LARCH DISEASE INQUIRY. 



213 



LARCH DISEASE INQUIRY. 

 Report by Sub-Committee appointed 10th December 1904. 



In compliance with a remit to the Council, with powers, from 

 the Annual General Meeting of 31st January 1902, to take such 

 steps as may seem necessary to inquire into and experiment 

 as to the cause and effect of the disease of the larch, and to 

 report to a future meeting, a committee of inquiry was duly 

 appointed; and as a preliminary to further investigation, a series 

 of questions was drawn up by a sub-committee appointed for 

 the purpose, consisting of the Convener, Dr Borthwick and 

 Dr MacDougall, and issued to observers throughout Scotland, 

 in the spring of 1904. The number of schedules issued was 

 over 500, and the number of returns received was, after 

 deducting duplicate returns from some estates, 66, or 13 per cent, 

 of the number issued, a proportion which the committee feel to 

 be disappointingly small in comparison with the importance of 

 the subject of investigation. And further, the committee, while 

 acknowledging their indebtedness to the observers for the 

 great amount of trouble they have taken in connection with 

 the inquiry, and for the large amount of valuable information 

 which they have placed at the committee's disposal, regret to 

 say that the value of the returns as a whole has been materially 

 lessened by the facts that in a number of instances observers, 

 instead of stating, as the committee desired, the results of actual 

 observation, have given general opinions which do not seem 

 to be borne out either by observation or experiment, and that 

 in a few instances there has been total misapprehension of the 

 meaning of the questions. 



Returns were received from the following counties : — 



