TRANSACTIONS 
OF THE 
ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
XX. Address delivered at the Thirty-ninth Annual Meeting, 9th 
August 1892. By Isaac Baytey Batrour, 8c.D., M.D., 
F.R.S., Queen’s Botanist in Scotland, Professor of Botany 
in the University of Edinburgh, and Keeper of the Royal 
Botanic Garden. 
My first duty is to thank you for the honour you have done 
me in electing me again to preside over your meetings. The 
position in which you place me is one of which any scientific 
man might be proud, and if I do indulge such feelings, they are 
not unmixed with thoughts of the inadequacy of my service and 
of the forbearance with which you have been pleased to regard 
my deficiencies. In response to your request that I should 
during the coming year act as your President, I can only reply 
by assuring you that I shall continue to promote, as far as lies 
within my power, the interest of forestry, and the progress 
of this Society. 
In addressing to you this evening a few remarks, I must, at 
the outset, congratulate the Society on its prosperity. The 
secretary informs me that this is quite a record year for the 
Society in the matter of new blood; no less than fifty-five new 
members having been enrolled. Surely we have evidence in 
this of the spread of interest in the subject of forestry throughout 
the country, and that the efforts made by our Society are con- 
tinuing to operate with increasing effect in stimulating attention 
to the importance of our woodlands, alike from an utilitarian 
and from an esthetic point of view. And if our accession of 
strength has been so great, it is pleasant to have to state that 
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