34 
we trust you will find leisure from your more important and higher 
duties to relax occasionally by doing us the honour of attending some of 
our meetings, and examining the remains of ancient Irish art and litera~ 
ture which are preserved in our Museum and Library. We beg to ex- 
press our anxious hope that the period of your Excellency’s administration 
in Ireland may prove an era distinguished by the promotion of peace and 
prosperity, the development of the industrial resources of the country, 
and the advancement of those literary and scientific pursuits to which 
the Royal Irish Academy is more especially devoted.’ 
His Excrtiency returned the following reply :— 
‘‘GrnTLEMEN,—It gives me much pleasure to meet a deputation 
from so distinguished a body, and to receive your congratulations on my 
re-appointment to the government of Ireland. The years that have 
passed since I was in Dublin have not driven from my recollection the 
history of your Society, or the knowledge of the beneficial effect which 
such a Society as yours has in promoting scientific attainments, not only 
in the city, but over the whole country. Any institution or any pursuit 
which brings together with a common or a praiseworthy object men who 
differ in religion and political questions is well worthy of support; and 
as Iam by my official position the Visitor of your Academy, I hope I 
may have an occasional opportunity of relaxing and improving my mind 
by a glance at the curiosities which you have amassed.” 
Joun R. Kivanan, M. D., read the following paper— 
ON OLDHAMIA, A GENUS OF CAMBRIAN FOSSILS. 
ty certain schistose beds of the Cambrian series, as seen at Bray Head 
and other places in the county of Wicklow, and at Howth in the 
county of Dublin, are found masses of peculiar markings, which the eye 
readily recognises as casts of an animal belonging either to the Polyzoan 
er Hydrozoan alliance. Although at first sight there may, especially 
to an untutored eye, appear to be some resemblance between these mark- 
ings, and the multiform shapes which masses of crystal assume, yet a 
consideration of their symmetrical regularity of form, thei constancy of 
direction with regard to the bedding, their 
frequent occurrence and permanency of cha- 
racter in even dissimilar beds, situate at great 
distances from each other; their association 
with traces of the remains of animals of aqua- 
tic habits; and their close agreement in form 
with beings living at the present day,—lead 
us to dismiss as untenable every theory which 
would assign to them aught save an organized 
origin. Geologists of the present day, without : hss 
hesitation, admit Oldhamia—as the genus Fig. 1. 
founded for the reception of these fossils, in 1848, by Edward Forbes is 
called, in honour of Professor Oldham, who first noticed their existence 
