THE ROYAL DUBLIN SOCIETY 245 



Surgeon John Hart reported on a specimen of the 

 Cervus giganteus, or fossil elk, the bones of which had 

 been found on the property of the Ven. William R. 

 Maunsell, archdeacon of Limerick, which had been 

 presented to the Society, and brought up to Dublin 

 by canal boat. This specimen is still preserved in the 

 natural history portion of the museum. 



On the 1 2th of May 1825, the Society learned that 

 Mr. George Le Touche had bequeathed to it his col- 

 lection of Etruscan vases; this collection, with some 

 water-colour drawings, formed the nucleus of the art 

 collections now in the National Museum. 



In 1826, Dr. Higgins having died, Edmond Davy, 1 

 who had been attached to the Royal Cork Institution, 

 was elected professor of chemistry, and Dr. Samuel 

 Litton, professor of botany, in the room of Dr. 

 Wade. 



Mr. Thomas Walker, in April 1826, presented to 

 the Society three letters in the handwriting of Dean 

 Swift. These are not now in the Society's keeping, 

 nor are they in the National Library. Sir Walter 

 Scott, in his Life of Swift, p. 72, prints a fragment of 

 a letter with a lampoon on the Rev. William Tisdall 

 (his rival in the case of Stella). Scott's Life was 

 published in 1814, and it states that the original 

 fragment was then preserved in the museum of the 

 Dublin Society, Hawkins street. (See also Dr. F. E. 

 Ball's Correspondence of 'Swift , iv. 479.) 



Colonel Stannus, C.B., who had served in Persia, 

 presented several casts from the ruins of Persepolis, 

 which he had visited ; also a stone with an ancient 

 Persian inscription, the key to which had been dis- 

 covered by M. Sylvester de Lacy, a French Orientalist. 



1 A picture of Davy, enlarged by photography, is in the reception- 

 room, Leinster House. 



