12 REV. MR BAIRD'S ADDRESS. 



pursuits is so pure and genuine, and so various, that I cannot fear that 

 any one who has fairly entered into their spirit will turn him away. The 

 best argument, indeed, I know in favour of our studies is derived from 

 this fact ; for the Deity has never affixed pleasure (I mean, a pleasure 

 which the conscience approves, and which the memory delights ever and 

 anon to recall) to any sublunary pursuit that is unsuitable to the dignity 

 and condition of man. When the conscience utters her still voice to re- 

 prove or condemn, it is time to desist, and leave the path we are follow- 

 ing, however gaily it may be strewed ; but where she approves, there let 

 us follow, certain of reward. And who among naturalists ever found the 

 fruit of his study turn ashes in the enjoyment ? Nor can it be : for what 

 our internal monitor approves, the Scriptures also commend, and send us 

 for instruction to the meanest things, to the ant and to the lilies of the 

 field ; and bid us seek out His wonderful works, and to tell of them ; and 

 thence borrow their moral lessons ; and call upon us to praise the Crea- 

 tor, in " his contriving skill, profuse imagination, conceiving genius, and 

 exquisite taste ; in his most gracious benignity and most benevolent 

 munificence," through his creatures, from the creeping things of the sea 

 even to his behemoth and leviathan. 



Address read at tlie Second Anniversary Meeting of tfie Berwickshire 

 Naturalists' Club, held at Dunse, September 18, 1833. By the Rev. 

 A. BAIRD, President. 



OF all earthly pursuits and acquisitions, that of knowledge has ever 

 been considered, by rational and civilized beings, as the most important, 

 dignified, and honourable. According, indeed, as men are destitute or 

 possessed of this, we are generally disposed to rank them in the scale of 

 humanity : For, as it is this which, more than any thing else, distin- 

 guishes one man from another, so it is also this which gives to one an 

 influence and an authority which another, who is destitute of it, let his 

 external advantages be what they may, can never possibly command. 



But, if knowledge in general be thus excellent and desirable, there is 

 one particular species of it which must surely, in an especial manner, re- 

 commend itself to every man of sentiment, of feeling, or of observation. 

 The knowledge we allude to is the knowledge of nature, the know- 

 ledge of the earth we tread on, with all its varied tribes of animated ex- 

 istence, and all the interesting phenomena presented by its inanimate 



objects, the knowledge, in short, of that fair world which is destined 



to be the present habitation of our species, and of those wondrous works 

 whereby the great Creator so conspicuously manifests himself to his 

 creatures ; and whereby, likewise, is so clearly shewn his great and glo- 

 rious character. Such a knowledge, we say, must surely appear of all 

 others (religious knowledge expected), not only as the most interesting, 



