57 



many treasures, and employment of idle time, then not 

 idly spent. In fact, the chief purpose of the present ob- 

 servations is to show how she invites us gratuitously, how 

 the visit may be paid with little trouble and much profit, 

 and how even this lowly study of the cell-life of plants 

 may be made at once subservient to science and to some of 

 our best enjoyments. 



To this end we have only to compare the cells of the 

 many plants ever greeting us in our country rambles, and 

 for which purpose an achromatic object-glass of half an 

 inch focal length will suffice. The form and contents of 

 the cells may be best seen in fine sections, made in various 

 directions, of the stems, leaves, roots, and other parts ; but 

 as such preparations require practice and skill, they may 

 be dispensed with generally, and another way employed, 

 rough and ready, yet likely to be rewarded with interest- 

 ing and useful results, provided the pursuit be steadily 

 continued. Thus we have simply to dissect with needles, 

 or scrape or mash with a penknife, a fragment of the plant- 

 tissue in a drop of water on the glass object-plate, 

 and place it, either covered or not with a thinner bit of 

 glass, under the microscope, when many of the vegetable 

 cells will appear with their form and contents perfect, and 

 more injured or broken, with their contents, yet recogniza- 

 ble and characteristic, escaped into the water. You 

 will perceive that this kind of examination is far 

 more easy than the process required for the display 

 of the anatomy of the seed, and some other ordinal characters, 

 while the character we are searching for is determinable at 

 once and at all times, quite independently of the flowers or 

 fruit. For example, if the problem be to distinguish, oven 

 if by a mere fragment of the species, whether a Eush be- 

 long to this or that division of the genus, we have only to 

 look at the pith-cells, which form a very beautiful stellate 

 or radiate tissue in one group of the genus, and a tissue 

 of oval cells in the other, as may be well seen by comparing 

 the actincnchyma of the pith of the common Juncus 



