OBITUARY NOTICES. 
Archibald Campbell Swinton of Kimmerghame. By 
The Right Hon. Lord Moncreiff of Tulliebole. 
I am desirous of placing on the records of the Royal Society, in 
the shape of an obituary notice, a slender memorial of a very early, 
a very constant, and a very distinguished friend, who at his death, 
on the 27th November of last year, was one of the oldest members 
of this Society. The subject of my memoir is the late Mr Archibald 
Campbell Swinton of Kimmerghame, who was admitted a member 
in 1844, and died in his 78th year. He was possessed of a character 
and abilities which, although not conversant with much public dis- 
play, were not only of solid power, but of the more ethereal element, 
and which, had his surroundings required or prompted, might have 
raised him to great eminence. It may truly be said of him, though 
the saying is commonplace, that he touched nothing in his long, 
busy, and useful life which he did not adorn. Perhaps ease, by 
itself, may have tended to repress the genial current of his soul, as 
for the last five and twenty years of his life the position of an 
active, cultured, and energetic country gentleman was that which 
fate had prepared for him ; but he had a buoyancy and vivacity 
of intelligence which would have lighted up the most common- 
place occupation, and would have asserted itself in the dingiest of 
surroundings. 
He came of an ancient and honourable house, who were territorial 
magnates in the south of Scotland through many centuries, and are 
mentioned as having taken part in many public events in a work sub- 
stantially compiled by the subject of this memoir, called The Swintons 
of that Ilk. In that volume the family, and the history of the 
descent of their estates, as well as of the collateral branches, are 
very clearly deduced, and as a piece of historical reading it is 
a 
