150 President's Address. 



than others reared from seeds or roots taken from tlie lower 

 native habitats ; and were collectors of exotic plants to 

 send home only seeds gathered in their highest and coldest 

 natural habitats, we might get many hardy forms of what 

 are now deemed half-hardy and greenhouse plants from 

 the mountain ranges of Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, 

 Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, 

 Japan, and other parts, which would form new, valuable, 

 and highly interesting features in our plantations, pleasure- 

 grounds, and gardens. 



Our native forests of the Scotch pine or fir {Pinus syl- 

 vestris) may be instanced as affording important examples 

 of the beneficial effects of natural selection on that most 

 important and extensively grown of timber trees. In 1874 

 I had an opportunity of carefully examining much of the 

 famous Ballochbuie forest on the Braes of Mar, which since 

 then has fortunately become the property of our Society's 

 most respected patron, Her Majesty the Queen. And I 

 here use the word fortunately, advisedly, as from this grand 

 old forest having become royal property, a guarantee is 

 afforded that it will be permanently preserved as a worthy 

 remnant of those magnificent pine forests with which our 

 Highland glens and mountains were once so widely clothed, 

 but of which many have even recently been cleared away ; 

 and that it will continue to exhibit through far future 

 generations as many noble specimens as it now does of the 

 true valuable timbered, gigantic, smooth reddish stemmed 

 native Scotch pine or fir, with its picturesque, horizontal 

 branched, umbrella-like top. In Ballochbuie I observed 

 many varieties and sub-varieties of the Pinus sylvestris, 

 among which I had no difiiculty in identifying the four de- 

 scribed in the Caledonian Horticultural Society's "Memoirs," 

 for 1814, by that renowned Scottish botanist, the late Mr 

 George Don, as having been found by him in some planta- 

 tions in the neighbourhood of Forfar, where he ascertained 

 that the forementioned best native variety (which he called 

 Pinus sylvestris, Jiorizontalis) only existed in the proportion 

 of about one tree to ten or twelve of the others. In those 

 parts of Ballochbuie forest which were most favourable for 

 tree-growth, such as in proximity to the drive from 

 Balmoral to Invercauld, as well as in dry-bottomed 



