The Microscope. 257 



knowledge of the structure of man and animals, and to modern 

 improvements in the healing art. The powers now at the dis- 

 posal of the savant far surpass any which were attainable only a 

 few years ago ; but the use of these high powers requires the de- 

 votion of such a lifetime to the study of learning how to see, and 

 how to interpret what is seen. No persons are more certain to 

 fall into gross errors than the untrained possessors of powerful 

 Microscopes ; and the conduct of actual research, of the business 

 of carrying knowledge a step in advance of its former boundar- 

 ies, must always be limited to the few. When, in 1854, the late 

 Dr. William Budd announced that cholera was dependent upon 

 tthe presence of a minute intestinal fungus, there were probably 

 not three observers in England who were capable of pronounc- 

 ing a trustworthy opinion as to whether a given speck was a 

 microscopic fungus or not ; and there was no doubt that the so- 

 called ' fungi ' of many persons were nothing more than fine par- 

 ticles of chalk, derived from medicine which had been adminis- 

 tered to the patient. Since that time vast strides had been 

 made in the methods of conducting such investigations, together 

 with corresponding improvements in the instruments by which 

 they are conducted; and almost every beginner now thinks him- 

 self qualified to prattle about microbes. In the case, unfortu- 

 nately, of those who may be presumed to be the most skilled 

 observers, talk and observation do not always seem to be con- 

 ducive to agreement. 



It is not, however, for the sake of prosecuting original in- 

 quiry, but for the sake of making known to the young what has 

 already been established, that the Microscope should commend 

 itself to educationists. It reveals and displays plainly to the 

 sense of sight two great facts — the fact of the wonderful com- 

 plexity and beauty of the structure of the smallest and appar- 

 ently the most insignificant creatures, and the fact that all liv- 

 ing things of appreciable magnitude, whether they be plants or 

 animals, are built up by the aggregation of myriad of minute or- 

 ganisms or cells, each of which possesses independent life, and 

 each of which fulfils a purpose in the corporate body by its own 

 inherent and independent activity. If a Microscope is given to 

 children as a toy, and if all that is done for them is to permit 

 them to look through it at something the nature of which they 



