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death, engaged in acquiring statistical information, much was to be 

 expected. 



" In Mr. David Aher the country has lost one well conversant, 

 as a civil engineer, with its physical circumstances, and anxious and 

 effectual in promoting industry. He was principally engaged in the 

 working of the coal district of Kilkenny and the Queen's County, but 

 was concerned in many other engineering operations in that neighbour- 

 hood. He supplied a great deal of valuable information embodied 

 in the Reports on the Irish Bogs, drawn up by order of Government; 

 and recently, I believe his last work, at the time when the plans for 

 railway intercourse through Ireland were much discussed, he sur- 

 veyed and proposed a line extending from Dublin to Kilkenny. 

 Owing to the purely practical nature of Mr. Aher's labours, he did 

 not contribute any memoirs to our Transactions, but his career was 

 not on that account the less valuable. This Academy, necessarily 

 limited in its scope to the more general and abstract contemplation 

 of scientific questions, is still most fully cognizant of the merit, 

 and anxious to express its admiration of those men, who practically 

 developing the sources of useful employment and industrial wealth 

 which our country holds, may become important agents in increasing 

 the comfort and happiness of our people. 



" Dr. James Macartney was born in March, 1770, in Armagh, 

 where his family had long been resident. He was educated in the 

 country, where he received the rudiments of an ordinary education, 

 but was not at college, nor was he intended for a profession. 

 Forced, however, in 1790, by the death of his father, to decide upon 

 his future course of life, he chose the profession of surgery, ' not,' 

 as he used to say, ' because he had any peculiar aptitude for the 

 business, but that he thought it would harden his feelings, which 

 he had found on many occasions painfully acute.' In 1 794 he was 

 apprenticed to Dr. Hartigan, who was at that time Professor of 

 Anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Passing to 

 London for the completion of his professional studies, he was ap- 

 pointed, in 1798, Demonstrator of Anatomy at Bartholomew's Hos- 

 pital; and in 1800, having become a member of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons in London, he began to lecture on Comparative Anatomy 

 and Physiology, which he continued up to 1810. During the greater 



