DEPUTATION TO THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND. 59 



classes for mining, for instance, but these never deal with the 

 growing of timber, the only material that can safely be used for 

 pit-props. We have no desire to deprive the scholars in the 

 Highlands of a knowledge of the heavenly bodies as now taught 

 to them, but we do plead that, in the interest of our nation, and 

 especially in the interests of the Highlands, the children there 

 should be encouraged to take a living interest in tree-growing. 



" During the past few days we have heard much about the 

 advance of agriculture — through education in its widest sense — 

 in Germany, Denmark, and other European countries. What 

 was said of agriculture in these countries could equally be said 

 of arboriculture, and while we may say a good deal about 

 agriculture in Scotland, all we can say of arboriculture is that it 

 has remained entirely neglected. 



" At Easter eighty schoolboys from Glasgow, assisted by 

 German military prisoners, planted 200 acres of Camps afforesta- 

 tion, and at Hairmyres we lined out two million plants and 

 prepared an acre of seed-beds. 



'■''Recuperative Value of Forestry. — The primary purpose of the 

 colony is to provide after care — training and treatment — for our 

 tuberculous patients. Our experience satisfied us that our scheme 

 might advantageously be temporarily used to benefit those 

 broken in health by military service. Mr Barnes, who visited 

 Hairmyres and Camps, shares our views, and through his efforts 

 facilities for completing the buildings have been secured. About 

 forty discharged men have worked in Hairmyres nursery, and 

 everyone benefited greatly. Several of the tuberculous civil 

 patients benefited so much that they are now serving in the 

 army, passed for general service. 



" Dr Macpherson, the resident physician at Hairmyres, has 

 had a wider experience in the effect of graded labour, as a cure, 

 than any one in the medical profession. In reply to an inquiry 

 as to his opinion of forestry as a curative agency, he wrote :— 

 'Emphasis might be laid on the marked physical improvement 

 on the general health of the workers in the forest garden, and 

 not merely the patients who, of course, also invariably derive 

 much benefit. The work is as valuable a sedative in excitable 

 cases as it is a stimulant to respiration and circulation in those 

 convalescent from acute illness.' 



"Forestry in Ru?-al Labour. — We all admit, as first principles 

 in forestry, that it will benefit agriculture, and our experience at 



