36 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



bouring landowners should put their woods under proper 

 management for the benefit of others) " might confer advantage 

 were they to allow some of the young trees in the Meadows, 

 say every fourth tree or so, to be so treated." I say, then, that 

 ideas in those days were on a more modest scale than now. In 

 the same volume I got an interesting piece of information, and 

 it may be information to more than myself, to the effect that 

 in the year, I think, 1858, there were Arboricultural Societies, 

 not only in Edinburgh, but also in Brechin and Peebles; and I 

 commend the idea to the historian of the Society, to find out 

 what has come of the Arboricultural Societies of Brechin and 

 Peebles. Another very interesting article ^ in an early volume 

 dealt with a subject which I think I have heard about before. 

 It seems that fifty years ago a great many people believed that 

 if you wanted durability you should only fell trees when the 

 moon was decreasing — in the wane of the moon, and that it 

 was fatal to the life of timber to fell it in the wax of the moon. 

 An early writer goes into the subject at great length, and he 

 points out that it was a prevalent idea in England — he does not 

 say that the Scotch had run away with such an idea — it was 

 acted on in England, he says, and you found it in France, and 

 even in Germany. He does not say you find it in Scotland. 

 In elaborating his idea, he puts down the following observations : 

 — " Can there, then," he says, " be anything imagined more 

 extraordinary, anomalous, or unaccountable than this supposed 

 correspondence between the movement of the sap and the 

 phases of the moon? It has its parallel only in the belief, at 

 one time generally entertained, that insanity was induced, or at 

 least influenced, by the moon ; hence the term lunatic. The 

 primary idea attached to the word is now obsolete. . . . But to 

 apply the term lunatic to those who entertain the belief that the 

 ascension of the sap is influenced by the moon, in any of her 

 phases, is to give the word its primary signification and to use it 

 appropriately; as it is our opinion that they are truly, and in 

 every sense of the word, lunatic P Now, gentlemen, you need not 

 imagine that that much discussed subject, the larch disease, 

 was unknown to the Founders of the Society, because I find 

 that the early volumes of the Transactions contain a great many 

 references to, and articles upon, the subject of larch disease. I 



1 "On the Felling of Timber with a View to Future Durability," by 

 James Macneil, Abercairney, Crieff, Vol. II. p. 17. 



