40 [Proc. B. N. F. C, 



reasonably anticipate that Belfast will always have a willing 

 band of earnest students of natural science, to carry on the work 

 of their predecessors." Mr. Gray then referred to the material 

 aid necessary for the study of natural history, and giving full credit 

 for the accommodation given the Club by the Council of the Natu- 

 ral History Society, urged very strongly the necessity for having 

 a town aquarium, and continued — '^ We have had our dredging 

 excursions, and at several of our meetings we have made some 

 attempts to exhibit living marine forms ; but our efforts have 

 been a comparative failure, which would not have been so com- 

 plete, had we had the great advantage of permanent marine 

 and freshwater aquaria, to which the public, as well as students 

 of natural history, should have easy access. In these days, when 

 we speak of having a public aquarium, visions of splendid 

 buildings, palaces of pleasure, brilliant with plate glass, sculpture, 

 and gilding, float before the imagination ; but for the practical 

 purposes of an aquarium — that is, for the scientific study of its 

 inhabitants — stately palaces or costly decorations are not re- 

 quired. The conditions of nature may be very closely imitated 

 without extraordinary expense. Some years ago our Field Club 

 suggested to the Committee of the Botanic Gardens the desira- 

 bility of forming an aquarium in the gardens, but from sup- 

 posed financial difficulties the question itself was from that time 



drowned in cold water I now come back to the 



question of a Museum. Referring to the early history of the 

 Belfast Museum, we find it originated with eight individuals, 

 who formed the Natural History Society in Belfast on the 5th 

 June, 1 82 1. The little society at its birth was not so strong as . 

 the Naturalists' Field Club at the same stage of its existence ; 

 yet within a period less than the present age of our Club this 

 energetic little society, before it was thirteen years old, succeeded 

 in erecting this building we now occupy, and opening it free of 

 debt, after an expenditure of ^^2,300. That was at a time when 

 the sites of many of our present busy streets were but open fields 

 for the grazing of cattle, when the number of inhabitants was 

 scarcely a fourth of what it is now, and the value of property 



