62 
REVIEWS. 
and may to the reader serve for a speaking illustration of this sentence in 
the Memoir — u Many will remember the searching cross-examination to 
which, on such occasions, they were subjected.” The love of truth—a 
characteristic of every true naturalist—was peculiarly awake in William 
Thompson, and the eminently judicial character of his mind fitted him for 
sifting, and weighing, and deciding on the evidence of natural phenomena, 
as the same would have qualified him to deal with questions of another 
sort, had his choice or his profession bent him thitherward. Amid the 
busy people of the most busy and thriving commercial town of Ireland, he 
was the only one who was devoted-—time and talents, both and mainly-—to 
natural science. But his industry and his methodical habits were akin to 
theirs; and his townsmen, not altogether strangers, either, to the attrac¬ 
tions of literature and science in the rare pauses of intense commercial 
life, were proud to claim for their own the first naturalist of Ireland. 
A list of his publications in Natural History, appended to this volume, 
extends to more than seventy distinct articles ; while the number of species 
by him first recorded in the Irish Fauna amounts to between nine hundred 
and a thousand. The comprehensive range of his study was commensu¬ 
rate with the thorough accuracy of his knowledge. “ He gave attention 
not only to the long series of vertebrate and invertebrate animals (except 
Insecta and Infusoria), but also to the vegetable kingdom in all its various 
forms.” It may not be uninteresting here, in conclusion, to recapitulate 
the number of species, in each of the grand divisions of the animal king¬ 
dom, which are enumerated as Irish in the work with which, or beforehand, 
the labours of Mr. Thompson’s life were closed:— 
Mammalia (of which Cetacea and Pinnipedia 11), besides 6 extinct . 36 
Birds (of which a few admitted on scanty evidence) . . . 264 
Beptilia 2, and Amphibia 5.7 
Fishes (of which some considered not sufficiently authenticated) . 182 
Mollusca (not including the Molluscan Bryozoa) .... 545 
Insecta (enumerated by families ; names of species not given) . . 4,440 
Arachnida omitted, except Pycnogonida (included with Crustacea) . 10 
Crustacea 199, and Cirripedia 22, (Myriapoda omitted) . . .221 
Annelida (besides Entozoa 143, Report of B. A., 1843 ; Rotifera omitted) 95 
Echinoderma 55, and Acaleplia 31.86 
Zoophyta (Anthozoa 71, Bryozoa 96) ...... 167 
Foraminifera (Rhizopoda and Infusoria omitted).30 
Amorphozoa (Porifera) . . . . . . . . . 34 
Appendix, Additions to the Irish Fauna, recorded since W. T. ob. . 27 
To which are to be added some hundred species m Irish collections, 
not yet named or identified. A. H. H. 
