162 Transactions of the Society, 



evening's demonstration will stand recorded in onr Proceedings 

 as the point of departure for its publication. 



Between Seneca's globe of water in the 1st century a.d.* 

 (through which "letters though small and indistinct, are seen 

 enlarged and more distinct,") and the prismatic binocular of 

 Conrad Beck lies a long road, diversified by steep acclivities 

 and precipitous descents, by fertile plains and sterile chasms, 

 and there is no lack of rocks to be surmouuted and pit-falls to 

 be avoided. 



A long and illuminative series of early books is exhibited to- 

 night, in which not only the instruments used, but the objects seen 

 are illustrated in historical sequence. It has been said that " the 

 earliest illustrated publication for which there is any evidence 

 that a magnifying glass was used is by Hofnagel and appeared at 

 Frankfort in 1592." f The magnified domestic fly from that work 

 has been reproduced in our Journal,:}: but nearly thirty years 

 before that, Conrad Gesner illustrated § an organism Stromhus 

 lajjidus, which the late Prof. T. Eupert Jones identified as the 

 Foraminifer Vaginulina livvigata ; |1 this work is on the table 

 to-night. 



We will detain you no longer, but will call your attention 

 shortly to the instruments exhibited this evening. Mr. Court 

 emphasizes the fact that during the 17th, and the earlier part of 

 the 18th century, on the Continent, and in France and Germany 

 in particular, scientific instruments were often engraved with 

 elaborate designs, decorated with fancy scrolls, and embossed in 

 gold on vellum and leather. Microscopes and scientific instru- 

 ments generally of this description have often survived, being 

 preserved from destruction on account of their artistic value, when 

 they had been superseded by better and later models from a 

 practical point of view. The instruments made in Great Britain 

 were generally of a plainer description, and would therefore, when 

 their usefulness had passed away, be either destroyed, or altered 

 by the addition of newer devices and improvements, by which 

 their original characteristics were disguised and obscured, and 

 their historical value greatly impaired. " This no doubt accounts 

 for the scarcity of the earlier forms of Microscopes made in Great 

 Britain during the 17th century. 



The series of instruments shown on the table to-night have 

 been selected from the cabinets of the Society with the view of 

 illustrating, so far as possible, the gradual improvement of the 



*■ Seneca, " Qusestiones Naturales," Bk. i. Ch. vi. 

 t " Archetypa studiaque patris Georgii Hoefnagelii," Frankfort, 1592. 

 X J.R.M.S., 1915, p. 318. 



§ C. Gesner, " De omni rerum fossilium genere, gemmis," etc.,- Tiguri, 1565. 

 (Last section, p. 165.) 



li T. Rupert Jones, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1884, pi. xsxiv. fig. 5. 



