1 22 Transactions of the Royal Microscopical Society. 
ciples of the microscope and to microscopical phenomena (about as 
much as is to be found prefaced to foreign books on histology or 
botany that do not pretend to be treatises “ on the microscope ” at 
all), and what is given is in the most elementary form that can be 
conceived. The remainder of the book is avowedly a condensed 
summary of the whole range of subjects belonging to natural 
history — a small natural history cyclopaedia.* 
If we compare our books with those of some other countries, 
in particular Germany and Holland, the conviction must be forced 
upon us that we in England have not in modern times kept pace 
with the progress that has been made elsewhere. I am not 
venturing to reflect in any way upon our authors, the blame must 
rest upon ourselves and not upon them. The supply is necessarily 
regulated by the demand — if there is no demand there can hardly 
be expected to be any supply, so that any improvement must 
originate from ourselves. 
The principal reasons, as I conceive, for this state of things are 
these. 
In the first place, a feeling has gained ground amongst us that 
the only proper field for the microscopist is to be found in the in- 
vestigation of one or other of the many branches of natural science 
that require the aid of the microscope, and hence the theory of 
the microscope itself and of microscopical phenomena is regarded 
as altogether puerile and unworthy of the attention of the true 
microscopist. 
For myself, I may freely confess that (erring, no doubt, in the 
opposite extreme) I take a comparatively small interest in the 
subjects to which the microscope is applied, and that I am 
almost inclined to look on the term “ microscopist ” as not being 
properly applicable to those who are engaged in the study of 
natural history, even although it may be essentially by means of 
the microscope — in fact, that as it has been said “ the proper study 
of mankind is man,” so the proper study of the microscopist is the 
microscope. 
It has been objected, and no doubt will be objected again, to 
this view, that it is fallacious, in so far as it exalts to an end that 
which ought only to be looked upon as the means to the end — that 
the microscope (as I was recently told) can be properly regarded as 
nothing more than the ladder by which we climb to a point from 
which a better prospect may be obtained, and that it is a waste of 
time in such a case to devote attention to the ladder rather than 
to the prospect. 
Such an argument — one that exalts the applications of a science 
at the expense of the investigation of its theoretical principles, on 
* This does not, of course, apply to books that do not pretend to describe the 
microscope, but to furnish directions for its use. 
