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TRANSACTIONS, 247 
your Society, I do so believing that such disposition would have been 
agreeable to my father’s wishes could he have been consulted, and I am 
glad to be the medium of tendering you this donation to your library. 
I have the honour to be, 
Yours very truly, 
Rosert DINWIDDIE. 
The Secretary was directed to write thanking the donor for 
his valuable present. 
Mr James Lennox, F.S.A. (the Librarian) read the following 
‘paper entitled “The Dinwiddie Library, and how it came to this 
Society” :— 
The original owner, Mr Robert Dinwiddie, was born in 
Dumfries, 23d July, 1811, and died at New York, 12th July, 
1888. He was the third son of Mr William Dinwiddie, hosier. 
Commencing life in the Dumfries branch of the Commercial Bank 
of Scotland, he rose to be teller. He emigrated to America in 
1835, and joined the house of Brown Brothers, merchants and 
bankers in New York ; shortly afterwards entering the employment 
of J. Laurie & Co., commission merchants, in which business he 
succeeded them, being left by them to administer funds for St. 
Luke’s and the Presbyterian Hospital in connection with the St. 
Andrew’s Society of New York. 
He retired from business in 1883, and then devoted more of 
his time to scientific pursuits, although he had always been a 
worker both in archeology and botany. His attainments in these 
had been recognised, as he was fifteen years a member of the New 
York Academy of Sciences and an active member of the Micro- 
scopical Society up to the day of his death. Some years ago he 
gifted the whole of his extensive scientific library to the New 
York Academy of Sciences, and what is now under our own roof 
has been collected since that date, being more valuable as they are 
more recent. 
He visited this country a few years ago, being here when the 
Cryptogamic Society were in Dumfries, and during his stay he 
was admitted a life member of this Society. The history of the 
New York Academy of Science contains a portrait of him, but no 
mention appears in the text, as it was with great difficulty that 
they persuaded him to sit for this plate, but on no account would 
he allow anything to be said of him. 
The books consist of 229 bound volumes and 22 unbound. 
They embrace ;—24 Microscopic, 5 Medicine, 8 Geology, 24 
