38 
important point ; and it was this which induced him to bring the pre- 
sent matter, not the most pleasant, before them. 
Mr. B. LoMAX said the most useful lesson of the microscope was to 
teach people to use their eyes microscopicaily ; not simply to look at 
things as they appeared, but as they would be if greatly magnified. 
Those who had learnt to do this had learnt a thousand of the secrets 
of Nature, for Nature was made up of duplications and repetitions. If 
we could make a cell, we could make a honeycomb ; if we could under- 
stand a branch, we could understand the tree on which it grew. In 
the Pavilion gardens, they might find amongst the grass little channels 
of water, say three inches wide and four feet long, emptying into the 
drain or gutter. Magnify one of those channels, and it became a 
mighty river miles long and a mile broad. It would be seen that the 
channel did not run straight; wherever it met an obstruction it turned 
aside and took a serpentine direction. This little channel amid the 
grass might show them how the Mississippi rose among forests, how 
it sometimes ran between high cliffs, then over turbulent rocks, 
and again formed great waterfalls. There was a lesson in geography. 
But it taught much more. Visit it another day and they would find 
the bottom of the stream had been changed ; where were roughness 
there was now a smooth layer of mud ; and the water was no longer 
clear. There was a deposit on the bottom, some of which was carried 
to the mouth, where it collected, and so divided the stream into two. 
This would show how a river like the Ganges, year after year, deposited 
a bed which might in time changeits course. Magnify the grass on the 
sides of the little channeland it became a forest. Now this grass was 
a foreigner,—a poor relation of a great foreign family. There was a 
great difference between some foreign plants and our own; and the 
grass was foreign. In the Tropics were thousands of forest trees, 
corresponding to our grass, but being unlike the other plants of our 
land. These were only a few of the lessons to be got from a little 
stream of water; but they might get from it useful lessons in almost 
every branch of science. 
Refreshments were served during the evening in the Drawing 
Room, and the company numbered over 500, 
