GLASGOW SOCIETY OF FIELD NATURALISTS. 117 



PAPER READ, 



On the Microscope and Microscopic Illumination. By Mr. Adolf 



SCHULZE, 



I purpose speaking this evening on the Microscope, making 

 special reference to the most recent improvements on it, and to 

 the best modes of microscopic illumination. My remarks will be 

 principally addressed to those gentlemen among you who are not 

 or only little acquainted with the microscope, in the hope that 

 they may incite them to engage in one of the most fascinating and 

 useful of studies, and that they may assist them in the selection 

 and proper use of a microscope. 



Of all the instruments with which the scientific observer of 

 nature can arm himself, there is none which holds a higher place, 

 with regard to general utility, than the microscope, which is now 

 produced in such a state of perfection, yielding so excellent results, 

 that it seems almost impossible to improve on it. I need hardly 

 remind you of what the microscope has done for Science — the 

 Botanist, the Chemist, the Geologist, the Physiologist, the Pathol- 

 ogist, and all those engaged in the examination of minute objects 

 and structures, can no longer be without it. It has even created 

 a new Science, I refer to Histology, or the science of the animal 

 and vegetable tissues, and it has become an inexhaustible source 

 of the purest intellectual enjoyment and of interesting information, 

 even to the non-scientific enquirer. The extremes of minuteness 

 are as wonderful as the extremes of vastness, although the tendency 

 is generally to estimate things by their material grandeur alone. 

 It would be impossible to enumerate all the advantages derived 

 by microscopic observations, and any microscopist, with even less 

 eloquence than I am possessed of, might spend a great deal of 

 time to vent his enthusiasm on this subject. Those persons who 

 pass their lives content with seeing only what they can see with 

 their unarmed eyes, deserve really our sympathy, for to them half 

 of the beauties and wonders of nature remain ever a book with 

 seven seals, which they might easily break open, to feast their eyes 

 and their minds by the perusal of this instructive and edifying 

 volume. 



Gentlemen, the Microscope, as you are awai-e, is an optical con- 

 trivance which enables the observer to see minute objects, or their 

 details of form and structure, magnified, if brought within its reach 



