Development of the Continental Stand . By Dr. J. B. Nias. 597 
repeated assertions, never effectively denied, on the part of a certain 
anatomist, that it was he who designed the original model of the 
Continental stand for his own particular use, and that it was made for 
him by the firm to which Oberhaeuser belonged, and finally, that with 
his sanction it was patented by them, so as to give them for a certain 
period a monopoly of the manufacture — a fact which well explains 
its association with their names. 1 also find that this firm were 
permitted by the anatomist Dujardin to do the same thing with an 
achromatic condenser which he had invented, and, indeed, that they 
were actually the first opticians in France who conceived the idea 
of patenting inventions in connection with the Microscope ; but to 
substantiate this position requires the enumeration of a considerable 
number of details. 
The anatomist to whom I have referred, Strauss-Durckheim by 
name, pupil of Cuvier, first addressed the scientific public with a work 
on the anatomy of the Coleoptera, in which the common cockchafer 
served as a type, which work being beautifully illustrated from his own 
dissections, aroused some curiosity, as he tells us subsequently, on the 
part of naturalists as to the methods of investigation employed. To 
gratify this he undertook a second treatise on the methods of com- 
parative anatomy, in which, among other instruments, are figured 
two Microscopes which appear to me to present the earliest type, 
regard being had to dates, of the Continental stand. 
The work of dissecting small animals requiring the alternate use 
of the simple and the compound Microscope with as little disturbance 
as possible of the preparation, together with its arrangement in a 
convenient form for manipulation, we find this point particularly 
studied in the design of these two stands : firstly, by the introduction of 
a rotating stage ; secondly, by a limited height and a vertical position 
of the model. A precise account of his claims to this invention is to 
be found in a letter written by Strauss-Durckheim in 1850 to the 
optician Chevalier, which is printed in the life of the latter by his 
son ; from it I quote the following paragraphs : — 
“ Having formerly had to occupy myself a good deal with anatomical 
researches on very small animals with a Microscope, which by a kind 
of chance, was of small dimensions, I did as other microscopists do, 
I tried to make the best of it by perfecting the mechanical part by 
several means which necessity suggested to me, and reflecting on all 
the inconveniences which I had encountered in my microscopical re- 
searches during my long experience, I finished by designing one of 
these instruments in which all difficulties were removed, and this was 
the Microscope of which I published the description in my work on 
the art of dissecting which I mentioned above ” (the Treatise on 
Comparative Anatomy published in 1842, this being written in 1850). 
He continues, “ The first requisite of the Microscope is to have in all 
about 3 dm. (=12 inches) in height, so that the observer, comfortably 
seated at the table at which he is working, and on which the Micro- 
2 t 2 
