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Ipreaibential Hbbreae to tbe ffiatb 

 fIDicroacopical Society* 



By W. G. Wheatcroft. 



ALLOW me, in the first place, to thank you for the honour 

 you have done me in electing me President of this Society. 

 I felt great diffidence in accepting the office, and am 

 conscious that it is to your generosity, and not to any merits of 

 my own, that I owe the distinction you have conferred upon me. 

 I rely, with much confidence, on your continued kindness, both in 

 bearing with my shortcomings and in cordially assisting me to carry 

 out the work of the session in a satisfactory manner. It requires 

 no ordinary amount of courage to address a body of microscopists 

 when the majority of them have had more experience in the study 

 and practice of microscopy than the speaker. This knowledge 

 ought to teach me one lesson ; namely, the cultivation of modesty. 

 A great living microscopist, Professor Virchow, once observed 

 "that Ufe is just long enough to teach us our ignorance.'^ I must 

 confess that each year of my life brings with it a discovery, which 

 is, how little I know and how much I have to learn, even upon 

 the subjects I know something about. Until I joined this 

 Society I had scarcely given any attention whatever to Crypto- 

 gamic Botany, and but for my good fortune in becoming a 

 member thereof I should probably have remained completely 

 ignorant of that branch of botanical science. I am convinced 

 that if a botanist once begins to study the life history of the 

 Cryptogamia, he will become so fascinated with it that for the 

 future, if any of his botanical studies are neglected, they will be 

 those which relate to the Phaenogamia and not the Cryptogamia. 

 Whilst speaking on this subject I should like to call your attention 

 to a work which has recently been published. It is a " Hand- 

 book of Cryptogamic Botany, by A. W. Bennett, M.A., F.L.S., 

 and George Murray, F.L.S." Many of you are doubtless aware 

 that until the appearance of the book referred to no general 

 handbook of Cryptogamic Botany in the English language had 

 been published since the Rev. M. J. Berkeley brought forth his 



