ADDRESS 
ON OPENING THE 
BELFAST MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
GENTLEMEN OF THE NATURAL HisrTory SoOcIrry, 
For a number of years past, I have been honoured 
by your appointing me to the place of President of your 
Body ; and in virtue of that office, it is my duty to address 
you on the present occasion. I rejoice that it falls to my lot 
to congratulate you on an era so auspicious to our success, 
and on the bright prospects which now lie before the So- 
ciety, compared with the obscure and doubtful horizon 
which encompassed the early years of its existence. The 
report of the Curators, however, has saved me the necessity 
of entering into any detail of the origin, progress, and pre- 
sent state of the Society, and therefore I will only occupy 
the time of the meeting with such general observations as 
I may conceive to possess some interest in your minds; and 
that without any attempt at arrangement, but just as the 
ideas have occurred. 
That there is more pleasure in observing the objects of 
creation themselves, in their native places, than in studying 
their history in books; and that there is more satisfaction 
in seeing birds and other animals in all the activity of life 
and sensation, than to contemplate them dead and immove- 
able in the cases of a Museum, you will, I presume, at once 
admit. But there is a fashion now getting up by various 
_ writers, of decrying the study of Natural History from books 
or Museums, and which advances the doctrine, that no man 
can be a naturalist, who is not an actual observer of out- 
