4 Annual Meeting. 



The President of Queen's College, in moving the adoption of 

 the report and statement of accounts, said that the Belfast 

 Natural History and Philosophical Society was one of the 

 few old things that our comparatively modern city had, and 

 was one of the most useful and most interesting of all the 

 societies that Belfast could boast of. He hoped the day was 

 far distant when it would cease to perform its very excellent 

 functions in the midst of this busy community. 



The report reminded them that duringtheyear the society had 

 lost four very valued and old friends, all of whom he knew, 

 and all of whom the society had good reasons to prize. The 

 death of Mr. Thomas Workman was specially sad. He was the 

 second president who had died during his term of oflEice, the 

 first being their eminent and well known Belfast naturalist, 

 Mr. William Thompson, whose death occurred in 1852. Mr. 

 Workman, as they all knew, was a man of very varied and large 

 scientific attainments. He was one of the type of men who 

 helped long ago to earn for Belfast the appellation of the Athens 

 of the North, and who at the present day enabled it to still lay 

 claim to some extent to that name. Another death chronicled 

 in the report was that of Professor Hodges. They in Queen's 

 College had already in their own way taken note of that death, 

 which deprived them of the last of the old staff of original 

 professors. He had occupied a chair in the college for fifty 

 years, and he (the President) was glad to say that in a short 

 time a portrait of him, subscribed for by his friends in the 

 college and city, would be hung on the walls of the Ex- 

 amination Hall. In the Natural History Society the 

 late professor occupied a very prominent place, and in its 

 working he took a large share. In connection with his name it 

 ought to be said that very long ago he took steps in his own 

 private capacity to do, in of course a small way, what this very 

 year was being carried out by the Government through the 

 operation of the Agriculture and Technical Schools Act. 

 He established, many years since, a little farm of his own not 

 far from the College, for experimenting with seeds, plants, and 



