136 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



(6) Miscellaneous. 



Development of the Compound Microscope.* — In the course of Mr. 

 E. M. Nelson's paper on this subject he makes the following remarks : — 

 " Let me preface the few remarks I have to make on the Development 

 of the Microscope, by pointing out to you the important place the Micro- 

 scope holds in our social economy. Up to a very few years ago the 

 education of the nation was confined merely to a knowledge of Greek 

 and Roman mythology. This was the key-note given by our two Uni- 

 versities, which as a natural consequence was followed up by the public 

 schools, whose masters are all graduates of one of these Universities. 

 The knowledge of a dead language depends more on an effort of 

 memory than on a use of the reasoning faculty. As a development of 

 the reasoning faculty is of vastly greater importance than the memory 

 power, so dead languages are most unsuited for the training of the 

 young. To educate according to its derivation, means to lead out ; to 

 educate a boy therefore, is to lead out his mind ; in other words, to draw 

 out something which is there. According to the popular notion it is to 

 put in something which is not. 



The only way to procure growth in an organism is to supply it with 

 food it can readily digest, so the only way to develope the brain is to 

 supply it with digestible food. Further, as one man's meat is another's 

 poison for the body, so also is it for the mind. But what have the great 

 educators of our nation done but force every one through the same 

 classical diet, to the exclusion of everything else ? In doing so they have 

 ruined thousands of minds by arresting the development of the reasoning 

 faculty, and by filling them with what is, in most cases, indigestible 

 matter. There is necessarily a certain percentage of minds to whom 

 classical lore is a food capable of ready assimilation ; they consequently 

 may be benefited by it, but we may assume the percentage is small. 



You will be asking what all this has to do with the Microscope. To 

 which I reply, that I wish to see Liddell and Scott's Lexicon dethroned, 

 and the Microscope put in its place as a national educator. Of late a 

 change has taken place. Since my schooldays, science has been in- 

 troduced. This is the thin end of the wedge ; let it by all means have 

 full scope, and I have little doubt but that that science which was ridi- 

 culed by the schoolmasters of my day, will eventually supplant the 

 Olympian mythology as a pabulum on which to feed the young mind. 

 The Microscope and the telescope hold the same relation to science as a 

 knife and fork do to beef. If science is a food for the mind, a little time 

 devoted to the knife which makes it capable of assimilation will, I hope, 

 not be in vain. Therefore, without further digression, I will at once 

 pass to the instrument. The telescope, dealing as it does with extra- 

 mundane things, cannot have the same interest for us as the Microscope. 

 The one fact, that the Microscope has revealed the pestilence which has 

 walked in darkness all these ages, is sufficient to place it above all other 

 scientific instruments in importance. An unseen foe is a bad one to 

 fight, but now that his lurking-place has been unmasked by the Micro- 

 scope, we may look for some victories over our enemy. Have not some 

 indeed been already gained ? " 



" "We have now come to a period when the Microscope object-glass 

 was achromatized, and from this date spring the great improvements 



* Trans. Middlesex Nat. Hist, and Sci. Soc, 1886-7, pp. 103-11. 



