178 TRANSACTIONS OP ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



XIV. Address delivered at the General Meeting, 7th August 

 1900. By Alexander Milne, Vice-President of the 

 Society. 



I am sure that we all regret the absence of our noble 

 President, the Earl of Mansfield, from our meeting to-day. 

 No one is more sorry than I am at his inability to preside 

 on this occasion (on account of my having to fill this chair 

 in his stead). However, we all rejoice that his Lordship is 

 doing duty with his regiment in London, but we must also 

 express the hope that our President may soon return to his 

 extensive and well-wooded estates of Scone and Lynedoch, to 

 direct the planter's spade and pruniug-hook instead of the sword 

 and spear of the army. It is no easy matter to take our worthy 

 and honoured President's place on any occasion, but in occupying 

 this chair to-day, I have some consolation in the fact that at 

 this General Meeting of the Society the business is very much 

 of a formal nature, — no lengthened address or discussion is 

 expected, our Annual Meeting in January being the time for 

 lectures and papers on Arboricultural subjects. The principal 

 object of our gathering here (after the transaction of routine 

 business) is for the purpose of proceeding on our Annual 

 Excursion, to the north of Ireland this year, to see and 

 discuss there, object-lessons in practical forestry. I may say 

 that these Excursions, established now for over twenty years, 

 are full of Arboricultural interest and instruction. They afford 

 a valuable opportunity to all the members of meeting collectively 

 once a year, and exchanging views on the different methods 

 of the management of woodlands. Demonstration and discus- 

 sion are the most approved ways of gaining knowledge, and 

 in the presence of the giants of the forest, which take many 

 years to come to maturity, lessons are inculcated of the deepest 

 concern, both from an aesthetic and industrial point of view. 



I will not detain you with many remarks on any special 

 subject of Forestry, as your thoughts are more bent on seeing 

 practical Arboriculture, pointed out in the open-air, rather than 

 by debating theoretical instruction of this nature indoors. With 

 your permission, then, I will only offer a few observations on 

 the past and present work of the Society. To start with, I 

 think that we can congratulate ourselves on our present position. 

 I do not think that the Society was ever in a more flourishing 



