MICROSCOPIC RESEARCH. 1 1 3 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE AQUARIUM AS A NURSERY FOR THE 

 MICROSCOPE. 



To those who keep aquaria for the sake, not merely 

 of being amused, but of learning the higher lessons 

 which animated nature is ever so ready to teach, both 

 fresh-water and marine parlour-aquaria may easily 

 be converted into nurseries for microscopic research. 

 Here may be reared with the utmost ease thousands 

 of minute forms of life, whose ephemeral history of 

 various conditions may be actually seen enacted upon 

 the stage of the microscope. Human eyes can thus 

 look down upon and witness the evolutions of these 

 lower forms of life, just as it is possible other eyes 

 look down upon our own terrestial career. 



The fresh-water tank especially is worth supporting, 

 even for the sake of its microscopical animals and 

 plants alone. Mere littleness does not detract from 

 the interest of their microscopical study, but rather 

 throws a romantic glow about it. By the true natu- 

 ralist magnitude is not taken specially into account, 

 nor is minuteness of size regarded as in itself a sign 

 of low organisation. It is true that most of the lower 

 forms of life are microscopic, but this is because it is 



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