106 M. RaspaiPs Note on Mr BroimCs Observations. 



and who would no doubt be every day discouraged by the er- 

 roneous expression with an expensive, a powerful, and a fine 

 microscope. 



In justification of my conduct in this matter, it will be suf- 

 ficient to mention the following fact : — 



A manufacturer of painted papers having learned the use 

 which I had made of magnifying glasses in the analysis of the 

 fecula, and of the encollage a la cuve, and, deceived by pom- 

 pous announces in the Journals, eagerly purchased for 1200 

 francs a microscope of Amici''s. If he had done me the honour 

 to consult me, he would have devoted 1185 francs to the pur- 

 pose of his manufactory; for by the side of my costly micro- 

 scope of M. Selligue"'s, I would have shown him the poor 

 mounted single lens which has served me for all my researches 

 on the fecula and on the encollages a la cuve ; and I boldly 

 hold out a formal defiance that a more expensive instrument 

 will find a single point of these experiments erroneous. 



Art. XVI. — Note on Mr Brown^s Microscopical Observations 

 on the active Molecules of organic and inorganic bodies. * 

 By M. Raspail. 



The Society has heard at its last meeting the contents of a 

 work by Mr Robert Brown, entitled, " A brief account of 

 Microscopical Observations on the particles contained in the 

 Pollen of Plants,'''' f &c. Such of our members as attended to 

 the discussion which took place at the Institute on the subject 

 of my Memoir On the granules discharged in the explosion of 

 a grain of Pollen, which was read on the 18th March 1828, 

 cannot fail to have observed, that the general proposition of Mr 

 Brown is contained in that Memoir; and philosophers will 

 doubtless acknowledge that the phenomena of motion, which 

 Mr Brown left enveloped in a sort of mystery, by represent- ^ 

 ing them as inherent in the molecules of organic and inorganic 

 bodies, may be easily explained by the concurrence of all the 

 foreign circumstances which we have enumerated in the pre- 



• This Note was read to the Society of Natural History of Paris on tlie 

 29th August 1828, and forms an appendix to the preceding Memoir. 

 f Printed in our last Number, p. 336. 



