THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS PREPARATIONS/ 



The more I study the wonderful revelations of the microscope, 

 the more I seem to realize that there are two distinct worlds of 

 vision, with a well-defined line of demarkatiori between them. 

 The one is the world of our natural vision the beautiful display 

 of nature which is ever before our eyes. The other is the world 

 which the powers of magnified vision have in these latter days 

 unfolded to us. The things which are beautiful and interesting 

 to the unaided eye, are not the things which are beautiful and 

 interesting under the microscope. 



The exquisitely colored plumage of some birds, even the bril- 

 liant feathers on the breasts of tropical humming-birds, are coarse 

 and unattractive objects when magnified sufficiently to bring out 

 their true structure. IsTot that the feathers of birds do not fur- 

 nish some very beautiful microscopic objects. The structure of 

 the fibers of the minute down feathers of some birds, composed 

 of little cones, the black point of each just inserted into the 

 white mouth of the one next below it, the exceedingly minute 

 booklets and barbed fibrils which unite the edges of the vanes of 

 common feathers, are striking and interesting objects. But they 

 are not the things that contribute to the visible attractions of 

 the feathered tribes. 



The gaudy colors on the wings of butterflies are among the 

 coarsest and most ill-defined of objects under low powers of the 

 microscope. But the exquisitely wrought and beautifully paint- 

 ed scales which the high powers bring out, regularly laid like 

 tiles on both sides of the wings, and which the naked eye fails to 



* Lecture written in 1881, and read before various societies, with exhibition 

 of specimens. 



