98 THE MICROSCOPE. 



2. The instrument is an equally necessary 

 auxiliary to the Botanist. It has aided him to 

 determine many important or curious questions 

 connected with fossil plants. Professor Nicol 

 of Aberdeen, e.g., by subjecting the ashes of a 

 Silurian anthracite, occurring in Peeblesshire, 

 to the Microscope, detects in it minute tubular 

 fibres ; and observes, that they seem to indicate 

 a higher class of vegetables than was previously 

 supposed to exist at that period. 1 



(1.) Mr. Hugh Miller notices, that an organ- 

 ism found by him at an early period of his 

 geological discoveries, in a nodule of the ichthy- 

 olite beds of Cromarty, although understood 

 by him to be a vegetable remain, was only re- 

 cently certainly determined to be a true wood. 

 " Though I described it," says he, " in the first 

 edition of my little work on the Old Ked Sand- 

 stone in 1841, as exhibiting the woody fibre, it 

 was not until 1845, that, with the assistance of 

 the optical lapidary, I subjected its structure to 

 the test of the Microscope. It turned out, as I 

 had anticipated, to be the portion of a tree ; 

 and, on my submitting the prepared specimen 



1 Testimony of the Socks, p. 424. 



