The President's Address . By A. B. Michael. 3 
practised as a medical man; the son was brought up to the same 
profession and practised it at Wellclose Square, where he made his 
discovery of the glazed cases for the transmission and growth of plants, 
which were the means of introducing the tea-plant into Assam, the 
cinchonas into India, and which are used to this day whenever it is 
desired to import new plants into this or other countries — not to speak 
of their having rendered life somewhat more pleasurable to thousands 
of dwellers in cities who have a taste for ferns and mosses. Ward 
erected a large Wardian case on his staircase at Wellclose Square, and 
a Tintern Abbey window was modelled for it by Edwin Quekett. When 
he left the square and went to live at Clapham Bise, Ward took this 
window away with him, and it stands to this day where W ard put it, 
namely in the rockery round the water-lily pond at what is now 
No. 303 Clapham Koad, where lives our respected Past President, 
Dr. Braithwaite, and it may not be unknown to you that Mrs. 
Braith waite was once Miss Ward. 
Ward was one of the most active founders of this Society ; he was 
its first Treasurer and occupied that position for twenty-three years ; 
he retired in 1862, and died on the 4th June, 1868, at the age of 
seventy-seven. Ward and Dr. Bowerbank practically kept open 
house to microscopists and other men of science, and a number of micro- 
scopists, whom Bowerbank called his “ Band of Brothers,” used to meet 
frequently at these two houses. It was after one of these gatherings, 
assembled to greet Ehrenberg, that Bowerbank is said to have 
exclaimed to the llev. J. B. Eeade, “ God bless the Microscope, let us 
have a Society.” The matter was broached at the next meeting in 
Ward’s drawing-room, and it was in consequence of what took place 
there that those seventeen gentlemen came to Edwin Quekett s house 
on that September evening some five and fifty years ago. 
The time was propitious, ideas of the improvement of the Micro- 
scope and microscopical science had been in the air for some little time, 
and the Society was becoming a want. In January 1830, Mr. Lister 
had published his epoch-making paper “ On the Improvement of 
Achromatic Compound Microscopes,” announcing the discovery of two 
aplanatic foci in a double achromatic object-glass, upon which, together 
with the practical directions of the author, Messrs. Powell, Boss, 
and Smith (names not unknown to us to day) worked so success- 
fully. In 1832, Mr. J. T. Cooper’s suggestion of using Canada 
balsam for mounting objects had been put in practice by Mr. Bond, 
and a first notice of it had appeared in print in 1835, in a book by 
Mr. Pritchard entitled ‘ A list of Two Thousand Microscopic Objects ’ ; 
and in 1837 Andrew Boss had suggested the correction-collar. 
Among the seventeen assembled at Edwin Quekett’s house we find, 
in addition to that gentleman himself and Ward, the names of Mr. 
Bowerbank (not Dr. then), Dr. Farre, George Jackson, and the Bev. 
J. B. Beade, all of whom became Presidents of the Society, and also 
Lister himself, George and Conrad Loddiges the nurserymen, and 
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