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ANNUAL MEETING 
BELFAST 
Hatural History and Philosophical Society. 
Tue annual meeting of the shareholders of the Belfast 
Museum was held on the 17th of June, 1857—Robert 
Patterson, Esq., V.?., in the chair, when the following 
report was read:— 
The Council of the Belfast Natural History and 
Philosophical Society, in offering their present annual 
report to the shareholders of the Belfast Museum, have 
much pleasure in announcing the satisfactory state of 
all its departments, which are in excellent order, and 
are very creditable to the taste and care of the 
curator. The rooms of the building are now so well 
filled, that it would be difficult to increase the display 
of specimens in some of these departments; and a want 
of cases is already felt, especially for the exhibition of 
minerals and fossils. A number of donations bave been 
presented during the past session, a list of which is ap- 
pénded to this report. Among these donations is a 
number of valuable and interesting books—-most ac- 
ceptab'e additions to our library, which now contains 
nearly twelve hundred volumes. 
During the past session, the meetinzs of the Natural 
History and Philosophical Society hava been well 
attended; and there is an evidently increasing in- 
terest taken in its proceedings. The subjects discussed 
were frequently of a popular character, so as to be easily 
understood by a mixed andience; one of the objects of 
the society being to foster and diffuse a taste fur science 
in this manufacturing and commercial community, and 
to encourage in the path of study, and in the acquisi- 
tion of useful information, those young persons who, in 
their course of instruction in the various branches of 
enterprise and industry practised here, are preparing 
themselves for the future discharge of the important 
duties of active life. 
There have been seven public and six private meetiags 
duriog the past session; and, as a variation on the cus- 
tom of former years, there have been, at several of these 
meetings, two or more communications brought for- 
ward; whereas, generally, in former sessions, the 
evening was occupied by the delivery aud discussion 
of a single mewoir. 
