477 



Mr. Hardinge made the following observations :— I hand in, Mr. 

 President, as the property of the Academy, the original MS. from which 

 my " Memoir on Towoland and other Surveys in Ireland of a public cha- 

 racter, from the year 1641 to the year 1688," was published in the Aca- 

 demy's " Transactions;" and beg to observe that the value of the MS. 

 is, that it exhibits the superior form in which the statistical analyses of 

 the forfeited, profitable, and unprofitable baronial areas of the lands ex- 

 hibited in Appendix E. would have appeared, had not a pressing neces- 

 sity to economize the Academy's funds obliged its modification to the 

 form in which it has been printed. The MS. is also valuable in ena- 

 bling any person to distinguish the author's from the printer's errors; 

 and, as I lay claim to no infallibility this way, I consider the present an 

 opportune time and place to state, that I will feel much obliged, upon 

 the discovery of errors, if the discoverers will communicate to me their 

 nature, and the exact references to them in the " Transactions' " volume, 

 I beg also to present to the Academy one of my own copies of the publi- 

 cation ; it will be found to embrace an Introduction not contained in the 

 copies distributed amongst the members of the Academy, and this Intro- 

 duction divulges some circumstances that Academicians especially should 

 be made acquainted with ; it also contains two photographedDown Survey 

 Maps, which in the operation were reduced to a size suitable for introduc- 

 tion into the " Transactions' " volume. These maps were presented to me, 

 in duplicate, by Sir Henry James, Chief of the Ordnance Survey Depart- 

 ment. They are elegantly and accurately executed ; and my reason for 

 thus presenting them is, to promulgate the circumstances leading to 

 their existence, and at the same time to perpetuate these circumstances 

 and the illustrations themselves in the Library of the Academy. 



The Academy then adjourned. 



MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1864. 

 The Yeey Eev. Chaeles Geaves, D. D., President, in the Chair. 



J. Huband, Smith, Esq., exhibited an autograph letter of Oliver 

 Cromwell to his son Henry, when Governor- General of Ireland, and read 

 a paper explaining the circumstances referred to in the letter. 



W. H. Haedinge, Esq., read the following paper, containing some 

 remarks on the Countess of Desmond, in the reign of Charles I. : — 



The Old Countess of Desmokd. 



It must appear presumptuous in me, thus occupying the position of a 

 yet living, though unhappilj^ absent author, in the observations I am 

 about off'ering to the Academy on a few points hitherto unnoticed, and 

 which I think throw additional light upon the history of the Old Coun - 

 tess of Desmond ; but in explanation I may be permitted to state, that 

 having placed at the disposal of the author alluded to the materials giv- 



