
188 THE NORTHERN MICROSCOPIST. 

should be given with the preparation. After such a course, when 
the student comes to the work of every-day life in the routine of 
practical medicine, he finds laid a solid basis upon which to extend 
his future observations. 
All physicians cannot be specialists with the microscope, but all 
should know the pathological difference between fatty degeneration 
and amyloid degeneration when they see it. Yet how many do? 
I venture not ten per cent. of them, and so long as you insist upon 
surrounding the student with so complicated an outfit as the writer 
above mentioned would suggest, so long will he continue to turn 
out physicians from our medical schools ignorant of the essential 
principles of histology and pathology. I well remember while I 
was a student in the Pathological Institute in Berlin, that the great 
endeavour of Virchow was always to simplify things as much as 
possible ; and had I been obliged to buy my whole outfit, the cost, 
including my microscope, would not have exceeded seventy-five 
dollars. In the future I may have more to say upon this subject. 
—American Monthly Microscopical Journal. 

TO SECRETARIES OF SOCIETIES. 
Tn view of the constantly increasing pressure upon our columns, we find it impossible 
to give such full and complete lists of objects shown at the Ordinary Meetings and 
Soirees of Societies, as we hitherto have done. 
We do not wish all lists expunged from reports, but that there should be some 
method in enumeration is evinced by the numerous letters we have received during 
the last six months, to the effect that in the opinion of our correspondents, many of 
these lists are of but little use. ‘Our own views coincide completely with those of 
our correspondents. We had long been of opinion that the lists of objects might be 
cut down with advantage, but wished for twelve months at least, to provide a per- 
manent record, useful to young Societies and to those wishful to exhibit at Soirees. 
We have done this, and therefore ask the Secretaries of Societies to aid us in making 
their lists as interesting as possible, confining it to objects shown to illustrate papers 
or other communications, new apparatus, and to rare specimens met with in the 
district. 

NOTICES OF MEETINGS. 
BLACKBURN FIELD NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY.—MiIcroscopican 
SECTION.—Meeting 1st May, 1882, Mr. Knowles exhibited Larve of Whip 
Tail Fly (Eristalis tenax), taken from a ditch behind Revidge. Vulgar name 
for Larva—Rat-tailed Maggot. Mr. Pilling, Spores of Equisetum, obtained at 
Feniscowles, on 25th April, samples of which he gave to those present. He at 
the same time pointed out an error in Hogg’s sixth edition, p. 311, in which 
he says that, ‘‘ While the spore remains in the sporange these fibres are rolled 
*‘round the spore as seen, etc., but by gently slackening the fruit spike, the 
‘* spores are discharged. The coiled fibres immediately unroll as at F., their 
“elasticity causing them to spring about in a most curious manner. In a few 
‘‘minutes this motion apparently ceases, but if breathed upon they again zzrol/ 
“and dart about with wonderful elasticity.” The contrary is the fact. When 

