2 Mr. T. D. Aldous on the 



own mind." Well, gentlemen, I wish Mr. Adams's friends had 

 kept their opinions and advice to themselves, for, as may be 

 imagined, the plates have been very much disposed of and sepa- 

 rated from the work, and this has given me a lot of trouble in 

 hunting up in other contemporary works the plates he refers to, 

 and in comparing his descriptions with the drawings and reference 

 lettering of other men. With just this one little grumble I will 

 pass to my subject. 



The microscope was invented in the year 1590 by a Dutchman 

 named Zacharias Jansens, and in 1619 one Cornelius Drebell 

 brought to England, from Holland, one of these instruments. 

 This was in all probability more of the nature of a microscopic 

 telescope than what we understand as a microscope. It was 

 formed of a copper tube 6ft. long by 1 in. in diameter, supported 

 by three brass pillars mounted on a wooden base, on which the 

 objects to be viewed were placed. This seems to be an extra- 

 ordinary length of body-tube, and one is almost inclined to think, 

 in the absence of any drawing, that, while the whole instrument 

 may have been used as a telescope, probably the tube was 

 removed, leaving the bottom lens on the pillars to be used as a 

 magnifying-glass or simple microscope when small objects were 

 to be viewed ; it is from this instrument the Dutch claim to 

 be the inventors of the microscope. The great Galileo made 

 one in 1637. 



But an Italian named Fontana, in a work published in 1646, 

 says he made microscopes in the year 1618. This, indeed, may 

 have been so, for instances are not wanting where two men have 

 produced similar things at the same time ; and, as a striking in- 

 stance of this in our own times, I may mention those wonderful 

 papers of Darwin and Wallace, read before the Linnean Society 

 on the same night, July 1st, 1858. 



But if we consider the microscope in its most simple form of a 

 magnifying-glass, I think it is highly probable that it was known 

 to and used as such by the Greeks and Komans. There are 

 extant specimens of ancient workmanship so fine in detail that 

 it is difficult to understand how they were carved or engraved 

 without the aid of a magnifying lens of some sort ; some of the 

 Eoman or Greek seals, for instance, which have been found, look 

 commonplace to the naked eye, but when magnified are seen to 

 bear work of great delicacy and minuteness, and in the writings 

 of Pisidias occurs the passage, Ta fJuXMnTo. w? ^»a ^ioir-rpa-v (iM'jrtii, 

 " You look at future things by or through a dioptrum." Now, in 

 a somewhat aged lexicon in my possession, I find the word 

 AioTTTpixo?, which is translated into Latin, "ad spectanda re- 

 motiora aptus," which, I take it, may be freely rendered as 

 " suitable for viewing distant objects." Why not small ones ? 

 Then turning to a Latin author, Seneca writes : — " Literae 



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