president's address. 319 



I might there find recorded a few facts and occurrences, notice of 

 which might help me to suggest to you a course of thought which 

 you could follow for yourselves. As I do not wish that my address 

 shall be an elaborate production, I shall allude very briefly to these 

 facts, and shall be content if I can offer to you a few ideas which 

 may not be too trifling for you to think about at your leisure. 



At the instigation of Dr. Goring, in 1824 and 1825, Tulley con- 

 structed the first achromatic objectives made in this country, which 

 were termed by him the "triple object glasses." About the same 

 time Selligue was at work in France, Fraunhofer at Munich, and 

 Amici at Modena. 



In 1830 an important paper on achromatic object glasses, by 

 Joseph Jackson Lister, was published in the " Transactions of the 

 Royal Society." This was an eventful period in the history of the 

 construction of microscopes, and the influence of that communica- 

 tion extends downwards to the present day. 



In 1832 Messrs. Cooper and Carey constructed an oxy-hydrogen 

 microscope, and scientific men were invited to a private view of it at 

 21, Old Bond street, in February, 1833. It was afterwards publicly 

 exhibited, and greatly stimulated popular interest in microscopical 

 science, which already numbered amongst those devoted to it, Robert 

 Brown, Bauer, Solly, Lister, Cuthbert, Pritchard, Goring, and 

 others. One of the most distinguished of this corps of pioneers 

 was my kind old friend, Dr. Bowerbank, who, in the journal referred 

 to, received a well-merited encomium. The writer says : — " It must 

 on all sides be agreed that every praise and commendation the world 

 can bestow are due to the indefatigable exertions of Mr. Bowerbank, 

 who, by his well-known liberality in promoting the cause, has at 

 length succeeded in diffusing that growing taste for microscopic 

 research in the Metropolis characteristic of the present age. To 

 this gentleman's liberality in opening his house weekly for the pur- 

 poses of microscopic illustration is in a great measure to be attri- 

 buted the first dawn of encouragement to the rising scientific gene- 

 ration. Ever ready, ever desirous, and ever interested in the tyro's 

 cause, he must have created in the minds of those seeking such 

 valuable aids, every regard and esteem ; and especially when we con- 

 sider that the limited means of investigators formerly, and even at 

 the present day, have not allowed them such splendid instruments 

 and practical facilities in their manipulation which the fortune and 



