PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 181 
being some living marine diatomacee from the sea-shore near 
Tynemouth, the most remarkable of which were the Bacillaria 
eursoria, which shot backwards and forwards under the microscope 
like troops moving on parade. Notice was also made of the 
voloux globator, a constant attraction at microscopical soirées ; 
erystals of fluoride of silicium, closely resembling diatoms ; also 
to several low forms of animal life. He also alluded to some 
fossil teeth and fossil jaws from the Northumberland coal 
measures, exhibited by Mr. Craggs. One local naturalist, Mr. 
Atthey, he said, had devoted much time to the investigation of 
the fauna and flora of our local coal-fields, and that gentleman 
was considered to have probably the best collection of carboniferous 
fossils in existence. The wonderful specimens of diatoms, fora- 
menifera, &c., from the bottom of the Atlantic and other oceans, 
and exhibited by Mr. Hobkirk, next claimed the attention of and 
astonished the audience, and the more so as some of the specimens 
had been brought up in connection with the soundings for the 
Atlantic cable. After going through several other of the speci- 
mens seriatim, the lecturer proceeded to say that the microscope 
was eclectic, and suited all tastes. To the natural philosopher it 
was one of his greatest boons; and to the most uninquiring, 
stolid mind, it presented phases of life and passages of natural 
beauty, of vital and mechanical harmony, that even the most 
stoical could not refrain from admiring. To the physician it ex- 
hibited crystals, cells, and structures which revealed to his expe- 
rienced eye and mind the seat of disease in a manner no other 
process of inquiry would so thoroughly recognise. To the chemist 
it showed under the polarized light the properties of his prepara- 
tions, which no other means would enable him to detect. To the 
natural philosopher it opened up forms of skill, beauty, and 
variety, in every department of nature, which the most romantic, 
fertile, and ideal mind never dreamt of; peopling every hedge- 
row and pool with myriad wonders, showing the results of the 
vital processes that were at work in every living mechanism, 
culling from the refuse and slime of oceans forms of beauty and 
diversities of light that transfigured this world into the palace of 
an enchanter, touching our eyes as with the wand of a magician, 
and opening them to visions of beauty and treasures more dazzling 
and gorgeous than the enchanted palace opened by the genii to 
Aladdin, making us feel that everywhere we walked on holy 
ground, everywhere were imprints of the Divine fingers on objects 
too minute to be seen by the unassisted eye of man, and yet under 
a Great Father’s care—He who had seen it good to expend 
mechanical skill and boundless design upon the flinty shells of 
innumerable myriads of vegetables, that until very recently had 
never been seen by the eye of man. All nature literally teemed 
with life, the result of the Divine outworking. The microscope 
made or revealed all nature as vocal with praise to its Divine 
Artificer. What more appropriate could be brought into the 
