132 THE NORTHERN MICROSCOPIST. 
This ingenious little instrument (designed by Mr. D. Houston, 
author of ‘Practical Botany,”) is intended to provide working 
botanical students with a convenient and serviceable Dissecting 
Microscope at a moderate cost. 
The box measures, when closed, 9 inches long, 4 inches 
" wide, and 2 inches deep, and is so constructed that, by using a 
divided sliding lid (which acts as a support for the dissecting 
stage), a rest for the wrists is secured while the hands are employed 
in dissecting. 
The duplex lens, which gives three powers, magnifying 4, 6, and 
10 diameters, is screwed to the end of a brass focussing tube which 
moves upon a brass pillar attached to a sliding bar at the bottom 
of the box. The lens may at any time be unscrewed and carried 
in the pocket. 
The dissecting stage is a cork slide, plain on one side for 
general work, but provided with a shallow cell on the other, for 
the dissection of such objects as small glossy seeds which “ fly a 
under the needles. 
A pitted glass slide, to be used when the object is best dissected 
under water, is also provided. 
A cutting needle, two dissecting needles, and a pair of small 
forceps are also included, and the whole is sold at the moderate 
price of six shillings and sixpence. 
Mr. Browning has also produced a new form of binocular stand, 
which with substage fittings is selling for £25. The instrument is 
very similar to his best stand, and is constructed on the Jackson 
model. 
We also saw some very beautiful wood-sections of exception- 
ally large size, cut by an amateur, who uses for the purpose an 
apparatus similar to the slitter of the lapidary. The sections were 
so thin that they seemed to comprise only one layer of cells, and 
were entirely unbroken. 
Something quite novel was shown us in the shape of a new 
patent stand by Messrs. Watson and Son, of Holborn, an illustra- 
tion of which we give as fig. 21. It will be seen that the new stand 
enables the observer to examine an object as he would if it were 
held in the hand, and viewed by the naked eye—that is, to turn it 
about in every possible way towards a ray of light proceeding in a 
fixed direction—and so, without once losing sight either of the 
light or the object, to observe its appearance when illuminated 
by light of every degree of obliquity. 
This is the fundamental idea underlying its construction, and in 
this consists the great difference between it and all the old forms 
of stand (although it has all the uses of the latter), where the object 
remaining fixed, the only way in which its illumination can be 
varied is by moving the illuminating ray—which, in the amount 
