30 Anniversary Address. 



any suggestions to make, by which that prosperity may be 

 promoted or extended. To the practice recently introduced 

 of inserting in our Proceedings, biographical notices of men 

 of mark connected with the localities which we visit, much 

 interest may, I think, attach, provided the length of such 

 notices is duly limited. A similar caution may perhaps be 

 necessary with regard to the historical and topographical 

 details, which individual members have been invited to fur- 

 nish in connection with their respective parishes or districts. 

 Of the proposal that our volume might occasionally contain 

 illustrations of remarkable trees, I venture to express my 

 approval by asking the Club to accept, for insertion in this 

 year's Proceedings, engravings of a photograph admirably 

 executed by Mr Bruce, of Dunse, of the finest of three 

 splendid Auraucarias in the Dunse Castle Garden. 



Against one suggestion, made some years ago by one of 

 the most eminent of my predecessors, I must earnestly pro- 

 test. I allude to the opinion expressed by my friend, Mr 

 Milne Home, in 1861, that " considering the great change 

 which has taken place since the formation of the Club in its 

 objects, and in its sphere of operations, some change should 

 be made in its name." In the first place, I must be per- 

 mitted to deny that we have wandered very far, at least, 

 from the ground laid out for us by our founders, 45 years 

 ago, when they declared, " that the obj ect of the Club shall 

 be to investigate the Natural History and Antiquities of Ber- 

 wickshire and its vicinage." But even, were it otherwise, it 

 is not, I submit, the practice of similar associations to change 

 their names as their objects multiply, and their influence ex- 

 tends. The New Club in Edinburgh continues to be so called 

 though it is the oldest establishment of the kind in Scotland. 

 The Bowmen of the Border existed as a social institution 

 long after its members had ceased to practice — if practice 

 they ever did — the sport of archery. Even a mercantile 

 firm does not abandon, on a change of its individual partners, 

 the name under which it has acquired the confidence of the 



