The Scottish Naturalist. "195 



INAUGURAL ADDEESS- 



AT THE THIRTEENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SCOTTISH 

 CRYPTOGAMIC SOCIETY, HELD AT GREENOCK ON 4TH OCTOBER 1 88 7. 



By Rev. Hugh Macmillan, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E. 



My first duty is to thank you heartily for the high honour you 

 have conferred upon me in electing me to be your local president 

 during the meetings of our society in Greenock. There are many 

 members much more worthy of this honour than I am ; but there 

 are none who have the interest of the association more at heart, and 

 who desire more earnestly to make this year's Congress in every 

 respect a success. Your choice in the present instance is symp* 

 tomatic of the fact that the antagonism between scientific men and 

 ministers of religion has now, owing to more enlightened views en 

 both sides, in a large measure ceased to exist ; and that they are 

 now capable of understanding and sympathising with each other's 

 pursuits, and finding an interesting and instructive harmony be- 

 tween them. I feel that it is also a kind of acknowledgment, in 

 my unworthy person as their representative, of the great debt which 

 Cryptogamic science owes to members of my profession. Presby- 

 terian and Church of England clergymen have been among the 

 most enthusiastic students of this special department of Botany. 

 At the end of last century there was a parish minister at Ivillin, at 

 the head of Loch Tay in Perthshire, who enriched the Crypto- 

 gamic flora of Scotland by many interesting discoveries made, 

 among the Breadalbane mountains situated in his parish. This 

 minister, whose name was the Rev. Mr. Stewart, father of the better 

 known Dr. Stewart of Luss, was a remarkable example of the high 

 culture of some of the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland at a time 

 when science was little known. Besides faithfully performing his 

 professional duties, and earning the respect and regard of all his 

 people, he employed his leisure hours in translating the Bible into 

 Gaelic, and in investigating the Cryptogamic flora of Locli Tay 

 side. He was a correspondent of Lightfoot, the author of the 

 "Flora Scotica,". in which many of his discoveries appear, and 

 of Linnaeus^ to whom he wrote : long letters- about his favourite 



