William Stevenson. By Professor Dimb. 297 



I say this as one well acquainted with the localities and phenom- 

 ena referred to, and as having often felt the difficulties connected 

 with attempts to determine and explain the relations of the 

 Lammermuir and Sub-Lammermuir deposits. 



Associated with these notes, and not unfrequently mixed up 

 with them, are others made in the North and West Highlands, 

 Fife, Forfar, Perth, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Linlithgow, Pox- 

 burgh, Peebles and Selkirk Shires, in which his skill as a student 

 of physical geology— descriptive and dynamical —is equally con- 

 spicuous. In these notes, moreover, a good deal occurs which 

 indicates that Mr Stevenson might have done good work in archae- 

 ology had his mind become sufficiently interested in it. The 

 qualities shown when he had to describe superficial deposits 

 would have been most useful in this department. But I am not 

 acquainted with any paper on Berwickshire Antiquities by him 

 except the " Notice of a Cist found at Broomhill, Dunse," in the 

 Proceedings for 1863. In 1864 he delivered an Address to the 

 Club as President. In the proceedings of the Society of Anti- 

 quaries of Scotland for 1871, intimation is made of the presenta- 

 tion by Mr Stevenson of a Bronze Palstave found with a sandstone 

 Celt on the farm of Windshiel. 



My chief desire in the foregoing remarks was to put on record 

 the names at least of Mr Stevenson's principal contributions to 

 science. The outline is necessarily meagre and bald. Before 

 closing, I refer briefly to the worker himself. In his ripe boy- 

 hood I saw a good deal of Mr Stevenson. Occasionally on 

 summer mornings, between 5 and 7 o'clock, he joined Stephen 

 Hislop, myself, and others in our walks to the " Verier Well'" — 

 going by Todlaw and returning by Grueldykes and " The Style. " 

 The tastes of the little company were mostly towards science. 

 The eyes of one wandered among wayside trees and flowers and 

 grasses, of another among beasts and birds, and butterflies and 

 beetles, while Stevenson's scanned the sky or looked in the stream- 

 let's course for his favourite " hUlletts " (pebbles). He was about 

 5 feet 6 in height ; as a lad he was slender of build with a slightly 

 forward stoop, and even then with student shoulders ; long arms 

 and fingers ; light hair, greyish blue eyes, thinnish lips ; and mouth 

 around which happy thoughts and quiet humour seemed ever 

 lingering. When I left Berwickshire for the University we fell 

 out of acquaintanceship, but I continued to take great interest 

 in tho reports of his work. 



