3© [Proc. B. N. F. C, 



The opening of the Queen's College, and the transfer to it of 

 the Collegiate department of the Institution, rendered it 

 unnecessary for the latter to maintain the delivery of lectures so 

 far as the students were concerned, and the establishment of 

 the Natural History Society gave facilities for the maintenance 

 of the public lectures which the Institution had originated. In 

 the school department, however, the Rev. Isaiah Steen, whom 

 many of you may recollect, carried on a system of lectures on 

 Physical and Natural Science. Since his death a similar work 

 has been done by Dr. Henry Burden, and latterly by Mr. 

 Robert Barklie. As an old pupil of the Institution, I have 

 referred at some length to the work accomplished by it, but it 

 should be noticed that the study of Natural Science which was 

 so much furthered in it by Dr. Drummond and others, had in 

 the Belfast Academy, a similar advocate in the person of Mr. 

 James Bryce, whose valuable paper upon the geology of our 

 district, read before the British Association at the Belfast 

 meeting in 1852, and whose many contributions to the 

 Geological Society placed him high in the ranks of authorities 

 upon that subject. During Mr. Bryce's long connection with 

 the Academy, he did much to foster a taste for Natural History 

 amongst his pupils, not only by his lectures, but by his Satur- 

 day rambles with them, and I am sure that many of them look 

 back with pleasure to his efforts in that direction. I find 

 from a paper read before the Natural History and Philosophical 

 Society in 1 840, by the late Mr. Robert Patterson, that Mr. 

 Bryce was the first to place Natural History in the rank of a 

 branch of ordinary education, he having introduced it into his 

 Geographical Class in the Academy, and having established 

 a Natural History Society among his pupils. In the Institu- 

 tion, the same subject became a branch of education in the 

 English department, under the Rev. William Hamilton, and a 

 similar society had, at the time at which Mr. Patterson wrote, 

 held its meetings for some years under the guidance of Rev. 

 Isaiah Steen, who had latterly been joined in the management 

 of it by Mr. Hamilton.* 



Note. — Since the above was written, a most valuable " History of the Belfast 



