ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 
673 
Once observed, there is no mistaking the nucleus in the two con- 
ditions, and always when in this last condition it seeks and effects union 
with another, and genetic products ensue. 
I cannot but believe that we have here the act of fertilization in its 
simplest condition, and the act of cell-budding in its most initial state. 
By their study the complexities of karyokinesis may be, I believe, ap- 
proached and understood. It is worthy of our best effort ; and certainly 
is worthy of the finest endeavour of the optician and the chemist to 
provide us with the best possible objectives — not objectives that, though 
triumphs of science and art, are not adapted to our wants — but objectives 
that may be applied to this most difficult and most promising labour by 
meeting our specific and inevitable wants. 
This may not be possible without the chemist’s aid. It seems 
almost certain that mounting media of great refractive indices are indis- 
pensable ; but to serve the purpose of the student of living cells they 
must be media applied without heat, and at least tolerant, or for some 
moments at least not destructive of organic tissues. 
Of this I do not despair, and when I see what great mathematical 
and optical insight and ability have done in the past, combined with 
perfect lens grinding and mounting, I anticipate a nobler future for 
microscopic biology and microscopists of the true type.” 
The late Mr. John Mayall, Jr., Sec. It.M.S. — Our deceased friend, 
who to so many of us was the type of manly vigour no less than of great 
mental activity, died on the 27th of July last, from an attack of acute 
pneumonia ; his illness was so short that many learnt of our loss only 
when the August number of the Journal came into their hands. 
Mr. Mayall was not fifty years of age, having been born at Lingard, 
in Yorkshire, on January the 7th, 1842 ; he received his early education 
at the Lycee Bonaparte, where, as we may suppose, he acquired his 
accurate knowledge of French language and literature : on his return 
to England he was for a time a student at King’s College, London. 
But, as we all recognize, a man’s education depends as much, if not 
more, on his associates than his schoolmasters ; Mayall was a friend of 
the great French painter Meissonier and the distinguished English 
mathematician Augustus de Morgan. 
His acquaintance with and mastery of the theories of mathematical 
optics was of great service in the introduction and explanation of the 
views of Prof. Abbe ; he translated Naegeli and Schwendener’s treatise 
on the Microscope, and he delivered two valuable series of Cantor 
Lectures on his favourite instrument before the Society of Arts. He 
first became associated with this Society in 1867, and was a member of 
its Council from 1881 to the time of his death ; in 1890 he was elected 
to succeed Mr. Crisp as one of the Secretaries of the Society. In this 
last office he was most energetic, undertaking the greater part of the 
direction of the affairs of the Society, and being a constant visitor to our 
rooms. He carried through the business of our removal at great trouble 
to himself, but none to the Society, and, even on his death-bed, he sent 
communications to his colleague regarding some difficult questions in 
which the Society’s interests were involved. 
The Fellows had ample opportunity of observing Mayall’s acquaint- 
ance with all the details of the manufacture and manipulation of the 
