204 PICTURING MIRACLES 



eye one sees the parts of the living cell or whatever 

 the subject is more or less isolated from their sur- 

 roundings and the part you are most interested in 

 showing is often entirely invisible if pictured in what 

 in the print is a monochrome field. I have in mind as 

 an example a lapse-time picture I made of the 

 embryo of the anchovy fish egg. After overcoming 

 the mechanical difficulties of holding the egg still 

 and supplying fresh salt water continually for the 

 four-day incubation period under the microscope, I 

 could watch and picture at ten-minute intervals the 

 some 600 pictures (25 seconds on the screen). While 

 the yellowish embryo with its large head and tail 

 formed from a clear colorless egg, the picture, per- 

 fect photographically, lacked the yellow color of the 

 embryo to segregate it from the surrounding proto- 

 plasm in the egg, while the eye watching it could 

 distinguish the division of the egg into cells and 

 their gradual grouping of themselves into the tiny 

 fish-like embryo; to the eye beautiful and wonderful 

 to see, step by step for the four days, all the organs 

 and the baby fish build up in front of you. On the 

 screen that action, taking only twenty-five seconds, 

 was wonderful, but it lacked the color to enable the 

 eye to distinguish the dividing line between proto- 

 plasm and the body already formed and its tiny or- 

 gans taking up their life duties. 



