Anniversary Address. 405 



ourselves of the idea that the explorations of those who have 

 preceded us have heen exhaustive. They seldom are. It is not 

 every season that is favourable for observation ; attention is 

 sometimes distracted ; when the frame becomes exhausted we 

 cannot always be on the look out ; and if the place has only 

 once been visited, the land-marks require to be noted before 

 there can be a thorough investigation ; hence before a spot 

 can be said to be ransacked, it must be repeatedly tried. 



I cannot do better than conclude in the words of Sir 

 William Jardine, himself one of our veteran members, as to 

 what may be anticipated from the institutions of which ours 

 is the exemplar and fountain-head. 



" These Clubs are of much importance. The preservation 

 of the condition of the present physical characters of our 

 country will be far more dependent on them than at first 

 appears. The last fifty years have made a great change in the 

 surface of the country ; population has increased ; so have 

 agricultural improvements, plantations, drainage, enclosure 

 of waste lands, in short artificial works of every kind. These 

 have often completely altered the nature and aspect of the 

 country, and in consequence the productions, both animal and 

 vegetable. In parts of the north of Scotland, another cause, 

 that great rage and passion for ' sporting ' as it is termed, has 

 influenced the distribution of the higher orders ; the wild 

 animals and birds have been reduced in numbers as ' vermin,' 

 sometimes almost extirpated, and many will in a few years 

 stand side by side in history with the bear and the wolf. It 

 will be to these Clubs that we shall be indebted for a record 

 of what in their days did exist ; and in the still untouched 

 mountains and valleys we may have the discovery of insects 

 and plants not known to our geographic range ; and when 

 the country shall have been mapped on the large scale of the 

 Government surveyors, there is nothing that should prevent 

 an active Club to fill up in a few years a list of the produc- 

 tions within their beat, and so lead into a complete and 

 accurate Fauna and Flora of our own time and age; and 

 generations succeeding would be able not only to mark the 

 changes of the productions, but to judge and reason upon the 



