Monthly, Microsconia'| PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 105 
under an angle corresponding with that at which they would have arrived 
from a larger object situated at a greater distance.” * We doubt not 
that Mr. Suffolk is familiar enough with this fact, but what we 
complain of is that he does not express it with sufficient clearness. 
The volume is one, nevertheless, which will deservedly attain popu- 
larity among amateurs commencing microscopic inquiries. 
Proceedings of the. Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical 
Society during the year 1869. Part I. Birmingham: Sackett & 
Edmonds. 1870.—The Natural History Society of Birmingham 
has certainly been successful, even in its first effort, and has 
issued a capital volume of ‘ Proceedings’ most creditable as a whole 
to its members. Perhaps the highest proof of our good opinion 
of the work is the fact that the Editor has selected one of its 
papers for publication in these pages. The illustrations are 
numerous, and in most cases good; those of Mr. Wills on micro- 
scopic crystals, and of Mr. Marshall’s on the transformations of the 
Gnat, being especially well-executed and scientific representations 
of objects seen under the miéroscope. We must not criticize too 
closely the several contributions to the first volume of a provincial 
Society’s ‘ Proceedings,’ but we would remark that a few of the 
papers are so flagrantly mere compilations from the most ordinary 
text-books they should not have been allowed to be read before the 
Society, and are certainly not worth the time expended by the 
compositor in setting them up. We are sorry to observe, too, 
that these papers are generally by persons whose titles and position 
entitle them to be regarded as belonging to the scientific world. We 
doubt not that “a word to the wise” will be sufficient, and that the 
many able and distinguished original workers which the Society 
embraces will soon weed out, or at least convert into listeners, 
those members from whom better things should be expected, but 
who palm off on a body of earnest labourers, papers which are no 
more valuable or original than a schoolboy’s essay. It must be 
said that contributions of this kind are the exception, not the rule, 
and that as a whole the Birmingham Society’s first volume is a 
really good and useful one. 
PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 
Structure of Wood from the Cairo Petrified Forest—In the ‘ Geo- 
logical Magazine’ for July, Mr. Carruthers publishes a very interesting 
paper, illustrated by a capital plate, describing the results of his 
examination of the wood from the curious petrified forest of Cairo. 
After a full account of the general and geological features of the 
fossil wood of the desert, he goes on to state its peculiarity of struc- 
* ‘The Microscope and its Revelations, 4th edition, p.19. The italics are 
ours.—REVIEWER. 
