THE ANNUAL EXCURSION. 513 



deer; but common-sense told them that any one who held land 

 must make the best of it for himself, and he believed that in 

 many cases both the sheep and the deer had better give way to 

 trees. It was a good advice that the old laird gave to his son, 

 to "Aye be stickin' in a tree; it'll be growin' when ye're sleepin'." 

 They should, however, not only be " aye stickin' in a tree," but 

 they should also keep "stickin' it in" with knowledge, and that 

 was where the great benefit of association with a Society like 

 the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society came in. The 

 Society aimed at helping to show how to grow the best kind of 

 trees, suited to the different localities, in the best method, and 

 with the best results — financial and otherwise. He did not pro- 

 fess to be an expert in forestry, but, with the view of eliciting a 

 useful and instructive discussion, for the purpose of drawing out 

 the ideas of the scientific and theoretical arboriculturists present, 

 he would adopt the plan that was always adopted with political 

 candidates, and would heckle them a bit. He would invite them 

 to give their different views about the following questions: — (1) 

 The thinning of woods. Should trees be planted close and thick, 

 and the thinning be deferred till a late period of their growth; 

 or should the thinning be early and extensive? There was a 

 great boom in light and air just now, as a means of keeping 

 human beings and farm live stock healthy, and the only argu- 

 ment for close planting and deferred thinning was that, if the 

 trees were close together, you keep them from throwing out 

 superfluous branches, and get them to grow straight, and yield 

 clean good timber. (2) Natural regeneration: is it better than 

 artificial planting 1 (3) Diseases of trees. There was the larch 

 disease, for instance. They had all been told by bacteriological 

 scientists, in recent years, that tuberculosis, or consumption, was 

 caused by a bacillus, and he would like to know whether there 

 was any bacillus in connection with larch disease. They should 

 always try to get at the root of a thing, and, in the case of a 

 disease, they should aim at discovering its cause; for if the cause 

 could be removed or prevented, the effect — that was to say, the 

 disease — would be removed or prevented also. The fourth point 

 was the cultivation of trees, and that was a wide subject. The 

 fifth point was foreign competition. How could they keep ahead 

 of foreign competition? They had not so much foreign com- 

 petition to meet in the case of hardwoods, such as the oak, 

 the elm, and the ash. As to the ash, there had for some time 



