AS TO OURSELVES 



the eye ever magnifies anything. When 

 we cross a street in order to read a sign we 

 have not magnified its letters by doing so. 

 We have simply brought our eyes nearer 

 to them. And that is all that a microscope 

 does. A three-inch glass brings our eyes 

 to that distance of the object we are look- 

 ing at. An inch and a half glass brings 

 us so much nearer, and if then with a direct 

 illumination we look at the centre of a 

 common verbena flower, strings upon 

 strings of more gorgeously colored pearls 

 than any jeweller can show, appear to our 

 admiring gaze. All this shows that the 

 eyes which we brought with us at birth do 

 not see a tithe of the beauties of Nature. 

 With a microscope not much better than 

 this, Leeuwenhoek, in 1675, frightened the 

 world by saying that more animals live in 

 our mouths than there were people in Hol- 

 land I But with object glasses of higher 

 powers we are said to see things magnified 

 161 



