62 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER CHAP. 



print on slips of paper. These improvements in 

 detail may not seem of importance, in comparison 

 with that of the principles which they illustrated. 

 But in the work which Flower had set himself to do, 

 clearness of detail and setting out was of the essence 

 of the matter. The objects shown in "wet" 

 preparations are all suspended in spirit, and not 

 placed on fixed rods fastened to the top or sides, or 

 the movements of the fluid might injure them in 

 time. The means of suspension needed improve- 

 ment. The rods, or whatever passed through the 

 portions, must be made of some substance which 

 the spirit could not affect in any way. At the same 

 time it was necessary that these rods should be of 

 the lightest possible material. Flower at first used 

 thin rods of glass, often not thicker than a knitting 

 needle. These were passed through the specimen, 

 and suspended from either end by almost invisible 

 threads. Later, a neater invention improved upon 

 this. Instead of glass rods, minute tubes of glass 

 were used as suspending rods. The threads were 

 passed through these tubes from end to end, and 

 the method of suspending the specimens made at 

 once easy and perfectly safe after the ends of the 

 little tubes had been rounded in the blowpipe for a 

 moment to take off the sharp edge which might 

 have cut the threads. 



By these means it was easy to suspend two or 

 three specimens in the same case, and so to present 

 the same organ from different points of view, as 



