The Microscope. 205 



PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



WELLESLEY, MASS., MICROSCOPICAL AND SCIENTIFIC 



SOCIETY. 



THE tenth anniversary of the organization of this society was 

 marked on Satui'day evening by a reception and scientific 

 exhibit on the second-floor centre of the college building. Miss 

 Drury, of Natick, (B. A. 1879), who was the first president of the 

 society, and who has been one to continue her microscopical work to 

 some purpose since, and has been, for several years, instructor in 

 Microscopy at the Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute, contributed 

 some 25 objects of her own preparation. The varieties of hydroids 

 were mounted with excellent success by a process which might be 

 well styled " killing them alive." The mounts of lasso cells of jeUy 

 fish and the sections of pollen, double stained, showing the coatings 

 and contents, were among those which tested most the skill of the 

 manipulator. Tables in the east center were devoted to work in 

 botany by various students. These included photo-micrographic 

 negatives taken from sections of pine needles. These sections are 

 interesting as it has lately been discovered that the best character- 

 istics for distinguishing species are found by the form and arrange- 

 ment of the tissues within : — ciystals, raphides and cystoliths ; fresh 

 water algae; air channels in nymphte; double stained sections; 

 fruited fern fronds. 



The exhibits in zoology in an adjoining room included, circula- 

 tion in frog, cilia in clam, hydrse, amcebse, colonies of epistylis, 

 mounts of hydroids, calcareous spicules of synapta and chirodota, 

 slides showing interesting structures of many common insects. A 

 large number of exquisite glass models belonging to this depart- 

 ment were with the microscopic objects. Rock sections and sections 

 of crystals were displayed under several polariscopes by members 

 from the physical department. Also absorption spectra with the 

 microspectroscope, several optical effects with concave and cylindri- 

 cal mirrors, and interesting experiments with floating magnets. In 

 an adjoining room lantern projections in insect anatomy, plant sec- 

 tions and animal histology were going on for an houi\ Mr. Brown, 

 of Natick, by request, exhibited some of his ingenious pasteboard 

 slides, also some of the tine vegetable preparations of Mr. Peet, of 

 Baltimore. The following is an abstract of the sketch of the ten 

 years' work of the society prepared by Miss Whiting, who has been 

 connected with it from the first. 



