AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 439 



Mr. Pell complied, as follows : 



MICROSCOPE. 



Two of the most noble instrumeuts presented hj scientific men to the 

 world we inhabit, are the telescope and microscope. With them we con- 

 trol the universe, and are enabled to gaze upon existences hitherto unknown 

 to us. Through the medium of the telescope creations millions of miles 

 bejond our globe are revealed. While the microscope brings to light those 

 that the unassisted eye never could have beheld. The telescope carries us 

 to the illimitable fields of space, and unfolds to us systems of suns like our 

 own, rushing with the same inconceivable speed amidst attendant glittering 

 worlds. 



While the microscope opens to us fields of instinct life enshrined in re- 

 gions of infinitude, and aggregated by myriads, so mysterious as scarcely 

 to be grasped by the intellect of man. 



As the astronomer with his telescope sweeps over the star spangled 

 heavens in a cloudless night, and trembles at the power and majesty of the 

 Supreme God, so the microcopist sweeps over a drop of water, which im- 

 mediately becomes an ocean, teeming with groups of symmetrical figures, 

 sporting at will through their spacious domain, and he holds his breath for 

 fear of disturbing them. The term microscope is derived from uticpog, 

 small, and OKorreoj, I view, and was first suggested by Demisianus. 



Aristophanes, five hundred years before the birth of our Saviour, speaks 

 of a burning sphere. Seneca, born the first year of the Christian ^ra, 

 writes that small objects might be seen through a glass filled with water. 

 Pliny speakes of lenses made of glass. Ptolemy uses the word refraction 

 in his writings. Lenses of a convex figure were used in the fourth century. 

 The English, however say, that Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century, 

 invented the telescope, microscope, camera obscura, gunpowder, and the 

 reading glass. Huyghen, gives Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutchmp;n, the credit 

 of inventing the compound microscopes in 1621. While Fontana, in 1618, 

 claims the discovery. Be that as it may, Zacharias Jansen, in 1590, pre- 

 sented the first microscope, to Charles Albert, Arch Duke of Austria. Vi- 

 viani, in his life of Galileo, says he invented the microscope from his know- 

 ledge of the telescope, and that in 1612, he sent one to Sigismund, King of 

 Poland. In 1667, Robert Hooke published a work on philosophical de- 

 scriptions of bodies made by a magnifying glass. He was the first who 

 made globule lenses of high power. 



The solar microscope, is admirably adapted to illustrate popular subjects 

 rather than accurate investigations, as its construction is inferior to the 

 compound. It has a condensing lens, mirror, and object glass. When used 

 it is passed through a hole in a window shutter, and the tube with its 

 lenses fastened on the inside ; the mirror receives the rays of the sun, and 

 reflects them along the tube, where they are condensed by the lens, and 

 concentrated upon the object, placed near the principal focus. On account 

 of the powerful concentration of light upon the object, the image may be 



