PROCEEDINGS OF THE CHEMICAL DEPARTMENT. 385 



which will spring up naturally at a future time will be found to 

 be safe enough from such destruction. It is always the newly 

 inserted and weakly plant which is attacked by hares or rabbits, 

 whatever be its species. Under the name of alums incana (and 

 Silber-erle in German) the seed might be easily procured from 

 Hamburgh by any gentleman who wishes to raise plants in large 

 numbers for himself. 



As an ornamental addition to our sylva, the species is worthy 

 of notice for its graceful, though not large, catkins, which adorn 

 it in February ; the fine play of its foliage in the summer breeze ; 

 and the warm, pinkish, puce-colour of its twigs, as the summer 

 advances. It carries its leaves well into November, yet, like all 

 the other alders, it lacks the golden tints that adorn the birch in 

 autumn. 



It will in all likelihood propagate itself by seed down the 

 gravelly and sandy margins of our moorland streams, when 

 planted near their feeders among the hills, and so become 

 naturalized. 



Our greatest arboricultural deficiency has always been that 

 of a hardy secondary tree, which would be for our northern 

 woods, what the hornbeam is for those of the southern counties 

 of England. The silver alder will, in some measure, supply this 

 want, if freely cultivated 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE CHEMICAL DEPARTMENT. 



Report by Dr. Anderson on the Field Experiments made during the 



Season 1866. 



The best methods of conducting agricultural experiments, and 

 securing from them the most reliable results, has formed a fre- 

 quent subject of discussion in the Chemical Committee during 

 the whole of its existence ; and while recognising most fully the 

 debt under which agriculture lies to those who have devoted 

 much time and labour to such investigations, and the valuable 

 results obtained through the Prizes offered by the Highland and 

 Agricultural and other similar Societies, it was felt that 

 many of these did not in all respects fulfil the wants of 

 agriculture iu its present condition. Many of the earlier 

 experiments were necessarily defective, owing to the im- 

 perfect knowledge which then existed on the subject of 

 the precautions necessary to secure success, and even of 

 those more recently made it is not unfrequently apparent 

 that the results obtained are by no means commensurate 

 with the labour expended on them. Sometimes the omission of 

 a trifling precaution, or the absence of some apparently minute 



