XXX ii Proceedings of Royal Soeiety of Edinburgh. 
The ownership of a fine estate, bounded by one of the beautiful 
rivers of Scotland, and an old castle with historical associations, 
besides influencing his character, imposed on him the duties of a 
country gentleman, which have seldom been better fulfilled. The 
loss of a portion of his estate through an unfortunate law-suit he 
was bound, by honour as well as by interest, to defend, in which the 
House of Lords reversed the judgment of the Court of Session, and 
perhaps a share of the proverbial prudence of his fellow-countrymen, 
led him to practise economy in matters personal. 
But his economy was the reverse of selfish. Its purpose was to 
enable him to be more hospitable and charitable on what he deemed 
the proper occasions for the exercise of these virtues. His estate 
was one of the best managed in the district where it lay, and best 
provided with houses for farmers and labourers. He left it free 
from debt, and it was estimated that he expended £40,000 on its im- 
provement. He made a convenient and appropriate addition to the 
Castle of Drum, which will carry down its history in the nineteenth 
— as the strong Great Tower marks its origin in the days of the 
War of Independence and the larger addition by one of his ancestors 
records its history after the troubles of the seventeenth — century. 
During a period when many of the nobility and gentry were selling the 
books they inherited to pay the bets or stakes they had lost, he was 
extending his library, in which he had the interest of a reader, and 
not merely a collector. He restored with taste the decayed chapel, 
and practised in it a natural piety, after the manner of his fore- 
fathers and the rites of the branch of the Church Catholic of which 
he was a member. His unobtrusive talents and independent and 
honourable character received the recognition due to them from 
those amongst whom he lived, as well as in the profession to which he 
belonged. He acted for about thirty years as Chairman of the Com- 
mittee of Publications of the Highland and Agricultural Society, 
and more than once as . Director of the Philosophical Institution of 
Edinburgh. Pie served for several years after 1860 as Captain- 
Commandant of the 20th Aberdeenshire Eifie Corps. In 1862 he 
was chosen Convener of the Commissioners of Supply of the county of 
Aberdeen, and presided over their meetings with invariable courtesy 
and tact. On retiring from office, when the Local Government Act 
came into operation, he was presented with his portrait, painted by 
