62 Royal Zoological Society of Ireland 



many as fine and interesting specimens as have ever been 

 exhibited. From many of the old members of the Society, 

 the Council received all due encouragement in their 

 difficult task; while by those who have never contributed 

 anything to, or have not paid their promised subscrip- 

 tions, they have been too often assailed with complaints 

 that the collection of animals was not larger. Had the 

 Council yielded to this unthinking clamour and purchased 

 animals during the period of difficulty, they should on the 

 one hand have had to defend themselves from the probable 

 charge of feeding wild beasts while their fellow-men were 

 starving, and on the other, those who urged them on to 

 purchase might have left them to pay as best they could. 

 As it is, your Council have the satisfaction of feeling that 

 the course they have pursued has preserved to you, and 

 to the public of Dublin, an Institution of great educational 

 value. They would ask your attention to the fact, that it 

 has been maintained at a cost on the average of the last 

 three years of £760 per annum, and that during that time 

 it has afforded rational and instructive amusement to 

 more than 200,000 persons, including the children of 

 military and other public schools, admitted without a 

 charge. Your Council is not aware that there is any 

 similar Institution which thus opens its doors not only to 

 schools, but to Students in the arts of design ; besides, it 

 admits the people at large once a week at the merely 

 nominal rate of one penny each ; a public boon which 

 must be acknowledged by those who really value the 

 sanitary condition and intellectual improvement of the 

 working classes ; for it holds out an inducement to the 

 healthy exercise not of the body only, but of the senses 

 and the mind. The predecessors of your present Council 

 justly congratulated you on the possession of an 

 unrivalled giraffe on the last anniversary. A few days 

 afterwards a sudden attack carried him off. leaving a 

 blank not easily supplied. 



'" During the year fifteen new members and seven 

 subscribers have been enrolled in the Society as follows : 



" Life Members — 



John Casement, Esq. 



Sir George Simpson 



C. F. Staunton, Esq. fin consideration of Donations. 



Lord Lurgan. j 



