PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
149 
Walters; “ Lichens,” Mr. Brittain, of Manchester; “Fungi,” Mr. 
Pullinger ; “ Fossil Botany,” Mr. J. Nield ; “ Internal Structure of 
Fossil Plants,” Mr. J. Butterworth ; “Vegetable Tissues,” Mr. J. E. 
Byrom ; “ Closing Address,” the President. The retiring President, 
Mr. James Nield, read a very able resume of the Society’s proceedings 
during the past year, of which the following is an abstract : — After 
congratulating the Society on its position, financially and otherwise, 
and adverting to its excursions, he passed to what he described as the 
real work of the Society, namely, the useful series of papers delivered 
during the session, and which he characterized as being every way 
worthy of the Society over which it had been his honour to preside. 
Mr. Horne’s very interesting paper, given in October, “ On Infusoria,” 
was a valuable acquisition, and invested those lowliest of beings which 
people our ponds in such myriads with an interest and importance which 
rendered the subject a most pleasant and profitable one to investigate. 
He would therefore pass on to that given in December by Dr. Fawsitt, 
“ On Blood,” illustrated by diagrams, and prepared slides of blood cor- 
puscles, exhibiting many modifications of those disk-like living bodies 
as they occur in various types of animal life, and likewise of those 
singular objects, “ blood crystals,” which result from a breaking up of the 
red corpuscles, and which in the human blood take a prismatic form, and 
in other creatures lower in the scale of being, modifications of the 
prism. The paper was of an exhaustive character, as far as scientific 
research has hitherto enabled the student to advance. One of the 
results of this Society, numbering amongst its members several gentle- 
men holding high and honourable positions in the medical profession, 
was made manifest in this paper. Dr. Fawsitt brought his professional 
knowledge and experience to bear on the subject of his paper, adding 
a medico-physiological feature to its other important peculiarities. 
The legitimate work of the microscopist is, undoubtedly, practical and 
utilitarian in character. Yet the student can rightly claim to enter 
into the realms of theoretical speculation. Dr. Fawsitt prudently, I 
think, confined himself principally to ascertained facts. He made no 
attempt at generalization, or from an aggregation of accepted data to 
make abstract deductions. Yet the moment was propitious. And let 
me admit that during the progress of the reading, with the diagrams 
and prepared slides of blood and its crystals before me, the complete, 
or nearly complete, identity in form and chemical composition of the 
blood of all the vertebrata, and the intimate connection and relationship 
of all these varied animal organisms, seemed to me to be clearly 
established to the extent of the subject of the paper. When we look 
upon the colourless corpuscles of the human blood, and remember 
their chemical composition, their ever-changing form, and the purpose 
they serve in the economy of the human body, the conviction is forced 
upon us that man, the highest and grandest work of the Creator, is 
connected by these peculiar links in the chain of being with the 
humble and lowly rhizopoda, the latter finding congenial conditions 
in water, the former floating in the plasma of the human blood. 
The naked and protean amoeba, and the sarcode clothed in ornate 
foraminiferous test, are but free members of a family, which are 
