a at ee 
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Hatural History & Dbilosophical Society 
Tue annual meeting of the shareholders in this Society was 
held at the Museum, on Thursday afternoon, the 30th 
May, 1872, at two o'clock. R. M‘Adam, Esq., occupied the 
chair. There werealso present—Joseph John Murphy, Hsq.; 
A. O'D. Taylor, Esq.; Wilham H, Patterson, Hsq.; Henry 
Burden, Esq., M.D.; John Anderson, Esq. F.G.S.; RB. L. 
Patterson, Esq.; Robert Gray, Esq.; J. F. Hodges, Esq., 
M.D. ; &e. 
The Cuarmsan read the advertisement convening meet- 
ing, and then called upon Mr, Taylor, secretary, to read 
the report for the past year, which ran as follows :— 
ANNUAL REPORT BY THE COUNCIL OF THE NATURAL HISTORY 
AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, BELFAST, FOR THE SESSION 
1871-72. 
“At the commencement of the last report submitted by 
your council, they referred with special gratification to 
the fact that of the eight original founders of the society 
three were then alive, and that one of them (Robert 
Patterson, Hsq., F.R.S.) had completed his 50th year of 
active service in connection with your museum. To mark 
the high appreciation of Mr. Patterson’s unusually long 
and yaluable services, an illuminated address was in 
September, 1871—a few months after the publication of 
your report—presented to him by the shareholders and 
members, 
“It now becomes the melancholy duty of your council 
to chronicle the decease of Mr. Patterson, which took place 
on the 14th of February last. Your council conveyed to 
the family a special resolution of sympathy and respect, 
but they deem it only due to the memory of the deceased 
to repeat in this official record of the society’s progress, 
the society’s abiding sense of Mr. Patterson’s life-long 
efforts on behalf of this institution. 
“During the session now terminated—the fifty-firet of 
oy society's existence—meetings have been regularly held 
or the reading of papers which, by arrangement with the 
