524 HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



presented, by no fewer than 830 members of the Society, 

 with several vahiable articles of plate and a purse of a 

 thousand sovereigns. Owing to the illness and subsequent 

 death of the gentleman who was elected as his successor, 

 Mr Hall Maxwell, although himself far from well, continued 

 to perform the duties of secretary till May 1866, in which 

 month he retired to his country seat, Torr Hall, in Ren- 

 frewshire, and died there 25th August 1866. The following 

 resolutions by a meeting of the Directors, 3rd September 

 1866, his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch in the chair, were 

 unanimously adopted : 



I. That the Directors desire unanimously to express the deep and sincere 

 regret with which they have received the information of the death of their late 

 secretary, Mr John Hall Maxwell, C.B. 2. That the Society having, in the 

 minutes of the General Meeting held on the 17th January 1866, recorded, upon 

 Mr Maxwell's resignation of the office of secretary, their sense of the remark- 

 able zeal, energy, and ability with which Mr IMaxwell had for twenty years 

 discharged the duties of his office, it only remains for the Directors to deplore 

 the loss which they and the Society have now suffered by the death of one 

 whose presence at their meetings, both as an extraordinary Director and as a 

 member of the Society, would doubtless have proved of great service if his life 

 had been prolonged. 3. That the Directors request the chairman to transmit 

 a copy of these resolutions to Mrs Hall Maxwell, with their respectful condol- 

 ence and sympathy upon the occasion of the painful bereavement which Mrs 

 Maxwell and her family have sustained. 



VI. Mr Alexander Macduff of Bonhard. — At a 

 meeting of the Directors of the Society, held on the ist 

 November 1865, Mr Macduff of Bonhard was elected to 

 the office of Secretary, in room of Mr Hall Maxwell re- 

 signed, and this election was in terms of the charter 

 approved by the General Meeting on the 17th of January 

 1866. Shortly after his appointment, he was seized with 

 severe illness, which at length terminated fatally on the 

 2 1st of March 1866. The Directors placed in their minutes a 

 record of the loss the Society had sustained in Mr Macduff's 

 death, remarking that ' Mr Macduff had been for several 

 years an Ordinary Director of the Society, and all inter- 

 ested in its proceedings are aware of the zeal, ability, and 

 discretion which he brought to the conduct of its affairs, 

 and will participate in the deep regret which his premature 

 death has occasioned to a wide circle of friends and 

 acquaintances.' 



