TRANSACTIONS 
OF THE 
ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
I. Address delivered at the Thirty-seventh Annual Meeting, 5th 
August 1890. By Mr D. F. Macxenziz, Morton Hall, 
Vice-President. 
GENTLEMEN,—In the absence of the President of our Society, 
I am called on to make the customary Address from the Chair, 
and I think I cannot make a better use of the opportunity than 
to draw your attention for a short time to the large extent of 
what is called “Waste Land” in Scotland, and the amount 
of the same which could be profitably devoted to the growth 
of Forest Trees. 
Scotland is very irregular in outline, being so broken up by 
promontories stretching far into the sea, and by arms of the sea 
deeply indenting the land, that a great portion of the interior lies 
within less than forty miles from the sea. This accounts, to a 
large extent, for the difficulty in getting timber to grow at such 
high altitudes as it often does on the Continent. The superficial area, 
according to the Board of Trade, is computed to be 30,463 square 
miles, or 19,496,133 statute acres; but the final results of the 
Ordnance Survey give the figures at 19,777,490 acres of land 
and water. The latter includes lakes, rivers, rivulets, and per- 
manent pools down to the horse-pond. It also includes land or 
beaches along the seaboard, and estuaries to low-water mark. 
Such are the details laid down by the Ordnance Survey Depart- 
ment, from whose works, and the Board of Trade Returns, the 
figures Iam about to submit to you have been taken; but, for 
VOL. XIII. PART I. A 
