LIBRARY 

 UNTVERSITY OF CALIFORN 



SA^TA bah-^aha 



PREFACE. 



It was my duty, in common with other members of 

 the Natural History Society of Belfast, to furnish 

 papers for some of those meetings in our Museum, 

 held on what are termed " Public Nights." On these 

 occasions ladies as well as gentlemen are admitted as 

 visitors, and the reader abandons, in a great degree, 

 the technicalities of science for " metal more attrac- 

 tive." 



Several of these papers I had the honour of read- 

 ing at various intervals between the 1st of March, 

 1832, and the 1st of Januarj^ 1836. They were 

 then thrown into the epistolary form, in which they 

 appear in the following pages ; and with the excep- 

 tion of some verbal amendments, and the introduc- 

 tion of some additional quotations, as the sheets 

 were passing through the press, they are now printed 

 as they were then arranged. 



This brief statement of the circumstances under 

 which these "Letters" were written will, I trust, 

 A 3 



