202 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Mar., 1899. 
Animal Pathology. 
THE STOCKOWNERS’ INDEBTEDNESS TO THE MICROSCOPE, 
By C. J. POUND, F.R.M.S., 
Director of the Queensland Stock Institute. 
Tux following is the text of an address delivered by Mr. C. J. Pound, President 
of the Royal Society of Queensland, to the members of that body at the annual 
general meeting of the society on 31st January, 1898 :— 
On the present occasion I have thought it advisable, after due considera- 
tion, to depart from the usual custom of reviewing the past year’s work of this 
or any other scientific society, by addressing you on a subject which immediately 
concerns the most important industry this colony possesses, viz. :—The 
stockowners’ indebtedness to the microscope, and in order to make the subject 
more interesting to those engaged in pastoral pursuits I have introduced some 
notes on my own personal recollections of the invaluable benefit that some 
stockowners have derived by means of the microscope since I arrived in 
Australia some six years ago. 
Up till within recent years the microscope was looked upon by most people 
merely as a scientific toy, and they believed that little or no benefit could be 
derived even from its very close acquaintance. 
During my travels through the various pastoral districts of this colony, 1 
am frequently asked if I have brought my microscope with me. On my reply- 
ing in the affirmative I am at once met with a volley of questions, of which the 
following may be taken as typical examples :—(a) Will you show us all the 
snakes and insects in a drop of our tank water? (4) If I catch a beetle L 
suppose you will show it to us under your microscope? I reckon it looks like 
one of those devils that eat our peaches. You know what I mean—flying- 
foxes. (c) I suppose a mosquito would be as large as a goanna under your 
microscope? and soon. It is a very remarkable fact that what held good fifty 
years ago in regard to the popular idea of the nature of the microscope prac- 
tically speaking holds good at the present time. In the year 1847 the late Dr. 
C.-R. Goring, in an essay on the microscope, remarks that “the great mass of 
mankind will almost invariably be more delighted by an exhibition where they 
can see the whole object at once, though only moderately magnified, than by a 
display with a perfect high-power instrument, which shows only small detached 
parts prodigiously amplified. Occasionally I meet with people who are so 
unreasonable as to expect that opticians ought to make a microscope which 
would exhibit the whole of a laughing-jackass or a bullock magnified at least a 
million times, not being aware, [ suppose, that the more we magnify any 
object the less we must be content to see of it, according to the law of nature 
and optics, whatever may be the construction of the glasses we employ. 
“Once,” says Dr. Goring, who by the way was a most humorous microscopist, 
“TY met with a virtuoso in Hyde Park who seemed to have effected a sort of 
approximation in his own way as to the kind of microscope the general public 
wanted, and was making a considerably handsome collection of half-pence 
upon the strength of it. He was exhibiting a variety of large objects with a 
compound microscope of the old fashion, which might perhaps magnify six 
times, and requesting the observers to look through the instrument (which was 
placed horizontally) with one eye, while they viewed Apsley House (which was 
three-quarters of a mile off) with the other, in order that they might form an 
idea of the stupendous powers of the splendid microscope submitted to their 
