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The Secretary read the following correspondence :— 
“ Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 
*¢ April 4, 1857. 
««My Lorp,—On the part of the Royal Irish Academy, 
I have the honour of addressing your Excellency to solicit 
your favourable consideration of the following request :— 
«Your Excellency is aware that during the progress of 
the Ordnance Survey in this country it was the earnest en- 
deavour of the distinguished officers employed in that great 
national work, in addition to the main objects contemplated 
by Parliament, to collect and preserve such local knowledge 
as might render the Survey subservient to other purposes. 
With this view, geological, statistical, and antiquarian re- 
searches were carried on, information was collected on the 
Fauna, the botany, and agricultural resources of each district, 
as far as was consistent with the more urgent duties of the 
Survey, and it was proposed to embody the materials thus 
brought together in County Memoirs. 
‘This admirable project was strenuously supported by 
the Royal Irish Academy, who saw in it an opportunity of 
making known, and of preserving from oblivion, information 
of the greatest value to science, history, and topography,— 
information which, if the design had been carried out as ori- 
ginally intended and begun, could not fail to have been most 
beneficial to the social progress of Ireland. 
‘«But when the topographical delineation of the country 
was completed, and the invaluable Maps now so extensively 
useful were published, the Academy learned with regret that 
it was not thought necessary by the Government to continue 
the descriptive memoirs of the Irish counties. 
«‘ The geological and agricultural part of the contemplated 
work has since been, in a great measure, otherwise provided 
for, so that the interests of practical science have not suffered 
much, if at all, from its discontinuance. But the materials 
