1869.] SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 573 



tion. I have a few rows of Elton Pine Strawberry twelve years old, 

 and they are as healthy and fruit as well as others I have at two 

 years old. After the crop is gathered I fork in the bark and give a 

 slight topdressing of dung well rotted, and there they remain until 

 next fruiting season. I always have succeeded in producing good 

 crops. Adam Renton. 



SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The Sixteenth Annual General Meeting of this prosperous Society was held 

 at the Craigie Hall, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, on Wednesday, the 3d of 

 November 1869, at 1 p.m., a large gathering of the members being present ; the 

 chair was taken by the President of the Society, Eobert Hutchinson, Esq. of 

 Carlo wrie, F.E.S. E. The minutes of the last annual general meeting and com- 

 mittee meetings having been read, and the President having been re-elected, he 

 then proceeded to deliver his inaugural address, from which we take the following 

 extract :— 



" There is also another and more practical cause in which we are called upon 

 to assist, and that is, in endeavouring to ascertain exactly the influence which 

 vegetation has, or rather the influence which ivoods exert, on the health of the 

 country, both directly and indirectly, through their bearing on the rainfall. 

 This is a most important and most interesting branch of arboricultural science, 

 and one which is yet completely in its infancy. 



'•' The attention of scientiflc men has only lately been aroused to the fact that 

 trees modify very materially both the climate and the rainfall of a country ; and 

 ia order to ascertain the precise nature and extent of the influence they exercise, 

 very minute and careful observations, and a series of registrations in diff'erent 

 localities, under different circumstances, must be made. This is a work which 

 falls very particularly within our immediate province as a Society, and we must 

 not shirk it, but must each one carefully and conscientiously do the portion of 

 it which falls to his hand to do ; and by all labouring together, an immense 

 amount of light may be thrown on this important question, which may be useful 

 to the more purely scientific minds and associations ; and should we, in our 

 humble investigations, aid thereby in defining laws by which our country will be 

 benefited, both in the increased health of its inhabitants and in the improved 

 abundance of its harvests, the reward of the pains and trouble expended will be 

 a rich one. But, gentlemen, besides the good we may help, by God's blessing, 

 in doing to our countrymen, we shall certainly be conferring a great boon on 

 ourselves by cultivating a habit of intelligent observation. We cease to be like 

 ' dumb driven cattle,' and become ' heroes in the strife,' when we lift our daily 

 work out of the mere routine of petty drudgery into the willing co-operation in 

 the great battle of knowledge against ignorance ; and every day, as we go on 

 striving, the field of our view will open up and enlarge, and we will find an in- 

 tensified interest in our lives, and in everything that surrounds us. The dignity 

 and importance of arboriculture as a science is at last, I am happy to say, forcing 

 itself upon public attention, and the work of the forester is making itself felt as 

 an agency of immense power for good or for evil, according as it is performed. 

 Unfortunately, in former years, from ignorance of climatic and hygienic laws, 

 which are now acknowledged, forestry was regarded as mainly a necessary work 



