Objects for the Microscope. 23 



the common garden Rhubarb will furnish you with abun- 

 dant specimens. Take a little boiled Rhubarb, and pick it 

 to pieces with a mounted needle in a little water, when 

 bundles of spiral vessels will be easily found. 



SPIRAL CELLS OF SPHAGNUM. 



Sphagnum is a moss growing in marshy places, and its 

 leaf shows a beautiful arrangement of spiral fibres in its 

 large oval cells, whilst in the smaller ones you will see the 

 granules of chlorophylle which colour the leaf. 



SCALARIFORM VESSELS, 



so called because they resemble the steps of a ladder, are 

 peculiar to ferns and to asparagus. They are secondary 

 deposits on the cell wall, and somewhat of the nature of 

 spiral fibre. Under polarized light they are very beautiful. 

 When you pull up a common Bracken or Fern, and cut 

 the root across, the brown figure you see, called King 

 Charles in the Oak, is made up of these scalariform vessels. 

 They are very troublesome to prepare, but this is the easiest 

 way that I know of: Cut up the root and boil it until 

 tender enough to peel ; put the centre part into a jam- 

 pot with water and a little nitric acid ; let it stand in 

 boiling water for some hours, then pick the long white 

 fibres carefully out, wash them in boiling water over and 

 over again until perfectly clean and clear, which is only 

 ascertained by examination under the microscope, then 

 mount them in fluid or balsam. If in balsam, dry them 

 well first. 



POLLEN. 



POLLEN OF MALLOW. 



A beautiful object viewed as an opaque more lovely far 

 when taken fresh from the flower, and looked at upon one 



