24 



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



feel as if I were a kind of grandfather and you children. You 

 are 50 years old; we are 183 years old. You started in 1863; 

 we started in 1 731. You started as a Club fully equipped to do 

 the kind of work Mr. Praeger has spoken of. The Royal Dublin 

 Society was started to promote improvements of all kinds. It 

 did not limit itself to Science. A document I have refers to the 

 " Dublin Society for improving husbandry, manufactures, and 

 other useful arts and sciences." I have read that to you to draw 

 attention to the fact that the Dublin Society has given up, 

 perforce I imagine, some of the work it started to do. At the 

 present time it limits its energies to husbandry, chiefly cattle and 

 live stock, and to science. It began some thirty or forty years 

 ago, or perhaps not so long, having scientific meetings and 

 publications, and now it is limited to those two main objects. 



You all know we in Dublin have no very great idea of the 

 intellectuality of Belfast, but after what Mr. Praeger has said I 

 am beginning to see we shall have to change our opinion. 

 (Laughter.) I was forced to change that opinion a few years ago 

 out in Canada. I met a man of the same name as myself. I 

 can't remember whether he was a schoolmaster or bookseller, but 

 he was one of the two. He was asking me what sort of a place 

 Dublin was — " It is a place burning to have a parliament, is it 

 not?" I replied "Some of it is," and he went on to say "Is 

 there much intellectuality in Dublin?" and I said "We think it 

 a very intellectual place, the most intellectual place in Ireland 

 without any doubt." "But," said he, "You have not a Naturalists' 

 Field Club like Belfast." I found that he was a son of a Belfast man. 



I am glad to find the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club is not 

 unknown to working-men, for I understand in your Club there 

 are working-men, and have been from the beginning. It is a 

 good thing to find that you have a Club in which working-men are 

 brought in contact with those of a slightly better education, 

 perhaps not always better, and so have a chance of leavening the 

 whole neighbourhood. 



