180 



THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



Delivered at the Annual General Meeting, 24th July, 1885. 



By Dr. W. B. Carpenter, C.B., F.R.S., &c, &c. 



You will excuse me, gentlemen, I am sure, if I limit my re- 

 marks to a very few points. One of the manifestations of the 

 nervous prostration or depression under which I have suffered is a 

 great failure of voice. The genial weather and dry air of the last 

 two days have rather invigorated me, I am happy to say, or I 

 should not have been down here this evening. 



In the first place let me congratulate you on having secured the 

 services, as President, of Mr. Michael. Mr. Michael is pre- 

 eminently one of that class which I think it is the especial 

 function of this Club to foster, the class of those who take up the 

 microscope and microscojucal research, as a means of pleasurable 

 occupation, but who pursue it not as mere dilettanti, but in the 

 spirit in which I recommended it to you in my opening address. 

 The value to one's self, and the interest, I think, of microscopic study, 

 are greatly raised by a systematic pursuit of some limited depart- 

 ment, after having qualified the mind by a general logical study to 

 appreciate the importance of a larger acquirement of biological in- 

 formation, obtained, it may be, by books, but as much as possible 

 by actual observation. But the taking up of a particular group of 

 natural history — which, as I then explained to you, one is some- 

 times directed to by mere accident — the taking up a special group 

 and working that group as thoroughly as the individual's means of 

 research permit, that is the way in which science is benefited, and 

 I can assure you that it is the way in which the pleasure and 

 advantage of microscopical research to the individual are most felt 

 — much more than by the mere dilettante pursuit of this, and that, 

 and the other study, which lead to nothing. 



Mr. Michael is, I believe, engaged during a large part of his 

 time in business — professional work — which has nothing whatever 

 to do with any department of biology, but he has devoted himself 



