316 THE MICROSCOPE. 
another somewhat similar to it, and another, until the ideas 
have ceased or the writer has grown tired, when another quota- 
tion starts him on another moralizing journey. The book recalls 
to the remembrance of the reader Jacox’s “ Cues from all Quar- 
ters,” but it is without the satisfying qualities of that charming 
essay. It is scarcely adapted to consecutive reading. It is more 
acceptable in a momentary examination, when one of the quota- 
tions or comments may cling to the memory, and be borne away 
as a “seed thought” that may suggest something new, inspiring 
or helpful. 
Ambition, wealth, health, love, art, poetry, music, the beauties 
of nature, the troubles of life, labor and rest, religion, the hope 
of progress, and the destiny of man, are the headings of its thir- 
teen chapters, from which an idea of the contents may be 
obtained, 
“Many of us,” says Sir John, “ walk through the world like 
ghosts, as if we were in it and not of it. We have ‘eyes and 
see not, ears and hear not.’ To look is much less easy than to 
overlook, and to be able to see what we do see, is a great gift. 
Ruskin maintains that ‘The greatest thing a human soul ever 
does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a 
plain way.’ We must look before we can expect to see. ‘To 
the attentive eye,’ says Emerson, ‘each moment of the year has 
its own beauty; and in the same field it beholds every hour a 
picture that was never seen before, and shall never be seen 
again.’” 
In the chapter on the hope of progress, the author says: “We 
cannot, it would seem, hope at present for any great increase of 
our knowledge of atoms by improvements in the microscope. 
With our present instruments we can perceive lines ruled on 
glass which are 1-90,000 of an inch apart; but owing to the 
properties of light itself it would appear that we cannot hope to 
be able to perceive objects which are much less than 1-100,000 
of an inch in diameter.” One hundred and twenty thousand 
lines to the inch have undoubtedly been resolved, and Dr. Roys- 
ton-Piggott claims to have seen objects only the one one-mill- 
ionth of an inch in diameter. The author’s preface is dated 
April, 1889, and the volume is the June issue of “The Hum- 
boldt Library.” It would seem as if the author were not well 
informed in microscopical science. Sir John Lubbock, how- 
