January 31, 1895] 



NA TURE 



i35 



Royal Microscopical Society, January l6. — Annual 

 meeting. — A. D. Michael, President, in the chair. — After the 

 report of the Council for the past year and the treasurer's 

 statement of accounts had been read and adopted, the 

 President announced that the following were elected as officers 

 and Council for the ensuing year : — President, A. D. Michael; 

 vice presidents, Prof. L. ,S. Beale, F. R S., Dr. K. G. Hebb, 

 !•.. M, Nelson, T. H. Powell ; treasurer, W. T. Suffolk ; 

 secretaries. Prof. F. Jefit'rey liell, Dr. W. H. Dallinger, 

 F. R S. ; ordinary members of Council, T. D. Aldous, C, 

 Beck, A. W. Bennett, Dr. R. B'-aithwaite, Rev. 1£. Carr. 

 Frank Crisp, K. Dadswell, G. C. Karop, C. F. Rousselet, Dr. 

 H. C. Sorby, F.R.S., J. J. Vezey, and T. Charters White. The 

 President then delivered the addres.s, the subject being, "The 

 History of the Royal Microscopical Society." The President 

 said that if any of his hearers would leave that West-end 

 abode of science, and journey eastward to Tower Hill, and 

 thence by Sparrow Corner along Royal Mint Street, he would 

 find himself in Cable Street, St. George's-in-the East, not a 

 very quiet or a very clean locality ; turning down Shorter Street 

 he would emerge opposite a space of green, where once stood 

 the Danish Church, with its Royal closet reserved for the use 

 of the King of Denmark when visiting this country ; the space 

 is surrounded by houses which have seen better days, and 

 amongst them, between a pickle-factory and a brewery, stands 

 a rather dilapidated erection which is 50 Wellclose Square ; 

 where, in 1839, lived I'.dwin J. Quekett, Professor of Botany at 

 the London Hospital ; and there, on .September 3 of that year, 

 seventeen gentlemen assembled "to take into consideration the 

 propriety of forming a society for the promotion of micro- 

 scopical investigation and for the introduction and improvement 

 of the microscope as a scientific instrument." Among the 

 seventeen were N. B. Ward, the inventor of the Wardian-case, 

 which is not only an ornament to town houses, but was the 

 means of introducing the tea-plant into Assam and the 

 chinchonas into India, and who became treasurer of the 

 society : Bowerbank l.i>ter, who has been called the creator of 

 the modern microscope ; Dr. Farre, Dr. George Jackson, the 

 Rev. J. B. Reade, and the enterprising and scientific nursery- 

 man George Loddiges. Most of these subsequently became 

 presidents of the Society. .-^ public meeting was held on 

 December 20, 1839, at the rooms of the Horticultural Society, 

 then at 21 Regent-street, when the " Microscopical Society of 

 London " was formally started. Prof. Richard Owen (not Sir 

 Richard at that time) took the chair and became the first 

 president, and shortly after the famous John Quekett became 

 secretary, an office which he held almost to his death. At this 

 moment Schleiden in Germany was commenting upon the 

 paucity of British microscopical research, and attributing it to 

 the want of efficient instruments, not knowing that a society was 

 then forming which was to raise British microscopes to probably 

 the first position in the world. The President then traced the 

 history of the Society through the presidencies of Dr. Lindley 

 the botanist. Prof. Thomas Bell the zoologist, Dr. Bowerbank, 

 Or. George Busk, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Lankester, Prof. \V. 

 Kitchen Parker (all deceased), and of others equally famous who 

 are still living ; and showed how, under its influence and by its 

 assistance, the vast improvements in the microscope, and the 

 enormous extension of its use had gradually arisen ; he also 

 described its connection with the origin of the Quarterly 

 fournal of JMicroscopical Scit-iicc, the Monthly Microscopical 

 journal, and other publications, besides its own present widely 

 circulated journal with its exhaustive summary of microscopical 

 and biological work. He related how on John Quekett's death 

 certain members of the Society subscribed to purchase for the 

 Society's collection a curious microscope which Quekett 

 possessed, and which had been made by the celebrated Benjamin 

 Martin about 1770, probably for George III., and how they 

 extended their subscription so as tn provide a medal to be 

 called "the Quekett medal" to be given from time to time 

 to eminent microscopists ; and how, difliculiies having arisen, 

 it happened that the only Quekett medal ever awarded 

 was given to Sir John Lubbock. Finally, the President 

 considered the future of the microscope and the prospects 

 of further improvements. He said that many people were 

 of opinion that the instrument is now perfect, and that 

 consequently the most important ration ifi'/rc of the Society 

 was over ; he by no means agreed in that view, he believed 

 that there was as much scope lor progress in the future as there 

 had been in the past ; it was not by any means the first time 



that this idea haii been put forward. In 1829 Dr. tioring, then 

 a great authority on the subject, wrote in one of his published 

 works : " Microscopes are now placed completely on a level with 

 telescopes, and like them must remain stationary in their 

 construction." In 1830, less than a year after, appeared 

 Lister's epoch-making paper, "On the improvement of 

 achromatic compound microscopes," and we have been im- 

 proving ever since. — Mr. II. V. Teblis proposed a vote of 

 thanks to the President for his address ; this, having been 

 seconded by Prof. Bell, was carried. 



Edinburgh. 



Royal Society, December 17, 1894. — The Hon. Lord 

 M'Laren, Vice-President, in the chair. — Mr. Patrick Murray 

 read an obituary notice of the late Mr. Donald Beith. — In a 

 paper on germination in ponds and rivers, Mr. H. B. Guppy 

 described observations on the germination of semi-aquatic and 

 arjuatic plants, and discussed the effects of temperature and light 

 — .\ paper on the Hall effect and some related actions in bis- 

 muth, by Mr. J. C. Beattie, was read. Mr. Beattie finds, with 

 high fields, a reversal of the Hall effect in certain specimens of 

 bismuth. — Mr. George Romanes communicated a paper on at- 

 traction treated by graphic processes, with deductions. 



January 7. — The Rev. Prof. Flint, Vice-President, in the 

 chair. — Dr. W. Peddie read a paper on a case of yellow-blue 

 blindness, and its bearings on the theories of dichromasy. The 

 historical aspect of the Young- Helmholtz theory is as follows : 

 (i) Young gave his theory of colour-blindness by lapse of one 

 sensation, stating that this seemed to him to be simpler than 

 any other assumption. But, as with his theory of colour-vision, 

 he meant this theory to be given up if it were subsequently 

 found to be inconsistent with experiment. (2) Helmholtz added 

 his ideas regarding the nature of the mechanism, adopting 

 implicitly Young's reservations, and stating explicitly that his 

 ideas, if false, did not afTect the basis of Young's theory. (3) 

 In accordance with the above facts, when E. Rose brought for- 

 ward the evidence of his observations, Helmholtz at once 

 indicated the probable direction in which the statement of the 

 theory had to be modified. (4) Subsequently, Ilelmholtz's 

 pupils, Kijnig and Dieterici, working presumably under his 

 direction, made a crucial test to find if it were absolutely 

 essential to abandon the idea of lapse of a fundamental sensa- 

 tion, and found that it was necessary to do so. (5) Kimig in- 

 vestigated, at different parts of the spectrum, the mean error of 

 wave-length which could be made in adjusting light from 

 different near parts of the spectrum to equality. (6) Helmholtz 

 gave an expression, in terms of the unknown fundamentals, for 

 the rate at which the total " sensation " varies with wave-length. 

 He wrote down three linear equations, with unknown coeffi- 

 cients, expressing the three fundamental sensations in terms of 

 those chosen (arbitrarily so far) by Konig and Dieterici. 

 The latter were known in terms of the wave-length by 

 means of the observations of these two investigators. 

 Therefore, if Helmholtz could determine the unknown 

 coefficients, he could express the other fund.imentals in terms 

 of the wave-length. Now an obvious assumption to make is 

 this : the mean error of wave-length which can be m.ade in 

 adjusting two very narrow strips, one from each of two similar 

 spectra, to apparent equality corresponds to a constant differ- 

 ence of total "sensation." Helmholtz made this assumption 

 in order to determine the unknown coefficients by means of 

 Konig's observations on the mean error. And he fnither 

 justified this by showing that there w.as a close correspondence 

 between the mean errors found by Kiinig and the mean errors 

 calculated from his own theory on the assumption of a constant 

 difference of sensation. Thus the new fundamentals, given by 

 Helmholtz as " provisional," may be regarded as having been 

 determined upon a purely experimental basis, with no assump- 

 tion other than the radical assum| tion of three fundamental 

 sensations. The whole thing is a beautiful example of the 

 cautious, steady, scientific development of a theory. There 

 has not been, by Helmholtz, any violent upholding of a weak- 

 ened theory, followed by a sudden facing round after defeat. 

 In violet, or yellow blue, blindness, the two colours of the 

 spectrum are red and bluish-green, and the spectrum is short- 

 ened at the blue end with a sharp limit near the line G. Blind- 

 ness of this type is lare. The case described in this paper 

 presents the peculiarity that there is no shortening of the 

 .spectrum at either end. The range extends beyond the line a 

 at the red end, and beyond the line H at the violet end. The 



NO. I318, VOL. 51] 



