70 
The Preside7ifs Address. 
one can^ I think_, deny ; and rather than regarding it as 
antagonistic of your Society, I feel you can fairly claim what- 
ever merits it possesses as your own. It offers a great facility 
for the publication of their papers to observers who dwell at 
too great a distance from London to join the meetings of the 
Society, and who feel that the mere formality of having a 
paper read, or merely its title, is not necessary to ensure for 
it the candid criticism of the scientific world. Our meetings 
have, I apprehend, a value quite independent of the papers 
for the evening, in the meeting of men of similar tastes, in 
the discussions which some oral communication may evoke, 
and, above all, in the arrangements by which the instruments 
of our research are always on the table for the purposes of 
experiment and observation. It is on this last fact that 1 
think much of the success of our meetings depends. Unlike 
the cultivators of so many other departments of science, we 
are enabled to bring the objects of our researches without 
any inconvenience to the meetings of the Society, and by the 
aid of the fine instruments we possess to exhibit them to 
our fellow-members. Not that I would for one moment de- 
precate the reading papers at our meetings, but I feel that 
unless we met oftener than once a month, our meetings would 
not be so instructive and agreeable as they have been if a 
much larger number of papers had been read. The papers 
already published in the ^ Transactions ' average more than 
one for every meeting of the Society, and do not include 
many papers that have been read. 
During the past year eighteen papers have been read at 
the ordinary meetings, and as they have most of them been 
published, perhaps I may be excused from giving any ex- 
tended account of their contents. I know that it has been 
the practice of my predecessors in this chair to give an ana- 
lysis of each paper ; but as this custom originated when the 
^Transactions^ were published with less regularity than at pre- 
sent, and there seemed more reason for putting members in 
possession of our proceedings, I do not propose to do more 
than briefly refer you to their contents. The papers read 
have been sixteen in number, and may be arranged as follows : 
Four on the Structure of the Microscope; six on Micro- 
scopic Plants ; two on Microscopic Animals ; two on 
Animal Structure; and two on general subjects. 
The papers on the Mechanics of the Microscope were as 
follows : 
Mr. Hislopj On a New Secondary Stage. 
Mr. Tomkins, On a New Form of Simple Microscope, 
which he calls a " Diatom detector.^^ 
