Profiare. HE Sixth Volume closes the First Series of THE JOURNAL OF MICROSCOPY AND NATURAL SCIENCE, formerly called The Journal of the Postal Microscopical Society. We sincerely hope that the place in your libra ries which was at the first granted from a kind desire to help forward a work on microscopy just struggling into existence, will, after six years of its publication and literary life, be continued to it, not from mere favour, but because it has won its way and confirmed its position by real worth and solid value. It has been deemed advisable to begin a New Series with the Seventh Volume of this Journal. The first part of that series will be published in January, 1888, and several new departments of interest to the microscopist and to the student of natural science will be entered upon. We have received promises from many naturalists and scientists of undoubted ability to furnish papers for the new series, and we are assured that the seventh volume of the Journal will be in no respects inferior to any of its predecessors, either in value or in interest. It remains for us only to thank our numerous contributors and subscribers for their much-valued support, and to beg that they will favour us with a further continuance of the same. "Mine eye unworthy seems to read One page of Nature's beauteous book; It lies before me, fair outspread I only cast a wistful look." Keble. VER since the receipt of Mr. Allen's letter informing me that your choice for the office of Presidentelect had fallen upon me, I have in vain been endeavouring to discover the reasons which led to that selection, and can assure you that my feelings of surprise have not been diminished by time; but like the fly in amber, I still wonder "why I am here," and can only thank you, either for your discernment of qualities which you suppose me to possess, or for your great kindness in bestowing the highest honour in your power upon a member now of some years' standing. This honour I highly appreciate, and with a deep sense of my own inability to fill worthily the place heretofore occupied by more distinguished men, must beg your kindest indulgence and forbearance. We meet here as members of a society, whose one bond of VOL. VI. B |