PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 



Secretary will send to any member who desires it, and these should 

 be placed at the end of the note-book, beginning at the last 

 page, and thus must be numbered the reverse way, that is, back- 

 wards. It is the greatest possible help to our notes, to accompany 

 them with sketches or more careful drawings ; and every member 

 should, if it is in his power, give some with his slides; but it is all- 

 important that they should be done in something permanent, not 

 surely in pencil, but in some way in which they will bear rubbing, 

 and will retain exactness of outline. 



There is here one great disadvantage under which we all 

 labour. We dread to risk our best slides and most carefully pre- 

 pared specimens to the unavoidable rough treatment of the postal 

 bags, as they are flung down upon the platform of a roadside 

 station from a passing train ; and it is with no small sigh of relief 

 that we greet our slides when they return unhurt to our hands, 

 after a two years journeying about from member to member ; just 

 as on the other hand there is a pang of sorrow when we find the 

 cover-glass displaced or broken, and our choice specimens 

 irretrievably damaged. I can only advise all our members to 

 cement their slides most carefully, and not to study appearance 

 and finish so much as security ; and I need not say that our 

 indefatigable Secretary ought at once to be made cognizant of 

 any accident which may occur to either boxes or note-books, or 

 damage to the slides. Still, in spite of this disadvantage, and in 

 the face of this risk, do not let us withhold from circulation our 

 really good and useful slides ; for as most of us have read, — 

 " Great objects exact a venture, and a sacrifice is the condition of 

 honour." 



And, now, having alluded to the Secretary, I may be permitted 

 to say a word about our relations with him. The Secretary of 

 every Society, scientific societies especially, is really the most 

 important ofiicer ; the President is little else than an ornamental 

 addition, — he takes the chair at meetings, and directs pleasant 

 gatherings like the present one ; but it is the Secretary who man- 

 ages the entire working, and in a Society so constituted as this is, 

 upon such management the very existence of the Postal Micro- 

 scopical Society depends ; the Secretary is the head to arrange and 

 plan the different groups of members ; he is also the heart to keep 



