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branches of forestry, including the most modern utilization developments in the Southern Hemisphere. Set in the fifty-year-old Whakarewarewa State Forest, of 8,000 acres — ■one of the earliest of the experimental exotic forests in New Zealand—the location is believed to be unrivalled anywhere in the Empire and it should inspire an extraordinarily high standard of educational training and investigative work. 13. Rotorua Forest Training Centre and Forest Experiment Station. —By virtue of its environmental advantages, Rotorua is even more suitable for an investigative headquarters, and it was therefore decided to link with the Rotorua Training Centre a Forest Experiment Station, staffed by highly qualified specialist officers who would not only •carry out forest investigational work, but also act in the capacity of part-time lecturers at the Training Centre. Only in this way is it possible to provide that minimum number of of qualified instructors referred to previously as being an essential requirement of an adequately staffed School of Forestry. It is pertinent to remark here that the associating ■of educational and investigative work and the dual functioning of specialist officers has been successfully developed in Sweden not so much for the economizing of staff, as for keeping the instructional staff thoroughly conversant with the latent forest technique and practices. 14. Operation of Scheme, 1939-45.—With the advent of the war it became necessary to defer the full establishment of the Rotorua Forest Training Centre and Forest Experiment Station, but both recruitment of young trainees and the original scheme of field training and of prerequisite degree work were commenced with a view to having sufficient entrants available for the first post-graduate course planned for 1948. The Training Centre was actually set under way as a tuitional school in 1944 for the purpose of providing vocational training for junior members of the Forest Service staff and for Teturned servicemen, and the success already achieved in the various courses for administrative field officers, timber-measurers, log-scalers, clerical staff, and leading hands has fully justified the confidence reposed in the scheme. Not only was the quality of instruction good, but the spirit of loyalty and of discipline inculcated into those who attended the courses has already shown healthy results throughout the Service. 15. Tapanui Forest Vocational School. —Following the termination of hostilities in 1945, an elaboration of the original scheme was necessary owing to the commencement of extensive rehabilitation projects much earlier than had been anticipated, and a purely vocational centre of instruction for supervising staff such as leading hands and forest foremen was established at Tapanui, Otago, to supplement the Rotorua work and to -deal with South Island personnel. The two centres are planned to deal with a total of "200 men before 31st March, 1948, a number that is essential for the minimum staffing of rehabilitation and normal departmental operations with minor supervising personnel. 16. Courses of Instruction at Rotorua Forest Training Centre. —With the unexpected termination of hostilities one year earlier than anticipated, it is desirable that the Rotorua Training Centre should be brought into full operation in 1947 instead of 1948. It is planned to provide the following courses of instruction : (a) Two-year post-graduate courses for officers aiming at professional rank who have completed a B.Sc. degree in approved subjects and have had sufficient preliminary field experience in forest work. (b) One-year diploma courses for non-professional students desiring to qualify for forest ranger status or equivalent, such students, as in (a), being required to have gained sufficient preliminary field experience in forest work. (c) Short courses of instruction on the various ancillary and specialized branches of forestry, mainly of an elementary nature, for the purpose of raising the general standard of forest education among junior staff, thereby improving efficiency and providing opportunities for more rapid advancement. (d) Refresher courses of a more advanced nature, as in (c), for more senior forest officers. (e) Administrative courses for departmental officers of the Clerical, General, and Professional Divisions aiming for promotion to administrative positions.

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