374 Royal Irish Academy. 



It is not usual to give in this Eeport a special notice of Honorary- 

 Members, but it is impossible to pass over one bonoured name ■without 

 at least a brief reference to the quality and nature of that Member's 

 work. The name of Margaret Stokes has long been a household word 

 in the archaeological world, but, to the Eoyal Irish Academy, it is even 

 more familiar as the name of the powerful exponent of the claims of 

 Irish Archaeology to the notice of scholars and of the world at large. 

 Miss Stokes' work in this large field, where the harvest is plenty and 

 the labourers are so few, has not been unnoticed by this Academy, 

 which brought out in 1898 a beautiful volume of her most charac- 

 teristic work on the High Crosses of Ireland. This work it was hoped 

 she might have been spared to carry to its completion in a full treatise 

 on Irish Iconography, but this was not to be. Eortunately, another 

 instalment of the preparatory studies was completed before her death, 

 and its speedy publication will enable the scientific world to judge of 

 the loss that has befallen the science of archaeology by her lamented 

 death in September, 1900. The work may be taken up and continued 

 by others on the basis of her initiative and with the stimulus of her 

 inspiration, but it will be hard to find again the same passionate 

 devotion to the object of her study, and the same artistic excellence 

 in the elaboration of her work. 



By the death of George Prancis FitzGrerald on the 22nd of Febru- 

 ary, 1901, the work of a valued labourer in the field of science and 

 also in the cause of education has been prematurely brought to a close. 

 Son of the Bishop of Killaloe, he was bom in Dublin in 1851. He 

 was educated at home by private tuition, and entered Trinity College 

 in 1867, at the age of sixteen. Ten years afterwards (1877) he 

 gained Fellowship in the College ; and in 1881, he was appointed to 

 the Erasmus Smith Chair of Experimental Philosophy in the Univer- 

 sity, in which post he remained till his death. In 1881 he was 

 President of Section A. (Mathematics and Experimental Physics) 

 of the British Association, and was elected in 1883 a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society, receiving from that Society a Eoyal Medal in 1899. 

 He became a member of the Eoyal Irish Academy in 1878, and served 

 on the Council from 1879 tiU 1883. 



It is impossible to enter here on a detailed estimate of his labours 

 either in the prosecution of scientific research or on behalf of educa- 



