158 The Microscope. 



eeems far beyond your ability to manage. Buy one with what 

 seems to be a multiplicity and complexity of movable parts, and 

 brass and glass. Buy an instrument to which you may advance, 

 not one beyond which you shall advance at the first step. As 

 your microscopical education proceeds, you will begin to ap- 

 preciate your microscope, and will no longer think it ' Too good 

 for only me,' or ' Too complicated for only a novice like me,' . . . 

 and will begin to suspect that you have made no mistake in 

 selecting an instrument to be 'lived up to.' " ^ By applying 

 Mr Griffith's method of criticism to his own letter, he may be 

 made to say some astonishing things. By using Mr Griffith's 

 plan the reader might perhaps be able to prove from Mr Grif- 

 fith's letter, that Shakespeare wrote the Bible. 



Leavino- out of the question the convenience and comfort in 

 the employment of a short, vertical tube, will Mr Stedman 

 kindly tell us what objectives he uses? Does he put on his short 

 tube objectives corrected for a body of the standard length ? If 

 he does will he please tell us what happens? If he uses objec- 

 tives corrected for the short body and extends the draw tube, as 

 I take for granted that he. does at times, will he again kindly tell 

 us what happens? I have observed that a good objective in- 

 tended for use on a body of the standard length will not act well 

 when used on a short tube, and that objectives corrected for the 

 short body will act as badly w^hen used on a long tube. But 

 perhaps I have been misinformed and deluded. Will Mr Sted- 

 man generously teach us that take an interest in the subject, 

 what is the correct thing to do and to believe in this connection? 

 Personally I shall be greatly obliged to him, and I am sure that 

 others that sometimes use the microscope for their pleasure and 

 their instruction, will join me in thanking him for the proper 



teaching. 



Mr Kingsley says that he "has never seen any work done 

 with an American stand and objectives which can compare with 

 the work done in America with the instruments of Zeiss, Leitz 

 and Hartnack." Does he mean work done in the University of 

 Nebraska ? If not, I wonder where he was sleeping when I 

 waked him up ? He seems to have been where Moses was when 

 the light went out. Yours truly, 



An Amateur. 



2. lb., p. 370. 



