458 On the Application of Natural Princijiles 



Art. VII. Copi/ of a Letter addressed to Sir Charles Gordon, 

 Secretary to the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. 

 By Gavin Cree. 



I OBSERVE a notice of an essay read by John Boswell, Esq., of 

 Balmuto, at the dinner of the Committee of the Highland and 

 Agricultural Society, met at Aberdeen, 1840, recommending 

 the application of science to agricultural improvements more 

 extensively than has hitherto been thought of, which proposal 

 was approved of by Sir F. Mackenzie, Bart., who, at the same 

 time, suggested that a farm should be submitted to the public 

 on which experimentalists might put forth their skill and 

 science, a proposition equally rational as the establishing of 

 experimental gardens or other scientific institutions. 



In the improvements of this farm, there is a department, 

 among others, which ought, I think, to be attended to, namely, 

 the scientific cultivation of trees for timber and shelter. The 

 Society may think that they have done enough already for the 

 advancement of this branch of cultivation ; but after all that has 

 been done, arboriculture, in my opinion, has never been con- 

 ducted, to any great extent, with scientific skill. 



The abstract from the Society's Transactions of 1820, on the 

 management of woods and plantations, only displayed igno- 

 rance in the writer of that date on the subject of pruning 

 forest trees. The Society's committee awarded prizes to four 

 different persons for essays on the pruning of forest trees 

 in 1836. The committee who decided the merits of these 

 neither claimed nor expected any reference to vegetable ana- 

 tomy in illustration of the different systems ; in my opinion, an 

 improper neglect, as the system of pruning which is best must 

 be founded on the principles of vegetable physiology. The 

 late Sir Walter Scott, Bart., gave his opinion in the Quarterly 

 lievicui, 1830; and in the Edinburgh Literary Journal^ 1830, the 

 following remarks occur, attributed to the late Sir H. Steuart, 

 Bart., which glaringly exhibit the inconsistency of those who 

 follow out their methods without any natural principles to direct 

 them. To reason with such men is vain. Their confidence 

 and self-sufficiency are in the ratio of their ignorance ; guided 

 by such counsellors, however, they oftentimes succeed in mis- 

 leading others, and in retarding the advancement of that 

 knowledge that has made Boutcher, Marshall, and Nicol, all 

 meritorious writers, appear unsatisfactory, Hanbury useless, 

 and Pontey ridiculous, and has rendered the pruning system 

 of the last mentioned so ruinous to the woods of England. 

 It is the same want that makes Billington and Cruickshanks, 



