484 Proceedings. 



made and used by A. Leeuwenhoek, one of the most celebrated of the 

 early discoverers, about the year A.D. 1700. This model, which would be 

 placed in the Colonial ]\Iuseum, showed that the original instrument was 

 of extreme roughness, having only a single lens fixed in a metal plate, to 

 which a small apparatus was attached at the back for holding an object. 

 The improved mechanism of the modern microscope was indeed wonderful, 

 and probably left little more to bo effected. Still, this was but a question 

 of degree and of mechanical skill : as regards the deductions from the 

 teaching of the microscope, we are no further advanced now than the 

 observers of Leeuwenhoek's time. 



The two great problems. What is life? and How have the varia- 

 tions of organic beings been brought about ? are not solved by the micro- 

 scope — which, indeed, in revealing to us innumerable wonders of fact, has 

 not lent itself to the advancement of modern scientific theory. The 

 prevalent tendency of modern tliought is in the direction of discovering a 

 physical, a material basis of life ; and all the energies of many accepted 

 leaders nowadays are bent towards this end. But they receive no aid 

 from the microscope, which, as it every day leads them further on in the 

 domain of facts, only does so to show still the same impassable gulfs prevent- 

 ing the desired solution of the problem. And as regards the second question 

 — of the variations of organisms — the microscope seems to provide even a 

 positive bar against modern theories. For these rest fundamentally on a 

 few assumptions, one of which is that in organic nature simplicity of 

 construction implies inferiority, and therefore priority : the simplest 

 organisms are taken as necessarily inferior, and therefore precedent, to 

 the more complex. An instance of the fallacy of this assumption is 

 afforded by the microscopic animal, hydra (common about Wellington 

 and elsewhere), an animal of almost the last degree of simplicity, and on 

 that account placed in modern systems in a very " low " order of beings. 

 It could be shown that the marvellous properties and powers of the hydra 

 formed a direct contradiction to the fundamental assumption above 

 mentioned of the evolutionary theory. On the whole, the microscope, 

 whilst it has taught us, and will continue to teach us, ever more and more 

 in the domain of fact, has in the domain of speculation left us no further 

 advanced than the early observers two centuries ago— even no further 

 advanced than the philosophers of ancient Greece. 



The President exhibited under the microscope a specimen of the 

 hydra. 



Papers. — 1. "On a New Species of Kiwi (Apteryx bulleri)," 

 by E. Bowdler Sharp, F.L.S., F.Z.S., Honorary Member N.Z. 

 Institute (Ornithological Department, British Museum) ; com- 

 municated by Sir Walter Buller. {Transactions, p. 224.) 



2. " On the Varieties of a Common Moth (Declana floc- 

 cosa)," by G. V. Hudson. (Transactions, p. 190.) 



Second Meeting : 27th June, 1888. 



W. M. Maskell, F.E.M.S., President, in the chair. 



Papers. — 1. "On Eabbit-disease in the Wairarapa," by 

 Coleman Phillips. {Transactions, p. 429.) 



Mr. John F. McClean, M.B.C.V.S., by permission of the meeting, 

 said that he objected to the wholesale introduction of "rabbit-fluke " as 

 a means of eradicating the pest, on the ground of its being the same 



