THE president's ADDRESS. 105 



of a still more eminently successful future before us. You 

 have heard the Report just read. I need not offer any comment 

 on the several items. Our numbers, our financial position, the 

 attendances at our meetings, the interesting character of the dis- 

 cussions carried on, the establishment of our Journal — these and 

 many other subjects alluded to in the Report, may, I think, be 

 regarded with satisfaction by every one interested in the wellbeing 

 of the Club. When the Quekett Microscopical Club was first pro- 

 jected, there were many who said that such a Club was not wanted, 

 and would never find room. Such objections have been effectually 

 answered and silenced by the signal success which has been so 

 speedily achieved. Nay more, — we now hear expressions of regret, 

 and even of surprise that our Club was not earlier started. 



The success of any undertaking in which we are engaged may 

 legitimately enough be considered matter for congratulation, on 

 account of the personal satisfaction which such success affords us. 

 But in the present case, I think we may congratulate ourselves 

 on far higher grounds than those merely of pride and pleasure in 

 the reward already gained, and the encouragement offered us to 

 go on. 



The success of the Quekett Microscopical Club affords incontro- 

 vertible evidence of an already wide spread, and still more widely 

 spreading interest in the use of the microscope, and the study of 

 its marvellous revelations. The fact of which we thus have evi- 

 dence appears to me matter for congratulation, because I believe 

 that the microscope is capable of affording very valuable aid in the 

 great work of education. Allow me to ask you for a few minutes 

 to consider the use of the microscope from an educational point of 

 view. 



You will at once understand that I do not now use the words 

 education and educational in the restricted senses in which they are 

 too often wrongly employed. School work and college work, as 

 commonly accepted, together with the special studies preparatory 

 for profession or business, really constitute but a small part of edu- 

 cation rightly understood. In its full, broad sense, education im- 

 plies the drawing out and developing, the strengthening and main- 

 taining by exercise, the various faculties and powers with which we 

 are endowed. It is a process which begins in our very earliest 

 days, and goes on throughout our lives. We are often un- 

 conscious alike of its progress and direction ; and we sometimes feel 



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