284 Transactions of the [*Jo'uni!u "uneTC! 



"White quietly removed his object from beneath the microscope, 

 and substituted one of ours in the place of it, and then invited Mr. 

 Goadby to look at it. He gazed at it for a few seconds with a 

 puzzled expression of countenance, and then throwing himself back 

 in the chair, exclaimed, " Where the devil did you get that object 

 from ? " Mr. White, with a look of extreme gravity, replied, in his 

 own words, " That is a profound secret known only to us three, and 

 we are bound not to divulge it." A hearty laugh was the result, 

 and further explanation convinced Mr. Goadby that his secret had 

 been detected, although he would not at the time acknowledge it. 

 Having thus possessed ourselves of the mystery of mounting in 

 Canada balsam without any of the restrictions of secrecy, we spread 

 the knowledge we had acquired far and wide among microscopists, 

 and it quickly became the favourite mode of mounting objects. We 

 soon learned to make our preparations without soihng our fingers, 

 and to clean our mounted objects with a few drops of cold water 

 and a thin knife-blade, without the use of turpentine or any other 

 odorous fluids. I gradually became possessed of a considerable 

 number of beautiful and interesting natural history objects, and 

 their exhibition by the achromatic combinations of Tulley contri- 

 buted in no small degree to the growing popularity of the micro- 

 scope. 



The fame of Tulley 's beautiful combinations spread far and 

 wide, and I was favoured by the visits of numerous eminent men 

 of science of the period, and among them Dr. Marshall Hall, Mr. 

 George Newport, Mr. Kiernan, Mr. Gulhver, Dr. Mantel, Professor 

 Owen, and others, who brought their specimens with them, and 

 verified their more laborious investigations by the Tullian facile 

 combinations. It was at one of these meetings with Professor Owen, 

 while we were examining the human blood, and the learned Pro- 

 fessor was speaking of its " globules," that I objected to the term as 

 not being descriptive of double concave circular discs. Professor 

 Owen concurred with my observation, and exclaimed, " From this 

 time forth then they are discs of the human blood." Mr. Kiernan 

 also verified his observations on the structure of the human liver, 

 before the reading of his celebrated paper at the Eoyal Society, in 

 1833, by the Tullian combinations in my possession. But, perhaps, 

 one of the most remarkable of my visitors was the great French 

 naturahst Geofiroi St. Hillaire, who paid a short visit to England in 

 1833. He had read my paper " On the Circulation of the Blood in 

 the Larva of Ephemera marginata," and doubted the possibility of 

 seeing the valvular action of the great dorsal vessel described 

 therein. I had fortunately in my possession some very favourable 

 subjects for exhibiting these beautiful phenomena, and when all was 

 in order, and the great man applied his eye to the instrument, he 

 at once saw the very facts he had doubted, and without removing 



