SOMETHING ABOUT AMERICAN STANDS, ETC. 29 



for he has often to remove the supplemental stage, and 

 to work for hours with the mounts placed on the main 

 plate, using not even the spring-clip or any other 

 attachment, the microscope being the while in the ver- 

 tical position. 



Says another: Why not have the maker furnish 

 some such stage at the date of purchase ? He can do- 

 these things better than any one else." I respond, 

 Yea, verily. 



Thousands of times the question has been asked r 

 44 Which do you prefer the binocular or the monocu- 

 lar? " and as it is more than probable that this question 

 will arise in the minds of some of those who read this- 

 book, perhaps a word or two on the subject may not be 

 amiss. 



Mr. Henry Crouch, F. R. M. S., a well known maker 

 of microscopes, visited this country during the Centen- 

 nial Exhibition, and on his return complained bitterly 

 of " an eminent German microscopist, who assisted in 

 examing the microscopes on exhibition at Philadelphia , 

 and who from the first loudly proclaimed the useless- 

 ness of binoculars, . . . but whom he afterwards 

 found out had never used one." 'The author is pretty 

 much in the same boat with the eminent German. 



Since the introduction of the binocular, the writer 

 has made several downright square and honest attempts 

 to use the binocular long enough to be able to express 

 an opinion worth consideration, but in each and every 

 case the double barrelled machine proved too much for 

 his patience. With the low powers the instrument is 



