Imperial Forestry Institute, Oxford

Abstract

THE Imperial Forestry Institute was established in 1924 at Oxford and placed under the direction of the professor of forestry—the School of Forestry and the Institute being kept separate. In the eleventh annual report (Hollywell Press, Oxford, 1935) it is announced that, owing to the work of the Institute having greatly increased, a new appointment of director of the Institute alone has been made, the Oxford professor of forestry remaining as general head of the Department and to remain in general administrative charge of the School and the Institute. Mr. J. N. Oliphant, deputy director of forestry, Malaya, has been appointed to the new post. It is stated in the report that “With a revival of recruitment for the forest services the number [of students at the Institute] may be expected to approach the normal once more”. Among the research work undertaken is the investigation into the cricket-bat willow. It is to be hoped that something definite and practical may come out of this work to assist landowners in Great Britain possessing areas eminently suited to the growth of the willow. The report mentions an estate where five hundred specimens of a well-known hybrid were supplied fifteen years ago; it being discovered years afterwards that they were not the true Salix ccerulea. The present writer knows of a case, now twenty-five years old, where a much larger number of a so-called cricket-bat willow were planted with a considerable financial loss to the estate. The owner wants a practical remedy. Another investigation is with the elm. The report says: “The elm studies begun by Dr. Bancroft in 1933 have been continued in the Cotentin region of Lower Normandy, the south of England, the east of Scotland, and in S.W. Ireland; the later investigations have been concerned more particularly with the origin of the English elm, Ulmus campestris, and of the Guernsey elm, Ulmus stricta var. sarniensis. Interesting observations were made in the Cotentin in July 1935, concerning the connexion between habit-type and climatic conditions, the effect of growth-conditions on the quality of the timber, and the effect of the introduction of Ulmus montana Stokes in the neighbourhood of Bricquebec.”