BELFAST NATURAL HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL 
SOCIETY. 
OCTOBER 26, 1853. 
A meeting of the above Society, for the session of 1853-4, was held at the 
Museum, 
Robert Patterson, Esq., President, in the chair, 
when a paper was read by Dr. Dickie on the 
RELATIONS OF FORM AND COLOUR IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 
A specimen of a candle, made from paraffine, was shown to the meeting, and a 
letter read from Sir J. Emerson Tennent, stating that the paraffine had been pro¬ 
cured at Bonn, on the Rhine, from the brown coal or lignite of that neighbourhood ; 
and he suggested that the like might be obtained from the lignite which is found in 
some quantity in the county of Antrim. He also mentioned that oil, that burns 
resembling camphine, had also been obtained from the German lignite. 
NOVEMBER 16, 1853. 
The second meeting of the Society was held, when a paper was read by Mr. 
Robert Young, C. E., on 
THE DRAINAGE OF TOWNS, IN ITS SANITARY AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS. 
After the paper was read, there was an interesting conversation on the topics 
contained in it. Dr. Browne pointed out the distinction between the sewerage and 
drainage of a town; and dwelt on the importance of the subject in a sanitary point 
of view. 
Dr. Stronge conceived that the breathing of the noxious vapours, arising from 
accumulations of animal filth, did not immediately produce cholera, but that by 
inhaling the like, the human constitution became disposed to receive epidemic 
contagion. 
Mr. MacAdam drew the attention of the meeting to a statement of the Registrar- 
General, in which it was mentioned that, formerly, Newcastle-on-Tyne was 
healthier than at present; but in consequence of the sewerage of the town being 
permitted to become mixed with the river, and the water, of late years, being sent 
back to the inhabitants to be used for domestic purposes, there was a marked dif¬ 
ference in their sanitary state, as exemplified in the late ravages of cholera; also, 
that at Exeter, that disease made great ravages in 1832, at the first visitation of the 
epidemic, but that subsequently a new supply of pure water having been procured 
for the inhabitants, the city suffered comparatively little in 1849, when the second 
visitation took place. 
