PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 85 
but we have yet to find the estate having as a policy the treat- 
ment of timber lands with the same methodical care which is 
being bestowed upon similar lands under crop, and too often if 
a real planter arises in one generation, his projects and his planta- 
tions do not long survive him in the next. 
The Laird of Dumbiedykes, ere he soughed awa’ to a tune which 
boded ill for his future, made one effort to escape punishment in 
the dying behest to Jock which has become our motto. Sir 
Walter, who gained immortality with spade as with pen, does not, 
however, record that Jock ever “stuck in a tree,” while Dumbie- 
dykes had to confess that “his father tauld him sae forty years sin’, 
but he’d ne’er fand time to mind him.” The industry which needs 
the higher training and the more elaborate treatment has been 
treated, whether in the estate office or in the Board of Agricul- 
ture, as a matter appertaining to estheticism, to enjoyment, to 
ancestral homes, rather than to business or to the working-men— 
as a question of private whim, rather than of public importance. 
Still, if proprietors have not been so keen to advance scientific 
forestry as they have been to ensure scientific farming, they need 
not be too seriously blamed. They have not had the same 
advantage of trained assistance in the one asin the other. Scottish 
agriculture has not been the creation of one class, else Scotland 
would not be farmed as she is to-day. 
The proprietor who hands over the management of agricultural 
lands to factor or tenant may occasionally come to regret his 
selection, still, with the most ordinary care, he need seldom find 
himself in harness with any man who would not be taken to be a 
fair good manager or farmer all the world over. But while we 
could boldly say so much before the whole world, we should be a 
good deal more diffident in expressing the same view regarding 
the management of our woodlands. When the Scottish proprietor 
has no knowledge of how to make his plantations pay, he may 
often find it hard to discover his instructor ; and though of good 
foresters there are not a few, too many of them have been obliged 
to buy their knowledge at their employers’ expense, for lack of 
opportunity to acquire it at school or college in a manner at once 
more rational and economical. 
Then, besides the question of management, the proprietor 
suffers further difficulties and discouragements which have been 
frequently acknowledged before the Society. The planter must 
feel that if he should be privileged to enjoy the fruits of 
