DR. CARPENTER, ON THE MICROSCOPE. 231 



The Microscope and its Revelations. By William B. Carpenter, 

 M.D., F.R.S., &c. London. Churchill. 



It was only to be expected that if Dr. Carpenter undertook to 

 write a book on the Microscope, it would be a good one, 

 and at least not inferior to any that had hitherto been pub- 

 lished. Such was our anticipation, and we have not been 

 disappointed. The book is even better than we could have 

 hoped for, for knowing as we do the great amount of literary 

 and teaching labour performed by Dr. Carpenter, we are 

 astonished to find tliat he could secure the time for producing 

 a book in every way so complete and faithful a transcript of 

 the subject to which it is devoted as the present volume. 

 This work is not, in fact, as its name might seem to imply, 

 a simple introduction to the use of the Microscope, but a 

 treatise on this instrument, describing the principles of its 

 construction, the various forms which are employed, their 

 adaptations to special uses, and a survey of the various depart- 

 ments of science in which it has been successfully employed. 

 The introduction consists of a sketch of the service rendered 

 by the Microscope to science. The author indicates here the 

 various facts observed by means of the Microscope, and points 

 out their value as the foundation of philosophical reasoning 

 in all those classes of phenomena to which they are related. 

 We should have been glad to have quoted the whole of the 

 concluding part of these observations devoted to the educa- 

 tional value of the Microscope. They are so applicable to 

 the educational demands of the present day, and so in accord- 

 ance with the aspirations of those who regard science and 

 scientific research as only means to the higher end of the 

 intellectual and moral development of man, that we can but 

 commend them to all interested in the subject of education. 

 We must, however, find space for the introductory remarks. 



" All the advantages which have been urged at various times, with so 

 much sense and vigour,* in favour of the study of Natural History, apply 

 with full force to Microscopical inquiry. What better encouragement and 

 direction can possibly be given to the exercise of the observing powers of a 

 child, than to habituate him to the employment of this instrument upon 

 the objects which immediately surround him, and then to teach him to 

 search out novelties among those less immediately accessible ? The more 

 we limit the natural exercise of these powers, hy the use of those methods 

 of education which are generally considered to be specially advantageous 

 for the development of the Intellect, — the more we take him from lields 

 and woods, from hills and moors, from river-side and sea-shore, and shut 

 him up in close school- rooms and narrow play-grounds, limiting his atten- 

 tion to abstractions, and cutting him off even in his hours of sport from those 



* By none more forcibly than by Mr. Kingsley, in his recent little volume en- 

 titled " Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore." 



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