27 



<Talpin, for certaio reisons was unable to attend, 

 and he (the Obairmanj had the imhappiness to 

 stand in his place. It was a great disappointment, 

 and they missed that evening what would have 

 ijeen a very great treat in listening to Mr. Galpin. 



On the ui:»tion of Miss Cole, seconded by the 

 Chairman, Mrs. Bowler was elected a member of the 

 Society. Councillor Whichcord proposed the elec- 

 tion of Miss Violet Ma5on as n member. Councillor 

 Stead seconded.aad it was agreed to. The Secretary 

 then explained theexhihits anJohjects of interest 

 which were p'aced upon the table for inspection 

 by members. At the last meeting Mr. Gard 

 »^dve a lecture on how to enlarge photographs, 

 and the Secretary hid now Irought two valuable 

 enlargers with him, the use of which he explained 

 to the members. He also called attention to the 

 March number of the " Phctogram," which had 

 just been issued. Mr. S.W, Harvey, who had left 

 the tovvQ, still took a deep interest in the Society 

 and had kindly presented them with 

 a number of interesting lantern slides 

 of the Cathedral and other Canterbury views, 

 which would be very valuable at some of their 

 lantern meetings. He hoped other members would 

 take the hint and follow Mr. Harvey's example. Mr. 

 Lander then read a report on the recent annual 

 affiliation meeting of the Royal Photographic 

 Society in London, with which the Canterbury 

 Socitty is sow affiliated, and wbich Mr. Harvey had 

 attended as a delegate. With the report was 

 enclosed a copy of the " Red Book," which con- 

 tained information respecting the Society and its 

 lecturers, etc. This book gives the holder the 

 privilege of photographing in the Zoological 

 Gardens, London, and other public places and 

 grounds.and the Secretiiy explained that he hoped 

 it would be possible, by consulting the Dean, to 

 get permission fo^ the Society to take photographs 

 in the grounds of the Cathedral. The report also 

 stated that the Executive Committee regretted 

 that more photographic slides had not been sub- 

 mitted by members of the affiliated societies, and 

 Mr. Harvey considered that the Canterbury Society 

 ought to contribute at least a dozen annually. 



On the motion of Councillor Whichcobd, 

 seconded by Councillor Stead, the report was 

 adopted, and a vote of thanks passed to Mr. S. W. 

 Harvey. 



The Hon. Sec. announced that at the next 

 meetiuL' Mr. F. C. Snell would srive his lecture ou 

 *' Clouds and cloud photography." 



Mr. Sidney Harvey then delivered his lecture 

 on " the infinitely great and the infinitely small 

 in nature," Mr. W. P. Mann taking the chair 

 vacated by him. The subject was, he said, an 

 extremely difficult one to deal with, but at the 

 ?ame time it was one upon which a few remarks 

 from him might not be out of place in a Society 

 like that. Of course, in nature "great" and 

 " small" were terms of comparison only ; they were 

 not terms of essential value, and in order to com- 

 prehend the great and the small they needed 

 instruments to appreciate their differences, and 

 when he said that he made no reflection 

 upou that instrument which nature had 

 already provided them with. — the human 

 eye. An instrument or machine such as the 

 human eye, which received and expounded and 



rLCorded all the impressions produced through its 

 organism, was no slight machine, for, in order to 

 do so, it had t-o receivt- and deal with every second, 

 392 billions of impressions tor the red rays of 

 light, or 757 billions for the violet rays, 

 and with other kinds of light sums 

 between these two tremendous estimates. It 

 was one of the most marvellous structures that 

 the mind of man could conceive, and, in addition 

 to that, it must be remembered that an eye 

 capable of dealing with things microscopical or 

 telescopical, or acting as a polariscope or prism 

 would be positively useless for the practical pur- 

 pose for v/hich the eye was intended. So there 

 was no disrespect to the eye when he said that 

 for certain purposes artificial instruments devised 

 by man should be used. The theory of the tele- 

 scope and the miscroscope, to which he 

 wished to advert, was practically the same, 

 although the construction was somewhat different. 

 The object of both was to bring objects somewhat 

 nearer, when they could not otherwise be dealt 

 with. The telesccpe brought things nearer 

 when viewed at a distance, and the luiscro- 

 Bcope oflabled them to view minute things 

 at a very short focus. The lecturer then 

 went on to describe the different microscopic 

 powers, which, starting with a lens magnifying 

 ten diameters of the object beneath it, ranged up 

 to 2,UC)U diameters. AVhen they had reached that 

 they had gone as far as most workers with the 

 microscope cared to go, but there were certain 

 rare instruments of very much higher power, and 

 they could iragnify up to four or five thousand 

 diameters. As showing how closely interwoven 

 the infinitely great and the infinitely small were, 

 they had in the heavens objects in which the 

 unit — a "million of miles— went a very little way 

 to express their extreme and tremendous 

 distance, and they used, in order to bridge over 

 that vast interval, vibrations of light, which, 

 in the case of some of the wave lengths, were 

 from one hundred and thirty-nine thousandth 

 to one hundred and fifty thousandth part of an 

 inch. These vibrations took place, as far as 

 modei'n theories aided them, in a medium which 

 was at once the most profoundly mysterious they 

 knew of, viz., the ether. By means of and trusting 

 to the integrity of these vibrations, they were able 

 to view and to reason upon, and to appreciate to a 

 limited extent, the nature and size and properties 

 of bodies many thousands of millions of miles 

 away. Here, then, they had a sort of 

 partnership set up between estreirely minute 

 vibrations and immensely large bodies at a 

 great distance, and here the great and small met. 

 But they had to deal with even smaller quantities 

 than these. When they considered the minuteness 

 of the atoms of which matter was built up they 

 had far smaller substances. They could, of course, 

 arrive at something like an approximate idea of 

 the size of an atom, but it was, however, very 

 approximate. If they could imagine a single drop 

 of water, magnified to the size of the earth itself, 

 and if they could imagine the component parts 

 of that drop of water magnified to a corresponding 

 extent, and if they could see the atoms so 

 magnified also, they would be, according to 

 Lord Kelvin, ai)proximate to something between 



