8 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Land Surveying and Plan Drawing. The attendance at the 
classes has been excellent, and the examinations satisfactory all 
round. Regarding the men themselves, it would not be easy to find 
anywhere a finer body of men, and every one of the lecturers 
has been impressed, as much as I myself have been, by their 
intelligent appreciation of the subjects brought before them, and 
by their diligent application and endeavour to master details. 
And if I may judge from what I have heard of the views of the 
men, they are no less satisfied with the instruction provided than 
we are with their reception of it. 
After the holiday months, from August to November, we shall 
recommence the course, and, with the promise of support which I 
have received from various lecturers, I look forward to a fruitful 
continuance of it. 
One pleasing feature of the opening of the course was a com- 
munication from General Michael, C.S.I., warmly commending it, and 
enclosing, as a mark of his sympathy with the movement, a cheque 
for £10, to be given, at the conclusion of the course, to the man 
who acquitted himself best in forestry,—a recognition which I 
need not say was warmly acknowledged, and which will be, I am 
sure, an additional incentive to the men to study. 
The path to success is never, I suppose, smooth, and ours, in 
this matter, has not been an exception. Before the course was 
opened an opposition to it cropped up unexpectedly in a quarter 
to which, so far as I know, none of us have hitherto had reason to 
look for special interest in forestry matters. What the inwardness 
of the opposition was I will not stop now to inquire, the avowed 
and sufficiently absurd reason was an assumed rivalry with the 
teaching in the University. The matter was dealt with in the 
Scotsman, and I had supposed and hoped its discussion there, and 
the practical working of our scheme, had given the story of rivalry 
its quietus. It was therefore with great regret I read in a report 
in an agricultural paper of a meeting of the Highland and 
Agricultural Society—a meeting my official duties prevented me 
attending—that the chairman of the Forestry Committee of the 
Society had again raised this bogey, and had indulged in some 
free oriticism of our course. Because only one student, who, 
as it happened, was not a pupil of the Edinburgh University 
lecturer, appeared for the diploma examination of the society, 
and obtained only a second class, therefore our course at the 
Botanic Garden was opposed to the University teaching. This 
