1 10 llie Influence of Language and Environment. 



individual born with a genius for music, and who may perhaps 

 be brought on a public platform to perform at the age of five 

 or seven years. In such a case, the special cultivation of the 

 faculty for music is adopted, to the entire neglect of the other 

 faculties of the brain, and with what result ? We very often 

 find that in ten, twenty, or thirty years that same individual 

 becomes an inmate of a lunatic asylum. I think that instead 

 of educating a child exclusively in, say music, it would be well 

 to restrain the tendency, and to give the child, as it were, an all 

 round education, say in mathematics and other branches, and 

 thus save it from the dreadful probability of insanity. My 

 thanks, I may also say, are due to the audience for the kind 

 attention paid to all my observations, which were unavoidably 

 of a technical nature. And 1 cannot sit down without tendering 

 my best thanks to Mr. Wallace for the admirable manner in 

 which he has represented my photo, slides on the screen. 



The Hon. Secretary (Mr. R. M. Young, BA., M.R.I.A.) 

 announced the following donations : — The volunteer sword, 

 worn by Henry Joy M'Cracken ; presented by M. Christopher 

 Aitcheson, J.P., Loanhead, Midlothian. An ornithorhyncus, 

 garnet rock from Alaska, silver ore, Chinese opium pipe ; pre- 

 sented by Captain Robert Campbell, ship Slieve Donard. A 

 large carboniferous fossil shell ^ productus giganticus; presented 

 by Mr. John Wilkinson, Comber Place, Belfast. 



A vote of thanks was passed to the donors, on the motion of 

 Mr. Robert Young, C.E., seconded by Dr. P. Macaulay. 



