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NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 
Death of Dr. Stimpson. — We regret to learn from ‘ Silliman’s 
American Journal’ for June, of the death of Dr. William Stimpson, 
which occurred in the evening of the 26th of May last. He had 
recently returned from a dredging expedition across the Gulf of 
Mexico, and had been very ill since his return. He has for many 
years been well known as one of the leading zoologists of this 
country, and has devoted himself chiefly to marine invertebrata. 
What Work can be done with the Microscope. — Mr. Charles 
Stodder writes to the ‘Boston Journal of Chemistry,’ June, to explain 
how an observer may study fermentation under, or rather over, the 
microscope. He says that the work of “breaking up organic com- 
pounds” can ever be understood, explained, or seen under the micro- 
scope, is very problematical, but as yet there is no evidence before the 
public that the research has been conducted with the best modern 
resources of the microscopist. With one instrument of investigation, 
the inverted microscope, the object will be not under the microscope, 
but the microscope under the object. With this instrument the evolu- 
tion of the gas will interfere much less with the observation of the 
processes going on. Then, most of the published accounts of investi- 
gations of this kind, in France and Germany, appear to have been 
made with instruments of the construction of ten, fifteen, or twenty 
years ago, with powers of 400 to perhaps 1000 diameters. Now, 
immersion objectives of ^ to of an inch focus, giving with ease 
powers from 1600 to 10,000 diameters, are in constant use. It is 
not known that such instruments have ever been applied to this class 
of studies. They have given remarkable results in other investiga- 
tions, and until they have been applied to the yeast plant, “ morbid or 
germinal growths,” &c., we do not and cannot know all that may be 
learned about them. It is with such instruments of the better quality 
that these organisms will have to be studied. Interest in microscopy 
is rapidly growing in this country. Hundreds of young men have 
procured their instruments. Here is a branch in which almost every- 
thing is yet to be learned, and fame and honours will be the reward 
of those who add to human knowledge. Very few European micro- 
scopists, when publishing their results, ever describe the instruments 
they work with ; as a general thing they merely say the object was 
magnified so many diameters, forgetting, or often not knowing, that 
500 diameters with one instrument may be vastly inferior or superior 
to the same power with an instrument by another maker. Astronomers 
always record and publish the instrument their observations are made 
with. The microscopist ought to do the same. He should give the 
maker of his objective, its angular aperture, and real focus , not merely 
what the maker sold it for ; for it is now a well-known fact that the 
instruments of some of the most renowned makers are really very 
different things from what the makers call them. In fact, in the 
