place for themselves and for him in the forestry literature of 

 Europe. 



The Honorary Secretary requires no testimonial from me. 

 But it would be ungrateful indeed not to acknowledge the 

 constant help which 1 have had from him during these three 

 years. He has always been the guardian of the constitution 

 of this Society, and we owe it more to him than to anyone else 

 that those differences of occupation and interest and locality 

 among our members, which might so easily have become a 

 source of weakness, have, as a matter of fact, in our Society 

 been a constant source of strength. 



As for Mr Galloway, I can only say I have never met a 

 secretary so efficient, or one with whom it is so delightful to 

 work. With him a thing is no sooner decided than it is done, 

 except when it is very urgent, and in such cases it is done 

 first and decided afterwards. He simply does not know what 

 red tape is. 



The mention of red tape brings me naturally to our efforts 

 of the last three years. We have made less progress than 

 I hoped three years ago. But still a good deal has been done. 

 Each year we have passed through a different phase, and 

 with each new phase progress has become slower. In the first 

 phase our Society had to choose a line for the development 

 of silviculture. It fell to me to embody our ideas in a 

 Memorandum, and I desire to record the fact that the policy 

 laid down in that Memorandum was not only arrived at 

 unanimously, but has never since been departed from. Nobody 

 can say that we ask for one thing to-day and another to-morrow. 

 The reason is that our views were the common-sense outcome 

 of the experience and studies of our members and their 

 predecessors during a great many years We also, since there 

 was no one else to do it, made an attempt to tackle some of 

 the greater difficulties of afforestation by means of a report 

 drawn up for our Society by Lord Lovat and Captain Stirling, 

 with the help of many others of our members. In this phase 

 we moved steadily and fast until we came to the end of 

 what a Society like ours can do in that line. In the 

 next phase, a long and wearisome correspondence with various 

 public departments led at last to the appointment, by the 

 Secretary for Scotland, of a committee to consider and report 

 on the policy which we had laid before him. It did consider 

 and report, and our scheme was carried a little further, but at 

 the expense of another twelve months. Then came the third 

 phase, in which we are now moving, if we are moving — the 

 appointment of the Board of Agriculture, with which forestry 

 was very properly included, since they are branches of one great 

 subject. Then came the welcome promise of a Department 

 of Forestry, and the happy choice of Mr Sutherland to take 

 charge of it. In my judgment, and I see in yours, no better 



