180 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
XV. Report on the Excursion of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural 
Society to Germany in July and August 1895. By Dona.p 
RoseErtTson, Forester, Novar. 
This Excursion was proposed by Mr Munro Ferguson of Raith 
and Novar, and was very ably carried through by Professors 
Somerville and Schwappach, both of whom deserve the thanks of 
all those who attended it. 
The punctuality and strict adherence to the programme which 
characterised the whole trip were practical lessons which we, as 
individuals and as a Society, ought to try and imitate as much as 
possible during our future excursions. This will not be so easily 
accomplished at home as in Germany, especially if we have much 
railway travelling, because, although some of our trains at home 
run faster than the trains in Germany, the German trains are at 
the journey’s end to a minute, whereas our trains are very often 
from ten minutes to two hours late. 
Leaving Leith on the 26th of July, we experienced rather rough 
weather during the first part of our voyage. We arrived at 
Bremen on the afternoon of Sunday, the 28th July, and had a 
ramble through the town. In Bremen and in all the towns and 
villages which we visited in Germany, we found trees growing 
in many of the principal streets and promenades, the buildings 
very neat and tastefully got up, the people very clean and polite, 
and no appearance of drunkenness, although there appeared to 
be large quantities of light beers and wines consumed. Perhaps 
it would be too much to ask a Scotchman at home to drink 
anything so light as the Germans do, but the writer thinks that 
it would add very much to our pleasure and comfort if we had 
more trees in our towns and villages in Scotland and England. 
On the 29th of July we began our tour of inspection at the 
Agricultural Station of Bremen, where we saw samples of what 
can be grown on pure peat land with dressings of potash and lime. 
Large tracts of peaty land in the neighbourhood of Bremen have 
been reclaimed aud put under cultivation by the unemployed, and 
yield fair crops. The experimental station, which is upheld at 
the joint expense of the Government and the town of Bremen, 
must be of immense value to the cultivators of the land in the 
neighbourhood, seeing they can find out, by means of the experi- 
ments carried on there, exactly the kind and quantity of any substance 
