2IO TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



if I had, I cannot fail to believe that these figures would have 

 shown substantial and continuous and persistent progress, and I 

 may almost venture to guess, or almost venture to say, on my 

 own authority without figures, that the Society was never in a 

 stronger position financially and numerically than it is at the 

 present time. The secret of the strength and vigour and 

 robustness and, I hope, permanency of the Society comes from 

 various sources. You have in Scotland an extraordinary 

 valuable asset, as it seems to me, in what one might call the 

 intelligent, reasoned .support of landowners, who are convinced 

 of the intrinsic merit of the subject of afforestation. When you 

 find owners of land, men who give their mind to the improve- 

 ment of the social and economic conditions of the countryside, 

 neglecting no opportunity of instructing themselves as to the 

 importance of forestry, and urging the claims of forestry on the 

 Government and coming to meetings of this kind, and maintain- 

 ing that in their estimation forestry is the one available and 

 possible instrument of rural amelioration in large parts of the 

 Highlands, such testimony as that has enormous value in the 

 development of the subject. That, I consider, is one of your 

 valuable assets— the support you get from men most directly 

 and practically and to a large extent economically interested in 

 the subject. Then you get other support, the support of the 

 kind of person I am, not altogether unprejudiced, and perhaps 

 in their own way attempting to be as unbiased as they can, 

 though, of course, they are not altogether beyond criticism. 

 But to-day we have had further support. I think we have 

 had more direct and definite recognition by the Town Council 

 and Corporation of Edinburgh than we have ever had before. 

 I do not recollect that we have ever been entertained in the 

 City Chambers of this old Corporation as we have been 

 entertained to-day. That sort of thing counts, and helps to get 

 the subject forward. I suppose you will all agree with me that 

 besides what you may call the technical development of 

 forestry, what most of us have tried to do is to get the subject 

 known through improved education in the widest sense of the 

 word. That is to say, from the earliest stages we have recog- 

 nised that definite and systematic education of the young foresters 

 is likely in the end to advance the subject. We have gone, 

 as you know, on many tours abroad, five, at least, to foreign 

 countries, and, therefore, we have tapped what we may call the 



