22 The Microscope. 



home. It is always the bandboxes that make themselves obnox 

 ious. Like the Englishman's bath-tub, they monopolize the travel- 

 ler's attention to the exclusion of social civility and of landscape 

 scenery. The microscopical traveler, especially at the beginning 

 of bis journey, is apt to accumulate bandboxes that like all such 

 trash hinder his progress and ruin his temper. As he looks over 

 the dealer's catalogues, that seem to be th6 schedules and the 

 time-tables prepared for him by some superior being, he fears 

 that he may omit some essential thing, and only succeeds in 

 loading himself with bandboxes to be hurled out of the window 

 after a few miles' progress. The novice that is forced to the 

 other extreme by the weakness of his exchequer, and so starts 

 empty handed, is in the end a happier traveler and a more 

 learned man, than he that steps off with a handbox in both 

 hands. 



One of the failings of the microscopical community seems to 

 be the accumulating of trash. Where the stuff comes from is 

 often hard to tell, yet it comes. Misguided friends are often one 

 ignorant cause, since they will persist in making Christmas 

 presents of thin glass, that for thickness is first cousin to window 

 panes. And it goes into the bandbox. Is there need of three or 

 four thicknesses of cover glass ? Is it not a good plan to use 

 number one covers for all purposes ? The skill to handle them is 

 soon acquired, while the result is more pleasing and more ship- 

 shape, beside being to the advantage of the objectives that are 

 always corrected for exceedingly thin glass. 



Rings ? Glass rings, and tin rings, and zylonite rings, and 

 white metal rings, and brass rings, and curtain rings, and ebo- 

 nite rings, and Oh, go to ! Curtain rings flattened with a 



hammer, and a few deep circles of tin will leave space in the 

 bandbox for the stains and cements sure to get there. 



.You were speaking of stains ? Heematoxylin and ammonia- 

 carmine, and borax-carmine, and picro-carmine, and Burrill's 

 stain, and Gibbes's stain, and Seller's sulph-indigotate of soda, 

 and anilin violet and blue and green and red, and Bismarck 

 brown, and vesuvin, and gentian violet, and methyl vio — alas, 

 that life should be so short ! 



Mounting media? Dozens of them. Cements? They come 

 by battalions, marching and counter-marching before the 

 bewildered microscopist until in his desperation he selects 



