PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



these organisms be only pursued for the pleasure it affords 

 ourselves and our friends, it is scarcely possible for the 

 observant follower to miss adding something, either directly 

 or indirectly, to that monument of intelligent labour Avhich 

 we call Science. 



Let me say at once that, with a boundless love for these 

 beautiful creatures, I felt the growing conviction that they were 

 worthy of my constant endeavours to find out means of 

 displaying them in accordance with what I suppose I must 

 call " high art." For in these days of JEstheticism, when the 

 love, and I might say the worship of the beautiful, if not of the 

 ridiculous, has grown to a positive mania — when boys and girls, 

 with only sixpence a-week to spend, will spend threepence or 

 perhaps the whole of it in the purchase of flowers, and when 

 artistic skill is brought to so great a perfection that it almost 

 needs a pocket-lens to tell whether the bonnets of the ladies 

 are decorated by the productions of the florist or the work of 

 the artist — it is more obviously necessary than ever that the real 

 works of nature should be put before us in the best possible 

 manner, and this, with microscopic life, is only to be done by 

 much practice and skill. 



Take, for example, a thick trough containing Entomostraca 

 and dirty water ; show it with an unsuitable light and a bad 

 insti'ument and every unfamiliar person will exclaim, •• ^\'hat 

 a lot of horrid things." or something equally complimentary 

 and equally true. But, on the other hand, take only a single 

 Daphnia and place it tenderly in a drop of clean water between 

 two thin plates of glass, throw upon it a flood of oblique light 

 by means of a good instrument and apparatus, and that which 

 before appeared as an almost loathsome deformity is now seen 

 to be a living marvel of exquisite beauty, and exclamations of 

 admiration take the place of those of disgust. 



Take even a single rotifer, and endeavour by examination 

 to make out all its wonderful details, and see what a splendid 

 held for manipulative skill it will afford, and liow truly worthy 

 it is of the pains you have bestowed upon it 



