70 
The President's Address. 
the Lord^s Prayer is written^ that is, about the size of a trans- 
verse section of a hair of the human head. These specimens 
have been seen by many, and some are in the possession of 
several gentlemen, some of whom, I believe, are present. The 
dimensions given are not loose statements, which may or 
may not be true; but the measurements have been made 
with the greatest care, and in the instances mentioned they 
were verified by the late Mr. George Jackson, whose skill in 
practical micrometry is well known. But there are produc- 
tions more marvellous still, the statements about which are 
not to be regarded as travellers^ tales ; they are what, whether 
addressed to a learned society or the general public, such 
statements ought to be, the truth without exaggeration. The 
name and address of Mr. " Matthew Marshall, Bank of Eng- 
land,^^ have been written in '^,T-oi),-oiro'^ inch — the two 
and a half millionth part of an inch. The Lord^s Prayer, too, 
has been written and may be read in xf-b-Iwo^^ of English 
square inch. The measurements of one of these specimens 
were verified by Dr. Bowerbank, with a difference of not more 
than one five-millionth of an inch, and that diff*erence, small 
as it is, arose from his not including the prolongation of the 
letter / in the sentence, Deliver us from evil so that he 
made the area occupied by the writing less than that stated 
above. Some idea of the minuteness of the characters in 
these specimens may be obtained from the statement that the 
whole Bible and Testament in writing of the same size might 
be placed twenty-two times on the surface of a square inch. 
The grounds for this startling assertion are as follows : — The 
Bible and Testament together, in the English language, are 
said to contain 3,566,480 letters. The number of letters in 
the Lord^s Prayer, as written, ending with the sentence, ^' De- 
liver us from evil," is 223, whence, as =^'^-|4v^ « ^ = 15,992, it 
appears that the Bible and Testament together contain the 
same number of letters as the Lord's Prayer written 16,000 
times ; if, then, the prayer were written in TT,Vo"o't^ inch, 
the Bible and Testament in writing of the same size would be 
contained by one square inch ; but as 3^^^,^-0-0-0*^ of ^'^ inch is 
less than -^^ndi part of -p^ -i-^-^nd of an inch, it follows that the 
Bible and Testament in writing of that size would occupy less 
space than Vi^nd of a square inch ; in other words, the writing 
is so small, that in similar characters the Bible and Testament 
together could be written twenty-two times in the space of 
one English square inch. 
To return to the objects of the Society; its founders con- 
templated not only the promotion and diffusion of improve- 
ments in the optical and mechanical construction, and in the 
