Tae NortHerN MicRoscorist. 
No. 10. OCTOBER. 1881. 
THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT YORK, 
SEPTEMBER, 1881. 
N “Exhibition of Instruments for scientific research illustrating 
the progress made in their construction during the past fifty 
years” was to have been an attractive feature of the Jubilee Meet- 
ing of this Association, held at York in September this year. 
As the Microscope is one of those instruments which has perhaps 
helped as much as any other to advance our knowledge in almost 
every direction, we visited York in the hope of having placed be- 
fore our eyes the various improvements effected during the past 
half century; but we must confess to having returned completely 
disappointed. 
There surely must be a plethora of material in this country for a 
really good and instructive microscopical display, not only of the 
progress made during the past half century, but much longer, and 
we cannot therefore but imagine that the meagre collection (it can- 
not be fairly called an exhibition) of microscopes to which the 
visitors were treated, resulted from the management of this depart- 
ment being placed in the wrong hands. Microscopy now-a-days 
enters so largely into the composition of every method of scientific 
research, that every effort should be made by those in high places 
to build up the study upon a sound basis, and tear down the 
shroud of charlatanism and secrecy which unfortunately too often 
pervades and surrounds the micyoscope in many districts. Here 
was a grand opportunity for those who desired to show what the 
microscope was, and is; an exhibition visited by thousands of 
scientists, and a Soirée so densely packed as to be almost uncom- 
fortable, yet had it not been for Mr. Thomas Bolton, of Newhall 
Street, Birmingham, who was present with several microscopes and 
a host of * Living Organisms,” the whole microscopical department 
would have remained in obscurity, to say nothing of the fact that 
the real progress in microscope manufacture was not demonstrated 
by the instruments exhibited, 
Io 
