OBtfuatg QXoftce of ffle fate 



Rev. Canon JOHN GRAINGER, D.D..M.R.IA 



EX-PRESIDENT. 

 By the Secretaries. 



THE eldest of a family of nine, John Grainger was born at Queen Street, 

 Belfast, on 19th March, 1830. His father was David Grainger, a ship- 

 owner, and a member of the Belfast Corporation. His mother's maiden name 

 was Maria Belinda Parke ; sho was a daughter of Lieut. James Parke, of the 

 Desertcreight Yeomanry, in Co. Tyrone, whose sword and gorget are still pre- 

 served in the Canon's collection. 



The Graingers came to Belfast from Lisburn, in which district they had been 

 long established, the name of one of the family appearing as churchwarden in 

 Jeremy Taylor's episcopate in 1667. 



Shortly after John's birth, the family removed to Vine Lodge, in Henry Street, 

 where they lived for some 16 years. When the boy was nine years old, the 

 reading of Peter Parley's Wonders of Earth, Sea, and Sky, with descriptions of 

 strange fossils found embedded in the earth, aroused his juvenile enthusiasm, 

 and armed with a spade he sallied forth into the garden to discover some of these 

 marvels. A large portion of Belfast is built on slob-land, the clay composing 

 which teems with marine shells of many species. The young scientist had, 

 therefore, not excavated far before he struck a rich vein of Turritella, Aporrhais, 

 and other beautiful shells, with which he returned to the house, radiant and 

 triumphant. Thus his first scientific expedition turned out successful, and 

 trivial as the incident appears, it bore abundant fruit, for in after years he 

 continued his exploration of the beds underlying the slob -lands of Belfast with 

 zeal and success, and it is by his papers before the British Association and else- 

 where on these post-tertiary deposits that his name is best known to geologists. 

 At the age of ten, the boy was sent to the Belfast Academy, then located in 

 Donegall Street and Academy Street. The head-master was Kev. Reuben John 

 Bryce, LL.D., who undertook the classical department; his brother, James 

 Bryce, F.G.S., had charge of the mathematical and science classes. In James 

 Bryce young Grainger met a teacher entirely to his taste— a man devoted to 

 science in all its branches, and an excellent geologist. Twice each week the 

 half -hour geography lesson was superseded by a lecture on some natural history 

 subject, and the master soon discovered that in John Grainger he had a most 

 attentive and promising pupil. In consequence of his pupil's aptitude and love 



