APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 103 



the Two-th part of an inch ; whilst the smallest 

 of these again is of enormous size, when com- 

 pared with the fibres of the partitions bounding 

 the vessels in which they occur. 1 



(5.) The Microscope also pours its light 

 upon another interesting section of wood on the 

 writer's table. Mr. Layard tells us that while 

 pursuing his remarkable discoveries among the 

 ruins of Nineveh, he one day felt the sweet 

 smell of burning cedar. The Arabs had dug a 

 beam of wood from the mounds of Nimroud, 

 and, as the weather was cold, had made a fire to 

 warm themselves. The wood was cedar, and 

 retained all its original fragrance. " It was 

 probably/' says Mr. Layard, " one of the very 

 beams which an inscription discovered on the 

 walls mentions as having been brought from the 

 forests of Lebanon by the king who built the 

 edifice." 2 A piece of the cedar, thus strangely 

 disinterred, was sent home to our distinguished 

 India Missionary, Dr. Duff. The specimen in 

 the writer's possession, prepared as a microscopic 



1 Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. pp. 484, 487 ; 

 vol. ii. pi. 56 a. 



2 Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 357. 



