The Microscope. 147 



AMERICAN MICROSCOPES AGAIN. 



PROFESSOR WM. H. SEAMAN. 



In THE MICROSCOPE for March we find on page 96 a remark that 

 the work done in America with American stands and ob- 

 jectives does not compare with the work done with the instru- 

 ments of Zeiss, Leitz, and Hartnack. Also that American makes 

 have many faults. It would have been more important if the 

 faults had been specified. 



By a symposium published in " Science," in 1889, p. 120, it 

 will be found that Ann Arbor and Cornell, two of the largest 

 universities in the country, use largely American microscopes. 

 'The quality of the work done at these institutions is admitted, 

 I think, to compare favorably with that done anywhere else, in 

 evidence of which I may refer to the papers of Cornell University 

 in the volume of the Proceedings of the American Society of 

 Microscopists for 1890. 



By the same article in " Science " above cited, it will be found 

 that the men who, so far as I know, stand at the head of the 

 list of American microscopists in the length of time they have 

 used, and the amount of work they have done with the instru- 

 ment, to wit, Dr J. G. Hunt of Philadelphia, Prof H. L. Smith 

 of Geneva, N. Y., and the Rev Francis Wolle of Bethlehem, Pa., 

 ■express their opinions unequivocally in favor of American instru- 

 ments. The recent publication of the book on the Diatomaceee 

 of North America by the latter author completes a series of 

 works that have required an amount of labor with the micro- 

 scope rarely equalled, the number of figures published being 

 over 5,400 ; probably over 10,000 individual objects were drawn 

 by the aid of the microscope to produce these plates. 



An analysis of the matter will show, in my opinion, something 

 like the following state of afftiirs. The foreign professor who is 

 unacquainted with American work, and who has frequently a 

 tendency to undervalue it, and the American student who looks 

 through a microscope for the first time when he stands within 

 the walls of a German university, acquire prepossessions in 

 favor of the instruments they first learn to use. They naturally 

 send to the makers they are already acquainted with, when ad- 

 ditional instruments are wanted. Now the question is, will this 

 -course of action build up those manufacturers and mechanics 



