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THE PRESIDEl^T'S ADDRESS 



Delivered at the Annual General Meeting, July 22, 1881. 

 By T. Charters White, M.E.O.S., F.L.S., F.R.M.S. 



Anniversaries may be regarded as so many resting places up the 

 steep ascent to Time, on wliich, while we pause to gather breath 

 and strength for the unknown path which lies before us, we can take 

 a retrospective glance at the road by which we have come. We 

 have to-day reached one of the resting-places in the history of our 

 Club — we have arrived at its 16th anniversary, and, taking a look 

 backward over its course, we may rejoice together in the retrospect 

 of its popularity in the past, and its continued prosperity up to the 

 present. Taking its rise in the fountain of that social union, which 

 I hope will ever be the distinguishing feature of the Quekett Micro- 

 scopical Club, we see it ever extending its influence and enlarging 

 its stream till its name is known, not only over our own land, but 

 even to foreign shores. Of late years there has been issued, with 

 great appropriateness, with our Annual Reports, an extract from 

 the original prospectus sketched out by our founders ; and, perhaps, 

 you will pardon me if, stepping aside from the beaten path of my 

 predecessors in this chair, I examine the different sections of this 

 extract, and, as it were, take stock of the working appliances of the 

 Club, so that, laying before you the plan originally designed, and at 

 the same time showing you how that plan has been carried out, we 

 may be enabled to render a good account of our stewardship. The 

 opening clause in this extract strikes the key-note of our " raison 

 d'etre" It says, " The want of such a Club as the present has long 

 been felt ; " and if we may judge from the number of members who, 

 from its foundation, have sought and found an entrance within its 

 circle, that conviction was fully justified. For many years previously 

 the means of communication between lovers of the microscope were 

 extremely scarce, and although for about 25 years before the institu- 

 tion of this Club we had " The Microscopical Society of London," 

 now " The Royal Microscopical Society," yet this seemed too grand 

 a society for the younger microscopists to aspire to. It reared its 



