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[IVoc. B.N.F.C., 



STEWART MEMORIAL MEETING. 



The third meeting of the Winter Session, held in the Museum 

 on 17th January, the President, Mr. Robert J. Welch, M.R.I. A., in 

 the chair, was devoted to the memory of the late Samuel Alexander 

 Stewart, A.L.S., F.B.S.E. The principal speakers were the Rev. C. 

 H. Waddell, M.A., B.I). ; Mr. R. Lloyd Praeger, M.R.I.A. ; and 

 the President. The meeting having been opened by the President, 

 Mr. Waddell read a most interesting biographical sketch of Mr. 

 Stewart's life, in which he said : — Last century there was a 

 succession of good naturalists in Belfast who awakened and 

 kept alive a love of Natural Sceince ; Templeton, who began his 

 researches as early as 1793, Thompson, and Patterson. But 

 Stewart did not owe the bent of his life to any of these. They 

 had all passed away, except the last named, when • he took up 

 Natural Science at the age of thirty-seven, in the year 1863. He 

 always regarded Prof. Ralph Tate as his master. 



How many of those who are pursuing the study at the present 

 day in the North of Ireland look back with gratitude and fond 

 remembrance to the encouragement and help and kindling of a 

 love for nature to him whose loss we now mourn ? I may venture 

 to say there is scarcely one who does not. No selfish heart 

 was his, taken up with its own concerns, engrossed in its own 

 advancement, but giving freely of its own, and loving nature for 

 its own sake. 



Greater and more fruitful was the influence of his life on 

 others than in the results of his own work. One writes regretfully, 

 " I shall never see again that clever striking face with those deep- 

 set eyes, and listen to his shrewd dry humour." 



Stewart's ancestors came from Scotland in the seventeenth 

 century and settled at Ballynure, Co. Antrim. They were 

 well-to-do farmers and occupied a farm of some forty acres on 

 the Dobbs' property, which got the name of the "graveyard farm" 

 from its containing a burying-ground where members of the family 



