The President's Address. By A. D. Michael . 
11 
wrote the descriptive catalogue of the Marine Polyzoa in the collec- 
tion of the British Museum ; the article Polyzoa in the English 
Cyclopmdia, which contained the first satisfactory attempt at a 
classification of the group ; and the ‘Monograph of the Fossil Polyzoa 
of the Crag * for the Palseontographical Society ; and he translated 
Steenstrup’s ‘ Alternation of Generations’ for the Bay Society. In 
1864, he and Dr. Falconer went to Gibraltar to investigate the 
ancient cave-fauna there ; and finally he examined and described the 
Polyzoa collected during the voyages of the ‘ Battlesnake ’ and the 
4 Challenger.’ 
It was during Busk’s presidency in 1848 that we find in our 
Transactions a paper by Mr. Warrington, “ On a new method for the 
mounting of organic substances as permanent objects for microscopic 
investigation.” The medium recommended is “ the liquid known under 
the name of glycerine and just at the end of his presidency that we 
find there Gosse’s well-known paper “ On the architectural instincts of 
Melicerta ringens .” 
Dr. Arthur Farre, F.B.S., who became President in 1850, was 
an original Fellow and first Secretary of the Society. He contributed 
several papers to our Transactions, but his fame was rather medical 
than microscopical. He was the fifth son of Dr. John Bichard Farre, 
and was horn in 1811 in Charterhouse Square, and educated at 
Charterhouse. He was Abernethy’s prosector, lecturer on comparative 
anatomy at St. Bartholomew’s in succession to Owen, and Kobert 
Ferguson’s successor in the chair of obstetric medecine at King’s 
College. It was during his presidency that we find the first paper 
in our Transactions by Mr. Wenham, whose long series of inventions 
and improvements in the Microscope and its apparatus, which will be 
chiefly found in the pages of our Journals, have been of such material 
benefit to almost all workers with our favourite instrument. This 
list of inventions is far too long for me to attempt to refer to them 
to-night, but I may remind you that what is now known as the 
Wenham prism for binocular Microscopes is figured in our Trans- 
actions for 1861. During this presidency we also find the first 
paper by Mr. Sorby, who subsequently became your President, and by 
Prof. Huxley, who became a member of the council in 1857. 
In 1852 George Jackson, well known to microscopists by the 
Jackson- Lister form of Microscope, became President, but as the time 
at my disposal to-night will not allow me to speak of all the eminent 
men who have occupied the presidential chair subsequent to this time, 
I propose to add a few notes respecting such of them as have passed 
away from us, in the form of an appendix, if you think it worth 
printing this address. 
Shortly after Mr. Jackson’s election an offer was received from 
Dr. Lankester and George Busk that they would start and edit a 
journal, to be called the ‘ Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science,’ 
in which they would publish the Society’s Transactions, and supply 
