942 THE Microscope. 
at the same time favor their readers with their methods of 
measurement, stating what objectives, eye-pieces, length of 
tubes, stage or eye-piece micrometers they use. This statement 
need occupy but little space, and would enable those interested 
in that subject to form a more correct judgment as to the relia- 
bility of published results. 
There are many who are working earnestly on this subject, 
and we desire all the light we can get. May I ask your corres- 
pondents to give us their methods of work? I desire to ask also 
if the blood corpuscles shrink in size by mounting them dry ? 
THE WORKING DEPARTMENT. 
A thanks for your kind words in the October number of 
Vy your journal. I certainly appreciated the unanimous vote 
of the A. 8. M. at our last annual meeting, but circumstances 
positively forbid my acceptance of the directorship of the 
Working Department next year; besides, I am not an advocate 
of third terms. If there is any honor in the office, let others 
share it; if it is a great tax in time and in money, let others 
help bear it. 
I am a firm believer in practical work rather than in theory 
in all the departments of life, and I am fully convinced that 
much of the future success of the A. S. M. will depend on the 
success of its Working Department. I trust that no member of 
the Society, one or more of whom I meet in my travels nearly 
every day of the year, will accuse me of disloyalty to its best 
interests because of my refusal to serve. If the Department 
has been a success thus far, most of the credit is due to the 
experts who so kindly came long distances, paying their own 
expenses and furnishing their own material to teach others, free, 
what cost them years of time and much money to learn. It 
may be unknown to the members that the valuable practical 
papers written by Rev. J. T. Brownell, Profs. H. Gage, F. L. 
James, M. D., Geo. Duffield, M. D., and by several others, were 
written expressly for the Working Department, and that many 
in attendance came expressly to learn methods by seeing the 
actual work which the papers described. Our honored member 
from Elmira, Dr. Gleason, expressed the views of the majority 
