62 The Microscope. 



CHAPTER VII. 



EYES AND OTHEE OBJECTS. 



|HB boiled eye of a fish provides an object 

 singularly well-adapted to the higher powers 

 of the microscope, and one which can 

 be prepared with little difficulty. Probably some 

 of my readers in their childish days, seeing 

 a cod-fish or haddock placed on the dinner-table 

 as a head dish, have begged for one of its eyes 

 not the whole jelly-like mass, but the pretty white 

 thing inside, the size and shape of a marble. The 

 prize gained, they have if old enough to be trusted 

 with a penknife cut away the white brittle outside 

 of the ball, and discovered the beautiful little trans- 

 parent sphere within. And then they have found that 

 they can peel a transparent delicate rind of fibres off 

 this little sphere, but only to find beneath it another 

 layer exactly similar, and another below that, and so 

 on till it becomes almost too small to hold. Our 

 present business is with this little sphere and its 

 peelings. 



I will suppose that I have placed a few of these 

 on a glass-slide, and have fastened a thin glass over 

 them, as they would quickly become brittle if left 



