1913-1914.| 



25 



I, therefore, congratulate you on having attained your 

 jubilee, and having done such good work in the past. 



Mr. George Donaldson said : — Mr. Chairman, ladies and 

 gentlemen — Mr. Praeger has said nearly all that I intended to 

 say. Very little has been left that I can say ; but it has been 

 insisted upon that I should say something, seeing that I was one 

 of the originators of the Club. I may tell the gentleman who 

 has just addressed us that all the originators of the Club, the half 

 dozen of us who first met together, were working-men. As Mr. 

 Praeger has said, the Club was really the outcome of the estab- 

 lishment of the Department of Science and Art. The Art 

 Department was started after the great exhibition of 185 1, when 

 we discovered we were rather behind in that sphere. Afterwards 

 they added Science to it, and in 1859 the Department of Science 

 and Art was formed for the purpose of sending out teachers and 

 delivering lectures to working-people. The Council of the 

 Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society at that time 

 called a public meeting that I attended, and the late Professor 

 Wyville Thomson gave a very nice lecture on "Geological Forces." 

 They formed an educational committee, and then applied for 

 lectures, the outcome of which was that in March, i860, the late 

 Professor Jukes came to Belfast and gave a series of lectures in 

 the old Music Hall, which I attended with some others. We got 

 a great deal of information on Geology, which was for ever after 

 the ground work of our investigations. These lectures were 

 so successful and attended by such large numbers of people 

 that it was determined to send one of their very best teachers, the 

 late Professor Ralph Tate, to Belfast the next Winter, and the 

 local Science Committee held classes in Geology, Zoology, and 

 Botany in the Museum. I attended the Geological classes with 

 Mr. Stewart, Mr. Robinson, and a few more. After the year was 

 over and when the examinations were passed in May, we 

 discovered we were going to be lost. We were disbanded and did 



