TRANSACTIONS 



SCOTTISH ARBOKICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



XXII. Address delivered at the Twenty-fourth Annual Meeting. 

 By the Right Hon. W. P. Adam of Blairadaru, M.P. 



It was with many misgivings as to my own ability properly 

 to discharge the duties of your President, but with none as to the 

 importance of the office and the great usefulness of your Society, 

 that I undertook to act in the distinguished position in which 

 your kindness has placed me. I should, however, have been able 

 much better to discharge the duties I have undertaken, and I 

 should not have had to ask your forgiveness for the short stay I 

 must make among you, had it not been decided to hold your meeting 

 on this particular day. You are, most of you, aware that although 

 politics have nothing to do with forestry, and although the forester 

 lives happy, "procul negotiis ut prisca gens mortalium," still that 

 I am not so free, and am obliged to be in the full whirl and vortex 

 of party, and am tied by duties which admit of no excuse and have 

 little cessation. In the performance of these duties I must be pre- 

 sent this day at very different meetings* from that which we are now 

 holding, and this must be my excuse if both my attendance here is 

 curtailed, and if I fall short, as I fear I must, both in the length and 

 the value of an address which has necessarily been prepared hastily 

 and amid many interruptions. It has been a matter of much gi-atifi- 

 cation to me, who have now been a member of your Society for some 

 years, to observe the gradual, steady, and sure progress which the 

 Society seems to be making, not only in the number of its membei's, 

 but in the influence and authority with which it speaks to all con- 

 nected with Arboriculture; and I would take this opportunity of 



* Political meetings held in honour of Lord Hartington, Nov. 6, 1877. 

 VOL. VIII., PART III. O 



