Monthly Microscopical 
( 104 ) Journal: aie i 1870. 
NEW BOOKS, WITH SHORT NOTICES. 
On Microscopical Manipulation ; being the subject-matter of a Course of 
Lectures delivered before the Quekett Microscopical Club, January- 
April, 1869. By W. T. Suffolk, F.R.M.S. London: Gillman. 
1870.—The lectures on microscopic manipulation, which Mr. Suf- 
folk last year delivered before the members of the Quekett Club, 
appeared successively in the pages of the ‘Chemical News.’ From 
the latter journal they have been reprinted by the author, and 
are now issued in the form of a very prettily-bound volume. We 
presume that the author does not intend his book to enter into 
competition with the larger treatises of Carpenter, Beale, and 
Hogg, but that he has written for those who may be desirous of 
reading something short and introductory before commencing the 
study of a standard work. If this book were to be regarded as in 
any way a comprehensive guide to the microscopist, it must meet 
with severe criticism. As an elementary volume it is creditable 
alike to Mr. Suffolk and the Quekett Club, and it will be found 
useful by amateurs who have just purchased their first microscope. 
It contains seven chapters, an appendix, and some good notes. 
The titles of the several sections give a key to the contents, and 
therefore we reproduce them as follows :—Construction of Micro- 
scope; Mechanical Processes; Mounting Objects Dry and in 
Balsam; Mounting Objects in Fluid; Illuminating Apparatus; 
Polarized Light; and lastly, Drawing and Micrometry. There 
are forty or fifty woodcuts scattered through the text, and there 
are eight lithographic plates on a black background. In most of 
the chapters we find but an outlinear summary of the facts stated 
in Carpenter’s ‘Microscope, but in some, as, for example, the 
second, we are given an amount of valuable practical information, 
the result of the author’s extensive experience. Mr. Suffolk’s 
remarks, too, on the method of drawing and lithographing sketches 
of microscopic objects are exceedingly good. ' The author is but an 
amateur lithographer himself, but some of his plates—especially 
that of Stephanoceros— give promise of considerable ultimate 
skill. It seems to us that Mr. Suffolk might have omitted the 
consideration of such questions as the reason why a convex lens 
when placed before the eye magnifies an object. This is a difficult 
problem indeed, and Mr. Suffolk has allowed to escape him a very 
important fact in connection with the subject. The magnifying ~ 
power of such a lens is not due simply to its rendering more con- 
vergent or less divergent the rays from an object placed within the 
range of normal vision. As Dr. Carpenter (and we fancy he is 
the only writer who has done so) has well pointed out when treating 
on this subject, “ Not only is the course of the several rays in each 
pencil altered as regards the rest by this refracting process, but the 
course of the pencils themselves is changed, so that they enter the eye 
