President's Address, 107 



credit to the Society, and we only regretted that the limited 

 funds at our disposal obliged us at that time to bring them to 

 a close. The Society, I have said, was poor in money, in 

 those days, but it was then rich in men — men whose names 

 will be long remembered and referred to by all cultivators 

 of the Natural Sciences. At the time of my admission, I 

 looked up with much respect to the learned Presidents 

 of the Society — Robert K. Greville, LL.D., the accomplished 

 botanist, conchologist, and artist, and the pleasant, polished 

 gentleman; Professor John Goodsir, the careful, learned, 

 and philosophical anatomist; Dr John Coldstream, zoologist, 

 ethnologist, and kind-hearted, philanthropic man, whose 

 richly-illustrated lectures on Ethnology many will remember 

 with pleasure — each and all of them high authorities in 

 various branches of Natural Science. In the Council at 

 that time were the previous President, John Fleming, D.D., 

 Professor of Natural Science in the New College, a genial, 

 cheerful, original, and many-sided man, full of knowledge 

 on every branch of Natural History — the well-known author 

 of the excellent "British Animals" (an early favourite of 

 mine) and the " Philosophy of Zoology," somewhat different 

 in its tone, perhaps, from some of our later treatises on 

 similar subjects, and more in accordance, in some respects, 

 with the religious feelings and instincts of, at least, our 

 Scottish people ; Hugh Miller, the w^onder- working geologist, 

 historian, and poet of the " Old Red Sandstone," and many 

 more works besides ; Alexander Bryson, the geologist, the 

 mineralogist, the ingenious mechanician, the social, warm- 

 hearted friend, and the fearless searcher after truth, giving 

 and taking hearty blows on its behalf, with the joy of a 

 strong man rejoicing in his strength ; Robert Chambers, LL.D., 

 who to varied stores of antiquarian lore added a knowledge 

 and a love for geology, in relation to which he published 

 various works, and also of zoology, his keen, inquiring mind 

 making him especially take an interest in the older and 

 somewhat fanciful theories and hypotheses of Oken and 

 Lamarck, and at last in what its Author thought fit at that 

 day to designate as the " Vestiges of the Natural History of 

 Creation." Subjects of that debatable kind, I may, however, 



