COREESPONDENCE. 173 



omitted to state tliat it was read before the former Society, a fact 

 which must have been obvious to everyone who read the paper in 

 your Journal : however, as such an interpretation has been put upon 

 my omission, I cannot but regret that it should have been made. 



A letter piiblishcd in page 134 of the last number of your Journal 

 unquestionably conveys a very erroneous impression of my views 

 respecting Dr. R. Pigott's " Aplanatic Searcher," and I trust an equally 

 erroneous version of the observations made on that subject in my 

 Address. From unavoidable circumstances I was obliged to give that 

 portion of my Address viva voce ; but as the printed version consists 

 of the short-hand writer's notes with unimportant amendments, I appeal 

 to my hearers as to ^vhether it may not be taken as a fair representa- 

 tion of my words spoken. 



I entirely fail to discover in my printed Address either the animus 

 of the letter in question, or a " condenmation " of the " Aplanatic 

 Searcher " : as it appears to me, the only legitimate inference to bo 

 drawn from my remarks is that I consider its utility " not proven " 

 at present. And so far from having " ajiplied his mathematical skill 

 to investigate the principle of its construction, he had come to the 

 conclusion that its merits were mainly, if not wholly, fictitious," I 

 have expressly stated in my Address that either from the comj^lexity 

 of the conditions of the jjroblem, or from my own want of skill in 

 dealing with them, I had failed in obtaining any result from analysis. 

 Requesting the insertion of these remarks in the forthcoming number 

 of the Joui'nal, 



I remain yours faithfully, 



Chas. Brooke. 



The President's Kemarks on Mr. Pillischer. 



2b the Editor of the 'Monthly MicroFxoj^ical Journal.^ 



88, New Bond Street, London, March 17, 1874. 



Sir, — Permit me to correct two mistakes made by our President 

 in his Address read before the Royal Microscopical Society on the 

 4th February last, in giving his account of the Vienna Exhibition as 

 Scientific Juror. 



' The President, in the first place, says that I am by birth a 

 " Prussian." This statement is quite incorrect ; I am by birth an 

 " Hungarian," and not a Prussian, though I should feel equally proud 

 to belong to the latter nationality; but, having been established in 

 England as a maker of microscopes nearly thirty years, I am perhaps 

 not presuming too much in venturing to ex;press that there was no 

 actual cause for the President to single me out as a Prussian, and 

 might have allowed me the honour to be included in the ranks of 

 English microscope makers. 



Our President further says, " and not even in his collection was 

 there a single objective of note or high power." 



As this assertion is calculated to do me a great deal of .injury, I 

 emphatically and substantially contradict and deny it, and beg most 



O 2 



