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



science. If we wish to illustrate the habits, customs, and 

 peculiarities of the various races of ancient and modern mankind, 

 there may be some difficulty in determining what should be 



excluded The primary object of diffusing useful 



information and cultivating the public taste should never be lost 

 sight of. With this view, such a town as Belfast should have its 

 technical or economic museum, in which our mineral and other 

 natural products should be exhibited, and their several uses in 

 the arts illustrated, and the processes by which they are rendered 

 available fully explained. This industrial museum of patterns, 

 processes, inventions, improvements, and suggestions would tend 

 to improve and give a healthy direction to our manufacturing skill. 

 Closely connected with manufacturing skill comes the question 

 of artistic design ; and this is again governed by the question of 

 public taste. For the last few years our School of Art has been 

 steadily working, and many of its students have taken high 

 places in artistic designing. The -school, with a staff" of able 

 teachers, under the management of an active committee, was 

 never more promising or worthy of public support than it is at 

 this moment. But its students labour under the great dis- 

 advantage of not having an art museum, in which the best 

 examples of artistic products should be exhibited, and also the 

 process of manufacture, in which art work is necessarily involved. 

 Without some technical knowledge of these several processes, the 

 designers cannot produce suitable designs for the manufacturer. 

 A true artist must be a field naturalist, not a mere admirer 

 only, but an accepted lover of nature, wooing her in her own 

 retreats, and acting under the spell of her influence; a "naturalist," 

 in fact, who endeavours to express the aesthetic aspects of nature 

 as the geologist interprets the revelations of the rocks. It, 

 tlierefore, becomes fairly within our province to advocate the 

 establishment of an art gallery, where works of art, purchased 

 by, or presented to the public, may be permanently exhibited, 

 supplemented by works lent by collectors or connoisseurs of art. 

 Such a gallery might be appropriately connected with the art 

 and industrial branch of the museum, and would serve as a 



