Belfast Natural History Society

The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society was founded in 1821 to promote the scientific study of animals, plants, fossils, rocks and minerals.

The Society was founded by George Crawford Hyndman, James Lawson Drummond, James Grimshaw, James McAdam, Robert Patterson, Robert Simms, Francis Archer, the Thomas Dix Hincks, Edward Hincks and Edmund Getty. Five years later in 1826 Alexander Henry Haliday and William Thompson both joined. In 1823, the Society’s collection and the small collection begun in 1788 in the rooms of the Belfast Reading Society and that of the Belfast Literary Society were moved to Belfast Academical Institution where James Bryce was centralising Belfast’s rapidly expanding natural history holdings. A new building opened at No. 7 College Square North in 1831.

How big were the first collections are unknown but the 1831 figure of 300 insects given when the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society Museum opened to non-members may refer to specimens on display. The research material would have been much more numerous and expanded rapidly during the next decade. Specimens from England, the West Indies, Lapland, France, Greece, Italy, Senegal, New Holland, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, Mauritius, Colombia, Recife, Peru, Virginia, India and West Africa were acquired by gift. The Society maintained an excellent library and received many journals from corresponding members of English and continental natural history societies. Notable contributors were John Obadiah Westwood, Francis Walker, Carl August Dohrn), Maximilian Spinola and John Gould and Charles Darwin. Many of the collections and some of the books were transferred to the Trinity College Museum, Dublin in 1843 after the society became the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society in 1842 when lectures in chemistry, physics, engineering and were allowed. Specimens remaining in Belfast are kept in the Ulster Museum where they bear the tag BNHPS collection.The formerly central role of natural history and archaeology diminished from this year on and in 1863 the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club was founded. The fragmentary BNHS minute books (pre 1842) and few letters are in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, in Belfast. The Society still exists today retaining ownership of the Old Museum Building, publishing occasional books, and running a lecture series out of the Linen Hall Library.

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