P14 
XXVIIL—ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS TO THE ROYAL 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF IRELAND, sy Rev. MAXWELL 
H. Cios&, M.A., PRESIDENT. 
[Read February 17th, 1879.] 
our anniversary meeting, we naturally 
look back at some of the more interesting events in connexion 
with our Society which have occurred during the past year. It 
very seldom happens that we have to record the removal from us 
by death, within a single year, of so many distinguished Fellows 
of the Society. We shall not now follow chronological order in 
our notices of them. 
Thomas Oldham, LL.D., F.R.S., Superintendent of the Geological 
Survey of India, was born in 1816; he died July 17, 1878. 
Having graduated in the University of Dublin in 1836, he went 
to Edinburgh to study civil engineering ; he there learned geology 
and mineralogy under Professor Jameson. In 1839 he became 
Chief Assistant to Captain Portlock, Director of the Geological 
Department of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, with sitions he 
worked in the geological examination of Derry, with parts of 
Tyrone and Antrim, and in the drawing up of the Report on that 
district, which was published in 1843. He was already a member 
of our Society, and in 1843 was appointed Curator of its 
Museum. The Council, in one of its reports, speaks of the ability, 
zeal, and industry of the Curator in words which seem almost 
like an echo of the similar testimony of Portlock to the qualities 
of his Chief Assistant. Oldham became, in 1844, Assistant to'the 
Professor of Engineering in the University of Dublin, Sir John 
MacNeill; and in 1845, Professor of Geology in the University. 
In 1846 he was appointed Local Director for Ireland of the 
Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. It was under hig 
directorship that the Cambrian rocks, on the east of Ireland, were 
ascertained to be such. The Cambrian fossil, Oldhamia, first 
found by him at Bray Head, was so named after him by Edward 
Forbes. He was admitted a F.R.S.in June, 1848. During the time 
that he was President of our Society, viz, from 1848 to 1850, 
