1 72 Transactions of the Society. 



V. — The President's Address. By Prof. P. Martin Duncan, 

 M.B. LoncL, F.E.S. 



{Annual Meeting, lith February, 1883.) 



Every Fellow of this Society who has attended the evening 

 meetings during the last twelve months, must have heen struck 

 with the very practical nature of our proceedings, and that the 

 ohservations made, and the apparatus exhibited and described on 

 those occasions, indicated a growing desire for the perfection of the 

 Microscope. At the same time it must have been evident that the 

 application of the instrument to its proper purposes is open to many 

 sources of error, and that there is an amount of intelligence and 

 knowledge required in the management of the Microscope, which 

 is the result of much labour, thought, and experience. Common 

 sense might tell everybody this, but it sometimes happens that 

 when a man has invested a certain number of guineas in an 

 instrument, he imagines he is correspondingly endowed with the 

 abilities of a microscopist in the true sense of the term. On the 

 other hand a very large number of able men become possessed of 

 instruments humble in appearance and not costly in any sense, and 

 they rest satisfied that a Microscope is a Microscope, and believe 

 therefore that they see the true invariably. One of the benefits of 

 belonging to our Society is the opportunity of seeing objects 

 properly shown by the ablest manipulators, and of hearing com- 

 munications on the imperfections and corrections of the instrument, 

 and it would be well if our Ust, full as it is, were crowded by those 

 scientific men who constantly use the Microscope in original re- 

 search in biology. A considerable experience impresses me that 

 the majority of students, and not a few professors, not only use 

 indifferent instruments, but also carefully avoid all those practices 

 which we know are absolutely necessary for correct microscopy. 

 A thing is seen, therefore it must be real ; one man sees a spiral 

 line, another a circle, another a series of dots, using the same 

 object and difierent Microscopes. They describe and debate and 

 each is self-satisfied. Yet all the while had they had a master in 

 microscopy, their differences could be terminated. 



We constantly read of wonderful researches involving great 

 dexterity of preparation, tedious dissection, and elaborate mounting, 

 consummated at last by a description of what is seen under a 

 Microscope. Some one else follows the subject and cannot see 

 what the previous observer has drawn. Here the difierence clearly 

 relates to the Microscope, and therefore it is worth while to pass in 

 review and remark upon some of the results of the work of our 

 Society during the [past year, so that workers may be stimulated 



