•1 
Address of the President. 19 
or there might he, a considerable difference in the credit 
attaching to these two appearances respectively. For the 
editors of the Journal (having to fill a certain number of 
pages every quarter) can scarcely be expected to feel that 
responsibility as to the quality of the papers they insert, 
which lies upon the Council of our Society, which is charged 
with admitting into its Transactions only such communi- 
cations as they may deem possessed of a certain scientific 
value. As the case at present stands, I cannot but believe 
that the want of due appreciation of the superior credit of our 
Transactions, and a feeling of indisposition on the part of 
authors to subject their communications to the double ordeal 
of a public discussion and of a privately-considered verdict, 
have kept, and will continue to keep, many valuable papers 
from being brought before the Society. 
Now if such be really one of the causes of deficiency, the 
next question is, how can it be remedied ? The remedy does 
not seem to me to be easy, so long as the existing union 
between the Transactions and the Journal shall continue ; 
and this union is attended with so much advantage to our 
Members, that I cannot advise its discontinuance. But it 
has occurred to me that a more marked difference might be 
advantageously made between our Transactions and the 
Journal, by adopting a different style for the former, — a some- 
what larger type, for example, or a more open page, — which 
should in some degree mark the superior status which I 
claim for them. The remedy lies essentially, however, with 
the Members themselves ; who ought, I think, to feel under 
an obligation to promote the interests of the Society, by 
sending their communications to it, rather than forward them 
direct to the Journal : and though we can scarcely exert any 
compulsion in such a matter, yet I would have the latter pro- 
ceeding fi?25Couraged, and the former e?2couraged, by the potent 
voice of public opinion. Further, if we can, by such a dis- 
tinction as I have suggested, increase the value set upon the 
appearance of a paper in our Transactions, we might take 
means to attract to ourselves various communications from 
sources external to our Society, which at present naturally 
follow the course of the stream that carries them to the 
Journal. 
Another source of the deficiency in question, appears to 
me to lie in the desultory mode in which a large proportion 
of our microscopic observers apply themselves to the use of 
the instrument. When we contrast the products of British 
and of German microscopy, and see how completely inverse 
are the proportions between the values of the instruments em- 
