270 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 
with them on the occasion of their first meeting in their new rooms. 
He hoped, however, that his recovery from the effects of the accident 
would soon take place, and that they would before long see him amongst 
them again. 
Mr. J. Mayall, junr., said that before entering upon the business of 
the evening he must thank the Fellows of the Society for the honour 
which they had done him in electing him to the office of Secretary. He 
desired to say that during his tenure of the Secretaryship it would be 
his endeavour and chief aim to promote the welfare of the Society as far 
as he was able, and to give every one who was interested in the study of 
microscopy the fairest possible play at the meetings. Because he held 
certain views upon optical questions, it must not be thought that he was 
unwilling to hear those who differed from him on those subjects ; on the 
contrary, he desired that, so far as the interests of the Society permitted, 
every one should be at liberty to state his opinions in the freest and 
fairest way. 
Mr. Mayall said that the Society had since their last meeting received 
a donation of a specially interesting character, from Prof. E. Abbe, of 
Jena, namely, one of Zeiss’s new apochromatic 1/lOth objectives, of 
1*6 N.A. It would be remembered that the new objectives had 
recently formed the subject of several communications to the Society. 
When first he heard from Dr. Czapski, of the firm of Zeiss, of an inten- 
tion to send one of the objectives to the Society, he was not quite certain 
whether it was to be sent as a donation or for inspection only. Upon 
further inquiry, however, he found that it was sent to them as a donation, 
as would be seen from the letter, dated Jena, 17th inst., just received 
from Prof. Abbe, as follows : — 
“ A few months ago our co-operator. Dr. Czapski, of this town, 
communicated with the Koyai Microscopical Society on the subject 
of a new objective of increased aperture, which had been constructed 
by us last year. The Editors of the Journal of the Society published 
this communication in the February number of the Journal, in the 
Transactions of the Society, and they also gave a full account of 
observations made with the lens. 
The aim which was held in view in the construction of the 
objective — viz. to increase the aperture of the microscope to the 
maximum degree obtainable with the means at present available in 
practical optics — unavoidably involves such restrictions in the use 
of the objective as to render its application very limited. It is, 
therefore, not to be expected that this objective will be at all exten- 
sively employed by microscopists, and, in fact, only a small number 
of these lenses have as yet been constructed. 
It was, however, our opinion that it would bo of some interest 
to the Fellows of the Royal Microscopical Society to test the result 
of this, our experiment, % ocular inspection. We accordingly con- 
structed one of these lenses specially for the Royal Microscopical 
Society, and now forward it by our agent, Mr. C. Baker, of London, 
requesting the Society’s acceptance of it as a token of our estimation 
of the valuable services rendered by the Society towards tho 
advancement of microscopical optics.” 
