Fellow Foresters, fellow alumni and friends: We are assembled for a multitude of purposes. To record our general interest in conservation as a principle, to bear testimony to our special faith in forestry as an instrument of conservation, to gather inspiration from a great educational institution renowned throughout the world for its agricultural leadership, to express our faith in the courage and consistency of the people of this great commonwealth whom it serves, and in all this to pay tribute to the work and services of one who for a full quarter of a century has carried the banner of progress for our common ideals and common objectives, Prof. G. B. MacDonald, dean and creator of the Ames School of Forestry.