PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



325 



A large cabinet of objects for consultation and reference is little 

 inferior in value to a library ; certainly in connection with books it 

 is an undoubted acquisition ; and large as this collection may be, I 

 plead for its extension on many grounds, but chiefly on its utility in 

 the present, and its interest in the future. How highly we should 

 value, for instance, objects presented to us, say only ten years ago, 

 by members now dead. Those who follow us will probably similarly 

 value our work ; therefore every member should make it a point to 

 present at least one slide to the Club with this thought in his mind. 

 I may advocate this also from another point of view. Certain 

 studies occupy men at certain periods of their life. For instance, 

 the staining of vegetable tissues is at present a prominent subject 

 of experiment. Twenty years hence how important and historically 

 valuable will be a series of slides mounted by the methods now 

 coming in vogue, and which then no money will purchase. 



This suggests to me another matter worthy of attention. There 

 are many little inexpensive contrivances which the practical micro - 

 scopist is constantly using, such as clips, finders, collecting bottles, 

 &c, &c, which are so common to us that we think nothing of them. 

 Each and all of these may be superseded and go out of date, and 

 thirty years hence no one will know anything about them. It 

 deserves consideration whether the Quekett Club should not collect 

 from its members such unconsidered trifles, with labels attached, 

 signifying the uses and date of each. Even if consigned to a 

 trunk, and not looked at for many years, they would then have just 

 such an interest as some of the more primitive contrivances of thirty 

 years ago now have for us. 



I now pass to the last feature to which I purpose especially ad- 

 verting, viz., the summer excursions. Gatherings of this kind, even 

 if they produce no immediate scientific results, are conducive to a 

 social benefit which this Club would be the last to ignore. If only 

 a dozen men meet and shake each other by the hand, every such 

 event strengthens the friendship of members for each other, and 

 consequently adds to the strength of the Club. Twelve intelligent 

 men cannot meet together in harmony for a common intellectual 

 object without reacting on each other with a beneficial result. The 

 Quekett excursionists will tell you that they have every reason to 

 be pleased with their experience of this feature of the Club. Those 

 who do not avail themselves of these gatherings cannot calculate 

 how much they lose by their abstention. 



