380 



published proceedings. To see more exactly what I mean I would 

 ask you to open any of the volumes of the Proceedings of the 

 Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, and observe how many short papers 

 there are there of the kind I allude to. That Club is the oldest 

 of all the Field Clubs. It exists to this day in as much life and 

 vigour as when first started. It has done an immense deal of work 

 in the district to which its labours are directed ; and younger Clubs 

 may well copy after its example in all that relates to their own 

 operations and method of carrying them on.* 



Gentlemen, I hope you will bear with me in these remarks, 

 which — though I fear I am detaining you rather long — I have 

 been the more anxious to make on this occasion, feeling that the 

 time is near when I must ask your permission either to retire from 

 the office of President of this Club, which by your indulgence I 

 have now held for several years beyond the period when I was able 

 to join in its excursions, or, still retaining the office, to delegate to 

 others its more onerous duties. Conditions of health I need not 

 enter into oblige me to solicit this at your hands. In either case, 

 if you accede to my request, this anniversary would be my last 

 opportunity of addressing you in this way on the affairs of the 

 Club. My own work for science is nearly done. But my love for 

 science continues, and will remain by me. I might almost say 

 my interest in the sciences increases as I grow in years, when I 

 reflect from time to time on the wondrous advances they have 

 made since the day when I first took up and began to read the 

 vast book of Nature. Yet more am I carried away by them 

 when I note the way in which the sciences have gradually 

 inter-penetrated almost all other branches of human learning, 

 serving to check and regulate our often too hasty judgments 

 and interpretations of the events and phenomena of this lower 

 world — even such events as belong to history and social 

 progress, and which would seem to be removed from the province 

 of science properly so called — nor stopping there, but shedding 

 their light upon that other great volume, the Book of Eevelation, 

 which we all look up to and revere as man's highest source of life 



• See two good articles on Field Clubs, and what should be their aims, and 

 how best managed, &c., in. "Nature," vol. ii., p. 469, and vol iii., p. 141. 



