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288 The Microscope. 



©f scientific and pathological research. Work by others, wliich 

 had passed through his hands, not only obtained rery consider- 

 able security against error, but not infrequently received import- 

 ant additions and elucidations. His good nature in these mat- 

 ters was occasionally somewhat imposed upon, and papers and 

 books were published which really owed quite as much to the 

 man whose name appeared only as artist as they did to him 

 who assumed the role of author. In a general way, he rendered 

 these services with pleasure and because he delighted in his 

 work, but there were instances of this kind of partnership which 

 he felt to be unfair, and concerning which he would remark, 

 with a smile, " My poverty, not my will, consents." Nothing 

 that he undertook was ever scamped. Thus it follows that few 

 original papers are to be credited to his pen. His work stands 

 chiefly in other men's names. A paper on the mechanism of the 

 feet of insects was of his own contributions to science, the one 

 in which he took most pride. Four years of his life were 

 devoted to the illustrations of BlackwelPs volumes on English 

 spiders and five to those of Smith on Diatomaceie. — Jour. R. 

 Micros. Soc. 



Mr. John' Mayall, Jr., died in London, July 2tth, 1891. He 

 was a prominent and distinguished student of the principles of 

 the microscope and one of the secretaries of the Royal Micro- 

 scopical Society. 



There is nothing among the recent disclosures of the micro- 

 scope in regard to the rocks so surprising as their delicate 

 adjustment to their environment. We are accustomed to look 

 upon the masses of our mountains as the very type of what is 

 stationary and eternal ; but in reality they are vast chemical 

 laboratories, full of activity and constant change. With every 

 alteration of external conditions or environment, what was a 

 stable equilibrium for atoms or molecules ceases to be. Old 

 unions are constantly being broken down and new ones formed. 

 Life in our planet, like life in ourselves, rests fundamentally in 

 chemical changes. Such processes as these, which properly 

 represent the physiology of our earth's crust, have long been 

 suspected, but their exact nature and details are now being 

 gradually disclosed by microscopical students of the rocks — 

 Popular Science 3Ionthhj. 



