84 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [April, 



subdivisions of Zoology and Botany to which they belong. The 

 subject-matter of these abstracts may be considered to fairly represent 

 microscopical literature and the science of microscopy. 



In the previous remarks a parallel has been drawn between astron- 

 omy and microscopy, as having equal claims to the title of science. 



But if the mixed nature of subject-matter lessens the claim of a pur- 

 suit to the title of Science, Geography, as the term is usually construed, 

 has fiir less claims to be called a science than microscopy. 



Until recently the applications of the microscope were almost en- 

 tirely confined to living structures in their minute elements, or a special 

 part of Biology, but " Geography as a science," as defined by Webster, 

 includes more or less Astronomy, Politics, and Biology ; in a word, as 

 heterogeneous a mass of subjects as could well be assembled. 



Neither can it be said that Botany, as commonly understood, in- 

 cludes all the results obtained by the use of the microscope, nor, simi- 

 larly, that Zoology covers all the microscopical work belonging to the 

 lower forms of animal life. The great majority of those students called 

 botanists in this country know almost nothing of the use of the com- 

 pound microscope in its more perfect forms, or of the lower classes of 

 vegetable life. The same is true of numbers of zoologists, and in these 

 lower classes of living forms we tread so closely on indeterminate 

 boundaries of form and structure that the distinctions between plants 

 and animals cease to be of more value than species characters in higher 

 groups, as illustrated by Hceckel's idea of the class Protista. Here 

 again the parallel with Astronomy holds good. Spectral analvsis and 

 stellar photography are often classed as branches of Astronomy, but 

 they belong by nature to Chemistry, and the bond of union to Astron- 

 omy is the principal instrument employed, as much as the subject- 

 matter. 



It may be further pointed out that no man is a competent observer in 

 t!ie field of microscopic zoology or botany who is not well acquainted 

 with both classes of objects. Their habitats and forms are so similar 

 as sometimes even to render it a inatter of doubt as to which department 

 of life they should be assigned. 



This application of the microscope presents so much adapted to in- 

 terest the observer that men are fascinated with its study apart from any 

 pecuniary reason. Men who begin scientific work because they love it 

 frequently acquire the highest skill in their specialty. 



They find their highest pleasure in the pursuit of science in the sense 

 defined at the beginning of this article, as a body of knowledge based 

 on inductive reasoning. The essential conditions of this pleasure are 

 enthusiasm for truth, and a judicial temperament that takes nothing for 

 granted unsupported by a logical basis of reasoning. When to these 

 we add the power of projecting on the mental plane of vision combina- 

 tions of ideas hitherto unknown, (called by Tyndall " the scientific im- 

 agination ") we have the conditions of greatest success in its pursuit. 



These conditions are as likely to exist in the so-called amateur, as in 

 the man who makes science his business.* Many attempts have been 



*Amaieur. " or.e who cultivates any study or art from taste or attachment, without pursuing it pro- 

 fessionally." — H'llister. This word does not in any way include the idea of careless, incorrect, or im- 

 perfect work. 



See articles on the above subject in Zeitschrift fiir Mikroskopie, ueber die Entwickelung und gegen- 

 wartigen Stellung der Mikroskopie in Deutschland, Kdouard Kaiser, October, 1877. 



Also American Quarterly Microscopical Journal, vol. i, p. 58, 1878, and Journal Royal Microscopical 

 Society, Jan., 1879. 



