22 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Feb 



II, The next method came into vogue when the physi- 

 cians, botanists and biologists began to utilize the 

 instrument for their purposes. Mounting after killing, 

 hardening, fixing, sectioning, and staining, led to satis- 

 factory results. Biology made rapid progress. Every 

 month brings refinements and additions to these opera- 

 tions. The optical accessfsories are largely replaced by 

 these mechanical and chemical aids. Mineralogy has 

 also resorted to sectioning. Hundreds of workers by 

 this method have replaced the tens who "fought objec- 

 tives" on optical grounds. Microscopy has thus became 

 subservient to the sciences and is not and never will 

 (again?) be a science of itself. 



III. There are those who are not satisfied with the 

 foregoing. Prof. H. B. Ward is one of these. He says : 



"The methods in vogue today for the examination and 

 study of living substance are but little improved over 

 those which obtained some thirty years ago; if possibly 

 we can see a little more it is because we have better lenses 

 and better instruments. The cell as a living thing, as 

 regards the changes which take place during its proces- 

 ses, is known by inference from the dead object rather 

 than by observations upon its living substance. It is a 

 chemical laboratory and should be studied that we may 

 know the reactions which are taking place in it. If the 

 methods of microscopical technique most generally in 

 vogue at the present have given us, as it were, a series of 

 instantaneous photographs of the cell and of the arrange- 

 ment or rearrangement of its various parts in various 

 conditions, there yet remains to be developed that tech- 

 nique which shall show us these substances in the pro- 

 cess of synthesis and analysis, that th<d investigator may 

 be able to follow the workings of the cell as a formative 

 power and see how living matter operates." Perhaps 

 Professor Gates has already supplied what Professor 

 Ward calls for. We shall soon see. 



