each hollowed out of a single tree, and a great collection of miscellaneous ornaments and domestic utensils—­all of which being illustrative of different periods of Irish history, will receive due attention at the hands of Irish antiquaries.  Visitors to the Society’s Museum will be gratified to know that Mr Petrie is preparing a catalogue of that valuable and interesting assemblage of rarities.  He is to begin with the Stone Period, and come down to the Bronze and Iron, according to their respective dates, with dissertations prefixed.  This is following the good example set by your Scottish Society of Antiquaries.

It is a fact honourable to the society that they do not confine their honours exclusively to contributors to their own ‘Transactions.’  At their late anniversary, they gave their gold medal to the Rev. J.H.  Jellett, for his labours in treating the noblest mathematical subjects in a way to make them intelligible to students.  As the president said in his address:  ’Descending from the more desirable position of an inventor to the humbler but more useful one of enabling others to place themselves on a level with himself, by compiling for their use an excellent elementary treatise, he has conferred on his species a benefit of the highest order,’ in a work which otherwise was ’as little likely to be given to the world as it was desirable that it should be so.’

It is time to close; but I must first clear off a few miscellaneous items.  The Admiralty Report concerning the Arctic expeditions is canvassed pretty freely, and with significant hints that justice has not been rendered in its conclusions.  We can only hope that really efficient commanders will be sent out with the expedition that is to be despatched in April or May next; if not, it will be abortive, as the others have been, and we shall never know what has become of Franklin.  It appears that the news of Collinson’s ships being on their return is unfounded.  It was communicated from the United States, and has been contradicted; and for all we know to the contrary, Collinson and his coadjutor Maclure may come home next summer by way of Baffin’s Bay.  There are now 226 telegraph stations connected with the central establishment in Lothbury, behind the Bank of England.  Of these, 70 are principal stations, at which the attendance is day and night; and in the whole, a distance of 2500 miles is embraced, with 800 more over which the wires are now being stretched.  The charges for transmission of messages have been lowered with a beneficial result, the business of the telegraph having greatly increased.  There must be a still further reduction before the ‘thought-flasher’ becomes as generally available here as it is in America.  It is now in real earnest going to Ireland.  A ship has been despatched to fetch Cleopatra’s so-called ‘needle:’  the Panopticon at length has found a local habitation, and is assuming a tangible form in the shape of bricks and mortar:  ocean steamers are more than ever talked about; and