Talk:Belfast Natural History Society

Haliday and the Belfast Museum
In 1823 the Belfast Natural History Society’s collection and the small collection begun in 1788 in the rooms of the Belfast Reading Society, were moved to Belfast Academical Institution centralising Belfasts rapidly expanding insect holdings.How big these collections were we do not know but the 1831 figure of 300 given when the Belfast Natural History Society Museum opened must refer to specimens on display.The research material would have been very much more numerous and expanded rapidly.

“Mr Hyndman sends his thanks for the Coleoptera from Senegal and those added, no doubt at some loss to your own collection from New Holland and Java” - letter from Alexander Henry Haliday to John Curtis in the Hope Department of Entomology (OUM 20 September year?). “I have just received some fine insects from Peru but no Hymenoptera, also interesting insects from Thebes, Greece, Italy and Colombia” - letter from Curtis to Haliday Royal Entomological Society RESL 10 September 1833. These were later shared with Robert Templeton who presented them to the Belfast Museum (

"The deal box belonging to him [Illiger*] contains first a great number for you from him [Illiger], second some from Mr. Walker, third a few I [Curtis] think may be useful and if they be so I beg you to accept them they are 1. Pelecinus polycerata 2. Stephanus, I believe, from Brazil 3. Ibalia cultellator female France I wish these were better but I have only one of each myself 4. Foenus asectator male Isle of Wight I wish I could give you the female 5. Scelis France 6. Cleptis auratis Britain 7. Microma latipennis. I would send you more but they have no heads excepting I believe one other specimen 8. Reduvius subapterous, this and the following are British specimens and I shall publish it soon, it seems to unite Reduvius and Nabis  9. Molophilus brevipennis, this I shall publish soon, is it not a curious insect 1 0. ''This is my Anisomena obscura? tell me if you please if you think it is of that genus as I should like to publish it...it seems to be very rare the female is like the male excepting the pointed abdomen'' 11. Tephritis marginata 12. T. sonchi" - letter from Curtis to Haliday RESL, 13 February 1833. Material given to Belfast Museum.

Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger died in 1813 (1815)- he was born in 1775 in Braunschweig and had been Direktor of the Zoological Museum in Berlin. Illiger was a coleopterist, as the material suggests. The material (unexamined in this respect) could be type and in Berlin.

.. "also some from Mr. Dale which I should have sent by Mr. Templeton had I seen him" - letter from Curtis to Haliday RESL 10 September 1833.

The growth of the collection [Belfast Natural History Society] is also evidenced by occasional notices in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London -

'The Secretary exhibited specimens of the male and female Cetonia guttata recieved from Sierra Leone and belonging to the Natural History Society of Belfast He also exhibited a bee from the same collection partaking of the characters of Anthophora and Xylocopa and forming the type of a new genus' and in letters to the editor. Further acquisitions are noted briefly in the donation book of the Belfast Museum (Anon, 1835) 'J.O. Westwood, Esq. F.L.S., London 208 specimens of British and exotic insects in exchange for some duplicates presented by the Belfast Natural History Society'. Within two years, then, of the founding of the museum in 1831 the insect collection must have contained well over 3,000 specimens a high proportion of these belonging to different taxa. One may infer from the surviving documentation that the collection continued to expand substantially for the next few decades. The Belfast Natural History Society was transferred to Dublin (National Museum of Ireland in the 1840's.

The only Haliday manuscript in Belfast (Ulster Museum) is notebook listing Coleoptera Hymenoptera  and  Diptera. "Purchased by me at the sale of the late G.C Hyndman's effects"- S.A. Stewart. The list is annotated thus;- Species taken  near  Belfast O, elsewhere  in  Ireland II,  English E. These symbols are used primarily for the Coleoptera, in the two other orders they are sparse. Haliday's own early Coleoptera were collected in Ireland, England and Scotland, whereas once work on the Hymenoptera and Diiptera began (18 ) collecting was mainly around Clifden in Holywood, C. Down (here "near Belfast"). A very small amount of the material survives, incorporated in the Hyndman Collection. That Haliday donated material to the Belfast Natural History Society is beyond doubt and yet what survives of the proceedings indicates nothing of this. But, then, nothing of other members donations or indeed a list of members has yet been found. Perhaps thay are in a separate as yet untraced book. The Society transferred its collections to Dublin when the Metropolitan Museum was founded in year Haliday and the Belfast Museum

Category needed
I added this tag because I wasn't sure if placing this article in Category:Natural history of Ireland was appropriate. If it is, please add it. &mdash;Viriditas | Talk 12:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)