The Scottish Naturalist. 55 



to Natural History as a recreation when in feeble health, and who 

 still works in a green old age at his favourite study, to which, he 

 has told me, he owed improved health, if not life itself, and who 

 is now a high authority in botanical science, and the joint author 

 of the beautiful work on British Algse, published by Bradbury and 

 Evans. 



Having selected your subject, you must, of course, read ; but 

 above all observe for yourselves. Take as model observers such 

 men as White of Selborne, Kirby and Spence, Lyall and Geekie, 

 in geology ; and, above all, Darwin, the most faithful observer 

 and recorder of facts, perhaps, that has lived in any age. 



In the early life of our Society, we are under great obligations 

 to those members who so kindly read papers on general subjects 

 — such as heat, light, electricity, &c. In the preparation of these 

 papers, the authors do themselves good, and afford us pleasure 

 and information. It should, however, be kept in view that the 

 true work of such a Society as ours is original observation and re- 

 search ; and that we will look by-and-bye for the outcome of this 

 work, especially from our younger members. Here let me say 

 that, though possibly some of the members may consider them- 

 selves too old to begin new studies, I am quite sure none of you 

 are too young. The love of nature and of acquiring knowledge 

 about all the wonderful things and phenomena that surround us is 

 born with every child ; and though we may smother this love, or 

 divert it into other channels by a false education, it will, if allowed, 

 or, still more, if nourished, assert itself. 



Forty years ago a few schoolboys in Musselburgh, bit by 

 curiosity, excited at the wonder of a chemist's shop, formed them- 

 selves into a little Society, under the ambitious title of the Mussel- 

 burgh Philosophical Society. I, one of these boys, shall never 

 forget the pure pleasure our meetings afforded us, though I am 

 bound to confess they were often disastrous to our clothes, and 

 were not unfrequently followed by parental chastisement, which 

 indelibly imprinted on our memories the chemical reaction of 

 sulphuric or nitric acid on tweed trousers ! Our Society, to which 

 I had the honour of acting as secretary and treasurer, met in a 

 loft. Its membership did not, to the best of my recollection, ex- 

 ceed half-a-dozen, and its existence was of brief duration ; but we 

 weie in earnest, and did real work. We taught ourselves practical 

 chemistry — there were no science classes in schools in those days, 



