138 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



room that night, I assure you. However, remembering 

 that " nothing venture, nothing have/' I thought I would 

 look into the disease. A well-known M.D. prefixed his re- 

 marks by saying, " I don't think you will find any organic 

 formation at all in it." So, spreading out some of what 

 bore the appearance of clotted cream on a slip of gla*s, 

 and using the highest magnifying power I have, namely, 

 the very best one-eighth, that magnifies 400 diameters, 

 that is, 160,000 times, it appeared to me that between 

 this disease and these fungoid plants to which I have 

 been referring there was little, if any, difference, each 

 ultimate particle invisible, of course, to the eye without 

 the aid of the microscope being a small circle with 

 another generation inside ; that, in fact, it was nothing 

 but or ganie formation ; and I said so. A smart discus- 

 sion followed, and the end was that I discovered they 

 took me for an M.D., and in their happy ignorance, in 

 which I, mischievously, did not undeceive them, they 

 made me an honorary member of the dispensary ! 



Innumerable instances might be here recorded of one 

 thing living upon another ; and while describing the very 

 interesting illustration of the vegetable caterpillar, I 

 remember a similar case of the mysterious way in which 

 eggs, like seeds, find their way into places and things 

 that puzzle our minds exceedingly. 



Some years ago I was shown a large case of various 

 descriptions of flies deposited, for safe keeping, in the 

 hands of one of the first opticians in London, during 

 the owner's absence abroad. The case, when I saw it, 

 represented its appearance on the owner's return when he 

 went to claim the property, on which he set great value. 



What a scene ! Swinging on the pins on which the 

 specimens had been so long impaled, fastened to the cork 

 below, were nothing but their skeletons ; the Dermestes, 



