Vice-President's Address. 393 



2. William Brown, r.K.C.S.R, RR.S.E, F.S.A.Scot, was 

 born at Edinburgh in 1796, and died in January 1887. He 

 had dropped out of our list of Fellows a good while before 

 his death, but, remembering his presence here when I first 

 became a Fellow, and having a very pleasant recollection of 

 a Paper read to us, and printed in our Proceedings, I was 

 unwilling to leave out his name from this address. He was 

 the son of William Brown, M.D., F.RC.S.E., an Edinburgh 

 practitioner. Mr Brown himself practised as a medical man 

 in Edinburgh from 1817 to 1884, when he retired. An old 

 friend, John Stuart, Esq., W.S., says of him, " I have had 

 occasion to peruse a great deal of his correspondence, and 

 though I knew Mr Brown from my infancy, I was astonished 

 to learn how wide his sympathies were, how large a number 

 of subjects of a great variety of kinds he was well informed 

 in, and how tolerant he was of opinions with which he did 

 not agree." In an interesting biographical notice by Dr 

 Lowe, of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, the 

 following paragraph occurs, — *' Mr Brown especially identi- 

 fied himself with the furtherance of the cause of Medical 

 Missions. At the inaugural Meeting, held in 1841, he was 

 elected a Director ; and in 1849, on the death of Dr Beilby, 

 he became president of the Society, which office he retained 

 till his death." 



A good idea of Mr Brown's habits of observation and 

 research may be got from two of his Papers — one read to 

 this Society, March 28, 1866, and another entitled "ISTotes 

 and Eecollections of the Tolbooth Church." The former is 

 a model animal biography ; the latter is brimful of antiquarian 

 gossip. Mr Brown was a man of great simplicity of char- 

 acter, and never seemed happier than when helping others. 

 " He had a good report of all men and of the truth itself." 



3. By the death of Mr Robert Gray, late V.P.E.S.E., 

 F.S.A.Scot., etc., we have sustained a loss so great that it can 

 hardly be put in words. About the only element of rest in 

 looking at it, as scientific workers, is the consideration that 

 so long as there is devoted and self-denying work to be 

 done, all the past warrants the anticipation that there will 

 be agents to do it. Mr Gray was a model Secretary — a man 



