164 Tvansoictions of the Society: 



connexion with the future of the Eoyal Microscopical Society which 

 are ripe for postulation if not for discussion. You have conferred 

 upon me the honour of nomination, and of rc;-nomination, as your 

 representative upon the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies, a 

 body whose labours constitute, in the opinion of many, perhaps the 

 most important work of the Royal Society of Great Britain in the 

 present War, and I have been afforded opportunities of observing in 

 what direction some of the activities of that body seem most 

 likely to develop. I think it is clear from the deliberations of the 

 " Sub-Committee on the Catalogue of Scientific Literature," of which 

 I have the honour to be a member, that the established Scientific 

 Societies of this country will be asked to develop a policy of closer 

 concentration upon the subjects which constitute the primary 

 reasons — the rationale — of their existence ; and each Society will 

 be expected to become responsible for the record, the catalogue, and 

 the index of the literature of its special subject. As far as the 

 Hoyal Microscopical Society is concerned, the effect of this policy 

 of concentration will probably be most marked in our Journal. I 

 have already alluded to the contraction of our spheres of work 

 dating from the year 1913. I think that that contraction must, in 

 the future, from the nature of things, become more pronounced. 

 There is a widely felt, and widely expressed, opinion, that the 

 work of many Societies, and, consequently the subjects dealt with 

 in their publications, overlap. In years gone by, when the possession 

 of a microscope and a knowledge of its technique and application 

 to scientific research may almost be said to have constituted a 

 science by itself, tliere was no branch of microscopical research 

 which was not essentially and of itself a field for our especial 

 enquiry and record. It is to enunciate the baldest of truisms to 

 say that those times have changed. The microscope, which has 

 properly been described as the most important of all optical instru- 

 ments, and the one for which there is the greatest commercial 

 demand, has become almost as universal a tool as the scissors ; it 

 enters into the daily life of all scientific laboratories and of all 

 trades, from that of the protozoologist to that of the linen-draper. 

 It becomes, therefore, daily and hourly more apparent that the 

 results of microscopic manipulation tend to become decentralized, 

 and that most of the subjects which naturally found a place in 

 our Journal in the first half-century of its existence, are, at the 

 present day, amply and fully discussed in the publications of other 

 Societies founded for the promotion of special — perhaps somewhat 

 over-specialized — branches of science. The science of Technical 

 Optics, to which allusion has been made, has become a concrete 

 entity, of which all that appertains to theoretical microscopy and 

 microscopic technique is only a branch, but a branch which 

 possesses an importance equalled by few and excelled by none 

 other. I cannot help thinking that in the future we shall have to 



