INHERITANCE 99 



refer, save in the briefest manner, to the ever- 

 widening applications of the microscope in other 

 branches of knowledge, and the benefits which it 

 is conferring on mankind. In trade and commerce 

 the microscope is employed more frequently and 

 relied on more fully than is generally appreciated ; 

 and in such matters as the adulteration of food, 

 and in criminal enquiries, it often yields evidence 

 of the most material and convincing character. 

 There is perhaps no direction in which microscop- 

 ical enquiry has advanced more rapidly of late 

 years than its employment as a means of detecting 

 disease, or even of determining its true nature and 

 causation. Pathology is one of the most actively 

 growing of modern sciences ; and though its fulness 

 of time has not yet come we may feel well assured, 

 from the results already attained, that the scientific, 

 and especially the microscopical, investigation of 

 disease, will in the immediate future afford us 

 most powerful and welcome assistance in the 

 alleviation of human suffering. It is in con- 

 siderations of this kind presented here, I am but 

 too well aware, in the crudest possible form that 

 we find the justification for the high position to 

 which a Microscopical Society may rightly aspire. 

 In the microscope we have perhaps the most potent 

 instrument of research that mankind has ever 

 possessed ; and in the ever-widening circle of its 

 influences, in its far-reaching applications, we may 

 see opportunity for enrolling amongst our numbers 

 men of the most varied interests and pursuits, and 

 so gaining that free interchange of independent 



