THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 157 



these Natural History courses, and it had not then been introduced 

 into other institutions. About this time, however, important improve- 

 ments were made in the construction of the microscope and object 

 glasses of high quality in power and definition, were made by Ross, Powell, 

 Smith, and Beck in England; and valuable instruments were likewise 

 constructed by the opticians of France and Germany. Ehrenberg's great 

 work on the Infusoria had been lately published, and the marvellous 

 forms of animal structure, which were so beautifully delineated in the 

 plates of Dielnfusions-Thierchen, brought microscopical science to the 

 front, a position which it has ever since maintained. 



Physiology was very badly taught in our Medical Schools fifty 

 years ago, the microscope had not then been introduced as an instru- 

 ment of research, otherwise I should have been enabled to describe 

 the Trichina spiralis, which I was the first to discover in the muscles 

 of a female brought into the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, in 1830 ; 

 three years before that Entozoon was seen and described by my old 

 friend, Professor Owen, in London. 



The laboratory studies made about this period, more especially by 

 Tiedemann in Germany, Majendie in France, Charles Bell in England, on 

 the Brain and Nervous System, gave a new direction to the lines of Physio- 

 logical research and brought other observers into the field, notably Pro- 

 fessor Matteucci, of Pisa, who, in 1814, gave courses of experimental 

 lectures on the " Physical Phenomena of Living Beings," by which the 

 importance of laboratory work was made more apparent to students 

 of Biology. The translation of Muller's exhaustive treatise on Phy- 

 siology, by Dr. Baily ; and Wagner's, by Dr. Willis, with the several 

 excellent works by Dr. Carpenter and others, formed a new basis for 

 teaching Physiology in schools, by shewing the importance of micros- 

 copic observations in Histology, and laboratory experiments in Physics 

 and Chemistry, with the view of clearing away the haze of ignorance 

 which had so long hung over many of the functions of organic life. 



The establishment of Biological laboratories in Edinburgh, Cam- 

 bridge, Oxford, and South Kensington formed an important era in the 

 study of the Natural Sciences, which will soon bear important fruit 

 both in the University life and popular education of our fatherland. 

 Already we see some of the foremost of the University students distin- 

 guishing themselves in the " Challenger's" work, and the SouthKensing- 

 ton lectures and demonstrations are destined to prepare the mind of 

 the future schoolmaster for disseminating the elements of Natural 

 Science in our National Schools. This is indeed beginning at the 

 right end of the story, and is one of the most hopeful signs of real 

 progress in our favourite pursuits. Germany has long utilised its 

 Professorial ability in training the Schoolmaster to fit him for his 

 work, and we cannot follow a better example in this line than the one 

 set us by our Teutonic neighbours in this branch of National 

 Education. 



Already nearly all the great schools in England, as Eton, Harrow, 

 and Rugby ; and Wellington, Clifton, Marlborough, and Cheltenham 



