118 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
almost annihilating time and space. It and its junior electric 
invention, the telephone, have quite revolutionised the rapid 
transaction of business and the development of trade throughout 
the civilised world. Another, and not the least important factor 
in the wonderful progress of the industries of the country in the 
past sixty years, was the invention of the penny post by Sir 
Rowland Hill, and its inauguration in 1840, when letters under 
half an ounce in weight were carried at a uniform rate of one 
penny. The weight of the letters was increased to one ounce 
in 1871, and, in commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of the 
Queen in the month of June last, the weight was further increased 
to four ounces for one penny—an immense boon to the public. 
The beneficial results of the development of these and other 
important inventions in the course of Her Majesty’s long reign 
are seen on every side and felt in every line of life, and have 
proved a great stimulus to the progress of forestry in this country. 
PLANTING OF FORESTS. 
The formation of extensive woods, or forests, was carried on 
in Scotland with great enterprise and public spirit by landowners 
in the last half of the eighteenth and the early part of the present 
century, so that when the Queen ascended the throne in 1837, 
many large tracts of land that were bare, treeless wastes, in the 
previous century, were well clothed with thriving plantations. 
During the same period, and especially towards the end of the 
last century, when the extensive natural pine forests in Strathspey 
were cut over, much of the natural woodlands were entirely 
cleared of their crop of timber, and some of the Jand then cleared 
remains still an unafforested waste. Most of it, however, has 
been restocked with timber, either by natural or artificial seeding, 
or by planting. Among the most noted of the earlier planters 
of forests in Scotland were the Dukes of Athole in Perthshire, 
who, in the forty years immediately preceding Her Majesty’s 
reign, planted of Larch alone about 9000 acres, as well as some 
thousands of acres of Scots Pine and Norway Spruce, the two 
latter being also extensively planted in the Moray and Strathspey 
districts by the Duke of Gordon and the Earl of Seafield. 
After a lull of a short period at the commencement of the 
present reign, those extensive planting operations have been 
carried on all through it with more or less continuity; and 
judging from the extent and generally flourishing condition of 
