Obituary Notices. 
XXUl 
Alexander Forbes Irvine of Drum. By Sheriff ^neas 
Mackay. 
(Read January 30, 1893.) 
Alexander Forbes Irvine of Drum, Advocate, twice a Vice-Pre- 
sident of the Eoyal Society, was born on 18th February 1818 at 
Schivas, and died at Drum Castle in Aberdeenshire on 4th April 
1892. As an example of a country gentleman and lawyer, who had 
a genuine interest in science and literature, it has been thought that 
his life merits a fuller notice than the President could afford to give 
in his account of the many losses the Society suffered during the 
past year. But I have accepted the invitation of the Council to 
write it with diffidence, knowing how difficult it is to express in 
words characteristics which impressed all with whom Mr Irvine 
came in contact, yet were as delicate as they were rare during the 
period in which he lived. It might be hard to find in the long list 
of present Fellows of the Society one who, in the same position, 
possessed the same qualities. It would be easier to discover a 
parallel in the seventeenth or eighteenth century amongst the mem- 
bers of the circles of Scott of Scottstarvet, or Gordon of Straloch, of 
Clerk of Penicuik, Lord Monboddo, or Lord Hailes, than in a 
time during which, in Scotland, intellectual, other than agrestic or 
forensic, tastes have too seldom been combined with the ownership 
of land or the profession of law. 
Mr Irvine was the eldest son of Alexander Irvine of Drum, who 
died in 1861, and of Margaret, daughter of Janies Hamilton, a 
descendant of the Hamiltons of Little Earnick. The family he 
represented originally sprang from the strong Border stock of the 
Irvines of Bonshaw in Annandale. William de Irvine migrated to 
Aberdeenshire in the reign of Bobert the Bruce. In that county 
the same family has held for more than five centuries and a half 
the estate of Drum, which derives its name from the ridge or rising 
ground on the north side of the Dee, about eleven miles from Aber- 
deen. The founder of the Aberdeenshire branch, William de 
Irvine, was, according to a tradition both of Annandale and Dee- 
side, the son of a vassal of the Lords of Annandale, who served as 
