The Sixteenth Annual General Meeting of this prosperous Society was held at the Craigie Hall, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, on Wednesday, the 3d of November 1869, at 1 p.m., a large gathering of the members being present; the chair was taken by the President of the Society, Robert Hutchinson, Esq. of Carlowrie, F. R.S. E. The minutes of the last annual general meeting and committee meetings having been read, and the President having been re-elected, he then proceeded to deliver his inaugural address, from which we take the following extract: -

"There is also another and more practical cause in which we are called upon to assist, and that is, in endeavouring to ascertain exactly the influence which vegetation has, or rather the influence which woods exert, on the health of the country, both directly and indirectly, through their bearing on the rainfall. This is a most important and most interesting branch of arboricultural science, and one which is yet completely in its infancy.

"The attention of scientific men has only lately been aroused to the fact that trees modify very materially both the climate and the rainfall of a country; and in order to ascertain the precise nature and extent of the influence they exercise, very minute and careful observations, and a series of registrations in different localities, under different circumstances, must be made. This is a work which falls very particularly within our immediate province as a Society, and we must not shirk it, but must each one carefully and conscientiously do the portion of it which falls to his hand to do; and by all labouring together, an immense amount of light may be thrown on this important question, which may be useful to the more purely scientific minds and associations; and should we, in our humble investigations, aid thereby in defining laws by which our country will be benefited, both in the increased health of its inhabitants and in the improved abundance of its harvests, the reward of the pains and trouble expended will be a rich one. But, gentlemen, besides the good we may help, by God's blessing, in doing to our countrymen, we shall certainly be conferring a great boon on ourselves by cultivating a habit of intelligent observation.

We cease to be like 'dumb driven cattle,' and become ' heroes in the strife,' when we lift our daily work out of the mere routine of petty drudgery into the willing co-operation in the great battle of knowledge against ignorance; and every day, as we go on striving, the field of our view will open up and enlarge, and we will find an intensified interest in our lives, and in everything that surrounds us. The dignity and importance of arboriculture as a science is at last, I am happy to say, forcing itself upon public attention, and the work of the forester is making itself felt as an agency of immense power for good or for evil, according as it is performed. Unfortunately, in former years, from ignorance of climatic and hygienic laws, which are now acknowledged, forestry was regarded as mainly a necessary work of destruction. This is now authoritatively admitted and referred to by the Under-Secretary of State for India - Mr Grant Duff - who, in introducing his financial statement in the House of Commons, in the last session of Parliament, said (referring to India Forest Conservancy) - ' No one who had not looked into this subject, had the faintest idea how terrible were the effects, over wide regions of the globe, of carelessness in keeping up a proper proportion of trees.

'"Let any one to whom the whole matter was new, turn to the remarkable work of the American Minister at Florence, Mr Marsh, upon ' Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action,' and he will shudder at the dangers which we have only just escaped. If our predecessors in India had known what we know, much of the enormous expense which we are now being put to with regard to irrigation would have been quite unnecessary. But the mistakes of former days are past praying for, and we can only now rejoice that the conservation of the forest has been recognised as a great State necessity, and that a regular forest department has been inaugurated, which will take to India the science of France and Germany.' Now, gentlemen, with regard to this speech of the Indian Secretary, I have a remark to make. The schools of forestry in these countries are famous, and deservedly so; but I am proud to say that, in my humble opinion, Scotland, without any school of forestry, is equally famous in this department. And one of the necessary qualifications - in fact, the concluding touch to the education of those young foresters, who are, according to Mr Grant Duff, ' to carry to the East the science of France and Germany ' - is, that they must for a time, after being in France and Germany, have studied under some approved Scotch forester in Scotland - to rectify, I suppose, any erroneous ideas imbibed in France and Germany previously.

Yes, gentlemen, in the ranks of this Society there have been found many scientific foresters, who have been chosen by the Government, and sent forth to our Indian empire; and at the present moment, if I am not mistaken, two young men - members of the Scottish Arboricultural Society - are about to follow those pioneers who have carried the name of our Society to the jungle and the Himalayan peaks, and who are already showing that Scotch energy and shrewdness are not unequal to grapple with the difficult problem of the conservancy of the Indian forests".