Book excerpt: Excerpt from Records of the Scottish Volunteer Force, 1859-1908 The present seems a peculiarly appropriate time when some record of the origin and history of the force should be compiled, as, firstly, its character and organisation have been changed and it has furnished the cadres for the territorial army of the future; and secondly, in a few years' time any attempt to arrive at data as to the earliest formations of the volunteer corps would be in vain. From the list appended to this Preface it will be seen how few are the efforts which have been made to commit to paper the histories of volunteer corps; indeed in the earlier days no records at all were kept in most cases. Nowadays, therefore, the bare facts disclosed by a study of army lists and other official documents can generally be only amplified by the personal recollections of those who took part in the movement in its early days. Those men are now passing away from among us, and with them their knowledge will be buried in the grave; so it becomes a pious military duty to collect as much as possible of what they have to tell and to record it in a per manent form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.