ANNIYERSARY ADDRESS 239 



difficult, laborious, and expensive, have a " faster " colour 

 than those dyed by Indigo alone, for which reason navy 

 cloths and policemen's uniforms are for the most part 

 " woaded." At the same time it is clear that there is 

 a good deal of misconception on the subject, for in a 

 leading London Pictorial in August last I read the 

 surprising statement — " Woad has now superseded Indigo 

 and aniline dyes " ! It appears that a Woad-indigo vat, 

 once started, can be kept going for weeks if the Indigo 

 be replenished as fast as it is absorbed by the dyed 

 goods, and if the fermentation be maintained by occas- 

 ionally adding small doses of bran as well as slaked 

 lime. 



In conclusion, every man-of-war sails under a flag ; 

 every regiment marches under colours. So does the 

 Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, our flag being the 

 motto which you will always find on the title-page of 

 each volume of our Proceedings — '•' Mare et Tellus, et, 

 quod tegit omnia, coelum." Whatever may be said or 

 thought about the doctrine of organic evolution, there 

 can be little doubt that one of its effects has been a 

 marked discouragement of the habit of "looking up 

 through Nature's works to Nature's God," which was 

 such a feature in the writings of former Naturalists. 

 That sentiment which inspired, for example, such books as 

 " Botany and Religion " by Professor Balfour, is the key- 

 note of that most delightful of works of its sort, Dr 

 Johnston's " Natural History of the Eastern Borders," 

 and is brought prominently out in our President's jubilee 

 Address of 1881. This discouragement, no doubt, is 

 accounted for partly by the materialistic tendencies of 

 the time ; but in great measure because organic evolution, 

 whether true or not, seems to separate a thing so remotely 

 from a designer, or accounts for it mechanically, independ- 

 ently of any designer at all. In future all this may 

 not be so much the case. There will, likel}^ be a 

 re-action, seeing that the hypothesis of the Origin of 



QG 



