266 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 
The President announced that the Scrutineers had handed in their 
report of the result of the ballot, showing that the whole of those whose 
names were printed in the list had been elected. 
The President said he had in the first place to thank them for the 
honour they had done him by electing him to a third year of office, a 
very graceful act on their part when it was remembered how imperfectly, 
owing to his absence from many of the meetings, he had been able to 
discharge his duties. It had been a great pleasure to him to be in his 
place whenever his health had permitted, and it had been a still greater 
pleasure to observe how greatly the Society had flourished, not on account 
of, but during his Presidency, and he could only add to this the hope 
that its prosperity would both increase and be long continued. 
“ And now, gentlemen, I propose to deviate from the usual custom 
of the chair, and, acting as I believe you, under the circumstances, 
would wish me to do, not only to propose, as your spokesman, the usual 
vote of thanks to your Secretaries for the admirable way in which the 
afiairs of your Society have been conducted during the last year, but to 
express to your senior Secretary, Mr. Crisp, our gratitude for his long 
and unwearied labours, and our deep regret that he has found it im- 
peratively necessary to resign his office. 
Mr. Crisp has now discharged the arduous duties of Secretary and 
Editor of our Journal for twelve years; and during that time the Society 
has doubled its numbers and has greatly improved its position and 
influence ; results which I feel sure you will consider to be due, in no 
slight degree, to the energy, sound advice, admirable tact, and unfailing 
good temper of our senior Secretary. Our Journal, too, as the 
‘Athenaeum’ has justly said, has, during his editing, ‘been converted 
into one of the most useful aids to research which can be put into the 
hands of working biologists. It has averaged a thousand pages in each 
volume, and its circulation is understood to be more than a thousand 
copies.’ Mr. Crisjj’s editing has been the reverse of nominal. Of course 
he has had the assistance of very able and willing colleagues, but when 
I mention that, till quite lately, he has selected nearly all the papers to 
bo noted; that he has read all the proofs, and often made excellent 
suggestions on them ; and that he has himself largely written the part 
of ‘ Microscoj^y,’ I have said enough to show how much we lose in 
parting, not only with our Secretary, but also with our Editor. 
But this is by no means all. It is to him that we are indebted for 
the introduction of Prof. Abbe’s theories to the notice of English 
microscopists and opticians, and for a lucid explanation and vigorous 
defence of them. Strictly speaking, Dr. Henry Eripp, of Clifton, then 
President of our Bristol Microscopical Society, was the first to translate 
Prof. Abbe’s original paper ; but his translation, which was published 
in the ‘ Proceedings ’ of the Bristol Naturalists’ Society, attracted little 
notice, till Mr. Crisp republished it, with others following it, in your 
‘ Proceedings.’ 
You, of course, well remember the storm that raged round immersion 
lenses and angles of aperture, &c., and how your Secretary never wearied 
in exploding fallacy after fallacy, as one antagonist after another rose 
up to maintain the old ideas. His victory, indeed, has been so complete. 
