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BELFAST NATURAL HISTORY AND PHILO: 
SOPHICAL SOCIETY. 
Tux first meeting of the Natural History and Philosophical 
Society for the present session was held yesterday evening, 
in the Museum. The chair was taken by Mr. Robert 
Patterson, F.R.S., who delivered the following address :— 
GENTLEMEN,—Since we last met within these walls, our 
society has lost by death one of its original members, our 
esteemed and much valued President, Mr. James Mac- 
Adam, I had known him intimately from childhood, and 
throughout his entire life no shadow of estrangement had 
ever come between us. In him I have lost my very oldest 
friend. The council of your society has thought fit to 
call on me to fill, for the present session, the blank now 
left in our list of officers. I duly appreciate the honour, 
and I have at once assented to their wish, being willing 
to give my services in any capacity where they might 
seem most useful, and relying, at the present time, on the 
same kindness and support that were accorded to me on a 
former occasion. And now, on taking the chair for the 
first time, on the opening of another session, I feel my 
first duty is to do justice to the memory of him who is no 
longer among us, In speaking of him as a man of 
science, I shall sedulously abstain from anything that 
would have the appearance of panegyric, and use only the 
simple language that any one acquainted with the facts 
might be supposed to employ. James MacAdam was 
born at Belfast, in January, 1801. His family, like the 
greater part of our bustling community, belonged to the 
commercial class ; and he himself was actively engaged 
in business throughout his entire Jife. Among his teachers 
were James Sheridan Knowles, the dramatist, and Dr. 
James Thomson, afterwards the distinguished professor of 
mathematics in the University of Glasgow ; names that 
may awaken reminiscences of early days in the minds of 
some now present. Both of these gentlemen were at one 
time Masters in the Royal Academical Institution, where 
Mr, MacAdam received a part of his early education. He 
