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diameter they were capable of being made out with low powers. But if 

 they took the great rods which were found under the cornea, and took a 

 transverse section of them, it would be seen that each one presented the 

 appearance of a number of bright points which were very minute, and were 

 supposed to be the highly refractive fibres of the rods. A cross section of 

 these was comparatively coarse beside what they had just been hearing 

 about, and yet when these points were examined as they appeared in a 

 section they could make anything they liked of them. They could be seen 

 as six or as sixteen, and all the images produced were, he believed, equally 

 faulty and defective, and he confessed that the more he looked at it the 

 more he hesitated about it. This appeared to him to be a case in point, in 

 which, putting the consideration of the retina on one side, the physical 

 character of a ray of light was such that in attempting to determine the 

 structure of the object they were simply theorizing. As he had already 

 said, he did not profess to know very much about diatoms, but he flattered 

 himself that he did know something of the laws of light, and he believed 

 they might go on talking until doomsday without getting any nearer to a 

 knowledge of what the actual structure was. But of course it would never 

 do for them to say so — as microscopists. 



Mr. E. M. Nelson read his papers " On Some Secondary Markings on 

 Diatoms," and " Some Observations on the Human Spermatozoon." 



The President said he had listened to Mr. Nelson's paper on the diatoms 

 with great interest, and to the paper on Spermatozoa not only with interest, 

 but also with astonishment. Mr. Nelson had found some very wonderful 

 things in them; but if they went back to about the time of Charles II., 

 when they were first examined, it would be found that there were some 

 still more wonderful things discovered. They were said to have internal 

 organs, and in fact to be perfect Homuncidi ! Of course, imagination went 

 a long way in such cases, but he should like to ask Mr. Nelson whether 

 those he had been examining had been properly fixed, because if not, 

 all observations upon them would be absolutely worthless. A spermatozoon 

 was simply a form of protoplasm — they did not even know that it had 

 a membrane at all — and when it dries it cracks or becomes vacuolated, 

 and presents any appearance possible other than what it had really been. 

 If Mr. Nelson would examine organic structures of this kind properly 

 fixed he would probably come to some other conclusions. Otherwise he 

 was afraid that the knowledge obtained would not be of a kind likely to 

 lead to any useful result. Certainly the amount of brilliant imagination 

 displayed in what they had heard there that evening was very remarkable. 

 Mr. Reed said that Mr. Nelson had described some of the forms he had 

 found as monstrous. One would, therefore, be glad to find what was a 

 proper subject to furnish " standard " spermatozoa. 



Announcements of meetings, etc., for the ensuing month were then made, 

 and the proceedings terminated with the usual conversazione, the following 

 objects being exhibited : — 



Annelid, Nais hamata ... ... ... ... Mr. F. W. Andrew. 



Long. sec. Cncurbita, showing sieve tubes ... Mr. W. J. Brown. 



