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president’s address. 
which prey on the larvie of Wasps. jMr. AVliittaker’s paper on 
“ Abnormal Plumage,” read at the same meeting, will also be 
published. Mr. Southwell gives us liis annual “Notes on the 
Herring Fishery ; ” and Mr. Preston his “ Meteorological Notes ” 
for the year. 
In continuation of the biographical notices of old Norfolk 
Naturalists, Professor Newton has contributed a memoir of the late 
John Scales, whose name was so intimately connected with the 
Ornithology of the county in the first half of the present century. 
For the portrait which accompanies the memoir, we are also 
indebted to the liberality of Professor Newton. 
The subject to which I wish to draw your attention this evening, 
is one with which probably the greater number of Members of 
this Society are not familiar; but it is one of great and growing 
interest, and one which, I think, is strictly within the province of 
such a Society as this to entertain. It is upon the enormous 
influence of minute organisms in the Kingdom of Nature. It is 
not possible within the limits of. our time to do more than 
briefly allude to the general character of the changes promoted 
by these minute and low types of life ; but the last ten or 
twelve years have been prolific in evidence of their existence, 
and of the vast influence which they are secretly and silently 
exerting upon ourselves and our surroundings. These organisms 
are identified to us under the names of Microzymes {i.e. minute 
ferments), ^licrococci, See.., and more specifically as Bacteria, 
Bacilli, etc. 
It is true that one of the earliest, and certainly one of the 
cleverest, of microscopists was acquainted by observation with the 
forms of these objects, namely, Leuwenhoek, who, just two hundred 
years ago, recorded that he found very minute living objects of 
this character in the fluids of the mouth and nose of his own 
person. Any further study as to the natural economy of such 
objects, or of the kind of work in which they were occupied, seems 
to Imve remained in abeyance until very recent times. Every 
one is probably now familiar with the elaborate researches of 
