S2 Presidents Address. 



objects of interest worthy to find a place on its shelves. He 

 supposed that he might say with truth that the two most notable 

 objects in that collection were the two portraits before them. It 

 seemed to him a peculiarly fitting thing that those two portraits 

 should come to the Society together, and were that night at once 

 placed side by side upon the walls of that room. Both Mr. 

 Thompson and Mr. Patterson were Belfast men bred and born as 

 they said, and they not only lived in Belfast all their lives, but 

 they loved Belfast. Indeed, there was a curious parallelism be- 

 tween their careers throughout. Not only were they both Belfast 

 men, but they both devoted themselves to the study of natural 

 history, both gave themselves to the service of that Society, and 

 both were elevated in their turn to the highest office in the 

 Society, the office of president. When Mr. Thompson died Mr. 

 Patterson became his literary executor, and carried through the 

 Press the fourth volume of his " Natural History of Ireland," 

 prefixing to it a biography of his friend. And now it was a surely 

 interesting thing that when the one had been lying in his grave 

 more than forty years, and the other in his more than twenty, 

 they were still united in death as they had been in life. Their 

 portraits on the one night coming into the possession of the Society 

 would hang together on those walls to tell future generations of 

 the manner of men they both were, and continue to stimulate 

 Belfastmen to the study of that branch of science to which both 

 of them so heartily devoted themselves. Mr. Thompson he 

 never had the pleasure of knowing ; Mr. Patterson he could 

 remember well, and if in any place his name ought to be men- 

 tioned with honour in Belfast it should be there. It had always 

 struck him as a remarkable thing that that young man of only 

 nineteen years of age should have been one of the founders of 

 that Society. It proved to them how early the love of science 

 had been born within him, and how strongly it grew with his 

 life and strengthened with his strength. As they had heard 

 already, that occurred in the year 1821, and from that time until 

 his death, 1872, everyone knew that that Society and that 

 Museum were dear to him. Many of them had heard, and 



