Anniversary Address. 423 



In this spirit the Club was inaugurated, and all along 

 through subsequent years the same feeling of devout earn- 

 estness may be traced — especially among the more able 

 contributors to your Proceedings. And long may this spirit 

 continue, the desire so to study the works of Creation as to 

 " rise through nature up to nature's God," never forgetting 

 in all our scientific researches that " the earth is the Lord's, 

 and the fulness thereof." 



Thus far we have sought to look back into the past. It 

 is just 50 years within a few weeks, since I joined the Club. 

 Two years afterwards I read a paper — that is 48 years ago 

 — and here once moje I have the honour to address one of 

 your meetings. Of those who were present on the former 

 occasion I am now the only survivor. Who knows whether, 

 among our younger members, there may not be some one 

 who may be spared to see another Jubilee, and who may look 

 back on us as we are now looking back on those who have 

 gone before us. But however that may be, and whoever may 

 live to see that time — the centenary of the Club — one thing 

 I will venture to predict — the Natural History of these 

 Border counties will not even then have been exhausted. 



It is a fair scene which lies spread out around us, with its 

 hills and valleys and rivers, and that great sea with its 

 sandy shores on the South, and its rock-bound coast on the 

 North, and all over it is full of the wonders of Creation. 

 From Bamburgh Castle to St. Abbs and Dunbar, away along 

 the mountain range of the Cheviots, on to the Eildons, and 

 round the wide sweep of the Lammermoors, out over the 

 fertile plains of the Merse, down the classic banks of the 

 Tweed, and up many a romantic valley north and south of 

 the Border, we have a district full of interest, within which 

 lie many spots yet waiting to be explored — many a secret 

 recess destined amply to reward the researches of the student 

 of Nature. When shall our Archaeologists have told us all 

 that is to be learned of Antiquarian lore in these Border 

 Counties ? When shall the Botanists have got the last plant 

 — down to the minutest moss or Alga ? When shall our En- 

 tomologists have catalogued the whole insect fauna, or the 



2b 



