Jo^S£ilp?nm^ PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 173 
microscope very mucli like mine for sale, and were selling it as Mr. 
Marshall's. 
With all respect to Mr. Marshall, I think it should have been 
brought out in our joint names, or, at least, I should have been 
written to before the microscopes were brought before the public. 
Chables Adcock, M.K.CS., &c.. 
Corresponding Member (late Hon. Sec.) Birmingham Natural History and 
Microscopical Society ; Resident Medical Officer ^ Jersey Dispensary, 
PEOCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES.* 
Oldham Microscopic Society.! 
July 13th. — The Chairman, Mr. PuUinger, in opening the pro- 
ceedings, briefly reviewed the history of the Society, congratulating 
the members on their increased numerical strength, and the many 
valuable additions they had made to their stock of working micro- 
scopic apparatus during the four years of the Society's existence. 
Mr. Waddington read a paper " On our British Mosses," in which 
he discussed their beauty as microscopic objects, the pleasures and 
advantages to be derived from their study, their geographical distri- 
bution, their economic value, and the part they had probably played 
in past geologic ages. 
It was a pleasure to him, he said, to live at a time when these 
beautiful objects could be examined and studied with the help of 
instruments so much superior to those with which the great Linnaeus 
conducted his investigations. Many important corrections and many 
new discoveries in muscology had been made with our improved 
means, which were utterly impossible with the old and imperfect 
instruments. The simple structure of mosses correctly placed them 
low in the scale of vegetable being. On the one hand, the andrises and 
phascums connected them with the more lowly Jungermannias ; and, 
on the other, the sphagnum s, with their more complex organization, 
clearly conducted to the higher cryptogams, thus offering, he thought, 
a few of the " links " so much clamoured for by the opponents of the 
development theory. The paper was well illustrated by numerous 
slides of sections of mosses, many of them contributed by the members 
generally, all bearing on the points adverted to. 
The paper concluded with a lucid explanation of the best modes 
of mounting and preparing for the microscope the different parts of 
mosses. 
* Secretaries of Societies will greatly oblige us by writing out their reports 
legibly — especially the technical terms — and by "underlining" words, such as 
specific names, which must be printed in italics. They will thus ensure accuracy 
and enhance the value of their proceedings. — Ed. M. M. J. 
t Report supplied by Mr. James Nield. 
