RECREATIONS WITH THE MICROSCOPE 



283 



PHOTOMICROGRAPH. STARCH. CANNA. 



200 DIAMETERS. "TOUS LE MOIS." 



Natural Paper in a Reservoir. 



Through the kindness of Dr. Frank 

 E. Hale, Director of the Mt. Prospect 

 Laboratories of Brooklyn. New York, 

 we have been favored with samples of 

 a paper-like substance taken from a 

 reservoir and composed of microscopic 

 material. Futher data are given by 

 Thomas Wilbur Melia, Bacteriologist, 

 who writes as follows : 



"A ten million gallon reservoir at 

 Pottsville, Pennsylvania, was by the 

 State Health Officer ordered to be shut 

 off from the source of supply and to be 

 cleaned as the consumers complained 

 that the water was unfit to drink. 

 After stripping the reservoir, ten tons 

 of this paper-like substance were taken 

 from the side walls of the dam. When 

 this specimen was sent to me for iden- 

 tification I teased it in water, using a 

 needle for separation. 

 "The substance is composed of almost 

 a pure culture of the fresh-water alga, 

 Conferva bombycina. The plant is com- 

 mon in the ponds but that it should have 

 developed in the reservoir in so enormous 

 a quantity is amazing. These fresh- 

 water algae were probably formed into 

 this paper-like substance by the constant 

 water pressure upon the side wails of the 

 reservoir." 



Development by Amateurs. 



It is largely to amateur mi- 

 croscopy that the desire and 

 motive for the great improve- 

 ments in object-glasses and 

 eye-pieces for the last twenty 

 years are due. The men 

 who have compared the 

 qualities of respective lenses, 

 and have had specific ideas 

 as to how these could be- 

 come possessed of still high- 

 er qualities, have been com- 

 paratively rarely those who 

 have employed the micro- 

 scope for professional and 

 educational purposes. They 

 have the rather simply used 

 — employed in the execution 

 of their professional work — 

 the best with which the 

 practical optician could sup- 

 ply them. It has been by 

 magnification amateur microscopists that 

 the opticians have been in- 

 cited to the production of 

 new and improved objectives. But it 

 is the men who work in our biological 

 and medical schools that ultimately 

 reap the immense advantage — not only 

 of greatly improved, but in the end of 

 greatly cheapened, object-glasses. — 

 "The Microscope and Its Revelations."' 



There certainly never was a time 

 when the microscope was so generally 

 used as it now is. With many, as al- 

 ready stated, it is simply an instrument 

 employed for elegant and instructive 

 relaxation and amusement. 



natural paper of algae. 



