DUBLIN NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
29 
Whilst in the fill! career of its usefulness, the famine years caused in 
this, as in all societies solely supported by private subscription, such a 
falling off in its income, as compelled the Council in prudence to give up 
the rooms then held, and for some years the collections were not availa¬ 
ble for public inspection. The Monthly Meetings still continued to be 
held regularly, and many new facts were brought forward and valuable 
donations still poured in, so that when, on the return of prosperity to the 
country, your Society once more was in a position to exhibit its collec¬ 
tion, it was found to be much increased in specimens of the rarer species, 
many of them then and still unique. Your Council, however, found 
itself still unable, through paucity of funds, to render the whole of the 
collections available, and therefore directed its attention, in the first in¬ 
stance, to those portions of the collection which, being of a compara¬ 
tively perishable nature, required more immediate attention, hoping, 
as has indeed been the case, year by year to be enabled gradually to de¬ 
velop the other resources of the collection, and thus render it a com¬ 
plete key to the identification of the rarer Irish species. 
Another matter also pressing on the Council caused a drain on the 
funds, arising from the great and steadily increasing value of the papers 
read before the Meetings, viz., the necessity, in justice to the Society 
and the authors of communications, of providing some permanent and 
available form of Transactions, in which the claim to priority of dis¬ 
covery should be preserved, and published in a form suitable for general 
diffusion, and thus form by degrees Annals of the Natural History of 
the country. It, therefore, felt it expedient to devote a portion of the 
funds of the Society to chronicling the discoveries brought forward at 
the Meetings, and have been enabled, through means of an advantageous 
agreement with the “ Natural History Eeview and Quarterly Journal 
of Science,” to publish in full authorized Reports of the Proceedings, 
which not merely enjoy the full advantages of the circulation of that 
Journal in Great Britain, Ireland, the Continent, and America, but also 
at the end of each year enables your Council to present each Member with 
a full record of the progress made—advantages the importance of which 
must be apparent to all. These latter arrangements, which have now, as 
you are aware, been in existence for the last three years, entail on the 
Society, in conjunction with the rent and other necessary expenses of 
the Meeting-rooms, an expenditure of above seventy pounds, leaving 
but a very trifling sum to meet any extra expenses which may arise, and 
incapacitating the Council from expending on your Museum the sums 
necessary for its further development. 
Your Council have, however, every confidence that it has but to call 
the attention of the Members, and Naturalists in general, to the impor¬ 
tance of a still further increase to its means of usefulness, to obtain, by 
accession of new Members, &c., such support as will enable it to carry 
out the good work in which the Society has been for the past eighteen 
years employed, particularly as, there being no paid officers in this So¬ 
ciety, the whole of its income is devoted to one object, viz., the illus- 
