Page images
PDF
EPUB

and healthier, and happier for it. This can be done only by filling the State with teachers who know the value of this work, and know how to teach it along with the reading, writing and arithmetic. This offers the only final solution of the problem. The getting of equipment is a small matter after we get superintendents who know what equipment is needed and teachers who can use it.

2. The State should provide means for the training of teachers of manual and domestic training. At present we have no teachers, and no means of educating any.

Our A. and M. College is proposing to do something in this line, and our Girls Industrial school will do yet more; but the A. and M. College and the Girls Industrial school are primarily agricultural and technical schools and not places for the training of public school teachers. The State normals and the University, with its school of pedagogy, have for their special mission the education of teachers. It is, then, in these institutions that we must introduce this work of educating teachers of this manual and domestic training. Three things should be done.

a. The University should put these courses in her summer school at once. I have recommended this for several years, and believe the University will do it if the teachers of the State would request it.

b. The Legislature should give $5,000 a year to each of our three normal schools for the purpose of establishing in each a manual and domestic training department, and thus provide opportunities for our regular teachers to learn this work as a part of their normal course. If, for instance, manual training were put on the optional list along with elocution or vocal music, we would be blessed in having several hundred teachers able to teach manual training sent out yearly over our State.

Just as soon as practicable the Legislature should establish here, as a part of the University school of pedagogy, a model school. This school under our direction should be made a model for the State in building, equipment, curriculum, and method. It should be furnished with the best teachers in the land, and serve as an observation and practice school for the students of education in the University. In this school we should have manual and domestic work taught by experts who, as a part of the faculty of the school of education, would help us to send out from here

yearly hundreds of men and women able to introduce and teach this in our schools.

Until this is done, the wisest direction or best results can not come, for with all due respect to the splendid work done in our State by the normal schools, we can not hope for broad leadership from these. It is from the Uniersity that the leaders of thought and action must come, and all friends of manual and domestic training should strive to put this work here at the earliest practicable time.

A FOREST WORKING PLAN FOR THE LONG LEAF PINE LANDS OF TEXAS.

WILLIAM L. BRAY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BOTANY.

During the past year a great deal has been said in the State press about the inauguration of a conservative foresty regime had in contemplation by the Kirby Lumber Company for its vast forests of long leaf pine lands, known as the Kirby tract. It was announced over a year ago that the company was about to close a contract with the United States Bureau of Foresty whereby the latter would undertake to send a party into the tract to make such surveys and estimates and secure such data as would enable them to submit a forest working plan, to be used by the company in its future lumbering operations. Later, experts from the bureau made a reconnaisance upon the tract, and upon their favorable report as to the practicability and profit of following a specific working plan, the Kirby Lumber Company accepted the offer of the Bureau of Forestry, and agreed to furnish certain funds and facilities to enable the Bureau to make its working plan. During November of the present season, a large party of foresters entered the Kirby tract and established camps preparatory to entering upon the survey work. The writer assumes that a good many queries have arisen as to the nature of this enterprise. "What is a Forest Working Plan? What kind of a party is engaged in making one? How do they go about the thing and what is to be done with it after it is finished?" It is the purpose of this article

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][ocr errors][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

to explain these things, and to that end the writer visited headquarter's camp near Buna in Jasper county early in December and familiarized himself with the work there in progress.

In the first place, it should be explained that the Houston Oil Company owns a vast area of 1,250,000 acres of long leaf pine lands, embracing about 80 per cent of all the long leaf timber now standing in Texas. This land, known as the Kirby tract, lies in the counties along the Sabine, and those immediately west, especially in Houston, Jasper, Hardin, Tyler, Sabine, San Augustine, and Angelina.

The Kirby Lumber Company is the owner of the timber on this tract, and being at liberty to cut it at its pleasure, it occurred to the management that it would be a good business proposition (not to say a public benefaction) if the lumbering operations could be so conducted as to preserve the producing capacity of the forest, while at the same time marketing the mature timber profitably. Such a procedure seemed practicable in view of the limited areas of valuable pine timber, both in the North and the South, and in view of the history of lumber prices, which have been marked by a steady and natural growth during a course of many years. It was with some such ideas as these in mind that the Bureau of Forestry was consulted. The Bureau offers, under certain conditions, to submit what is called a forest working plan, and the presumption is that this plan is found to be practicable under existing conditions, the company will act it and put it in operation, requiring the methods of lumbering to be pursued in accordance therewith.

The Bureau of Forestry is now engaged in making this working plan, and the field survey work was to have been completed by the first of March. For three months a party of nearly fifty men in charge of an expert forester, has been engaged in the survey. This force was divided into four camps, each originally located at one of the Kirby Lumber Company's cuttings or logging tracts. Headquarters' camp is four miles from Buna, a second near Silsbee, a third near Call station and a fourth a few miles from Kirbyville.

THE CAMP OUTFIT.

To outfit and maintain these four camps during the winter months is a matter of very considerable moment. The men must

« PreviousContinue »