Miscellaneous. 77 



which the coast has been plentifully supplied during the easterly- 

 winds. 



About the 14th of last month I shot a very fine old male black Red- 

 start in perfect plumage. A pair of Golden Orioles have been in the 

 large gardens at Kingsgate, which were there for nearly a week, but 

 I could not get a shot at them, being so very wild. On Saturday 

 last I also succeeded in shooting, at about five miles from Margate, a 

 good specimen of the Rose-coloured Pastor : there were two of them, 

 one escaped; that which I shot is a male. I have also a good 

 specimen of the Spotted Sandpiper, which was killed last year. 



144 High Street, Margate. S. Mummery. 



SCIENTIFIC APPOINTMENTS IN TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. 



It affords us very high gratification, more especially at the present 

 time, when some of our English Universities seem disposed to make 

 a retrograde movement in science, to be able to announce that se- 

 veral apijointments for the promotion of Natural Science have recently 

 been made in Ireland's only University. A chair of geology has been 

 founded, and the distinguished Assistant Secretary of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, Mr. John Phillii)s — 

 who for some time filled the chair of geology in King's College, 

 London — has been appointed to it. With Trinity College a museum 

 has always been connected, but in these days of progress it had be- 

 come quite of an antiquated character. With the view of making it 

 as extensively useful as pos.?ible, j^articularly in objects of science, a 

 new office — Director of the Museum — has been formed, and Mr. 

 Robert Ball, the well-known Secretary of the Royal Zoological So- 

 ciety of Ireland, elected to fill it, this gentleman making over to the 

 College his own most valuable and extensive collection of natural 

 history. To secure to the College the large collection of plants made 

 by Dr. Coulter in California and Mexico, and to have the benefit of 

 his botanical services, that distinguished traveller was a few years 

 since appointed Curator of the herbarium, and his collection became 

 the property of the University. After his lamented death, which 

 occurred about six months ago, a successor to the new office was 

 sought for, and that most able botanist Mr. William Henry Harvey 

 was elected, the College, as in the case of Dr. Coulter, securing the 

 whole of his very large and important herbarium. 



About the same time the chair of botany became vacant, and Dr. 

 George J. Allman, the most rising philosophical naturalist in Ireland, 

 was elected to it. Better appointments than these, individually and 

 collectively, could not have been made, and the enlightened and 

 liberal spirit with which they have been carried out is worthy of all 

 admiration. The best men, without reference to any previous con- 

 nexion by education with the College, or to any of those external 

 influences which even at great seats of learning will affect elections, 

 were appointed, their eminent fitness alone for the respective offices, 

 without any of the ordinary alloy, deciding the election. 



When mentioning these appointments, it is justly due to the me- 



