THE MICROSCOPE. 35 



Microscope, the name by which our instrument is known is a 

 word derived from two Greek words signifying "to view small 

 things." Demisianus is said to have first suggested this as the name 

 for the instrument. 



The use of the microscope antedated by hundreds of years a 

 thorough appreciation of the optical principles involved in its con- 

 struction. This is evidenced by the finding of a lens of rock 

 crystal' in the ruins of Ninniveh.'' Aristophanes, four 

 hundred B. C. also mentions burning spheres as being for sale 

 in shops at Athens. That their magnifying power 

 was known seems certain from the fact that designs were 

 wrought on metal that to the naked eye are confused markings but 

 with the aid of a magnifier develop into beautifully carved group- 

 ings. A seal once belonging to Michael Angelo of very ancient origin 

 now in the French Cabinet of Medals has engraved in a space of 

 fourteen mm. diameter fifteen figures and none of them discern- 

 able by the naked eye. Does it not seem rational to suppose that 

 these pieces of work required the aid of a lens both for their ex- 

 ecution and appreciation. Then too we find various passages in 

 works of Jamblichus, Pliny, Plutarch, Seneca, etc., showing almost 

 certainly they were possessed with apparatus that enabled them 

 both to see distant objects and to magnify small ones. Unless 

 we place this construction on them they would be absurd. Pisidias 

 who wrote sometime during the seventeenth century says, "You see 

 things future by a dioptrum." We know of nothing by which things 

 at a distance can be represented as near at hand, save the telescope. 

 Seneca' writing during the first century affirms distinctly "that 

 letters though minute and obscure appear larger and clearer though 

 a glass bubble filled with water." 



The first remark that I can find which can be construed into 

 a reference to the chief optical property of the microscope, viz., 

 refraction, is by Archimedes in the third century B. C. He is said 

 to have written a work on the appearance of objects under water 

 and therefore could not but have mentioned refraction and the 



1 Exhibited by Sir David Brewster 1852 to the Royal Society. 



2 Ninniveh in glory seven hundred B. C, and so completely destroyed 

 four hundred B. C, that Xenophen makes no mention of it though he led 

 ten thousand Greeks across its former site 



3 Nat. Inest. Lib. i Cap. 7. 



