88 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
which their learning and science can best pass to invigorate the 
movement towards a higher standard of training. 
This Society is thoroughly representative, harmonious, and 
flourishing ; we are a travelled body with recent Germanic experi- 
ence and with other transmaritime undertakings both east and 
west either in our immediate or prospective consideration. We 
should be able to command public confidence. 
I have keenly watched the growth of our Society, because, once 
it became clear that no Government would move upon the report 
of the select committee on forestry alone, it seemed to me on 
looking round that the most likely if not the only remaining lever 
was the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society. I believe that 
the whole immediate future of forestry lies with the success of 
our efforts now. We are the living organisation through which 
the support of followers of the noble art of forestry can best be 
centred to promote the cause. I certainly do not despair of the 
future, for the advance of technical and secondary education, if 
slow, is sure. Meanwhile we have to keep our lamp burning, 
its light will be needed ere long when we have educated a 
sufficient body of opinion to realise that we ourselves must be 
educated if a great national industry is to flourish, an industry 
which the exhaustion of forests abroad may render ere long one 
of supreme importance at home. 
The process of educating people up to the point of giving us 
education may be irksome, but to spend time in vain regrets 
would be unworthy. I for one am confident that none of us will 
relax in our efforts nor cease in our demands until we have 
secured some provision for training foresters, so that we may 
overcome the waste and vacillation and ignorance that so beset an 
industry which, in its scope, may yet rank in Scotland alongside 
of agriculture itself. 
