President's Address. 11 



clear lie soon found out his mistake, for he had to record — 

 " There hath been a match of scolding here among some of 

 our young physicians. I wish they did apply themselves 

 more to observation than dispute and inventing of new 

 hypotheses." Again, " There is a hot paper war here betwixt 

 some of the college and the chirurgeon apothecaries." It 

 seems almost true that there is nothing new except what is 

 very old. The characteristics of widely separated genera- 

 tions set themselves side by side. The amiable youth lived 

 to learn that all great ends are reached through toil, and 

 strife, and strong contendings. 



Sibbald afterwards studied at Leyden, taking anatomy, 

 among other branches taught by different professors, under 

 Sylvius. " I saw," he says, referring to Sylvius, " twenty- 

 three human bodies dissected by him." He afterwards went 

 to Paris and Angers for some time, and then returned to 

 London, whence, by slow coach stages, he reached York. " I 

 took," he adds, " horses and a guide to Newcastle, and hyred 

 the same guide and his horses, and came over the fells to 

 Jedburgh, and so by Melrose to Edinburgh, the penult day of 

 October 1662." The desire to bring Scotland abreast of lands 

 more favoured by science became to him a strong, over- 

 mastering passion, and to this we owe his " Scotia Illustrata," 

 the realisation of the Edinburgh Hortus Mediate, which ulti- 

 mately culminated in our Botanical Gardens, the active and 

 influential part he took in establishing the Eoyal College of 

 Physicians of Edinburgh, and also his numerous works on 

 natural science, Eoman antiquities, and provincial history. 



Any estimate of the value and true merits of Sibbald's 

 zoological work would be unsatisfactory, if not unfair, which 

 did not take into account — (1.) That his attention was limited 

 to Scottish natural history ; (2.) That it was no part of his 

 plan to deal with the gradational relations of animals, — that 

 is, with systematic classification and their place in it; (3.) 

 That all he had in view was to catalogue Scottish forms, in 

 order that, on the one hand, as a Naturalist, he might make 

 manifest how rich our country is in species, and, on the other 

 hand, as a Physician, that he might indicate the supposed 

 therapeutical value of our plants and animals. Now, when 



