2S0 
Proceedings of the Pioyal Society 
his advice, teaching, and example. One of those addresses, from 
the Border Medical Association, dated at Kelso, on the 18th August 
1869, runs as follows :— 
“At the twenty-third annual meeting of the Border Medical Association, 
we, the undersigned members, unanimously resolved to ask you to receive 
from us a short address on the occasion of your resignation of the Professor¬ 
ship of Clinical Surgery in the University of Edinburgh. 
“We desire to convey to you our warmest thanks for the very kind manner 
in which you have at all times discharged your duties towards our patients 
and ourselves. We beg also to thank you sincerely for innumerable acts of 
personal kindness and attention, for which we shall ever feel grateful. Al¬ 
though the members of our profession generally have resolved to offer you 
some testimonial in recognition of your inestimable services, and although 
you have already received a most hearty expression of sympathy and regard 
from the profession practising in far distant lands, we trust that it will not 
be otherwise than agreeable to you to know that the medical and surgical 
practitioners in your own Border-land are equally sensible of and grateful for 
the great advantages they have derived from your precepts and example. It 
was with unmingled feelings of sorrow and regret that we heard of your ill¬ 
ness, and we now most heartily rejoice to know that you have so far recovered 
as to be able, in some degree, to resume those professional duties which we 
have all learned to value so highly. We desire to express the earnest hope 
that you may yet be long spared to give us the benefit of that eminent wisdom, 
vast knowledge, and matchless diagnostic tact and skill which have rendered 
your name famous wherever the science and art of surgery are known. It is 
to us a source of pleasure that, on the very day of our assembling here, it has 
become known that you are to be succeeded in your chair by your son-in-law, 
Mr Lister, believing as we do that his appointment will be peculiarly grati¬ 
fying to yourself, in the highest degree acceptable to the profession at home 
and abroad, and highly calculated to maintain the celebrity of the Edinburgh 
surgical school, in which you have so long been the distinguished master.” 
If there was any taste or pursuit beyond that of his own special 
profession for wdiich Mr Syme had a predilection, it was gardening. 
He long cultivated with great success the rarest plants of distant 
temperate and tropical countries, and annually carried off the 
highest prizes at the exhibitions of the Horticultural Society of 
Scotland. He was equally successful with tropical fruits, among 
others the banana, which he was one of the first in this country to 
ripen in perfection. In his later years, at his villa of Millbank, he 
formed a large collection of Orchids. Among these he spent much 
of his leisure hours. To his friends and former pupils, when they 
came to see him, he was ever ready to show kindness and hospi¬ 
tality ; and the friendships which he made were lasting, warm¬ 
hearted, and disinterested. 
