48 [Proc. B. N. F. C, 



with education in it. Those of whom I have already spoken, 

 had most of them, reached beyond the allotted span of life, and 

 had attained to high honours in science and position. Amongst 

 our younger men blanks too are to be found. William M'Laren 

 Smith, one of a family of father and three sons who sat side by 

 side at many of our meetings, after a successful career at the 

 Queen's College, obtained a Professorship in one of the colleges 

 of our Indian Empire, and found an early grave in that far off 

 land. Thomas Hughes Corry, who even in his boyhood 

 exhibited that taste for Natural History, which afterwards 

 became his life work, perished in the very pursuit of his 

 favourite study. More recently Dr. Samuel Malcomson, one of 

 our most devoted students of microscopical science, was called 

 from our midst. 



But as we look back, we find that as gaps have been made in 

 our ranks, fresh recruits step forward to take their places, and 

 so our club marches bravely on, ever advancing, and long may 

 it do so. May we each one try to do our part in investigating 

 truth for its own sake, in imparting to others, so far as lies in 

 our power, the knowledge which we ourselves have gained, 

 and above all in looking from nature's works upward to the 

 Great First Cause, to whom they all owe their origin. With 

 the recollections fresh in my memory of the labours of those 

 whose names I have quoted to you, and calling up before me 

 those of the many eminent men of science whose deaths have 

 been recorded since our Society's existence began, I cannot 

 better conclude than in the words of Sir J. William Dawson, 

 in his address at the Birmingham meeting of the British 

 Association : "These men have left behind them ineffaceable 

 monuments of their work, in which they still survive, and we 

 rejoice to hope that though dead to us, they live in that great 

 company of the great and good of all ages who have entered 

 into that unseen universe where all that is high, and holy, and 

 beautiful, must go on accumulating till the restitution of all 

 things. Let us follow their example and carry on their work 

 as God may give us power and opportunity, gathering in the 

 precious stores of knowledge, in the belief that all truth is 



