1 86 now TO WORK 



instruments and apparatus. The microscope should be always ready 

 for use and should stand on the table covered with a glass shade 

 to protect it from the dust. This is far more convenient than the 

 plan of keeping the instrument in its case, and going through the 

 process of adapting the glasses, c., and then removing them again, 

 every time the instrument is required. 



The object-glasses, eye-pieces, condensers, and other apparatus 

 may be placed in a little cupboard provided with shelves and having 

 a glass door with lock and key. 



Knives and scissars can be kept in a shallow box having a glass 

 cover. Drawing instruments in a second, thin glass and glass slides 

 with watch glasses, or little saucers, in a third. These should all 

 be properly partitioned and may be kept on the table. A glass of 

 clean water should always stand on the table, and pipettes, stirring 

 rods and camel's hair brushes, all perfectly clean, should be pro- 

 vided. The injecting apparatus and instruments which are only 

 required occasionally may be kept in the table drawers. A portfolio 

 or pamphlet box is necessary for keeping drawing paper, cardboard, 

 tracing and retracing paper, scales for measuring, &c. All things 

 really necessary for ordinary microscopic work may be obtained for 

 two or three pounds, but it is easy of course to spend fifty pounds 

 or more upon a microscope table and apparatus. I have myself 

 always made use of an ordinary good strong library table fitted with 

 drawers underneath, and I think it would have been difficult to con- 

 trive anything upon the whole more convenient or better adapted for 

 work. The microscope stands on the table always ready for use 

 under a bell jar, and the lamp, fig. 48, pi. XI,, with scissars, 

 knives, needles, and other tools in frequent use close by. 



ai-4. Of Keeping Preparations in the Cabinet. Preparations 

 mounted in the dry way, or in Canada balsam, may be kept upright, 

 arranged in grooves, but all preparations mounted in fluid must be 

 allowed to lie perfectly flat, otherwise there will be great danger of 

 leakage. Cabinets holding several hundred specimens arranged in 

 this mannner may now be purchased of the microscope makers for 

 a very small sum, but if the observer is only provided with deep 

 drawers, they may be made available for the purpose, by having a 

 number of shallow trays of mill board made to fit them accurately. 

 Each preparation should be named as soon as it is put up, and it is 

 convenient to keep a number of small gummed labels aways at hand 

 for this purpose. Once or twice in the year a new layer of Brunswick 

 black should be applied, and the specimens carefully examined to 

 see that no leakage has occurred. The cases now generally sold 

 are, I think, preferable to cabinets, and of the cases I have seen 



