9B= Ueport of Committee for ascertaining 
of accomplishing the object^ of such a simple and inexpensive 
character as would merit universal adoption. 
The Committee have held three meetings^ besides having 
had communications by letter, and they now proceed to lay 
before the Society the result of their deliberations. 
They consider that a finder, in order to be universally 
adopted, should possess the following properties : 
1st. It should be applicable to any microscope, whether 
furnished with stage-movements or not ; and it should not 
preclude the use of these movements. 
2d. It should not require fresh labels to be placed on 
the slides, or any mark or index to be made on them. 
3d. It should not be necessary to remove the slide or 
finder for the registering or finding of every separate object. 
4th. The divisions on the index should be easily read. 
5th. It should aUow the microscope to be used in the in- 
clined position ; and — 
6th. It should be cheap, and simple enough to be con- 
structed by any one possessing a moderate amount of me- 
chanical skill. 
In the plans which they recommend for carrying out these 
requirements, the Committee lay no claim to originality; for 
they have merely selected materials from what has been 
already proposed, and arranged them in a modified form. 
They are therefore free from the prejudice which an inventor 
would naturally feel in favour of his own ideas. 
Whatever modification an individual may contrive for his 
own convenience, in the form of the finder, the same standard 
of measurement should be adopted ; and the measurements 
or distances of objects must be taken relatively to the same 
fixed point. This point should by no means have reference 
to any part of the microscope (which would be fatal to a 
universal system), but should be considered as a point in the 
slide itself upon which the object is mounted. 
The slides recommended by the Microscopical Society 
(three inches by one) are now so generally used that it is not 
worth while to propose a method of meeting exceptional 
cases ; therefore the above starting point may, under all cir- 
cumstances, be represented by the intersection of two crossed 
lines taken as perpendiculars, one and a half inch from one 
end of the slide, and half an inch from one side. As it 
would be difficult and troublesome to rule this cross on every 
slide, it is preferable to have one plain slide as a standard, 
with the cross occupying the position above named. The 
measured distance being taken strictly from one end and one 
side, the corner common to them should be marked with an 
