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some of the lower animals. These hopes have been more 
than realised by the application of the microscope to almost 
every department of medico-legal inquiry. In the great 
work which has been produced by Dr. Taylor, and which 
may be justly regarded as the most important and reliable in 
the British language, he has everywhere indicated where 
the inquiries of the medical jurist may be aided by the use 
of the microscope. It would be impossible for us here to go 
through the details of this great work on medical juris- 
prudence, to show where the microscope is needed ; but we will 
endeavour to pass in review some of the points where medico- 
legal inquiries may be justly regarded as imperfect without 
the aid of this instrument. 
There is a large class of agents derived from both the 
mineral and vegetable worlds which act as poisons on the 
human system, and which only a few years since were 
regarded as impossible of detection but by the agency of 
chemical analysis. It is in these cases that recently the 
iG 
microscope has not only come to the aid of the chemist, but 
has supplied the means of discovering these agents where 
chemistry has entirely failed. Of the many substances from 
the mineral kingdom to which we might allude, we refer 
