Hints to Beginners with the Microscope. 243 



tails, which he had very carefully observed, but had not defined 

 with sufficient care in his own drawing, owing to the pressure 

 of professional engagements which interrupted him before he 

 could give the last touches to his work. On the whole, our 

 engraving may be considered the most accurate portrait yet 

 published of the Portuguese man-of-war. 



HINTS TO BEGINNERS "WITH THE MICROSCOPE. 



BY T. EYMEE JONES, F.E.S. 



Eew things are more discouraging to the student when first 

 entering upon microscopical research than the frequent disap- 

 pointments he has to encounter in his endeavours to procure 

 living subjects for observation. He reads the instructions 

 usually laid down in works upon the microscope, provides him- 

 self with a multiplicity of apparatus, landing-nets, jointed rods, 

 phials with elaborate contrivances for their attachment and 

 detachment, cases of bottles, and corked tubes, etc., aftd yet 

 when he gets to the water-side, too often finds that, with all his 

 appliances, he is unable to procure the creatures of which he is 

 in search, reminding us forcibly of those amateur fishermen to 

 be seen on the banks of every river, armed with all the parapher- 

 nalia procurable in London, and yet unable to catch a single 

 fish, while the poor ragged lad who accompanies them, furnished 

 only with a rod and line of his own rude manufacture, soon 

 manages to fill his basket. 



We ourselves, in our younger days, enthusiastic though we 

 may have been, found our ardour very considerably damped 

 when, after a walk of twenty miles, we have returned wearied, 

 as from a day's shooting, with nothing but experience for our 

 pains, whilst, as we now know, every object of which we were 

 in want was easily obtainable in the nearest pond, had we but 

 understood how to set about procuring it. We write not, be it 

 remembered, for scientific readers, some of whom, perhaps, 

 may smile at the simplicity of these remarks ; our advice is 

 addressed to the beginners with the microscope, who will pro- 

 bably be benefited by the following suggestions :— 



Let us suppose that the young naturalist sets out in search 

 of infusorial animalcules, furnished secundem artem with a dozen 

 bottles, to be filled with different kinds, and is told to procure 

 samples of the water from each place that he visits likely to 

 contain these invisible atoms : he does so, but when he gets home 

 in the evening to his microscope, however much better he may 

 be for the exercise, he finds himself woefully taken in when 

 he comes to examine the contents of his several phials ; for, 



