"292 The Microscope. 



If the foregoing precedents are not worthy to be followed, or 

 if there are not the good reasons alleged for occupying your atten- 

 tion as a society of microscopists with such subjects as announced, 

 then I have, through an error of judgment, fallen short of the full 

 measure of my opportunities on this occasion. 



In the following discourse I have endeavored to keep before me 

 these conditions: First, to mention only such points as reasonably 

 possess a general interest, reserving the more technical results of 

 my study for presentation at the daily sessions ; second, to state and 

 illustrate these facts clearly; and third, to occupy a reasonable time. 



There is an almost universal desire on the part of the devotees 

 of any particular art or science to date its origin in the remote past. 

 Are we not apt to esteem most highly that which bears the stamp of 

 hoary antiquity ? I am convinced that this is the case, and yet I 

 cannot justly claim that advantage for my specialty. Other reasons 

 must be alleged as a warrant for especial attention to it. Still, the 

 beginning of our knowledge of the simplest animals was laid more 

 than two hundred years ago. The microscope of that time was 

 indeed a primitive instrument. Its evolution had so far progressed 

 that it was something more than a toy. By its aid, at that time, 

 was revealed, in partial vision, it is true, the grand fact, that there 

 exists beneath the waters of every mantled, festering pool, or limpid 

 stream, in lake or river, or in ocean depths alike, myriads of invisi- 

 bly minute beings, ceaselessly, noiselessly pursuing their work 

 unheeded. As the infinite variety of graceful forms and their 

 strange habits were more and more clearly comprehended, and as 

 the knowledge of a newly revealed animal world increased, the 

 enthusiasm of these early microscopists became exuberant, and with 

 their enthusiasm grew their devotion to Nature and its Author, — a 

 consequence repeated in every student who in the right spirit learns 

 his lessons for himself by his own explorations. Men now possessed, 

 and were beginning to employ, constantly improving microscopical 

 vision; it revealed a world of minute animals and plants, perfect in 

 their way, and actuated and governed by principles and impulses 

 not unlike those controlling the microscopic already known. In 

 these animate atoms were seen anew, or for the first time, certain 

 world problems, and there sprung up fresh hope of their solutions. 

 The origin and nature of life; what guided intelligence adjusts the 

 varied relations and necessities of each and every minute creature to 

 its environment as truly and exactly as in the higher organic forms. 

 Moreover, here and there a broad, unknown domain of nature was 

 opened for exploration by the human intellect, which, at that time, 



