President's Address. 



interest in natural science studies is apt to have his mine] 

 cramped and narrowed, and is thus prepared to fall a victim 

 to morbid ideas ; whereas tlio man whose studies have 

 embraced the natural sciences finds an ennobling and 

 healthy influence in their pursuit. How different from 

 that of the lecturer referred to was the view of such a 

 physician as the late Dr Warburton Begbie, who, on 

 receiving a botanical paper from a medical friend who had 

 written it, expressed the interest which he felt in the 

 subject, and added, " How pleasant it is to have such a 

 study to relieve the tension of your ordinary daily labours." 

 The keen student of botany is not necessarily the less 

 ardent and successful prosecutor of his other medical 

 studies ; though, to confine myself to my own fellow 

 students, neither Burdon Sanderson nor Murchison, how- 

 ever they might have aspired, would ever have been 

 admitted to the high ofiice of assistant to Dr Batty Tuke. 



It would be easy to enlarge on this theme, and to show 

 the importance of a knowledge of botany from its bearing 

 on hygiene, — e.g., when vegetable organisms in the water- 

 supply render it unsuitable, — malaria,"^ &c., &c. ; but the 

 time at my disposal is already too short for the work that 

 is before us, so that I must at once proceed to the Obituary 

 Notices, which have reference to the following : — 



Mr JAMES M'NAB. 



Sir W. C. TREVELYAN. 



Dr M'BAIN. 



Prof. GRISEBACH. 



Me ARTHUR FORBES. 



Mr a. J. ADIE. 



Dr JAS. gumming. 



Dr KARL KOCH. 



Dr CHARLES MURCHISON. 



Dr DAVID MOORE. 



Mr peter S. ROBERTSON. 



Mr WM. MUDD. 



Dr JOHANN F. TH. IRMISCH. 



Mr SAMUEL HAY. 



Dr M. a. E. WILKINSON. 



Rev. W. B. CUNNINGHAM. 



Mr E. V. SANDILANDS. 



Mr a. GRAHAM. 



* Since the above was written, a most interesting essay on ' ' Contagion, " from 

 the pen of Mr Simon, has appeared, in which he quotes the researches of Pro- 

 fessors Klcbs and Tommasi-Crudeli made at Rome in reference to the ague 

 endemic there, which seem to render it certain that ague-poison is a micro- 

 phyte of malarious soil ; for these professors maintain that they can isolate 

 from malarious soils and their atmospheres definite microphytic forms capable 

 of separate cultivation ; and that if this microphyte, which they have named 

 Bacillus onalaricc, bo cultivated through successive generations in successive 

 portions of an indifl'erent fluid, and a i)ortion of the last fluid in which the 

 Bacillus is germinating be injected subcutaneously into rabbits, ague will be 

 produced in these animals. 



