The President’ s Address . By A. D. Michael. 
15 
Yes ! It is not merely the instances of important inventions and 
improvements, such as those before referred to, and such as Mr. 
Stephenson’s suggestion of homogeneous-immersion lenses which Prof. 
Abbe worked out, and the same gentleman’s binocular Microscope, so 
admirable for dissecting purposes, &c., all of which have been the 
direct outcrop of the Society, but it is in an even greater degree the 
hundreds of small improvements which have been gradually brought 
out under its influence, and have formed a constant progress towards 
the present excellence of the instrument ; and most of all it is the 
steady encouragement which the Society has been able to afford over 
half a century to improvements in the instrument and to its intelligent 
use, an influence which has spread all over the civilized world and has 
resulted in hundreds of other Societies and institutions with more or 
less similar objects springing up in this and foreign countries, that 
have formed the real value of this institution. During its more than 
fifty years of existence, the Microscope has grown from the compara- 
tively rarely used and imperfect possession of a few men of science and 
the amusement of a few children to be the highly finished and most 
important companion of almost all investigators of nature ; sold in 
thousands, and employed alike by the physician, the anatomist, the 
general biologist, the botanist, the mineralogist, and even the physicist, 
and extending its range into commerce and agriculture. There is at 
the present time hardly a biological or medical Society in the world 
which does not derive a large part of the discoveries laid before 
it from investigations made by the aid of the Microscope, and I believe 
that this Society and its influence have been most important factors in 
this great progress. There is also plenty of admirable biological work 
to be found in the Transactions both by the eminent men before referred 
to and by Allman, Caruthers, Dallinger, Drysdale, Kupert Jones, 
Klein, Kay Lankester, Murie, and others. 
Finally, I will say a word as to the future : an idea is, I think, 
prevalent in some quarters that the Microscope is now perfect and that 
consequently the chief raison d'etre of this Society is over. I am not by 
any means one of those who take this view ; we may not for the moment 
see hew further improvements are to be made, but people rarely do 
until they are made. There is a tendency in the human mind when a 
considerable progress has been made either in invention or investigation 
to say, “ Now we have got to the end of it, there is not any more to 
come ” ; but this seldom turns out to be correct ; it has been said 
about the Microscope over and over again as each step was made. I 
will only quote one instance : there were few of our early microscopists 
who knew more about the Microscope or contributed more to its 
improvement than Dr. Goring ; in his exordium to the first edition of 
his ‘ Microscopic Illustrations,’ published in 1829, the learned doctor 
says, “ Microscopes are now placed completely on a level with telescopes 
and like them must remain stationary in their construction.” In 
January 1830, Lister published his era-making paper on improve- 
ments in the Microscope before referred to. 
