350 The Microscope. 



The enterprising publishers of The Microscope, and the Phvr- 

 maceutical Era, oflPer a prize of fifty dollars in gold for the best 

 essay on The Mutual Relation of Physician and Pharmacist. A 

 neat circular letter, stating conditions, etc., is sent to all interested. 



A. J. Howe, M. D., says too much attention is given to bacteri- 

 ology and not enough to unorganized poison, the virus of decompo- 

 sition. There may be microbes on a palatable beef- steak or mutton- 

 chop, and the food be none the worse for it, and yet a very savory 

 dish of meat may be poisonous. — Technics. 



Mr. F. W. Leggett, in his paper before the New York Micro- 

 scopical Society, concluded that the reason that the roach is able to 

 walk when inverted and suspended on the under surface of a horizon- 

 tal plate of glass, lies in the fact that the tarsal joints are cap-shaped, 

 and of peculiar construction, and that the insect attaches its feet by 

 suction. 



James Stoller contributes to the October Siviss Cross an inter- 

 esting article on " An Aquarium Study." This may consist of an 

 ordinary fruit jar filled with water dipped from a weedy pond, and 

 containing a few living water-plants, of which chara and duckweed 

 do well. Many interesting forms of aquatic life may be thus studied, 

 both with the naked eye and under the microscope. 



Oliver Wendell Holmes, in an address to the Harvard Medi- 

 cal School, referred to the achromatic microscope as having "created 

 a new era in medical science," to say nothing of its great services in 

 other departments of knowledge. He illustrated the power of the 

 instrument strikingly by saying, -while a scrap of human skia was 

 under the glass, that the fragment thus magnified represented an 

 individual just one mile in height. He would ten times overtop the 

 loftiest of the pyramids, and twenty times the tallest of our steeples. 

 His breadth and thickness being in proportion to his height, his 

 weight would be one hundred and twenty billion pounds, equal to 

 sixty million tons. " He could take our State House up as we would 

 lift a paving- stone," the Doctor added, " and fling it into the waters 

 beyond Boston lighthouse, cleaning out that place of the people by 

 a summary process quicker than the praetorian bands of Domitian 

 or Commodus would have cleaned out a Roman Senate chamber that 

 dared to have an opinion of its own." 



