loth February^ igio. 



Sir John Byers, M.D., President, in the Chair. 



SIDELIGHTS ON BIBLE HISTORY." 

 By Mr. K. T. Frost. 



(Abstract.) 

 The Chairman said one of the special features of the Belfast 

 Natural History and Philosophical Society was the great variety 

 in the subjects brought before the members, and on that evening 

 they were to be favoured with a lecture on archaeological side- 

 lights on Bible history. As they were aware, archaeology, or 

 the science which dealt with past civilizations, was one of unusual 

 interest, and afforded immense scope for study, because the lines 

 along which it could be followed were so numerous. Ireland 

 was full of many types of antiquities, such as ecclesiastical 

 remains, round towers, cromlechs, forths (or raths), stone monu- 

 ments, souterrains, cairns, flint implements and ornaments, — like 

 the famous gold Celtic torque found near Limavady, — and Ulster 

 had produced a very able school of archaeologists. At their head 

 was the late Bishop Reeves, the most painstaking and accurate 

 of investigators. Then there were Robert MacAdam (editor of 

 the old Ulster Journal of Archaeology), who was so interested in 

 philology and folk-lore ; Samuel M'Skimmin, a new edition of 

 whose History and Antiquities of Carrickfergus was just pub- 

 lished ; Classon Porter, who accumulated so much original 

 material in reference to the old MacDonnells ; Canon Hume, 

 who wrote in the Ulster dialect ; Monsignor O'Laverty, who 

 collected the ancient legends direct from the people ; Edmund 

 Getty, a man of great antiquarian knowledge on many subjects ; 

 and John Grattan, whose original work on the measurements of 



