Address of the President at the Annual Meeting. 37 
motion be observed in the full-grown plant, unless for the 
purpose of reproduction ? for the cells of higher plants show 
such powerful mechanism merely for the vegetative processes. 
If these moving granules are zoospores, capable, when set 
free, of developing into perfect plants, then it seems to follow 
that the sporangium (which is the product of two such plants) 
may also contain these zoospores, capable, when their fitting 
time comes, of filling the waters with their countless progeny. 
And if, as I fully believe, fig. 29 is the sporangium of a 
Cosmarium, its growth by zoospores seems evident. 
Address of the President at the Annual Meeting of the 
Microscopical Society, February 28, 1855. 
Gentlemen, 
The Report of your Council cannot, I think, be other- 
wise than satisfactory, as regards both the progress of our 
Society in number of Members, and the state of our finances. 
Including the elections which we have made this evening, we 
have added twenty-five new names to our list, whilst we have 
lost five by death and five by resignation ; making an addition 
of fifteen to our total. The number of nominal Members, 
however, has been considerably reduced by the stringent mea- 
sures which your Council had thought it right to adopt, in 
regard to those individuals from whom long arrears of sub- 
scriptions are due. Of these, four have been taken off the list, 
as never having performed the first condition of membership, 
namely, payment of the entrance-fee and first subscription ; 
whilst eight more who had become entitled to membership, 
have been expelled, after ample notice had been given to them 
of the penalty which they incurred. I am quite sure that you 
will not regret the loss of those who have shown themselves so 
unworthy of the advantages which membership confers ; and 
that the vitality of our trunk will be increased by thus getting 
rid of all our dead branches. 
The financial condition of the Society affords matter for 
much congratulation ; since we have been able to afford con- 
siderable additions to our expenditure, without more than such 
a trifling reduction of our floating balance, as we may expect 
to be soon made up by that increase of contributions which is 
continually going on, whilst our reserve fund has considerably 
increased. Thus, we have paid to the editors of the ' Quarterly 
Microscopical Journal of Science ' a much larger sum than has 
ever been before expended in any one year for the printing of 
our Transactions ; whereby each of our Members becomes 
