PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
Microscorican Soctrty oF Lonpon. 
May 8th, 1863. 
Tue annual soirée of the Society was held this evening in the 
great hall and other rooms at King’s College, and though the 
requirements of the college obliged the Council to avail them- 
selves of the accommodation during the Easter holidays, the 
attendance of members and their friends was quite equal to the 
usual average, and the exhibition of instruments and objects by the 
instrument makers as large and fully as interesting as on any 
former occasion. Absence from town, so customary at this season, 
prevented several of the well-known supporters of the Society from 
being present, and though the members contributed a larger num- 
ber of instruments, they hardly made the same display as at some 
of the previous annual meetings of the Society. 
The most striking feature as regards the instruments was the 
great increase and improved adaptation of the binocular arrange- 
ment of Mr. Wenham to all classes of microscopes, from the most 
elaborately finished and expensive stands of the first-class makers to 
the cheap but more generally useful and instructive, educational 
and student’s instruments, for which the demand is so rapidly 
increasing. The stereoscopic effect, combined with really good 
definition and abundance of light, rendered the display of objects 
with low powers by this arrangement universally admired. 
The exhibition of objects requiring very high powers is hardly 
so well adapted to please the visitor as the preceding, but the 
advance here made has been quite as great as in any other depart- 
ment, and the fine =;th of Messrs. Powell and Lealand, and the 
sth of Messrs. Smith, Beck, and Beck, were exhibited, under all 
the disadvantages of a crowded room, in such a way as to show 
clearly to the microscopist what might be expected from their per- 
formance under the quiet and careful manipulation of the study. 
The large exhibition of instruments and improved thin stages of 
Mr. Ross also attracted a crowd of visitors to his table. It would 
be impossible, however, to enumerate all the various contrivances 
