54 
HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH MICROSCOPIC OBJECTS. 
By EDWARD T. WILSON, M.B. Oxon. 
« II JHCROPHOTOGRAPH ” is a very long name, recently in- 
ijX troduced, to denote a very small object ; it refers to the 
minute photographic reductions of portraits or views so often 
shown as curiosities under the microscope. et Photomicrograph,” 
on the contrary, is a name given to the photographic enlarge- 
ment of a microscopic object. It is now some twenty-seven 
years since the Rev. Mr. Reade, in the early days of photo- 
graphy, startled the scientific world by the magnified image of 
a flea, which he exhibited at a soiree given by the Marquis of 
Northampton ; and since that time many persons have turned 
their attention to the delineation of microscopic objects by 
photography with more or less success. Instruments have been 
improved, and the photographic processes have been so far sim- 
plified that at the present day this new art appears likely to 
attain an accuracy before unknown, a certainty in results, and a 
wideness of application which will tend to place it amongst the 
most useful branches of photography : not only can sections of 
animal and vegetable tissues, insects entire or in part, be re- 
presented with the most minute detail, but even the finest mark- 
ings of Diatomacese, difficult to resolve with the best light and 
the most skilful manipulation, are represented on paper with 
the utmost fidelity. Microscopists have long felt the want of 
some method by which their observations might be recorded at 
first hand, as it were, without passing through the brain of the 
artist, and receiving the unconscious impress of his mind during 
the process by which the image received on the retina is trans- 
ferred to the paper before him. When it is wanted, for instance, 
to prove some disputed point by dissection, a good photograph 
would carry conviction where the most faithful drawing would 
still leave the question in doubt. Changes in growth and de- 
velopment may be fixed for ever, and the minutest differences 
recorded with unerring accuracy for the purposes of future study 
and comparison. Much, no doubt, remains to be done before these 
most desirable results can be fully arrived at, but difficulties 
