4 Anniversary Address. 



Far be it from me even to suggest that those who devote 

 their hours to the scientific, must needs be dead to the poetic 

 aspect. On the contrary, do we not often find these most 

 happily wedded in the same mind ? This much one is 

 bound to say, that while familiar and legendary knowledge 

 may be the more delightful, the scientific is the more 

 improving in the highest sense of the word. It is, T take it, 

 impossible for the mind dealing fairly with itself to 

 contemplate the wondrous variety and harmony of Nature's 

 products, and their not less wondrous adaptation to a myriad 

 ends, and not be elevated with admiring awe of that Great 

 Power from whom they all proceed. When it is asserted 

 that evolution detracts from the glory of the Creative act, 

 one is driven to ask if it be less God-like to create a 

 protoplasm capable of self-development into the countless 

 living beings which surround us, than to create these 

 organisms separately and si)ecially by themselves ? But, 

 profound as the reflections boi-n of systematic science are, I 

 claim that there is and ought to be room in a Club of 

 Naturalists for those butterfly observers, who only flit from 

 flower to flower, as beauty draws them. One can well 

 imagine the enthusiastic jo}^ with which a Botanist might 

 set himself in the midst of a luxuriant tropical vegetation, 

 to marshal his specimens in true scientific sequence— ^ each 

 in its proper order, sub-order, tribe, species or variety ; but 

 the exile is not less a lover of Nature, who sees it all, yet 

 sighs for home : — 



The palm tree waveth high, aad sweet the myrtle springs, 

 And to the Indian maid the bulbul sweetly sings ; 

 Bat I canna see the broom, wi' its tassels on the lea, 

 Nor hear the linty's sang o' my ain coantrie. 



It cannot have escaped the notice of members that, although 

 Natural History formed at first the exclusive occupation of 

 the Club, Antiquarian research has been gradually supplant- 

 ing it, and now greatly predominates. I am told that our 

 Transactions contain nearly all that can be learned of the 

 Flora and Fauna of the Border country, whereas its 

 Antiquities still present a wide field for exploration and 



