The society developed under the direction of individuals such as Joseph Ellison Portlock, who was taking part in the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and the geologist and surveyor Richard Griffith, who published the first geological map of Ireland in 1855.
[2] Ganly worked for a number of years with Richard Griffith on the valuation of Ireland and discovered cross stratification.
During this period he wrote an article On the Mode of Formation of some of the River-valleys in the South of Ireland (Quarterly Journ.
The Dublin clergyman Maxwell Henry Close read a paper before the society in 1866, on the General Glaciation of Ireland, a masterly description of the effects of glaciation, and of the evidence in favor of the action of land-ice.
Throughout the latter decades of the century, for several reasons, membership slowly declined and the society was wound up in 1894.