OBITUATlY NOTICE.— REV. GEORGE GtJNN l5l 



him, aud when any such object was found in the parish, 

 it was brought as a matter of course to the minister. He 

 was equally interested in the ecclesiastical and civil history 

 of his parish, and was constantly hunting up — either in the 

 manuscript documents of the Register House in Edinburgh, 

 or in the printed volumes of atitiquarian societies — new facts 

 bearing upon it, and the knowledge he thus acquired he 

 afterwards turned to good use. He had all the curiosity 

 of an intelligent, inquisitive mind, and nothing came wrong 

 to him that satisfied his thirst for knowledge. 



The year after he came to Stichill, Mr Gunn was elected 

 a member of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club. For a con- 

 siderable time he took little active part in its work beyond 

 attending its meetings, and making use of the opportunities 

 for scientific study which they afforded him. His first 

 contribution to the Proceedings was a short obituary notice 

 of his friend and neighbour, the Eev. William Stobbs, 

 minister of Gordon, who died in 1885, and whom some of us 

 remember as a man of great kindheartedness and originality. 

 Thereafter, nothing from his pen appeared in our pages for 

 many years. He was, however, becoming gradually known to 

 the members of the Club, not only as one of the most sociable 

 of men and pleasantest of companions, but as one who had 

 much more than an average knowledge of the subjects that 

 the Club mainly concerned itself with. And so when Dr 

 Hardy was beginning to feel the weight of his many years, 

 and was no longer able to discharge all the duties devolving 

 upon him as Secretary, and when it therefore became necessary 

 to appoint some one as his assistant, the eyes of those 

 who were most capable of judging turned on Mr Gunn, 

 and it is a proof of the confidence the Club reposed in 

 him that he was unanimously elected Joint Secretary in 

 October 1896. 



He was well fitted for such a post. He had a certain 

 amount of spare time after all his duties to his parish were 

 discharged, for its population did not exceed 650 souls, and, 

 in addition to being competent from a scientific and literary 

 point of view, he was well known to many of the members, 

 and he possessed that affable and conciliatory manner which 

 is so necessary in the Secretary of a large Society. It was 



