THE MICROSCOPE. 147 
expressive from those present that Mr. Leckenby generously offered 
to donate a future evening to a more extended demonstration of 
mounting in balsam. 
The advisability of having an annual reception was discussed 
among the members, and a motion favorable to the proposition of 
holding one carried, the details to be arranged in the near future. 
Dr. Harkness made some excellent remarks bearing on the sub- 
ject of microscopical receptions here and in Europe, which were 
listened to with pleasure, and will probably be stored away in the 
memory of the prospective Committee of Arrangements. 
The acquisitions to the library consisted of the usual micro- 
scopical miscellany, while the cabinet was increased by a fine slide 
of Mentzelia from Colorado, donated by Mr. Leckenby. 
C. P. Bass, 
Recording Secretary. 
Die Orkin les 
T has been said that ‘“‘seeing is believing,’ and to the great 
majority of mankind nothing seems truer. But there exists an 
over-exacting minority who not only will not rely upon the evidences 
of the unaided senses, but must need inquire with tedious minuteness 
into the conditions under which the evidence was obtained. They 
prate learnedly of the influence of the mind on the senses, of pre- 
conceived ideas and inherited conceptions, and go so far in their 
devotion to cold truth as to attempt to shatter the lovely idealizations 
of which the senses are master creators by introducing the exact 
sciences in rebuttal. But what is yet more unfortunate, this dread- 
ful tendency of a minority is working as leaven on the majority, and 
when it is considered that leaven is sour dough and that it affects 
the mass not through substance but through the more reprehensible 
mode of gaseous emanations, the matter becomes doubly unfortunate. 
As a result of this disbelief in the senses the gruesome spooks and 
goblins and the delightful Brownies—visible companions of our 
forefathers’——-are moving in this springtime of new methods from 
their former abodes of fact to the more permanent though none the 
less delightful ones of fancy. All this means that there is a growing 
belief that our senses need educating, and although this education is 
progressing, it is far from complete. 
The microscope may be said to give us a new sense, a sense 
which, as it were, allows us to see the invisible; and with whatever 
