1888 .] 
Ckairman ’s Eemarks. 
479 
deplore serious losses. Death, relentless and inevitable, has been at 
work among us, reminding us of the uncertainty of life, the frailty 
of its attachments, the narrow limits set to all earthly hopes, 
ambitions, and labours, and the necessity of working earnestly 
while it is day. Since the opening of the Session eight Ordinary 
Fellows and two Honorary Fellows have been taken from us. As 
their merits and services will be commemorated with pious care by 
competent writers in the Obituary Notices, my own words will be 
very few, even regarding those of them of whom I have knowledge 
enough to speak at all. 
The first to be taken away was Colonel Balfour of Balfour and 
Trenabie, for some time Provost of Kirkwall. He will be long 
remembered and long regretted in the Orkneys, for which he did so 
much and which he loved so warmly, and where he was held in high 
esteem for his many excellent qualities. He was a man of cultivated 
mind, a trained lawyer, a public-spirited citizen, a generous dispenser 
of those powers for good which his position as a large landed pro- 
prietor gave him. He has left his mark in literature by his work 
on Udal Rights and Feudal Wrongs. 
With painful and impressive suddenness, Professor Alexander 
Dickson was withdrawn from the many friends to whom he had en- 
deared himself, and from the world of science in which he held so 
distinguished a place. He had taught with ardour and success his 
favourite study of Botany successively in the University of Dublin, 
the Eoyal College of Science, Dublin, and the Universities of 
Glasgow and Edinburgh. His contributions to it had been many 
and valuable. But probably all who came into real personal 
connection with him will feel that his scientific eminence was even 
less remarkable than his rare goodness of heart, the transparent sin- 
cerity and singular beauty of his character. To know him was to 
love him. We shall miss his contributions to our meetings and 
publications ; we shall miss still more his genial presence, his own 
true loving-hearted self. 
Dr Charles Edward Wilson, Chief Inspector of Schools in Scot- 
land, has left a very large circle of friends to mourn his death, and 
to bear in affectionate remembrance his amiable qualities as a man, 
his accomplishments as a scholar, and his services to education. 
Eobert Chambers inherited much of the geniality of disposition 
and not a little of the literary taste and talent of his father. 
VOL. XV. 12 / 12 / 88 . 2 II 
