MlCUOSCOnC ADMEASUREMENT. 7 



think necessary, both as to the desirability, the practicability, and 

 the mode of obtaining universality in one point connected with "our 

 hobby." It is for you to decide whether the Q. M. C. shall bind 

 the laurel wreath about its young but sturdy brow. It is for you 

 to determine whether the honour of appealing on a common object 

 to the microscopists of Europe shall be yours. It is for you to 

 decide whether from England, whence many a missive has fled in 

 days gone by, at which some individual nation has had cause to shud- 

 der, shall now hear from us, instead of the thunders of three- 

 deckers, the peaceful welcome to a bond of brotherhood. It is for 

 you to determine if the crowning effort of a year of glorious success 

 shall be to prepare the way for the more glorious success of future 

 years, by repudiating the use of figures which, to thousands of 

 fellow-workers, from the Seine to the Danube, have no meaning ; 

 and to whom they are almost as barbarous as the hieroglyphics of 

 ^gypt? orthe "pot-hooks and hangers" of Nineveh. It is yourgood 

 fortune that this new Eeform Bill should have been left for you to 

 pass, and whilst learned societies at home are debating whether the 

 markings of Pleurosigma angulatum can be resolved into " willow 

 leaves," or dodecahedrons, or what relation the Maroons of Jamaica 

 bear to the anthropomorphoid apes, that it should be left for you 

 to indicate a practical good, for which a future generation shall 

 have cause to be thankful. And, more than all, that you should 

 have the credit of breaking through the sullen and selfish morose- 

 ness of Englishmen, and take the initiative of spreading abroad 

 your arms from Sweden to Italy, and from Paris to St. Petersburg, 

 to shake all fellow-workers by the hand, whether they date their 

 ancestry to a Maximilian or Charlemagne, to Julius Ctesar or to 

 Peter the Great. 



It is but a small work in itself that I have invited you to per- 

 form, but who shall prophecy the end ? A good work is sure to 

 bring its own reward, and if by such a step you introduce yourselves 

 into correspondence with mici-oscopists abroad — if by these legiti- 

 mate means, and in a good cause, you make yourselves known 

 throughout the continent — the Quekett Club will not be forgotten j 

 and when in future years the shelves of our library bend beneath 

 the weight of contributions to microscopical science from all parts of 

 the world, we shall hail them as the labours of friends, and rejoice 

 that one of the first acts in our career was to smooth their road by 

 kicking a stumbling block out of the way. 



