CHAPTER II 



SOME EARLY MICROSCOPISTS 



OF the early British microscopists, Robert 

 Hooke must not pass unnoticed. He was 

 appointed Curator of the Royal Society 

 two years after its formation, and the terms 

 of his appointment were somewhat one-sided. He 

 was required to '' furnish the Society every day 

 they meet with three or four experiments " ; for 

 this no pay was to be his till the Society accumu- 

 lated sufficient funds to reward him. 



Although compound microscopes had been in- 

 vented in Hooke 's day, it is noteworthy that he 

 remained faithful to the single lens, in fact it was 

 not till very many years later that the simple 

 lens was supplanted, in general use by the more 

 complicated, if more perfect instrument. 



In his book on Microscopy, entitled Micrographia, 

 Hooke gives a quaint account of the making of a 

 microscope. '' Could we make a microscope," he 

 writes, " to have only one refraction, it would 

 cxteris paribus, far excel any other that had a 

 greater number. And hence it is, that if you take 

 a very clear piece of a broken Venice glass, and in 



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