74 Transactions. 



from nuiuber to number, they seem to me to have generally 

 embodied a vast amount of valuable observations. They seem to 

 me to have been animated by the true scientific spirit, a genuine 

 earnest love of truth ; and they seem to me to have maintained a 

 high standard of scientific excellence. These Transactions, at 

 anyrate, have rescued from sheer oblivion and neglectfulness 

 many interesting memorials of our ancestors in these parts ; they 

 have supplied us with trustworthy charts of the distribution of 

 animal and vegetable life in the south-west of Scotland ; and 

 they have preserved accurate records of many interesting and 

 important natural phenomena. I am quite sure the Transactions 

 of this Society will bear favourable comparison with the Trans- 

 actions of any similar Society in any part of the country. I 

 trust that the publication of these Transactions will be long 

 continued, and that they will continue to mirror for us such 

 traces of life in the past as may be still discernible or discover- 

 able ; that they will continue to reflect light on some of the dark 

 Corners of the mineral and vegetable world around us. The past 

 is an ever-increasing quantity, and its landmarks and character- 

 istics are perpetually crumbling away. So there is room for any 

 number of students to employ themselves in accurately noting 

 facts relating to the past — the immediate or the remote past — 

 those facts which are the raw materials of history. On the other 

 hand, the field of science is an ever-widening area, and there is a 

 growing demand for labourers and for investigators to explore 

 the confines of science. The work of a society like this is not 

 exhausted when complete collections have been made, when all 

 the species in a district have been discovered and classified. On 

 the contrary, tliat work is only introductory to the more important 

 investigation into their life habits — into the action of living 

 organisms, and the effect produced on them by their environment, 

 investigation which cannot fail to have important practical 

 results. The splendid development which has taken place quite 

 recently in bactereology — in that brancli of science which is 

 concerned with the very lowest forms of animal life, which has 

 almost certainly given us a cure for diphtheria, which has 

 certainly given us a remedy for tetanus (lock-jaw) — that splendid 

 development is an illustration of the lines on which scientific 

 investigation is now advancing ; lines which it is not beyond the 

 members of a Society such as this to some extent to pursue. I 

 feel confident that this Dumfries Society has an important part 



