lx REPORT — 1859. 



flattering offer of the Presidency, a request on my part is hardly necessary 

 that you will receive my efforts to fulfil its duties with kind indulgence. 



If it were possible for anything to make me still more aware how much I 

 stand in need of this indulgence, it is the recollection of the person whom I 

 have to succeed as your President — a man of whom this country is justly 

 proud, and whose name stands among the foremost of the Naturalists in 

 Europe for his patience in investigation, conscientiousness in observation, 

 boldness of imagination, and acuteness in reasoning. You have no doubt 

 listened with pleasure to his parting address, and I beg to thank him for the 

 flattering manner in which he has alluded to me in it. 



The Association meets for the first time to-day in these regions and in this 

 ancient and interesting city. The Poet, in his works of fiction, has to choose, 

 and anxiously to weigh, where to lay his scene, knowing that, like the 

 Painter, he is thus laying in the background of his picture, which will give 

 tone and colour to the whole. The stern and dry reality of life is governed 

 by the same laws, and we are here living, feeling, and thinking under the 

 influence of the local impressions of this northern seaport. The choice appears 

 to me a good one. The travelling Philosophers have had to come far, but 

 in approaching the Highlands of Scotland they meet Nature in its wild and 

 primitive form, and Nature is the object of their studies. The Geologist will 

 not find many novelties in yonder mountains, because he will stand there on 

 the bare backbone of the globe ; but the Primary rocks, which stand out in 

 their nakedness, exhibit the grandeur and beauty of their peculiar form, and 

 in the splendid quarries of this neighbourhood are seen to peculiar advantage 

 the closeness and hardness of their mass, and their inexhaustible supply for 

 the use of man, made available by the application of new mechanical powers. 

 On this primitive soil the Botanist and Zoologist will be attracted only by a 

 limited range of plants and animals, but they are the very species which the 

 extension of agriculture and increase of population are gradually driving out 

 of many parts of the country. On those blue hills the red deer, in vast herds, 

 holds undisturbed dominion over the wide heathery forest, until the sports- 

 man, fatigued and unstrung by the busy life of the bustling town, invades 

 the moor, to regain health and vigour by measuring his strength with that of 

 the antlered monarch of the hill. But, notwithstanding all his efforts to 

 overcome an antagonist possessed of such superiority of power, swiftness, 

 caution, and keenness of all the senses, the sportsman would find himself 

 baffled, had not Science supplied him with the telescope and those terrible 

 weapons which seem daily to progress in the precision with which they 

 carry the deadly bullet, mocking distance, to the mark. 



In return for the help which Science has afforded him, the sportsman can 

 supply the naturalist with many facts which he alone has opportunity of- 

 observing, and which may assist the solution of some interesting problems 

 suggested by the life of the deer. Man also, the highest object of our study, 

 is found in vigorous, healthy development, presenting a happy mixture of 



