126 The Microscope. 



In these remarks I have purposely omitted all those points 

 which require more technical knowledge, and more experience 

 in the use of the microscope. I would include under this head 

 the vexatious question of the various " bacilli; " of most patho- 

 logical questions; of questions coming under forensic medicine, 

 and various other matters. 



I have also omitted any reference to the delightful recrea- 

 tion this instrument affords with its power to reveal to us the 

 beauties of every insect and plant hidden from the unaided eye 

 of the unappreciative public masses. 



Truly did Henry Baker write, a hundred and fifty years 

 ago that " the microscopist never can feel his time hang heavy 

 on his hands, or be weary of himself, for want of knowing how 

 to employ his thoughts ; since every animal, flower, fruit or in- 

 sect, nay, almost every particle of matter affords him an enter- 

 tainment ; each garden or field is to him a cabinet of curiosities 

 everyone of which he longs to examine fully ; and he considers 

 the whole universe as a magazine of wonders, which infinite 

 ages are scarce sufficient to contemplate and admire enough." 



METHODS OF WORK. 



SECOND PAPER. 

 ALBERT E. JENKINS, ANN ARBOR, MICH. 



IN the many advances which have been made in the various 

 departments of scientific investigation in the last few years, 

 scarcely any one branch has received more attention or shown 

 more genuine progress than microscopical studies. From a toy 

 of curious optical properties to the physicist, or a magical glass 

 claiming popular attention as showing suckers on a fly's foot or 

 dreadful creatures in a drop of seemingly innocent water, the 

 microscope has become a means of exact analysis of the widest 

 application. The renditions which have come to us from this 

 source have determined nearly all the conclusions of modern 

 Botany, Zoology, and Physiology. Nor are the biological sci- 

 ences the only branches of learning indebted to the microscope. 

 Chemistry, Geology, and Mineralogy have put it in requisition 

 and already it has been adapted to these uses. 



