ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, AUGUST 4, 1891. 167 
the Highland and Agricultural Society had been endeavouring to 
rouse interest in forestry by granting diplomas after examination, 
and proposals had been made for teaching in this country of the 
young foresters for the Indian Government ; but otherwise I am 
not aware that any society or body of individuals was interesting 
itself in forestry. But the effect of the work of our Society was 
making itself felt elsewhere, and the appointment of the Select 
Committee on Forestry of 1885 may, I believe, be traced to our 
efforts. You all know what are the proposals of that Committee. 
After hearing of a great deal of conflicting evidence, the Committee 
devised a scheme which, if carried out in all its details, would have 
gone far to supply what we, as a Society, have been seeking for. 
But, alas! five years are elapsed since the recommendations of 
the report appeared, and there is no sign of any action being taken 
on the lines laid down, and it appears as if the only result of the 
Forestry Committee, so far as we are concerned, will have been 
the temporary cessation of effort to establish independent teaching 
of forestry in Edinburgh in expectation of the advantages which 
it was hoped the deliberations of the Committee would confer. 
We were in this state of expectancy in 1889, when a new 
impetus was given to our energies by the arrival of Dr Somerville, 
fresh from the training he had enjoyed under the master of German 
scientific forestry, Professor Hartig of Munich. From the moment 
of his advent we have, I may say, felt that our hopes of the 
establishment of forestry teaching were near realisation. In Dr 
Somerville we had just the man required—one devoted to his 
subject, with full knowledge of it, ready and competent to 
impart his knowledge. And here you will allow me, whilst con- 
gratulating him on his election to the important and prominent 
position he now occupies, to express our sense of the great loss 
we have sustained in his migration to Newcastle. We all know 
how generously, for small pecuniary return, he worked for forestry 
in Edinburgh, and we recognise that it is a misfortune there was 
not, and is not yet, a post with sufficient remuneration attached 
to it to keep so good a man in Edinburgh. Let us hope that 
ere long conditions will be altered, and that we may yet see so 
admirably qualified a man as he occupying a chair of forestry in 
our university. 
The cause of forestry has benefited to a very great extent by 
the two short years in which Dr Somerville has worked amongst 
us. For so good a man there was no difficulty in instituting in 
