SESSION 1891-1892. 
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14th, 1891. 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
BY 
MR. W. H. REAN, M.R.CS. 
(PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY), ON 
THE MICROSCOPE IN SCIENTIFIC 
INVESTIGATION. 
The subject to which I desire to direct your attention for a 
very brief space this evening is that of Microscopy, and I have 
chosen this particular branch of scientific research for two 
reasons, which reasons, with your permission, I will lay before 
you. 
In the first place it has been to me for some years a continual 
source of regret to find that the study of the microscope—at 
least in the public utterances of this Society—has been seriously 
on the decline. Practical papers on microscope work have been 
conspicuous by their absence. The attendance at our micro- 
scopical evenings have dwindled both with regard to the selections 
_ of microscopes and objects on view, and also as to the members 
who have made it their duty to be present, until the audiences 
became as time passed on nearly as microscopical as the objects 
themselves ; and your Council, seeing the lack of interest in the 
work wisely decided, for the time being at least, to do away with 
these evenings altogether. That such an eventuality should have 
occurred is, I consider, a grave reproach on such a Society as 
ours. Surely we have members enough among us who delight in 
microscopical research, and who possess instruments to raise 
microscopy once more to the place it commands in the study of 
natural history. And it is with the full belief that a little 
