291 Anniversary Address. 



cellent specimen ; and Mr D. M. Home and Mr R. Douglas 

 agreed to visit the spot. The gentlemen proposed dur- 

 ing the year for membership were then elected. Mr Boyd 

 then nominated the Rev. F. R. Simpson, President for the 

 ensuing year. 



Our Spring meeting was held at Jedburgh, on the 10th of 

 May. Present: — The Rev. F. R. Simpson, President; Dr 

 F. Douglas, Secretary; Sir Walter Elliot; Drs Charles 

 Douglas, J. R. Scott, Hume, and Blair ; Capt. Macpherson ; 

 Revs. Dr Leishman, G. S. Thomson, W. Procter, jun., J. S. 

 Green, D. Paul, P. Mackerron, A. Davidson, and D. Yair ; 

 Messrs John Turnbull, F. Walker, Wm. Elliot, W. B. Boyd, 

 C. Anderson, A. Jerdon, J. B. Boyd, J. Wood, J. Tait, W. E. 

 Otto, A. Scott, and J. Ord; and as visitors : Rev. Mr Moir; 

 Messrs T. Robson Scott, Ormiston, and Ritchie. The party 

 numbered twenty-two at breakfast, and thirty-two at dinner. 



After breakfast, the programme for the day was arranged. 

 The members there assembled first visited, under the guid- 

 ance of the Rev. Dr Ritchie of Jedburgh, the ruins of the 

 venerable abbey. These remains are of great interest, unfold- 

 ing as they do, a tale of chequered and eventful history. The 

 besom of destruction would seem to have frequently swept 

 over the church and abbey of Jedburgh ; for we find in the 

 ruins, as they now stand, at least three distinct styles of archi- 

 tecture, indicating so many successive partial destructions 

 and restorations. The oldest part (if not Saxon as some have 

 thought) is very early Norman ; and the edifice of which it 

 formed a part was itself, probably, a superstructure on the 

 ruins of an older church. It is clear from the remains of 

 sculptured stones here and there built into the present ruins, 

 that a Saxon church had previously occupied the same, or 

 some very closely neighbouring, site. No doubt, in the 

 troublous ages that have passed over this border land, these 

 sacred edifices have been, one after another, damaged or de- 

 stroyed, to be again restored by the zeal of our fore-elders. 

 Some portions of the older work have been in each case re- 



