MEMOIR 
OF THE LATE 
WILLIAM THOMPSON, ESQ., 
PRESIDENT OF THE 
NATURAL HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF BELFAST. 
A wish has been expressed by some of the personal friends of the late 
William Thompson, that this volume should contain a biographical notice 
of his life and labours : in deference to the desire so expressed, the pre- 
sent memoir has been prepared. 
It is brief, for his was a quiet and uneventful life ; no “ stirring inci- 
dents by flood or field” have to be recorded ; nor difficulties long encoun- 
tered and successfully overcome. It is brief for another reason : his 
letters do not in general contain those outpourings of thought or senti- 
ment, those revelations of the inner man, which to reflective minds are 
even more interesting than the open and noon-day occurrences of the out- 
ward life. To his most intimate friends, his correspondence, though fre- 
quent, was of the briefest possible kind. Such letters do not furnish the 
biographer with materials likely to be of general interest; and remarks 
on persons or occurrences, made on the impulse of the moment, and trans- 
mitted in the full confidence of private friendship, should not, we think, 
be torn from their shrines, and exposed to public comment. 
Our author, born 2nd of November, 1805, was the eldest son of a Bel- 
fast merchant, then, extensively engaged in the linen trade; and, being 
intended by his parents for the same business, he received such an educa- 
tion as was at the time considered suitable for commercial life. In 1821 
he was apprenticed to a highly respectable firm in the linen business, the 
staple trade of the North of Ireland. The senior partner of that firm, 
himself a keen sportsman, has survived the subject of the present memoir, 
and is not unfrequently referred to in the volumes on “ The Birds of Ire- 
land,” as an authority on their habits. 
A gentleman who was then in the same counting-house, and is now a 
merchant resident in Belfast, has kindly communicated some particulars 
respecting Mr. Thompson’s habits and tastes at this period of his life. 
According to him, Thompson never showed any great inclination for 
business, but while engaged in it his habits were strictly methodical. 
His leisure hours were chiefly spent in rural walks, in which this gentle- 
man, though ten years his senior, was frequently his companion. He 
