Minutes of the Academy. 
liii 
of the great scientific, literary, and art collections of Paris by the 
threatened bombardment of the city. We accordingly prepared a 
niemorial to the Government, requesting them to use their good offices 
to prevent, as far as possible, any injury to those collections. The 
memorial was adopted by the Academy, and transmitted, with the 
signature of the President, to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary for 
Foreign Affairs, from whom we received a reply, stating that he had 
forwarded a copy of the memorial to the British Ambassador at 
Berlin for communication to the Prussian Government. Copies of the 
memorial were at the same time sent to all the learned bodies with 
which the Academy has relations, requesting their support towards 
the attainment of the object in view. We received in reply, besides 
one or two communications from Germany, couched in language which 
may be fairly attributed to the excited feeling then prevalent in that 
country, several others from London, Oxford, Copenhagen, Brussels, 
Prague, Madrid and Lausanne, expressing entire concurrence in our 
views and earnest sympathy with our efforts. We are satisfied that, 
whatever might be the result of our action, in taking the course we did 
we simply discharged our duty. But the communications of which we 
have spoken lead us to believe that the timely expression of a strong 
opinion by this Academy, as the principal scientific and literary body 
in Ireland, was not without effect in awakening or strengthening the 
sentiment of cultivated Europe against the destruction of precious col- 
lections, which have been accumulated by the labour of many genera- 
tions, and which are not so much the property of any one nation as 
the common possession of civilized mankind. 
The Academy has lost seven ordinary Members by death within 
the past year : — 
1. Charles H. Poot, Esq., Elected 1864 
2. Alexander H. Haliday, Esq., M. A., ... 1848 
3. Eobert Hutton, Esq., E. G. S., ,, 1816 
4. William Longfield, Esq., ... 
5. Pev. Thomas Luby, D. D., 
6. Acheson Lyle, Esq., M. A., 
7. Lieutenant- General Sir Charles 0' 
And one Honorary member, 
Benjamin Thorpe, 
an eminent scholar in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian Literature and 
Archaeology. 
Two of these names we cannot pass over without special notice. 
Alexander Henry Haliday was bom at Belfast, in November, 1806. 
He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in his 16th year, and obtained the 
gold medal in Classics at his Degree Examination in 1827. Shortly 
afterwards he was called to the Bar, and became a member of the North- 
East Circuit. He was nominated High- Sheriff of the County of Antrim 
in the year 1843. He had shown from a very early period a marked 
taste for the study of l^atural History, and in 1828 he published in the 
Zoological Journal " his first Paper — On some new Diptera and 
R, I. A. PBGC. — VOL. I., SER. II. h 
1859 
„ 1833 
„ 1836 
Donnell, „ 1857 
