168 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
the university a lectureship in forestry, and under this appoint- 
ment Dr Somerville delivered complete course of lectures on 
forestry during the winters of 1889-90 and 1890-91. These were 
open to any student in the university, and I believe I am right 
in saying that they were the first courses of the kind delivered in 
the United Kingdom, and that Edinburgh has thus given the 
lead in forestry teaching. Dr Somerville’s work was in the main 
a labour of love: the fees provided a mere pittance, which of itself 
could not support a lecturer, and our Society therefore applied to 
the then recently established Board of Agriculture for a subven- 
tion under section 2 of the Board of Agriculture Act, 1889, in aid 
of the lecturer. Its application was successful, to the extent that 
in each of the years the lecturer received £100 out of Government 
funds. 
Dr Somerville’s labours did not, however, end with the opening 
up to students of the university of an avenue to a knowledge of 
forestry. They went further. The members of the Society will 
recollect that a circular sent to them last year informed them that 
a short course of lectures on botany and forestry for practical 
foresters would be given by Dr Somerville, and by the Keeper of 
the Royal Botanic Garden, during the winter months in the 
Botanic Garden. The course was opened, and twenty-two 
working-men were enrolled in the class—suflicient evidence, were 
it required, that lectures of the kind, if regularly and systematically 
supplied, would be greatly appreciated by a large body of men. 
In these ways, then, after so many years of struggling, the 
Society has seen, thanks in large measure to its efforts, the 
initiation of a system of forestry teaching, and the beginning, 
shall I say, of a forestry school. This is matter for hearty con- 
gratulation. The movements, so far as they have gone, can only 
be regarded as initial. I hope and believe that they mark the 
beginning of what is to be a permanent and flourishing forestry 
school. But, if this is to be so, effort is still wanting. I have 
endeavoured in outline to point out to you how our progress has 
been a gradual one, slow at times, but persistent, until, as it 
appears to me, we are near the goal towards which we have been 
striving for so long, the foundation of a forestry school. How 
then are we to proceed? How are we to pass beyond initiation 
to settled permanency 4 
It is fortunate we no longer require to adopt the militant 
attitude in respect of the claims of our subject. The importance 
