JOIJKNAIj 



OF THE 



ROYAL MICBOSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



APRIL, 1906. 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



II. — The President's Address: Life and Work of Bernard 



Renault. 



By Dukinfield H. Scott, F.R.S. 



(Read January 17, 1906.) 

 Plates IV. and V. 



I have chosen this subject for my address this year for two reasons. 

 First, because Bernard Renault did more than any other man — 

 with the possible exception of my late friend Professor W. C. 

 Williamson, for whom we may perhaps claim an equal place — to 

 make known the structure of fossil plants by microscopic investi- 

 gation ; and secondly because he was an Honorary Member of our 

 own Society. It is a source of great satisfaction to me that we 

 were able to do him this honour, conferred within six months of 

 his death, for in his own country his merits, though realised by his 

 scientific colleagues, by no means received the public recognition 

 they deserved. On several occasions the subject of the structure 

 and relationships of extinct plants has been brought before you, by 

 others as well as by myself, and it is not, I trust, inappropriate that 

 we should give our thoughts this evening to the career of one who, 

 in his own field of research, acted so consistently in the spirit of 

 our motto : " Minimis partibus, per totum Naturae campum, cer- 

 titudo omnis innititur." 



Bernard Renault was born at Autun on March 4, 1836, of 

 respectable middle-class parentage. After a creditable career as 

 schoolboy and student, he became Bachelor of Science at the Autun 

 College in 1854, and Bachelor of Letters the next year. He then 



April 18th, 1906 K 



