48" DR JOHNSTON'S ADDRESS. 



Nor will I e'er'forget you, nor shall e'er 

 The graver tasks of manhood, or th' advice 

 Of vulgar wisdom, move me to disclaim 

 Those studies which possessed me in the dawn 

 Of life, and fixed the colour of my mind 

 For every future year.'* 



Our perseverance was partially rewarded even on this day ; for, having 

 reached the deep and rocky gully in the side of the great Cheviot, named 

 Dunsdale, some plants of rare occurrence in the district gladdened us 

 with their beauty. I, for one, had not previously gathered the Saxifraga 

 hypnoides in its wild and native habitat ; and were it my lot ever to 

 woo a fairy — and fairies have been often wooed by mortals in this dis- 

 trict, unless legends lie — it should be on the mossy cushion, and under 

 the canopy of the white blossoms, of this pretty flower. The Ruhus 

 saxatilis trailed its *' innocent" shoots amidst the heathery rocks, and 

 ripened its berries in vain, aweary ing for the roe-buck, which in days 

 of yore came every autumnal eve to taste their sweetness.* What a fine 

 and sweetly wild picture was the herd browsing amidst the crags of that 

 dark and silent ravine ! But civilization and man spoil all. The deer are 

 gone ; the solitude is disturbed by the giggle of pic-nic parties ; and the 

 very flowers, happy to have been born to blush unseen, are rudely torn 

 up by the botanical idler, whose play is very death to them. The plant 

 which, on this occasion, most engaged his cruel attentions, was a Hieracium^ 

 of which many fine specimens were sacrificed to gratify his prying 

 curiosity. I have since examined these, and it seems scarcely possible 

 to resist the conclusion, that what have been called H. sylvaticum, 

 murorum, and pulmonarium, are merely states of one species. 



The walk homewards was hurried and fruitless ; but if there was any 

 disappointment felt at the result of the day's excursion, it disappeared 

 before the gladsomeness that sprung up out of a good dinner and a 

 temperate cheerer. Dr "Wilson, Mr James Tait, and Mr Jas. Douglas, 

 were thus enticed to enrol their names in our list of Members, and the 

 addition was hailed as an augury of the Club's perpetuity. After dinner, 

 Dr F. Douglas read a minute description of the skeleton of a child which 

 had been found in a stone coffin on the farm of Edenmouth, near Kelso ; 

 and Dr Wilson gave verbally a history of the discovery of the skeleton 

 of a beaver, made when digging in the moss at Linton Lough, in Rox- 



* The Scotch name for the fruit is " Roebuck-berries." " The young shoots are 

 very long, trailing, hairy, and furnished with innocent prickles." — Lightfoot. 



