12 REV. MR BAIRD's ADDRESS. 



that attendance and assistance which none Tvas more willing and none 

 more able to give. 



Geutlonien, it is unnecessary to add any plea to induce you to con- 

 tinue your efforts in favour of tliis Club. The pleasure attendant on 

 our pursuits is so pure and genuine, and so various, that I cannot fear 

 that any one who has fairly entered into their spirit will turn him away. 

 The best argument, indeed, I know in favour of our studies is derived 

 from this fact ; for the Deity has never affixed pleasure (I mean, a 

 pleasure whicli the conscience approves, and which the memory delights 

 ever and anon to r.ecall) to any sublunary pursuit that is unsuitable to 

 the dignity and condition of man. When the conscience utters her 

 still voice to reprove or condemn, it is time to desist, and leave the 

 path we are following, however gaily it may be strewed ; but where 

 she approves, there let us follow, certain of reward. And who among 

 naturalists ever found the fruit of his study turn ashes in the enjoy- 

 ment ? Nor can it be : for what our internal monitor approves, the 

 Scriptures also commend, and send us for instruction to the meanest 

 things, to the ant and to the lilies of the field ; and bid us seek out His 

 wonderful works, and to tell of them ; and thence borrow their moral 

 lessons ; and call upon us to praise the Creator, in ' ' his contriving 

 skill, profuse imagination, conceiving genius, and exquisite taste ; in 

 his most gracious benignity and most benevolent munificence," through 

 his creatures, from the creeping things of the sea even to his behemoth 

 and leviathan. 



Address read at the Second Anniversary Meeting of the Berwiclcshire 

 Naturalists'' Cluh, held at Biinse, September 18, 1833. By the Rev. 

 A. Baibd, President. 



Of all earthly pursuits and acquisitions, that of knowledge has ever 

 been considered, by rational and civilized beings, as the most important, 

 dignified, and honoiTrable. According, indeed, as men are destitute or 

 possessed of this, we are generally disposed to rank them in the scale 

 of humanity : For, as it is this which, more than anything else, dis- 

 tinguishes one man from another, so it is also this which gives to one an 

 influence and an authority which another, who is destitute of it, let his 

 external advantages be what they may, can never j)ossibly command. 



But, if knowledge in general be thus excellent and desirable, there 

 is one particular species of it which must surely, in an especial manner, 

 recommend itself to every man of sentiment, of feeling, or of observa- 

 tion. The knowledge we allude to is the knowledge of nature, — the 

 knowledge of the earth we tread on, with all its varied tribes of ani- 

 mated existence, and all the interesting phenomena presented by its 



