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THE MICROSCOPE AND THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



The 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 

 delight the eye by the elegance of their forms, the brilliancy of their varied hues, or 

 enchant the senses by their delicious odours ; or, it may be, for the healthful exercise 

 afforded by the different manual operations connected with gardening; but in how few 

 instances are the inhabitants of the parterre regarded as so many sources of the highest 

 moral and intellectual gratification. 



Pew persons are now-a-days ignorant of the important aid which the science of natural 

 history has derived from the microscope, 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 con- 

 ditions which must be fulfilled ; there is however but little necessity, except in very 

 minute investigations, to make use of the high magnifying powers with which we are 

 thus furnished. Tor 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 occupants of the flower 

 garden, we may be allowed to digress for a moment, to examine a plant belonging 

 to a A r ery humble division of the vegetable kingdom, viz., the Hepaticaj, or 

 liver- worts, this plant being termed by botanists, the Marchantia polymorpha. It 

 grows abundantly on damp rocks and walls, presenting the appearance of a firm green 

 lobed crust or expansion, studded with little conical elevations ; at the apex 

 of each of which is an oval orifice, communicating with a very curious breathing pore 

 or stoma, the latter being formed of five cellular rings, overlying 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, almost 

 circular bodies, which, viewed by the stanhope lens, are very beautiful objects. They 

 are regarded by botanists as buds or gemmre, which to use the language of Dr. Carpenter, 

 'separate spontaneously from the parent structure, and dcvclope themselves into new 



