QUEKETT MICROSCOPICAL CLUB. 541 



Messrs. Walter Adams, George Clarendon Hamilton, F. Rear- 

 don Brokenshire, W. Ludlow Haynes, Alexander McTavish, 

 W. B. Tindall, Henry Jewell and the Rev. John Bruce Williams 

 were balloted for and duly elected members of the Club. 



The list of donations to the Club was read, and the thanks of 

 the members voted to the donors. 



The President called upon the meeting to pass a resolution 

 expressing the members' deep regret at the loss they had sustained 

 by the death of Dr. M. C. Cooke, M.A., LL.D., A.L.S., which 

 occurred on November 12th at his residence in Southsea. 



Dr. Mordecai Cubitt Cooke was born July 12th, 1825, at the 

 village of Horning, in Norfolk. From an early age dependent 

 upon his own resources, he was in turn employed as draper's 

 assistant, teacher in a National school, and lawyer's clerk. As 

 an assistant in the Indian Museum he at last found congenial 

 occupation, and on the abolition of that institution he spent some 

 time at South Kensington Museum. He afterwards joined the 

 Herbarium at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and was for 

 twelve years (1880-1892) in charge of the Cryptogamic Depart- 

 ment. In 1892 he retired. During this time he incorporated 

 his own herbarium, which contained 46,000 specimens, with the 

 existing collection at Kew, as well as the collection of fungi pre- 

 sented to Kew by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley. His figures of 

 fungi, mostly coloured, and numbering 25,000 plates, are also 

 at Kew. 



His first important work was the Handbook of British Fungi 

 (1871), followed by Mycographia, Handbook of Australian Fungi, 

 and Illustrations of British Fungi (with 1,200 coloured plates). 

 He was editor of Hardwicke's Science Gossip from its beginning 

 in 1865 until December 1871. Dr. Cooke, the " father of the 

 Club," was one of the eleven members who attended the pre- 

 liminary meeting of the Q.M.C., held on June 14th, 1865, and he 

 was elected one of its first vice-presidents. He was president in 

 1882 and 1883, and was elected an honorary member in 1893. 



Mr. J. Grundy introduced and explained the great advantages 

 of a micrometric table by Mr. E. M. Nelson. The table is similar 

 to logarithm tables, the cross marginal numbers being M and O 

 respectively. The table gives the value of O x 100/M. M is 

 the reading of one division of a stage micrometer in the divisions 

 of the eyepiece micrometer. O is the reading of the object to be 



