299 



strong, and though his language is strong it is only through fear of 

 Mr. Chairman that I withhold it. Mr. Skinner's tender conscience 

 and fine taste could not bear rough usage. He had a law suit, 

 and thought he had a standing claim to some withheld tithe, and he 

 found a dispute with his parishionei-s a very diflerent thing from 

 a controversy among polite and friendly antiquaries. 



The year 1831-2 was in many respects not a happy time for 

 country parsons, and there were sorry people who found delight in 

 tormenting with their threats and forebodiugs sensitive men who 

 had made the clergy their profession. I then remember Mr. 

 William Lisle Bowles coming into our house on Belvedere with the 

 air of a man who had a mob at his heels, and anticipating with 

 tears the destruction of his beautiful parsonage at BremhiU by 

 incendiaries. In that year Mr. Skinner's son died at his house of 

 a decline, and the family was seriously agitated by the visit of the 

 cholera. In that year a friend wi'ites'of him, "Skinner is \ery 

 lively and ingenious, said to be sometimes hasty, but he has much 

 to try his patience among the farmers of Camerton." 



As in mind so was Mr. Skinner irritable in bodily system, and 

 in the pangs of neuralgia he sought the fleeting friend of irritable 

 men — opium. His mind fell from her seat, and then he fell, and 

 in such a way that, although when the Pastor calls his sheep 

 together he will not be forgotten, still to the visitor to Camerton 

 his tomb is not, and can never be exactly that which he in hopeful 

 and poetic, though even then in pensive thought designed it. 



The Viper: its Character and Species. By H. Bird, M.D. Read 

 January 17, 1872. 

 The common viper of Great Britain, and of most parts of the 

 continent of Europe (vipera hems, Daudin — coluber berus, Linn :), is 

 the most poisonous of European reptiles. It rarely exceeds two 

 feet in length. The upper portion of the head is protected by a 

 few plate -like scales, somewhat larger than the others. The usual 

 colour is pale ashy-brown above, with a space between the eyes, 

 and a patch on each side of the occiput deep brown or black. A 

 zigzag band of black (composed sometimes of confluent spots) extends 



