PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 87 
management as it is carried on without records or working plans. 
At Raith we have a Plantation Book begun by one of my forbears 
in 1724; it was elaborately kept until 1828, but having been 
then abandoned, the information it contains becomes curious 
rather than of practical utility. It makes me, however, the more 
confident in believing that forestry, to have a chance under 
private management, must have its records and working plans 
kept like title-deeds and posted up like ledgers. Then our 
forestry will be level with agriculture in so far as details of 
management are concerned. 
Meanwhile we have no encouragement from the State. I 
need not recapitulate what has been done to train foresters in 
lands where forestry pays, nor the success of foreign Govern- 
ments and communities in setting up a practical standard of 
forestry in national or communal foresis,—a standard which I 
believe to be invaluable. 
I once wrote a review article to maintain that communal 
ownership of land established side by side with private property 
was best calculated to develop national resources and social 
amelioration. The two systems being then in competition, the 
best would prevail in whatever direction its results would show 
it to be the best. I should be inclined to believe, for example, 
that communal farming would not be a practical success in our 
time, while, on the other hand, I believe that private forestry, 
as left to itself, will be generally a failure until the State takes 
in hand both instruction in forestry and the ownership of forests. 
Once State forests were started there should be an immediate 
improvement in the timber management of private estates. But 
to pursue the subject further would be going too far ahead. Our 
present and special business, outside of our ordinary routine, is 
the establishment of a Forest School coupled with an Experimental 
Area. This we advocate wholly apart from the policy of State 
forestry, as to which there may be divergence of opinion, whilst as 
to education and experiments there can be none. 
Now, to gain the requisite provision for forestry education, I pin 
my faith upon this Society as the best available instrument. 
There may be more power in the little finger of the Government 
than in all our loins, but then that little finger is not likely to be 
lifted. There may be more science in the head of any professor 
amongst those who have so readily and effectively aided us than 
in all the laymen of this Society, yet we are the medium through 
