60 Report of the Microscopical Section. [ Sess. 
the sense of being a science apart, but im the sense of the field 
of natural science—animal, vegetable, and mineral—studied 
by means of the microscope. The microscope and its capa- 
bilities are not to be studied as an end, but merely as a means 
to an end. The instrument should be used as a means of 
investigation into the secrets of nature. At every step in our 
researches we come upon objects too minute for investigation 
by the unaided eye, but science has placed at our disposal 
this instrument, which increases our power of vision many 
hundreds of times, and thus enables us to elucidate many 
complicated problems in the life-history of animals and plants. 
You will thus see that the “field of microscopy” to which 
I call you is practically limitless. Let each one, according to 
tastes and inclination, choose a corner for his or her own 
special work, and try to make himself or herself master or 
mistress of the same. In this domain, as in every other, if 
anything of importance is to be achieved there must be a 
definite aim. The worker must set a goal before him and 
brace his energies to reach the same. This necessarily limits 
the area of investigation, but what is lost in breadth of research 
is gained in depth of insight. As thus the field broadens out 
there is more and more a call for specialised workers. 
It is here that the importance comes in of meetings such 
as the Microscopical Section has. They act as a stimulating 
power to the individual worker, are a means of comparing 
notes of progress, and of giving assistance in the interpretation 
of things obscure. 
There is another class of workers, and perhaps in this 
country the more numerous, who use the microscope as a 
means of relaxation and refined enjoyment, who do not confine 
themselves to any one field of examination, but touch lightly 
upon many, examining now the beautiful mathematical figure 
of a diatom, then the varied forms of the desmids; now the 
glowing colours of the scales of a butterfly’s wing, and then 
the pseudo-spirals of the tongue of the blow-fly. Rich fields 
of examination for such lie on every hand. It would, however, 
add additional zest to their pleasure if, instead of getting their 
objects ready prepared and mounted, they would themselves do 
the preparation and mounting. It may be true that such 
microscopic slides prepared by themselves would not look so 
OO 
