Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society of Australia.

The first meeting of the recently formed Ophthalmological Society of Australia was held on April 5, 1939, in Melbourne, and this is the report of the proceedings. The presidential address was given by Sir James Barrett and dealt with blindness, partial sightedness and the history of Braille type. O'Day reported on his researches on the visual cells of Australian reptiles and mammals. He concluded that the early reptiles because of their diurnal habits discarded the rods they inherited from the amphibians and from the fishes. Some of the work—notably that on the Pygopodidae—is here reported for the first time. The same author described the hot celloidin technic of embedding histologic tissues. In a paper remarkable for the excellence of the photomicrographs, Willis made a plea for the histologic study of ocular tissues by nonsection methods. He used stripped and teased material and showed how the structures are more nearly preserved