The annual weekend this year was held at the Kingcombe Centre in the charming Dorset village of Toller Porcorum.

FRIDAY

The 23 attendees gathered in the main building for a briefing by Joan Bingley and staff members on the Centre.

After a pleasant tea with homemade cakes, Joan and staff brief the participants on the facilities of the Centre and the programme.

First off was a tour of the Nature Reserve. During the whole of our stay we enjoyed near-perfect weather.

I was lucky to find this 5 spot Burnet moth

In the evening we were treated to a presentation by Bryan Edwards, who works for the Dorset Environmental Record Centre as a site surveyor and recorder, showing some of the beautiful flora and fauna of the area:

	Bryan is a fine photographer, and I can only reproduce some of the many splendid photographs he showed here.

SATURDAY

A long day!

I was first off, showing some of the work I had done on the rotifer populations of the large marine lagoon - The Fleet, appropriately just ten miles south of Toller Porcorum. I was investigating the rotifers that inhabited the littoral alga, and I needed a unit of measurement. I described how I used the computer programs, SCIONIMAGE and Excel, to measure the length of algal filament, and area of algal filament, in each sample and to apply these to quantify the abundances of the rotifers that I found. I also described a simple method I devised to assess water disturbance, using the loss of a dye across a semi-permeable membrane, which could be measured with a simple colorimeter. Of course this was only a small percentage of what I did, but it's impossible to condense five years work down to forty five minutes!

Dick Speight was next on with a presentation entitled 'A Physicist Looks at the Microscope'.

Appropriately enough Dick used Lulworth Bay, Dorset, to illustrate how the diffraction of waves entering the bay through a narrow inlet, created different order effects which determined the resolution possible.

Directly after his talk, Dick gave a practical demonstration, using a diffraction grating, of how capturing the second and third order diffraction rays affected the resolution. (David Jarman and Maurice Moss in the background)

Kit Brownlee stepped in at short notice to give a talk on the Camera Lucida and drawing apparatus. (I can't remember a talk on this interesting subject having been given before)

Kit reaches for her laser pointer.

She showed a number of pictures of variations on this theme, mostly mid- to late-19th century devices, including (left) this by William Wollaston, who actively developed a number of instruments, and is well-known for the Wollaston Doublet hand magnifier. On the right is an illustration from Carpenter of a magnificent Powell and Leyland in the horizontal position using two oil lamps, one for the microscope illumination, and one for the drawing tablet.

An excellent buffet lunch followed, during which Maurice Moss, whose many interests include the Lepidoptera, discussed some of the Centre's butterfly and moth collection:

Maurice points out a particularly interesting specimen from the Centre collection.

During the lunch interval knowledgeable members were also able to inspect, adjust, and where possible repair some of the Centre's instruments.

Barry Ellam, who knows a thing or two about microscopes, adjusts the objectives on one of the Centre's stands.

There followed a gossip, but there were too many exhibits for me to describe in detail, however

Pam Hamer's exhibit, showing how she used mini-microscopes to study lichens, caught my eye. If you have good eyesight you may be able to read the description of her work!

SUNDAY

This was devoted to foraminifera.

The Club's expert in this field, Bryan Darnton, gave an introductory talk, describing some of the history of foram research, and showing his own techniques.

 

He showed some beautiful 3-D images achieved by using a Russian computer program to combine and stack images:

After a coffee break we repaired to the Cottage where he held a workshop:

Members availed themselves of a generous amount of sample material kindly provided by Brian.

At the end of the day we all felt we had had an excellent meeting; seeing old friends, meeting new ones (it was nice to see some new faces), in beautiful surroundings, and I'm sure we all went away thoroughly refreshed in our interest in microscopy.

A personal note: some time ago I received a charming email from Jenny Crouch (age 9) saying how exciting it was to see her grandad, Maurice Moss (at that time President) on the web. It was therefore a lovely moment to meet her at Kingscombe:

Me, Jenny and Maurice

Our grateful thanks to Joan Bingley for the impeccable organisation, and to the Staff of Kingscombe Centre for the smooth running of the event.