LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. XVU 



thematics of the first year was 86, but in the year 1858-9 they had 

 dwindled to 45, In Zoology and in Botany, on the contrary, whilst 

 in the former academical year they were only 12 in each of these 

 departments of Natural Science, they had increased in the last- 

 named year to 63 and 62. This appears to me to be a remarkable 

 fact, as indicative of a rapidly advancing taste for the sciences of ob- 

 servation, and for Natural History in particular. That these courses 

 of lectures do not consist of slight elementary outlines, or of dry 

 systematic details, the brief summary of the course of Dr. Dickie, 

 the Professor of Natural History in the College of Belfast, pub- 

 lished in the Government Eeport, wOl sufficiently attest. It has, 

 however, been recently proposed to render the attendance upon 

 these lectures so far voluntary that the student may substitute 

 some other named subject for either or both of them. This is a 

 very unfortunate, and, as it appears to me, a very mistaken pro- 

 cedure, and will, I fear, tend to negative the beneficial results 

 which might have been anticipated from a continuance in the 

 former arrangement. But it is not only in the regular curriculum 

 of the University that the teaching of Natural Science is provided. 

 The Professors are frequently called upon to lecture in various 

 parts of the coimtry, and Professor Thomson recently informed me 

 that he had lectured in a small country town to an audience whose 

 numbers during the whole course of ten lectures did not fall short 

 of about 400. I have also recently been favoured with interesting 

 returns from several flourishing provincial societies in Ireland, in 

 which, as a general rule, the Natural History sciences are suc- 

 cessfully cultivated. 



On a recent visit to London, my friend Mr. Eobert Paterson 

 of Belfast (a most zealous and accomplished naturalist, and the 

 author of the best school-book on Systematic Zoology which has 

 ever appeared) favoured me with some information on the subject 

 of the spread of Natural History science in Ireland, which in- 

 duced me to seek, through his kind intervention, for fuller de- 

 tails ; and the result is, that I have received communications of a 

 more or less interesting nature from a considerable number of the 

 provincial institutions in that part of the United Kingdom. 



With reference to the work I have just alluded to, the ' Zoology 

 for Schools,' and another little book by the same author, ' First 

 Steps to Zoology,' I understand that about 40,000 copies have 

 been sold, besides 10,000 copies of Illustrations of vertebrate and 

 invertebrate animals,— an extent of distribution which I presume 

 to be unparalleled in the same number of years, with regard 



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