66 



read, and the facts elicited during the year, is another advantage 

 of the Society which is highly worthy of notice, and the 

 microscopical meetings held every month. What a fund of 

 instruction and deep interest do these furnish. Even apart from 

 the higher uses of the microscope in scientific investigation, it has 

 been well said that the use of the microscope is " one of the most 

 pleasurable recreations that human ingenuity has devised." 

 I strongly recommend it to you all. 



And now I must stop, although I have said nothing yet about 

 our jileasant rambles together in the lanes and meadows — the 

 woods and pastures of our beautiful country — in our "field 

 excursions." These are indeed a privilege. And last, though 

 "not least," our highly jiopular "annual excursion.' To under- 

 stand the delight to be obtained from this you will really have to 

 come and experience it, for neither my time nor my powers will 

 enable me to do justice to this part of my subject. And now 

 permit me to ask if I have estabhshed my declaration that the 

 Natural History Society is worthy of your support. If so, I will 

 conclude by thanking you for the kind attention with which you 

 have Hstened to these few introductory remarks, and ask you to 

 join with me in very heartily wishing a long career of usefulness 

 and increasing prosperity to the Brighton and Sussex Natural 

 History Society. 



Shortly after the close of this address Mr. E. A. Pankhurst 

 delivered a lecture, illustrated with the lime light, on 



Comets and Nebula. 



He said : Many of you doubtless saw in the newspapers not 

 long since a paragraph with the startling heading, "A world in 

 Flames ; " and truly a world, a sun, did blaze out in fiery 

 eruption, so intense, so stupendous that the naked eye could 

 catch the gleams of it across an abyss of space to us immeasurable. 

 And now that sun is becoming an almost invisible speck even to 

 our large telescopes. It is quite possible that we saw its last 

 ading fires, and that it will never again take its place as a star in 



