A special feature in connection with the management of the affairs of the Zoological Gardens consists in the fact that the members of the Council take breakfast together each Saturday morning in the Gardens before proceeding to transact the weekly business. These breakfasts have become one of the social features of Dublin, and there cannot be a doubt that they exert a most important influence in advancing the interests of the Society. Not only do they promote good-fellowship amongst the members of the Council, but they have a remarkable effect in obtaining a regular attendance at the business meetings which follow. They are also recognised as a powerful agent in obtaining recruits for the Society. Curiously enough, it would appear that an impression has got abroad amongst some of those who are not acquainted with the management of the Zoological Gardens that the expense of these breakfasts is defrayed out of the funds of the Society. Such a conception is absolutely erroneous, and it may be well also to state that even the furniture of the room in which the breakfasts are held, and the table equipment, are the personal property of the members of the Council. At least one anniversary dinner has taken place in the Gardens (in the summer of 1838). This dinner, held always in connection with the Annual Meeting of the Society, was continued for some years; but, except on the one occasion referred to, it appears to have been held in an hotel. In having no salaried officers outside those actually engaged in the Gardens, the Zoological Society of Ireland differs from most, if not all, kindred societies. In 1868 there were 127,900 visitors to the Gardens, the receipts being £938 18s. 6d. In 1869 there were 136,052 visitors, and there were in the Gardens 143 mammals and 219 birds. In 1877 Miss Nesbitt presented the Gardens with a handsome aviary costing £350. In 1878 a severe frost occurred, covering the lake in the Gardens with a sheet of ice 9 inches thick. A fortnight’s good skating was the result, and no animals were lost, owing to special precautions being taken to supply additional fuel for the stoves and extra straw for bedding. During the visit of the British Association to Dublin in August, the Council entertained at breakfast seventy-two of the most distinguished of the foreign and British visitors in the aquarium. There is, however, no record to show whether they were given anything else but fish! During this year animals were born in the Gardens, including three leopards. One hundred and nineteen carcases of beef, twenty-four horses, and seventeen sheep were used to feed the animals. In 1879 ten lion cubs were born in the Gardens. Two Himalayan bear cubs were successfully reared during the year, a circumstance without parallel in the history of Zoological Gardens.