138 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [June, 



alone, except for the single P. & L. stand, as the sole represen- 

 tative of the English ideas and styles, while everything around it 

 was continental, wholly continental. These makers, also, in de- 

 veloping some of their most practical stands, have made such 

 large and good use of American ideas and experience that we are 

 half inclined to claim a special interest in the result. We have 

 been much interested in their eflbrts during recent years to de- 

 velop and improve the simple and less expensive forms of mi- 

 croscopes, especially in rendering the English and American type 

 convenient and available for laboratory use, and in building up in 

 London well-organized shops (after the method characteristic of 

 American practice) where work of a uniformlv good quality can 

 be done by machinery at a moderate cost. Perhaps the most uni- 

 versally available of their more ambitious instruments, though for- 

 tunately far from the largest or most costly, is the one lately ar- 

 ranged from Dr. Van Heurck's suggestions and named after him. 

 Though of moderate size and cost, being of exactly the size that 

 the writer would choose as a maximum, this possesses a great 

 number of serviceable features ; and, notwithstanding the unfa- 

 vorable opinions that some eminent authorities have expressed on 

 theoretical grounds, its practical working seems excellent. The 

 jury especially compliinented " the extreme precision of all its 

 movements ;" and the writer found it unexpectedly easy with its 

 fine adjustment to focus a lens of n. a. 1.63 upon the shell of A. 

 2^eU7icida, adjusting it instantly to exactly the plane of clearest 

 vision of the dots, and leaving it there, though every one knows 

 that, with extreme powers, it is often easy to catch glimpses, in 

 passing, of points which can hardly be permanently focused upon 

 and shown to other observers. 



One of the strongest and most agreeable impressions made by 

 the manufacturers' exhibit, in the aggregate, is that of the uni- 

 formity in good workmanship, and of the variety of convenient 

 and tasty designs, by all the prominent makers. 



All the manufacturers, with two exceptions, already stated, are 

 of the continental sort, and never before has the writer seen 

 grouped in one room a representative collection of their micro- 

 scopes at all comparable to this. It is most interesting to note the 

 purity in which, in so many hands, their type of stand has been 

 preserved and the extent to which its possibilities have been de- 

 veloped. This style must be abundantly satisfactory, alike to the 

 manufacturers and to their patrons, to be so freely reproduced and 

 elaborated by so many ingenious workers, in so many diverse 

 places, with so little deviation from the prevailing type. The in- 

 terest of the display is doubled, to Americans, from the fact that 

 from the first we have been constantly presented with the choice 

 between adopting the English or the continental style as the basis 

 of our own. The friendly though often severe battle of the 

 stands has continued throughout the memory of the present gen- 

 eration, and still continues to some extent notwithstanding the 



