; REVIEWS. 233 
doubt, and the study of morbid growths is exceedingly well sim- 
plified and systematized. Cautious microscopists would probably 
fail to go as far as the author in the recognition of the dises of hu- 
man blood, as distinguished from those of some of the domestic 
animals, since differences so minute, so subject to variation, and so 
liable to mismeasurement on account of slight differences of illu- 
mination, adjustment of lenses, etc., are justly deemed untrust- 
worthy in cases involving important interests; but, taken with 
some allowance for the author’s enthusiasm, the treatment of the 
subject is eminently useful as well as novel and interesting. 
The almost total absence of engravings is the first feature which 
attracts attention on opening the book. This, in the chapters 
which treat of instruments and apparatus, is a sign of maturity, 
not of poverty. The works of Carpenter and of Beale, first is- 
sued at a time when illustrations of stands and accessories were 
indispensable, very properly retain these illustrations and add to 
them according to the progress of the times, in order that they 
may continue to be encyclopzdic to all microscopical students of 
English-speaking countries; but the time has passed, when new 
works need encumber themselves with such pictures. Stands and 
lenses and prisms are sufficiently familiar to all except beginners 
who may well be referred to the elaborate, and often excellent cat- 
alogues of the opticians. Beck’s catalogue, for instance, studied 
in connection with two or three others to suggest an idea of the 
individual differences in the style of different makers, would give 
a better conception of the various kinds and classes of apparatus 
than all the illustrations which could reasonably be crowded into 
a Hand-book of Microscopy. In regard to the latter part of the 
book, however, the paucity of engravings is an evident fault. 
The exact appearances of diseased tissues, morbid growths, and 
abnormal deposits, are not yet completely familiar to the mass of 
physicians and medical students: if they were, then this book 
would occupy a crowded, not an open field. In his ambition to 
reduce the illustrations nearly to a standard of original contribu- 
tions, the author has strained a point which will probably be 
yielded in later editions by the introduction of a liberal assort- 
ment of wood-cuts, which will relieve the student of the necessity 
of searching the literature of his profession for exactly the light 
which this volume is designed to give. 
On the whole, the faults of this volume are mostly those of 
