JOUENAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL MICLiOSOOPICAL SOCIETY. 



APRIL, 1918. 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



III. — Tlie President's Address : " Bedelhts immor talis.'* 

 By H. G. Plimmer, F.E.S., etc. 



{Bead January 15, 1913.) 



Plate V. 



The object of such occasions as the present seems to be that we 

 can slow down our express train of papers, abstracts, etc. for a 

 few moments, and stop at some wayside place, if possible, for 

 refreshment, or to do this and change drivers, as in the present 

 pause. 



If at our last stop I did nothing but talk of myself and my 

 work — always a pleasant thing to do — I am going to try to atone for 

 it to-night by talking to you of somebody else : somebody who 

 lived long ago, long before our express train was started, or even 

 thought of. 



I propose to take as my subject the life-work of a man to whom 

 microscopists especially owe an earnest reverence; but one of 

 whom no picture nor written word is to be found in our Journal — 

 to our shame be it said, for he was the first of us — I speak of 

 Antonj van Leeuwenhoek. So I have gone back a long way for 

 my hero, and Microscopes have changed since he lived, so that he 

 would not know them any more ; and there have been many 

 great microscopists between his days and ours, when every part of 

 the body of anything, every single organism almost, glories in its 

 special expounder : when, as Carlyle said, '' Every cellular, vascular, 

 muscular tissue glories in its Laurences, Majendies, Bichats." But 

 Leeuwenhoek is still visible above all these, so that I hope to be 

 able to justify this sacrifice of living time to the recollection of the 

 April 16th, 1913 K 



