Ixxxii PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



"On Two Species of Gidfiferte.^' Linn. Soe. Journ. vol. ix. 

 p. 261 (1867). 



''An Enumeration of the Indian Species of AcanfJuicece,'' 1. c. 

 p. 425. 



Dr. Anderson was elected a Fellow of this Society on the 20th of 

 January 1859. 



Xathaxiel BrcKLET, M.D,, was in practice in the medical profes- 

 sion at Eochdale, in Lancashire. He was a Doctor of Medicine of 

 St. Andrew's and Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of 

 England. He was also a Fellow of the Botanical Society of Edin- 

 burgh. He died on the 13th of January 1871, aged 49, having been 

 elected a Fellow of this Society on the 18th of April 1843. 



Robert Chaitbeks, LL.D.. was born at Peebles, on the banks of 

 the Tweed, in the year 1802. His father, Mr. James Chambers, 

 was a muslin-weaver, and at first a prosperous manufacturer, but he 

 was eventually ruined by the competition of machine with hand-loom 

 weaving. Robert Chambers received his early education at the 

 Grammar School at Peebles. Being imable, from a painful defect in 

 his feet, to join in the play of his schoolfellows, he became a quiet, 

 studious boy. When he was twelve years old his father removed to 

 Edinburgh ; and for two years afterwards the son went to a school 

 kept by Mr. Benjamin Mackay, who was afterwards Head Master of 

 the High School. Meanwhile the family had been reduced to 

 poverty, and Robert Chambers was obliged to start in the world at 

 the early age of fifteen. He gives some account of this part of his 

 life in the preface to his collected works in 1847 ; and in a letter 

 addressed to the late Hugh Miller, in 1854, he gives some more details 

 of his early struggles. He says, " Till I proved that I could help 

 myself no friend came to me. The consequent defpug, self- relying 

 spirit in which at sixteen I set out as a bookseller, with only my own 

 small collection of books as a stock — not worth more than two 

 pounds, I believe — led to my being quickly independent of all aid : 

 but it has not been all a gain ; for I am now sensible that my spirit 

 of self-reliance too often manifested itself in an unsocial, unamiable 

 light, while my recollections of ' honest poverty ' may have made 

 me too eager to attain worldly prosperity.'' His elder brother 

 "William having started as a printer and bookseller, the two com- 

 menced a weekly Miscellany, called ' The Kaleidoscope : ' but it was 

 discontinued at the end of 1821. Robert Chambers's next literary 

 venture was more successful. The Waverley Novels being then in 

 the height of their fame, he wrote a volume entitled ' Illustrations 

 of the Author of Waverley,' consisting of descriptive sketches of the 



