2 g [Proc. B.N.F.l . 



the science much more effectively than some of those more 

 elaborate arrangements by which they are now helped. The facts 

 remained in our memory better than they do sometimes from the 

 present methods. The way they brought out amateur workers 

 was wonderful. I need only mention Samuel Alexander Stewart 

 in connection with these early science classes, and his zealous 

 work that brought him the honour of Associateship of the 

 Linnean Society of London. Again I wish to express the great 

 pleasure it gives me to be here, and to thank you for the personal 

 invitation you sent me, in addition to the official invitation. 

 During the next half-century I wish the Club continued prosperity, 

 and hope it will flourish even more than it has done in the past. 



Count Plunkett, Delegate from the Royal Society of 

 Antiquaries of Ireland, said : — Mr. Chairman, ladies and 

 gentlemen — It is a great pleasure to me to come to congratulate 

 an Irish society on such a splendid record. I know something 

 of the difficulties, having been concerned myself with many Irish 

 societies, not only of keeping them in existence but of keeping 

 them active. I have not the advantage of being able to say, as 

 some people can who are here to-day, that any society with which 

 I have been connected for fifty years has had such success. On 

 behalf of the Society of Antiquaries of Ireland I have to convey 

 our feeling to this Club of the great service it has done to the 

 study of Archaeology. When the Society was started, for many 

 years the study of pre-historic Archaeology in Ireland was 

 comparatively negligible till the example of this Club acted on 

 some of the earlier societies, which undoubtedly were stimulated 

 in their work by the example of the Belfast Naturalists' Field 

 Club. I remember personally myself — I cannot readily forget — 

 it is not fifty years but perhaps a little under forty years, since the 

 great meetings held in Belfast which created such heart-burning 

 at the time in many ways, of the British Association. Those 

 controversies, I suppose — most of them — have melted away " into 



