THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



THE MICROSCOPE AND THE FLOWER GARDEN". 



|HE flower garden is but too often valued merely as an 

 ornamental adjunct to our dwellings ; sometimes for the 

 more obvious beauties of its individual treasures which 

 may delight the eye by the elegance of tbeir forms, the 

 brilliancy of their varied hues, or enchant the senses bv 

 their delicious odours, or, it may be, for the healthful exercise 

 afforded by the different manual operations connected with garden- 

 ing ; but in how few instances are the inhabitants of the parterre 

 regarded as so many sources of the highest moral and intellectual 

 gratification. Few persons are nowadays ignorant of the important 

 aid which the science of natural history has derived from the micro- 

 scope, and we desire, in the following brief and simple outline, to 

 point out how this instrument may be made available in the flower 

 garden, as a means of mental culture and of amassing a store of facts 

 of the most interesting character. The too general disregard of 

 this valuable auxiliary of modern science, seems chiefly attributable 

 to the generally received opinion that the microscope is not only an 

 expensive instrument, but that it demands much time, attention, and 

 nice manipulation. And if the compound microscope be employed, 

 these are certainly conditions which must be fulfilled ; there is, how- 

 ever, but little necessity, except in very minute investigations, to 

 make use of the high magnifying powers with which we are thus 

 . furnished. 



For all ordinary purposes, the well-known Stanhope lens, which 

 is one of the cheapest and most powerful single microscopes that has 

 yet been proposed, is sufficient, and it is to this simple instrument 

 that reference will alone be made in the course of our observations. 



Perhaps, before directing our attention to the more showy occu- 

 pants of the flower garden, we may be allowed to digress for a 

 moment, to examine a plant belonging to a very humble division of the 

 vegetable kingdom, viz., the Hepaticse, or liverworts, this plant being 

 termed by botanists the Marchantia poli/?norplia. It grows abun- 

 dantly on damp rocks and walls, presenting the appearance of a 

 firm green-lobed crust or expansion, studded with little conical eleva- 

 tions, at the apex of each of which is an oval orifice, communicating 

 with a very curious breathing pore or stoma, the letter being formed 

 of five cellular rings, overlaying each other. 



But the parts of the plant to which we would more particularly 

 direct the attention of the microscopic observer, are the little urns 

 or receptacles which arise from different points of its surface, and 

 the edges or brims of which are fringed with a row of transparent, 

 delicate teeth. These urns contain a number of minute, flat, and 

 almost circular bodies, which, viewed by the Stanhope lens, arc very 

 beautiful objects. They are regarded by botanists as buds of 

 gemma: 1 , which, to use the language of Dr. Carpenter, " separate 

 spontaneously from the parent structure, and develope themselves 

 into new beings ; and as, when mature, they are liable to be washed, 

 out by rain, and to be carried to different parts of the neighbouring 



November. 



