88 
Fourteenth Report of 
blishment of a library of standard microscopical books." 
Here also, although something has been done, we have no 
cause for boasting. But if every Member who wishes to 
refer to such works, and cannot find what he wants in our 
library, were to address a note to the Council, giving the title 
of the book needed, we should gradually have these deficien- 
cies supplied. 
There are one or two subjects of microscopical investigation 
that do not appear to have attracted our attention so much as 
might be wished. 
Some communications from the Rev. J. B. Reade, in the 
early days of the Society, served to show that the microscope 
might be made of great utility in delicate chemical re- 
searches ; and a paper by Dr. Bird Herapath, in the Fifth 
Number of the ' Microscopical Journal,' strongly confirms 
this view ; but, with the exception of some incidental notices 
of the application of chemical tests to determine the nature 
of organic structure, very little of chemical microscopy has 
come before this Society. For this there may be a sufficient 
reason ; the subject is a special one, and chemists may 
prefer bringing their microscopical observations before the 
Chemical Society, to the alternative of submitting chemical 
matters to the Microscopical. How far they are right I will 
not determine. 
When we look over the list of our Members, and observe 
the number of medical men included in it, we may well be 
surprised that our ' Transactions ' have been enriched with so 
few papers on Animal Pathology. Had this been the case 
only since the institution of the Pathological Society, a reason 
similar to that above assigned might account for it ; but even 
now it may fairly be questioned whether the accuracy of dis- 
coveries in microscopical pathology would not be better 
tested by a body of men accustomed to use the instrument, 
and to examine matters of all kinds with it, than by those 
who have not had these advantages, however well they may 
be acquainted with the general subject. 
A physician in a neighbouring country some years ago 
announced that, by the aid of the microscope, he had disco- 
vered a pathognomonic symptom of pulmonary consumption 
in a peculiar egg-shaped body occurring in the sputa. It 
was afterwards found that in the hospital to which he was 
attached the consumptive patients breakfasted on arrow-root, 
and the peculiar bodies were some of the unbroken starch 
granules that had stuck to their mouths. 
In both the addresses of Professor Bell this want of papers 
on Animal Pathology is noticed ; and his ideas are so just, and 
