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PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
order. Hence it is probable that ToUes has made these amplifiers 
for the last nine years. 
I am entirely in harmony with Dr. Wythe's general position, to 
wit : " That future progress in the power of the microscope must 
depend on the eye-piece, or intermediate arrangements of lenses 
between the eye-piece and object-glass." 
Dr. Wythe, who was present, remarked that he had not been aware 
of such an amplifier as his ever having been made before ; and Mr. 
Hyde stated that he had used one of Tolles' amplifiers for some years, 
and it seemed hardly possible that they could be " exactly alike," 
for the results regarding magnification and definition were not at all 
the same, and that Tolles' does not approach the Wythe amplifier. 
The regular meeting of the San Francisco Microscopical Society 
was held on Thursday evening, June 15. 
Mr. J. A. Langstroth presented two slides mounted by him with 
the transverse section of the ovary of Trojpceolum majus, and the 
pollens of convolvulus, honeysuckle, pansy, and others, fixed on the 
same slide, in order to readily compare their size and shape, both of 
which slides, on examination, were found very interesting. 
Gen. Hewston donated a slide mounted with volatilized gold, 
which, under a frd objective, opaque, was not only a beautiful, 
but instructive object. The microscopic globules were perfect in 
shape, and were obtained at some distance from the melting pot, from 
which they had been thrown off by the draught and heat in a volatile 
form, so to speak, and condensed in the air in the form of minute 
shot, forming a veritable shower of golden rain. With all the care 
and appliances for the prevention of wastage in smelting or refining 
gold, a portion is lost in this way ; and no doubt the roofs of the houses 
adjacent to mints and refineries would yield enough of the precious 
metal to show the colour, at least under the microscope. 
The fact that the Society's Nachet No. 5 objective had shown 
No. 19 of Moller's test-plate into beads, at a former meeting of the 
Society, and had attracted considerable attention from some micro- 
scopists in the East, was alluded to by Mr. Hyde, and in connection 
he made a statement to the effect that the test-plate used on that 
occasion was one of a dozen which had been but recently sent out 
from London, and has proved to difi'er from all the rest, and others 
owned by members of the Society, in the respect that not only this 
No. 5, but any good glass of ^th and upwards, could resolve 
No. 19. 
Mr. Hyde further stated that he has examined the diatom care- 
fully, after securing the slide as a curiosity, and has no hesitation in 
stating that it is a true Nitzschia curvula, but with the peculiarity, 
amounting to almost an anomaly, that it is so easily resolved. The 
No. 5 fails to resolve No. 19 on the other slides ; and while it is an 
exceptionally good glass, it has, by a curious combination of circum- 
stances, provoked considerable discussion — not its fault or the ob- 
servers of the dots, but attributable to the fact that the anomaly was 
in the object and not the objective. 
