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An Address to the Members of the Berwickshire Naturalists* Club, 

 delivered at the Anniversary Meeting field at Ford, September 20. 

 1843. By George Johnston, M.D., President. 



Gentlemen, 



Eleven years have elapsed since I had the honour of addressing yea 

 from this chair. Few of us were then sanguine enough to believe that 

 the Club could ever sustain such a lengthened existence, while, in fact, 

 it shews yet no evidence of decay, for the meetings of the past session 

 have been more numerously attended than those of any previous year, 

 and no later than at our last meeting, three Members were added to our 

 list.* It is not difficult to account for our permanency. Attendance is not 

 enforced upon us ; and when we do meet, there is a certainty in us that 

 the disposition to society and socialness, innate to humanity, and ever 

 influencing its conduct, will have fair play ; for while there is nothing in 

 our rules to restrict or restrain freedom of conversation or debate, yet 

 the professed object of our meeting together operates, unseen and unfelt, 

 to guard us against the introduction of unpleasant topics, and to win us 

 to subjects that move the heart and its aflfections, and so to place us in 

 pleasant harmony with ourselves and with each other. Our association 

 affords us, moreover, the stated means of indulging another principle 

 bound up with our frame and constitution, for He who made nature all 

 beauty to the eye, implanted, at the same time, in his rational creatures, 

 an instinctive perception of that beauty, and with it joined indissolubly, 

 a balm and virtue that operates through life. You have the proof of this 



* The Members admitted in the course of the year, are : — 



Sept. 28. 1842, Thomas Tancred, Esq., Twizel-House. 



Dec. 15. "William Murray, Esq., of Marshall-Meadows. 



July 26. 1843, Charles Wilson, M.D., Kelso. 



James Tait, Esq. jun., Edcnside, Kelso. 



Mr James Douglas, Commercial Bank, Kelso. 

 Sept. 20. Rev. Edward Bigge, Archdeacon of Lindisfarne, Egglingham. 



William Dickson, Esq. of Amisfield, Alnwick. 



William Broderick, Esq., Belford. 



John Turnbull, Esq., 49 George Square, Edinburgh. 



Rev. George Walker, Belford. 



B. N. C. — VOL. II. NO. XI. D 



