ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 
207 
“ Gentlemen,—I t gives me much pleasure to meet a deputation 
from so distinguished a body, and to receive your congratulations on my 
re-appointment to the government of Ireland. The years that have 
passed since I was in Dublin have not driven from my recollection the 
history of your Society, or the knowledge of the beneficial effect which 
such a Society as yours has in promoting scientific attainments, not only 
in the city, but over the whole country. Any institution or any pursuit 
which brings together with a common or a praiseworthy object men who 
differ in religion and political questions is well worthy of support; and 
as I am by my official position the Visitor of your Academy, I hope I 
may have an occasional opportunity of relaxing and improving my mind 
by a glance at the curiosities which you have amassed.” 
John E. Kinahan, M. D., read the following paper— 
ON OLDHAMIA, A GENUS OE CAMBRIAN FOSSILS. 
In certain schistose beds of the Cambrian series, as seen at Eray Head 
and other places in the county of Wicklow, and at Howth in the 
county of Dublin, are found masses of peculiar markings, which the eye 
readily recognises as casts of an animal belonging either to the Polyzoan 
or Hydrozoan alliance. Although at first sight there may, especially 
to an untutored eye, appear to be some resemblance between these mark¬ 
ings, and the multiform shapes which masses of crystal assume, yet a 
consideration of their symmetrical regularity of form, their constancy of 
direction with regard to the bedding, their 
frequent occurrence and permanency of cha¬ 
racter in even dissimilar beds, situate at great 
distances from each other; their association 
with traces of the remains of animals of aqua¬ 
tic habits; and their close agreement in form 
with beings living at the present day,—lead 
us to dismiss as untenable every theory which 
would assign to them aught save an organized 
origin. Geologists of the present day, without 
hesitation, admit Oldhamia—as the genus 
founded for the reception of these fossils, in 1848, by Edward Eorbes is 
called, in honour of Professor Oldham, who first noticed their existence 
in 1844 (vide “ Proceedings of the Geological Society of Dublin,” vol. iii., 
p. 66)—among the list of fossils. But, although the former animal 
nature of these beings is now admitted, their exact position in the scale 
is by no means free from doubt; nor need we wonder at this when we 
recollect that but a few years since the two great families—to both of 
which Oldhamia has been referred by different observers, viz., the Poly¬ 
zoan Mollusca and the Hydrozoan Acrita—were confounded together, and 
that in many cases (widely different as the animals composing these two 
classes are in the structure and relations of their organs), even among 
recent species it is impossible d priori to declare, from the skeletons 
Fig. l. 
