164 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



digging another trench and filling in the earth against the planted 

 trees. This being carefully levelled to a line the next row was 

 proceeded with. In two days we transplanted about 20,000 

 larches. 



" As an experiment the holiday was eminently successful. 

 The boys got some idea of what forestry is, and maybe one 

 or two may be tempted to leave town and take to work in 

 the woods. A healthier life could not be desired. Our country 

 wants men on the land. If boys acquire a taste for such 

 work as this they will go to the land without much persuasion. 

 Experimental work like this ought to be encouraged ; and we 

 are all very grateful to Mr Leven for carrying the matter 

 through. The scouts benefited in many ways. They got an 

 insight into woods and trees which could not be gained other- 

 wise, for an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory. 

 Most of the boys now can tell a Scots pine, Sitka spruce, silver 

 fir, Austrian pine, etc. Their health improved greatly. From 

 seven till five in the open woods at hard work gave us such 

 an enormous appetite, that we found it impossible to live on 

 rations, so we just ate till we were satisfied. Great interest 

 was evinced in natural history, and we were fast becoming 

 expert entomologists. The scouts were continually finding 

 something new, and as we carried a stock of boxes and bottles 

 we had a collection every night. Centipedes and millipedes 

 were discovered under sods ; one or two pine beetles were 

 found in broken pine twigs ; a few pine weevil larvae were 

 dug up from the roots of a pine ; a curious beetle {Rhagium) 

 and its larva were excavated out of an old rotten tree in 

 which they lived, along with several large beetles, and other 

 insects. 



"The Easter holiday of 191 7 will remain long in our 

 memories, and, doubtless, in the years to come some of us will 

 visit the forest to see the progress of the trees we planted. 

 Then the truth of the motto of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural 

 Society will come home to us — * Ye may be aye sticking in a 

 tree ; it will be growing when ye're sleeping.'" 



In a later issue of the same newspaper, Mr George Leven, in 

 a letter to the editor, expressed the opinion that the services of 

 the boy scouts were of " real value." He goes on to say : — 



" Schoolboy labour has been made use of to a certain extent 



