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the hairs of good cotton any microscopist may satisfy himself 
in five minutes. An examination of many varieties of cotton 
has led me to believe that in those descriptions which find 
most favour in the English market there is a very large pro- 
portion of hairs that are entirely or nearly filled with second- 
ary deposits ; and on the contrary, in the low priced cotton 
the flat fibre consists of hardly anything but membrane ; in 
fact, an apparently undernourished cell predominates. The 
knotty portions, which I believe are considered refuse, con- 
sist almost entirely of these flat fibres. I believe that the 
absence of secondary deposit is an indication of careless cul- 
ture, or, what is much the same thing, of a poor soil. 
November 16th, 1863. 
J. Sidebotham, Esq., President of the Section, in the Chair. 
The President exhibited some spurious gold slides, on 
which he remarked that the first offered for sale were made 
by rolling gummed sand in gold leaf, some even more roughly 
by dabbing gold leaf on sand gummed to tbe slide ; whereas 
the practice now appears to be to electro-plate plumbago, the 
result of which however differs from the nugget-lilce form of 
real gold by being nicely broken off at what would be the 
angles. Some very good imitations were made by boiling 
plumbago in oxalic acid and chloride of gold. 
Mr. C. O’Neil stated that very beautiful spires of gold 
were observable on the surface of auriferous quartz boiled in 
carbonate of soda and then submitted to the action of heat 
for a short time under the muffle. 
Tbe President exhibited Phascum rectum and Hookeria 
lucens in fruit. 
