Tlie Presidents Address. Bij H. G. Plimmer. 129 



Although this microscopic work had an immense influence on 

 Science, many then doubted it, and at the end of the seventeenth 

 century everything discoverable seemed to have been observed ; 

 and at the earlier part of the eighteenth century investigators be- 

 came rarer and rarer, and the movement paused. After Hewson's 

 great work on the blood, a time came when the use of the Microscope 

 was almost lost. At the begining of last century, for instance, savants 

 said you could see what you wished to with the Microscope, and 

 the existence of blood-corpuscles was denied even by a Professor 

 of the Faculty of ]\Iedicine in Paris, who did not hesitate to say 

 that it was impossible to appreciate the volume or form of these 

 corpuscles by the Microscope. About 1820 things began to mend. 

 Microscopes began to improve : they became necessary for the 

 advance of knowledge, and Science began a new phase. Now the 

 Microscope is established permanently ; and our Society has had 

 a large share in the work of its due establishment ; and you know 

 even in the last few decades what the Microscope, used on 

 Leeuwenhoek's principles, has done, and how many dark places, 

 where ignorance formerly fungated, it has lighted up. It also has 

 founded a Society, where its lamp is kept burning, and in which 

 it is duly cherished, and where it is prevented from getting too 

 fat or too long, and where its screws and internals are kept of 

 proper sizes and shapes. 



And now, to his works. His communications were sent in to 

 the Ptoyal Society just as he happened to have thought about 

 them, and if you took them in his order, all would seem to be 

 confusion ; and so varied are the subjects, and so many, that it 

 would be very difficult to classify them. He did not possess 

 the least method ; but his writing upon an actual subject had 

 considerable precision, and always unveiled a new horizon. The 

 motives which determined each separate observation, and the 

 manner in which it was undertaken, show a very rare perspicacity. 

 Ptoughly, his work can be classified into : 1 . Work on " animal- 

 culse " in general, whether plant or animal, i.e. Bacteria, Yeasts, 

 Moulds, Infusoria, Eotifers, etc. 2. Work on animals in general, 

 from fleas to whales. 3. Work on plants, from bark to timber, 

 from cjalls to corn in granaries. 4. Work on structure of organs 

 and cells, from spermatozoa to the fur on the tongue, o. Work 

 on subjects not possibly classifiable under any of the above 

 headings, from the moxa used for gout to gunpowder, and the 

 edges of razors. You can understand what an enormous area his 

 work covered : indeed, he may be said to have been like Solomon, 

 for " he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even 

 unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall : he spake also of 

 beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." 



I will just mention a few scraps of his work more closely : in 

 the first instance, that on blood. Harvey had already discovered 



