9 2 



THE MICROSCOPE. 



from the heart of a solid brick also showed the same animalcule, 

 but in smaller numbers. The magnifying power of the instrument 

 was 300 diameters. Every decaying brick showed the same kind 

 of population, but the harder the brick the fewer were noticed. — Ex. 



Collecting Small Organisms. — In order to procure small 

 organisms for microscopical examination, living in their natural hab- 

 itat, Professor K. Mobius fixes some glass slides in a piece of wood 

 in which cuts, a few millimetres deep and of the thickness of the 

 slides, had been made with a saw. The wood was nailed to a pole 

 attached to a landing-stage in Kiel harbor, in such a way that the 

 wood with the slides was a few feet above the sea-bottom. For the 

 examination of the organisms on the glass slides, they were removed 

 from the wood, and immediately fixed in a cork, and floated in a 

 glass vessel full of sea-water. 



Upon such glass slides hydroid polyps, annelids, bryozoa, 

 infusoria, rhizopoda, diatoms, etc., attach themselves. 



In the aquarium slides may be similarly suspended from corks 

 in order to have infusoria, rhizopoda, etc., for immediate examina- 

 tion. — Royal Mic. Jour. 



Bacilli in Condensed Aqueous Vapor of the Breath of 

 Phthisical Persons. — A. Ransome condensed the aqueous vapor 

 of the breath of persons in an advanced phthisis, by the method he 

 invented some years ago (1869); the method of staining used was 

 that of Heneage Gibbes, magenta and aniline being used, discharged 

 by dilute nitric acid, and chrysoidin then added. It was found that 

 in the aqueous vapor obtained from two persons suffering from 

 phthisis, there was a bacillus which took the staining in the same 

 manner as the bacillus found in phthisical sputa and in tubercle, and 

 which is indistinguishable from that organism. In some cases the 

 experiments were unsuccessful. — Royal Mic. Jour. 



Mucous Layer of the Skin. — Ranvier has made sections of 

 the human skin, hardened in bichromate of ammonia (20 per cent.) 

 for two or three months, and then with gum and alcohol. In these 

 the intracellular network is well shown by haematoxylin. The 

 fibres of the network project beyond the cell and establish the 

 union between the cells. In the intercellular spaces these fibres are 

 thicker than within the cells: they have therefore acquired an addi- 

 tional envelope. Ranvier further argues against considering the 



