222 Royal Society. 



vanced age of 87, retaining his faculties till the last. After his 

 election to the Woodwardian Professorship he went to Germany to 

 profit by the lectures of Werner. To Mr. Hailstone the University 

 is indebted for additions to her collection of minerals and fossils. 

 He published a syllabus of Lectures, but did not succeed in bringing 

 together a class, as he received little or no encouragement from the 

 heads of the University. He published little : one paper in the 

 Geological Transactions, and a few short notices in the I'ransactions 

 of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. In politics he was a whig. 

 He was a friend to education, as he showed by the endowment of 

 a day-school, and the expenditure of several hundred pounds in im- 

 proving a parish school. 



The Rev. William Pearson, LL.D. 



Professor MacCullagh was born in the year 1S09. The place 

 of his birth was the townland of Loughlindhuhussey, then pos- 

 sessed by his grandfather, a man of considerable acquirements, and 

 a scholar of some pretensions. This place is in the parish of 

 Upper Badoney, in the county of Tyrone, about ten miles from 

 Strabane. 



Shortly after his birth, his father removed from the mountain farm 

 he occupied to Strabane, principally that he might have the means 

 of educating his son, it not being possible to do so in the secluded 

 glen in which he lived. In Strabane he was, while very young, 

 placed at the only respectable school at that time in the town. Here 

 his genius soon displayed itself. After school hours he was almost 

 constantly employed in solving mathematical problems ; yet, it is 

 remembered that when Euclid was first put into his hands he was 

 dissatisfied with the task. He was only required to get the solution 

 of a problem by heart, like a copy of verses, and repeat it. There 

 was no attempt made at explanation. This did not suit the cha- 

 racter of his mind, which even then could not rest until it thoroughly 

 understood the nature of everything that came before it. For some 

 days he was restless, unhappy and puzzled, wandering about with 

 his Euclid in his hand. In his perplexity he met a neighbour, a 

 working carj)enter, a man of cleverness and talent, who, seeing the 

 boy evidently unhappy, was good enough to ask him what was the 

 matter. He immediately told his good-natured friend that he was 

 obliged to get by heart a set of strange words, the meaning of which 

 he wanted to understand ; at the same time showing him the pro- 

 position he was committing to memory for the next day's task. The 

 carpenter instantly sat down with the puzzled boy, and in a short 

 time showed him what a proof was. This was the way in which 

 Professor MacCullagh first learned to j)rove a proposition in Euclid. 

 He was afterwards, when commencing his classical studies, sent to 

 Lifford to the school of the Rev. John Graham, and subsequently to 

 that of the Rev. Thomas Kollestone. He entered Trinity College, 

 Dublin, as a pensioner in November 1824, being then in the fifteenth 

 year of his age. In the following year, he became a candidate for 

 Sizarship, and was succesfful. 'J'hroughout his under-graduate 

 course he carried away eveiy Honour both in Science and Classics. 



I 



