BY MEANS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 391 



light you can get on your object the better will be the resulting 

 negative. 



Such objects as small shells, eggs of butterflies, polycystina, 

 light-coloured seeds, in fact, anything that will reflect and not 

 absorb the light, may be photographed in this way. A parabolic 

 silver-side reflector is sometimes used, but this is not nearly so 

 good, you are apt to get strong shadows on one side. I am sorry 

 I shall not be able to show you many examples of my work in 

 this direction, but the few I have will show you the beauty of 

 their structure, and how easy it is to make pictures of such minute 

 things. I have a lovely specimen of the eggs of the parasite of the 

 Reeves pheasant in situ clustered on the feather of the bird. 



Eggs of Parasite of Reeves Pheasant. 



Objects photographed under polarised light are very pretty; 

 some objects, such as starches, sections of rock, crystals, that are 

 perfectly transparent under ordinary light, when polarised are very 

 beautiful. Now if the two prisms are so turned that the object 

 comes on the dark field, they show up all the beauty of the struc- 

 ture and varied form and composition that, under other circum- 

 stances, would not be seen. The polariser, that is the prism near- 



