28 MEMOIR OF ALFRED SMEE. [CHAP. IV. 



when he was a student of King's College, he belonged to their 

 Debating Society, and it was there he learned to speak in public. 

 He would speak on any question that was before the meeting in 

 order to acquire a fluency of language a custom from which, he 

 observed in later life, he had derived considerable benefit. 



In March 1845, he wrote a paper for the Microscopical Society, 

 'On Vessels in Fat smaller than the Capillaries.' Curiously 

 enough the paper was lost by that society, which caused him 

 considerable irritation and annoyance : * for this paper contained 

 the description of the process he adopted in the preparation of his 

 beautiful carmine injections of the brain and spinal cord. These 

 injections were exceedingly difficult to prepare : they were made 

 by using a solution of carmine in ammonia mixed with size. The 

 preparations were then dried and placed in balsam, so that they 

 are permanent, and, being transparent, constitute the most lovely 

 microscopical specimens which can possibly be perceived. These 

 carmine injections will bear a very high magnifying power. 

 They were the very first that were made. Over a period of more 

 than thirty years these beautiful microscopic preparations have 

 been constantly shown at the various great soirees of London, 

 and up to the present day never are they exhibited without 

 filling the mind of the spectator with wonder and admiration.! 



Early in the summer (June 1845), my father and mother, 

 with her brother, went to Switzerland for a month. Since 

 the time of his marriage, this was the first holiday he had been 

 enabled to take. It was the first time he had seen the 

 snow mountains, and from his intense love of Nature we may 

 well imagine his feelings of delight on beholding the Alps, 

 where 



" The palaces of nature 



Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, 



And throned eternity in icy walls 



Of cold sublimity." BYRON, Childe Harold. 



In the summer of the same year a disease appeared in Europe 

 among potato plants, which caused the tubers to decay. The 

 first communication of the fact was in the ' Gardeners' Chronicle,' 

 on the 16th of August, 1845, by Dr. Bell Salter. No sooner 

 had this letter appeared than other communications were sent 

 to that journal, stating that the disease had existed to a large 

 extent the previous season, although such an important state- 



* It was supposed to have been stolen, 

 f See 'Mind of Man,' p. 233. 



