PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY 105 



sound and improving basis. The Society had been wonderfully active 

 and vital in the past, and a great future still seemed to be assured to it. 



Mr. Watson Baker, in moving the adoption of the Report, said that 

 it had been a great pleasure to hear so satisfactory a statement of affairs. 

 It had not been quite possible to grasp all the figures of the Financial 

 Statement which had just been read, but full opportunity for doing so 

 would be offered on the publication of the Report in their Journal. He 

 considered that it was perhaps only very few who realized to the full ex- 

 tent what the activities of the Secretaries, Treasurer and Council had 

 been during the last few years. The way in which economies in expen- 

 diture had been effected in the production of their Journal, without im- 

 pairing its high level, and in fact the splendid way in which all the 

 affairs of the Society generally had been conducted, reflected very great 

 credit on their Officers. He had extreme pleasure in proposing that the 

 Report of the Council and the Statement of Accounts should be adopted. 



Mr. Tierney, seconded the proposal, which was carried unanimously 



Mr. Rousselet then said a few words in description of the Leeuwen- 

 hoek Microscope presented by Sir Frank Crisp to the Society, and which 

 was handed round for examination by Members. Mr. Rousselet said that 

 this apparatus was a copy of the simple Microscope invented and made 

 by Leeuwenhoek before 1678, with which this " father of Microscopists " 

 made his numerous and remarkable discoveries, which were nearly all 

 published by the Royal Society of Loudon between 1673 and 1722. 

 Leeuwenhoek made his Microscopes, lenses and all, with his own hands, 

 but gave no details of their construction to anyone, a secret which he 

 jealously kept to himself all through his long life. Beyond the fact 

 that his observations were made with " simple Microscopes " nothing 

 was known about them by his contemporaries. At his death in 1723, 

 at the age of 91, he bequeathed to the Royal Society a cabinet con- 

 taining 26 of these Microscopes which unfortunately are now lost. 



In 1S86 Professor Hiibrecht of Utrecht University brought to 

 London one of Leeuwenhoek's Microscopes belonging to the Zoological 

 Laboratory of his University, and from this original Sir Frank Crisp, 

 then Secretary of this Society, had an exact copy made for his own 

 collection. Last year, at the time of the International Congress of 

 Medicine held in London, the Medical Society obtained the loan of 

 this copy for their museum, and afterwards they joined the Royal 

 Microscopical Society in a request for permission to have copies made 

 of this interesting old Microscope, whereupon Sir Frank Crisp very 

 kindly offered to supply a copy of it to each of these Societies. This 

 has now been done, and the Society's best thanks are due to the donor 

 for this generous gift, w T hich, although only a copy, fills a great gap in 

 the Society's collection, and is correspondingly appreciated. 



The Microscope consists of a single biconvex lens of about \ in. 

 focus, mounted in concavities between two thin plates of copper about 

 :i in. high by about 1 in. wide, riveted together in three places, and 

 with a very small hole on each side ; a very simple and primitive 



