SciEXTiTic Lectures. 33 



presents cliaracteristics easily recognizable, under tlie microscope 

 wliicli point to the animal of wliicli they have formed parts. A curi- 

 ous illustration of this truth is mentioned in the Transactions of the 

 Microscopical Society of Great Britain, as having occurred a few 

 years since- in England. A tradition had been current, time out of 

 mind, that the skin of one of the Danish pirates who, more than a 

 thousand years ago, were accustomed to ravage the eastern coast of 

 the island, and who had been captured and ^\it to death, had been 

 nailed to the door of the neighboring church, as a perpetual terror 

 and warning to his tribe, and the very nails were pointed out by 

 which it had been fixed in its place. A curious antiquarian having, 

 by close scrutiny, discovered adhering to one or two of these nails 

 something which seemed to him like a minute shred of leather, care- 

 fully detached it, and submitting it for examinatioil to a microscopic 

 expert, when the peculiar structure characteristic of human skin pre- 

 sented itself, and indicated the truth of the tradition. The minute 

 hairs, also, which accompanied the specimen were pronounced to 

 have belonged to a fair-haired man, such as the Danes were known 

 to have generally been. 



When we- descend lower in the scale of being, however, the char- 

 acteristic differences of organic structure become less and less marked, 

 until in the very lowest forms, the whole organism, whether animal 

 or plant, seems to be made up of entirely homogeneous cells. And 

 this, which is the permanent condition of these lowest forms, is shown 

 by the microscope to be equally the temporary condition of the high- 

 est, even of man himself, when his life history is traced back to its 

 origin. There is no animal whatever, which, in its embryonic condi- 

 tion, is anything more than a congeries of perfectly un distinguishable 

 cells. 



The foregoing observations may serve imperfectly to illustrate the 

 importance and value of the microscope as a means of scientific inves- 

 tigation. And they may serve to illustrate also to what extent science, 

 in all its departments, is dependent for its advancement upon the 

 gradual improvement of the instruments of research. But for the 

 telescope, astronomy might have remained stationary to this day at 

 the point where Tycho Brahe and Kepler left it, and all the magnifi- 

 cent conquests of this grandest of sciences during the last two or 

 three centuries might have remained still unachieved. But for the 

 balance, chemistry might yet continue to be an unwieldy mass of inco- 

 herent truths, instead of rivaling, as it does at present, the severe- 



[Inst.] 3 



