EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 19 



CHAPTER II. 



EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 



1. WHAT have been the applications and the 

 discoveries of the Microscope ? 



" Of all the instruments which have yet been 

 applied to scientific research, there is certainly 

 none whose use has been more largely or more 

 rapidly productive of most valuable results/' 

 than the Microscope. There is scarcely a region 

 of the world, or an element of nature scarcely 

 an art or science scarcely an atom of unor- 

 ganized matter scarcely a thallogen or acrogen 

 scarcely a sea- weed or fern of the Silurian or 

 Red Sandstone systems, onward to the loftiest 

 dicotyledon of our own forests and gardens 

 scarcely an organ or tissue of animal, from the 

 humblest crustacean or mollusc up to man 

 ' monarch of all," upon which the Microscope 

 has not fixed its clear far-searching eye, and 

 by which it has not triumphantly proved its 



