BELFAST 



NATURAL HISTORY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



SESSION 1903-4. 



jrd November, igoj. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 

 Professor Johnson Symington, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.S.E. 



JOHN GRATTAN : A SKETCH OF HIS WORK AS A 

 CRANIOLOGIST. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — My first duty is to offer my warmest 

 thanks to the Council for the honour they have conferred upon 

 me in electing me President of this Society. It is certainly an 

 honour to be identified with the government of an Institution 

 which has existed for more than 80 years without state aid or 

 municipal support, whose object is the extension of a knowledge 

 of nature and of art, and the encouragement of learning and 

 research, and which during this period has received not only the 

 sympathy, but the active support, of such men as Thomas Andrews, 

 William Thompson, Robert Patterson and Wyville Thomson. I 

 am fully aware that I have done but little to deserve this honour, 

 and that the invitation so cordially extended to me was intended 

 quite as much as a compliment to the College which I have the 

 honour to serve, as to myself personally. Indeed, it was the 

 consciousness of this fact that led me to accept a position for 

 which my other duties leave me but little time to discharge as I 

 should wish. 



Many of those who have contributed to our proceedings have 

 been engaged in some industrial or professional occupation, but 

 have found a change of thought and a relaxation from their ordinary 

 work in the study of some department of the physical, or of the 

 biological sciences. They have been the fortunate possessors of 

 a scientific hobby, which they followed without any idea or hope 



