THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 105 



own special ground ; otherwise the societies tend either to become 

 rivals, whence a waste of scientific power, or pale reflexes of one 

 another mutually deteriorative. 



The Quekett is, as I have said before, a society of students, 

 neither desiring to rival or reflect the Microscopical, but to supple- 

 ment it. Looking over the papers, and listening to its meetings, it 

 does not seem quite to possess the special character it might be 

 desirable to impress on it. Many of the papers have quite sufficient 

 integral merit to have been read at any society, but are not 

 characteristic of ours. They touch on the usual topics in the usual 

 manner. Of real students' papers there are very few, and I would 

 appeal urgently to students for more. 



Perhaps microscopical science, at present, is itself in some de- 

 gree chargeable as a cause for this state of things. The modern 

 tendency is rather to subordinate the ends to the means. The 

 actual work done is decidedly below all proportion to either the 

 quantity or quality of admirable instruments turned out by our best 

 makers. But do we not, in testing and proving their admirable 

 qualities, rather addict ourselves to those branches of investigation 

 which test the power of the instrument more than the intelligence 

 of the observer ? Reaumur, or Leuwenhoek, or Swammerdam, or 

 Tremblay, had nothing to compare with our ordinary commercial 

 Birmingham instruments, much less with our best artists' work, but 

 has our society collectively yet produced a tithe of the labours of 

 one of these great men ? As bearing on this, students cannot be 

 too frequently reminded that facility of labouring with the simple 

 microscope must precede all valuable study. The young 

 microscopist is too apt to undervalue the resources of this instru- 

 ment. Again, few remember how important, how essential, are 

 those two powers, to dissect and to draw ; nothing can replace or 

 compensate for them, and yet how many who profess and call them- 

 selves microscopists can do neither. 



Every naturalist knows the immense amount of detail which the 

 study of any given organism reveals. Lyonnet's marvellous mono- 

 gram on the caterpillar of the goat moth is a case in point ; but 

 few microscopists in the Quekett Club addict themselves to one 

 subject of study — not that it is therefore to be counselled that no 

 illustrative demonstrations should be taken. Nature is a whole ; 

 every part has relation to every other ; but the microscopical 

 student will do well to adopt a line of study, a single branch of in- 

 quiry, and let that be the thread on which to string his subsidiary 



