ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 177 



Btruction from sections. An appendix describes methods of in- 

 jection and museum methods, and gives formula9 for most of the 

 important reagents, &c." 



Examination of Blood. — If we did not fear to disturb the 

 exceptional harmony which has always existed between English 

 microscopists and their American colleagues, we shoiild be tempted 

 to preface the extract here given by the stereotyped formula of the 

 newspapers, " The following is from an American source " : — 



" A man was found shot in his bedroom, while his wife was lying 

 wounded in another part of the room. She said that her husband had 

 come home in a rage, hit her on the head with the butt of his revolver 

 while her head was on the pillow, and spattered blood over the linen ; 

 that she jumped up, and he shot her. She then rushed at him, and, 

 snatching the revolver, shot him through the heart. He reeled to the 

 corner where he was found, and died. The prosecution did not 

 believe her story, and set up the theory that she shot him when he 

 was asleep, and dragged him to the corner, and then inflicted the 

 wound upon herself. The carpet where the dead man lay was 

 saturated with blood. According to the theory of the prosecution, 

 the blood on the pillow was his also. 



Dr. Piper put the section of the pillow with blood upon it under 

 the Microscope, and drew the shape of the corpuscles, enlarged about 

 2000 diameters. He then put the blood on the carpet under the 

 Microscope in the same way. The comparison settled the question 

 at once. The blood-corpuscles were as different as day and night, 

 and sustained the woman's account of the shooting. She was acquitted 

 on that and other evidence." * 



Dr. 0. H. Stowell, amongst other sarcastic comments on this story, 

 suggests I that " perhaps when a man is on a pillow his blood- 

 corpuscles are softer and rounder than when on a hard flat carpet." 



Microscopical Jurisprudence. | — Dr. H. J. Detmers cites a case 

 recently on trial in Hlinois, where a murder was committed in an old 

 ice-house. The murdered man was found lying on a pile of pine saw- 

 dust. A man was arrested for the murder upon whose boots and 

 pantaloons small particles of sawdust were found clinging. He 

 exclaimed that he had not been near the ice-house where the murder 

 was committed, but had been sleeping in another ice-house several 

 yards away. It was conclusively shown that all the sawdust in the 

 house where he claimed to have been was from hard wood. There 

 was no hard wood sawdust in the house where the murder was com- 

 mitted. Particles of sawdust from the prisoner's boots and clothes 

 were placed under the Microscope by an expert, who conclusively 

 proved that it was pine sawdust exactly like that found at the scene of 

 the murder. The microscopist's evidence led to the conviction of the 

 prisoner. 



* The Microscope, v. (1885) pp. 234-5. From ' Scientific American.' 

 t Ibid , p. 230. X Amer. Mon. Micr Journ., vi. (1885) p. 199. 



Ser 2.— Vol. VI. i< 



