THe MuicroscopicaL News 
AND 
NORTHERN MICROSCOPIST. 
No. 28. APRIL. 1883. 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS TO THE 
MANCHESTER MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 
By W. Biacksurn, F.R.M.S. 
Read at the Annual Meeting, February 22nd. 
ae it is customary on occasions of this kind, when the manage- 
ment of a society is submitted annually to the suffrages of its 
members, for an address on some subject connected with the 
society or the nature of its pursuits, to be delivered from the 
chair, I propose, upon now assuming the office to which you 
have done me the honour to elect me, to draw your attention to 
some of the ways in which the progress of natural science has 
been promoted by the use of the microscope, and to the advantages 
we have derived from microscopical research in our social relations, 
as affecting our well-being. 
It will, of course, be impossible for me to treat this subject very 
fully within the limits of this short address, and I must content 
myself with merely noting what appear to me to be some salient 
points. 
For a long time the physical sciences were in advance of the 
natural sciences, owing to the imperfect instruments with which 
the latter were investigated, and modern microscopical research 
may be said to date from the introduction of the achromatic 
principle into microscope lenses. Previous to this event micro- 
scopical investigations were principally carried on by means of 
simple lenses, the uncorrected compound instrument. having 
fallen into disuse to a great extent, owing to the unreliable nature 
of some of the inferences to which it had given rise. Simple 
lenses appear to have been used as magnifiers from a very remote 
period. Aristophanes, the Grecian dramatist, who lived in the 
fifth century before Christ, alludes in his “Clouds” to “burning 
VOL. III. 
