172 PBESIDENl's ADDRESS. 



generally don't flourish as they did. Many Sycamores, the tree 

 that has always seemed to succeed best with us, have died, and 

 others are dying. As we go nearer to the Tyne we find this dismal 

 state of things intensified. About Hebburn Hall and the village 

 of Monkton, where, within fifteen or twenty years, were some 

 flourishing well-foliaged trees, there are little else than bare and 

 blasted stems. The Hawthorn hedges are gradually dying, and 

 within a mile or two of the Tyne, between Gateshead and South 

 Shields, there are scarcely any surviving ! The agricultural 

 crops are scarcely in better plight. In these cases there is little 

 difficulty or doubt in pointing out the cause. The fumes from 

 the chemical works fully account for it, and I suppose the enor- 

 mous quantities of black smoke given off into the atmosphere 

 from other sources help the effect. Doubtless also they are 

 partly the cause of the deterioration in our gardens. Is it also 

 chargeable against them that they have driven away the Martins 

 and the Swallows ? Is it fair that this damage is to be inflicted 

 on the entire property of a neighbourhood ? Pew will contend 

 for this, and as it is certain that most if not all the offending 

 vapours can be condensed or prevented, surely the law ought to 

 compel it to be done. 



To pass for a moment from subjects more particularly belong- 

 ing to our own neighbourhood there has occurred during last 

 month an event which every student of Natural History, every 

 one interested in the solution of the problems presented by the 

 phenomena of Nature, must feel to be a great loss, I mean, of 

 course, the death of Charles Darwin. In a short article written 

 on the occasion by a distinguished man of science I find, coupled 

 with remarks which many think uncalled for, those sentences, 

 which, so far as I have the means of judging, accurately describe 

 him, " and this loss, thus his death will be felt to be by many, 

 not merely because of his wonderfully genial, simple, and gener- 

 ous nature ; his cheerful and animated conversation, and the in- 

 finite variety and accuracy of his information ; but because the 

 more one knew of him, the more he seemed the incorporated 

 ideal of a man of science. Acute as were his reasoning powers, 

 vast as was his knowledge, marvellous as was his tenacious 



