12 TRANSACTIONS OF ROVAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



have taken advantage of the recent fine weather to make their 

 inspection. As neither of them has had any experience in the 

 management of British nurseries, their visit cannot have been 

 of the sHghtest vahie. Let us hope they enjoyed the outing. 

 In railway fares, motor hires, and hotel bills, it is understood to 

 have doubled the cost of the plants. 



" It is time all this nonsense was swept away. A policy 

 such as I have ventured to sketch, and such as this Society 

 has steadily advocated, cannot be carried out by this sort of 

 muddling. The job must be entrusted to men who understand 

 it. A definite responsibility must be attached to them. They 

 must not play at forestry, but face the facts and take in due 

 order the practical steps essential to the re-establishment of this 

 lost industry. 



" I would not like to put all the blame for the inaction on the 

 Development Commissioners. I know they have had difficulties, 

 and in Scotland they have had to work with a very difficult 

 department in our Board of Agriculture. I do not know whether 

 the attitude of that Board to forestry as contrasted with the 

 friendly attitude, which we all know and welcome, of the 

 Forestry Section under Mr Sutherland and Dr Borthwick — I 

 do not know whether the attitude of the Board as a whole has 

 been fully grasped. When the Board was set up in 1911, Lord 

 Pentland said in his speech in the House of Lords, 27th 

 November : ' It is the intention of the Government that there 

 shall be under the Board of Agriculture, as an integral and vital 

 part of its administrative machinery, a department dealing 

 with forestry, which shall be developed as the needs of 

 forestry may justify in Scotland, and which shall be equipped 

 with competent and efficient advice in the matter.' That speech 

 embodied what seemed to us a very clear promise that this 

 integral part of the Board would share in the funds of 

 the Board, but after the legislation was finished and the Board 

 set up, the Chairman entirely refused to give for forestry any 

 grant from the funds apportioned to the Board. That refusal 

 was maintained till quite recently, and the Development Com- 

 missioners have consequently had to be relied upon for every 

 expenditure required on forestry in Scotland. This action on 

 the part of the Board, which I believe to have been wholly 

 illegal, has been responsible perhaps as much as any action on 

 the part of the Development Commissioners for the way in which 



