218 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 



AN ORDINARY MEETING 



OF THE Society was Held at 20 Hanover Square, W., on 

 Wednesday, May 18th, 1921, Professor John Eyre, Presi- 

 dent, IN the Chair. 



The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read, confirmed, and 

 signed by the President. 



The nomination papers were read of four candidates for Fellowship. 



New Fellows. — The following were elected Ordinary Fellows : — 

 Mr. Charles H. Caflfyn. 

 Professor Ekendranath Ghosh, M.Sc, M.D. 

 Mr. Alfred Holt, F.C.S. 

 Professor Sakae Saguchi. 

 Donations were reported from : — 



Messrs, J. and A. Churchill — 



" Critical Microscopy." (A. C. Coles.) 

 M. Paul Lechevalier— 



" Faune de France : I. Echinodermes." (R. Koehler.) 

 On the motion of the President, hearty votes of thanks were 

 accorded to the donors. 



Pond-Life Exhibition. — The President then called upon Mr. 

 Scourfield to make some observations on the Annual Exhibition of 

 Microscopic Pond-Life which had been arranged by Fellows of the 

 Society and Members of the Quekett Microscopical Club. 



Mr. Scourfield said that those who had been present at recent Pond- 

 Life Exhibitions would remember that he insisted again and again upon 

 the idea that such exhibitions might, and indeed should, have at least 

 one good effect — namely, that of encouraging the study of pond-life 

 organisms as living things and not merely as subjects for systematic and 

 morphological research. 



Even limited in this way, however, there were so many problems 

 arising that it was quite impossible to deal adequately with them all on 

 any one occasion. Some had been briefly referred to at previous Pond- 

 Life Exhibitions, as, for example, the characteristic movements of different 

 fresh-water microscopic organisms, the correlation of their structure to 

 their mode of life, their colours and patterns, and so on. 



The problems so far touched upon, however, had all been such as 

 could, in the main, be solved by simple direct observational 

 methods. But there also existed quite a number of biological problems 

 which demanded more or less experimental methods for their investiga- 

 tion ; and what he wanted to emphasize that evening was the fact that 

 many pond-life organisms lent themselves excellently to this experimental 

 treatment. He proposed therefore to call attention to two or three hues 

 of experimental work in which pond-life organisms had been used with 

 considerable success. 



There was first of all the cultivation of the organisms under 

 somewhat abnormal, but, so far as possible, controlled conditions. The 

 main idea underlying this line of work was of course to discover the 

 influence of dift'erent elements in the environment, and if possible to throw 

 light on that very fundamental biological problem, the causes of 



