THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
THE 
 
 MICROSCOPE 
 
 ITS REVELATIONS AND APPLICATIONS 
 IN SCIENCE AND ART. 
 
 JOHN FERGUSON, 
 
 MINISTER OP THK FREE CHURCH, BRIDGE OF ALLAN. 
 
 " I can truly affirm of myself, that my studies have been profitable and availing to 
 me, only so far as I have endeavoured to use nil my other knowledge as a. glass, enabling 
 me to receive more light, in a wider field of vision, from the Word of God." 
 
 CoLBRinoR. Appendix to the Statesman's Manual. 
 
 EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE & CO. 
 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO., LONDON. 
 MDCCCLVIII. 
 
" The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused, 
 Sustains, and is the life of all that lives. 
 Nature is but a name for an effect 
 
 Whose cause is God 
 
 All are under One. One spirit His 
 Who bore the platted thorns with bleeding brows- 
 Rules universal Nature. Not a flower 
 But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain, 
 Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires 
 Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues, 
 And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, 
 In grams as countless as the sea-side sands, 
 The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth. " 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE following pages have been written chiefly with 
 a view to exhibit the bearings of modern Microscopic 
 research on the elucidation of the minute works of 
 the Creator, and the illustration thereby given of the 
 Divine perfections. 
 
 It is well known that, in the present century, the 
 advocates of infidelity have passed from the depart- 
 ment of Metaphysics to that of Physics, in order to 
 maintain their cause not a little damaged on the 
 former field of conflict against Natural and Kevealed 
 Religion. In many cases, with a professed reverence 
 for the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, as 
 displayed in the Volume of Nature, there has been a 
 subtle opposition to His manifestations in the Book 
 of Inspiration ; but between the Work and the Word 
 of the Author and Lord of all, there can be no oppo- 
 sition. Humble inquirers, therefore, after truth, alike 
 on the field of nature and of revelation, may antici- 
 pate, as the sure though perhaps slow result of such 
 controversies, a more enlarged comprehension of the 
 works of God in connexion with a clearer under- 
 standing of His 'Holy Scriptures. Already this issue 
 has been seen. Do not the strange discoveries re- 
 cently made at Nineveh and Babylon strikingly illus- 
 
 ft8 
 
 L.4 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 trate the Sacred Writings ? And do not these in 
 return reflect the brighter light of the inspired page 
 on Nineveh and Babylon these old enemies of 
 Heaven's cause when they arise from their deep 
 graves, after the silence of three thousand years, to 
 emit their testimony before the world 1 For a time, 
 too, not a few hoped that the Geology of our century 
 would give the final death-blow to that Bible, which, 
 for thousands of years, has maintained its place as 
 the Creed of nations. But already Geology has been 
 found to supply the most cogent and complete refuta- 
 tion of Hume's boasted argument against miracles ; 
 and perhaps the time is not far distant when it will 
 appear that such works as the Testimony of the Rocks, 
 or Sermons in Stones, will prove a closer agreement 
 between the first page of Scripture and the many 
 pages of the Earth's successive formations, than the 
 most ardent advocate of Inspiration could, until 
 recently, have hoped ever to discover. 
 
 The conflict has extended to the field of Physio- 
 logy ; and here, too, the friends of religion may 
 anticipate an equally triumphant issue. The Micro- 
 scope will certainly contribute its aid in no small 
 degree to the result, as it reveals to us the (other- 
 wise) " invisible things of God" in His minutest 
 operations, and proclaims that " there was the hiding 
 of His power." 
 
 March 18, 1858. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MODERN INVENTIONS, AND THEIR RESULTS. 
 
 SECT. PAGE 
 
 1. The Steam-Engine, Electric Telegraph, 1 
 
 2. The Telescope, 3 
 
 3. The Microscope, . . , . . . ' . . . . 4 
 
 4. Chalmers on the Telescope and Microscope, .... 5 
 
 5. Imperfections, and their Removal, 7 
 
 6. Compound Achromatic Microscope, 10 
 
 7. Early Forms of the Microscope, 11 
 
 8. Recent Improvements, . . ..-.- . . . 14 
 
 9. Future Capabilities, . < r 16 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 1. Extent of Field, 19 
 
 2. Difficulty of Selection, . . .... . . 20 
 
 8. Trembley's Researches, The Hydra, , . . 21 
 
 4. Ehrenberg's Discoveries, 24 
 
 5. Classification : Vegetables or Animals ? 25 
 
 6. Berlin, ...,. 28 
 
 7. Extension of Microscopic Discoveries, 29 
 
 8. Minuteness of Organic Remains, 31 
 
 9. Agencies in Creation, 32 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. 
 
 1. Extension of the Botanical Field, 36 
 
 2. Desmidieae, Diatomaceae, &c., 36 
 
 3. Their abundance, 38 
 
 4. Their uses, 39 
 
 5. Volvocinese, 41 
 
 6. Monas Crepusculum, ....;.... 43 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MICBOSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 
 
 SECT. PAGE 
 
 1. Infusoria, 46 
 
 2. Polygastrica, 46 
 
 3. Cilia, 47 
 
 4. Rotifera, 49 
 
 5. Melicerta Ringens, 51 
 
 6. Interesting Spectacle, 52 
 
 7. Tenacity of Life, 54 
 
 8. Views of the Divine Benevolence, 57 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MICROSCOPIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1. Difficulties, 60 
 
 2. Fossil Earths, 60 
 
 3. Red Snow, Green Snow, Red Rain, &c., 61 
 
 4. The Protococcus, 63 
 
 5. Ehrenberg's Passat-Staub und Blut-Regen 63 
 
 6. Prodigy of Blood, D'Aubigng's History of the Reformation, . 65 
 
 7. Variety of Microscopic Illustrations, 67 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN op LIFE. 
 
 1. Manifold Solutions, 71 
 
 2. Spontaneous Generation, &c., 72 
 
 3. Alternation of Generations, 73 
 
 4. Authorities, .......... 76 
 
 5. Professor Owen, 76 
 
 6. Professor Carpenter, .77 
 
 7. Professor James F. W. Johnston the Yeast Plant, . . 78 
 
 8. Dr. Prout, 80 
 
 9. Dr. Roget, 81 
 
 10. Professor Whe well, 82 
 
 11. Professor Sedgwick, 82 
 
 12. Professor James Buchanan, 86 
 
 13. Experiment of Professor Schultz 86 
 
 14. The Development Theory Genealogical Tree, .... 88 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 SECT. p Afe . E 
 
 1. Palaeontology, . . , 90 
 
 (1.) Search for Coal, 92 
 
 (2.) Sir Roderick Murcbison, 94 
 
 (3.) Agassiz's Researches 95 
 
 (4.) Fossil Remains found at Stirling, 96 
 
 2. Botany, 98 
 
 (1.) Ancient Scottish Lignite, 98 
 
 (2.) Sections of Fossils, 99 
 
 (3.) Formation of Coal, 101 
 
 (4.) Fossil Dust from Crystal Palace, 101 
 
 (5.) Cedar from Nineveh, . 103 
 
 (6.) Living Plants 104 
 
 3. Antiquarianism, . 104 
 
 4. Chemistry, &c., . . 106 
 
 5. Anatomy, &c., 108 
 
 6. Criminal Jurisprudence 110 
 
 (1.) Trial for Murder in France .111 
 
 (2.) Trial for Murder in Cumberland, 113 
 
 (3.) Trial for Murder in Norfolk, 116 
 
 (4.) Detection of Robbers in Prussia 118 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 APPLICATIONS OP THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 1. Lieu tenant Maury, and Telegraph to America 120 
 
 2. Bed of the Atlantic, 121 
 
 3. Atlantic Telegraphic Plateau, 122 
 
 4. Soundings, 123 
 
 5 Microscopic Dredging Trophies, 125 
 
 6. Their Testimony, 126 
 
 7. New Truths, 129 
 
 8. Novel Experiment, 130 
 
 9. Circuits of the Wind, 131 
 
 10 Tallies put on the Winds 136 
 
 11. Path of Infusoria, . 137 
 
 12. Results, ' 140 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES OF THE MICROSCOPE. 
 SECT. PAGE 
 
 1. Microscopic Photographs, 142 
 
 2. Her Majesty Queen Victoria 142 
 
 3. The Arctic Council, . . . . . . . . .143 
 
 4. Crimean Photographs, 144 
 
 5. The Future of the Microscope, 14<j 
 
 6. The Microscope as an Educational Instrument, . . .148 
 
 7. Illustrations of Scripture, .150 
 
 8. Light and Lessons for Eternity, 152 
 
 NOTE ON ALTERNATION OF GENEBATIONS, AND PARTHENOGENESIS, 155 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 2, line 11, for at only read only al. 
 
 In pages 27, 36, and 37, for Desmidia, read Desmidwce. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 
 
 1. THE age in which we live teems with the 
 marvellous inventions of man. The early fruits 
 of these inventions warrant us in anticipating 
 from them, as they advance to maturity, the 
 greatest and most beneficial changes upon so- 
 ciety, art, and commerce, throughout the world. 
 We see Watt's steam-engine, with its gigantic 
 arm, guiding the manufactures of millions along 
 the great highways of the land, and resistlessly 
 conveying the commerce of nations along the 
 greater highway of the deep. We everywhere 
 see our countryman's noble invention regulating 
 the ten thousand looms of our manufactories, 
 ploughing the deep strata of our firm-set soils, 
 reaping the golden grain of our wide-spread 
 
3 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 fields, or gathering far beneath our feet the not 
 less precious harvests of our coal, and lime, and 
 iron mines : and as we gaze on the strange and 
 varied scene, we are constrained to ask, Where is 
 the seer's eye that can yet discover, or the pro- 
 phet's tongue that can tell, what is to be the 
 amount of the changes that the world is destined 
 to witness, as the result of the invention of the 
 Steam-Engine ? 
 
 Or we see the Electric Element, that for six 
 thousand years seemed to go forth at only Hea- 
 ven's bidding, and to flash before the human 
 eye as the most awful of God's material agencies, 
 at last arrested in its dread path, and employed 
 by the genius of a Wheatstone to pass on its 
 way as man's most ready and rapid messenger, 
 communicating his thoughts with a tongue of 
 fire, in a moment of time, in the twinkling of 
 an eye, to his brother man, at the ends of the 
 earth ; now conveying to us war's dread tidings 
 from the shores of the Crimea, or the wide-spread 
 plains of India ; and now preparing to circulate 
 daily and instantaneously between the Old and 
 New Worlds even though the deep and stormy 
 waters of the Atlantic roll between them the 
 
MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 3 
 
 hourly transactions in the Exchanges of London 
 and New York. And with the results of this 
 one invention, ever and anon more and more 
 marvellously revealed, we may again unhesitat- 
 ingly inquire, Who will venture to set bounds 
 to the changes which may ensue over our globe 
 to its farthest limits, and throughout its un- 
 numbered families, from the Electric Telegraph ? 
 As we contemplate such inventions, and attempt 
 to anticipate their results, we are called to form 
 a still more elevated conception than we had 
 previously entertained, of the genius of man, by 
 whom such powers of nature have been disco- 
 vered and controlled, and to raise a new song 
 of praise to that God whose " inspiration giveth 
 men understanding." 
 
 2. But there are other most valuable inven- 
 tions of recent days, which society at large is 
 not so ready to remember ; perhaps, because they 
 stand less closely connected with the daily pur- 
 suits and material enjoyments of the world. To 
 these inventions, it may be alike profitable and 
 pleasant often to turn our thoughts ; and that 
 the more, because, even in a still higher degree 
 than in the cases already noticed, they tend to 
 
4 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 exalt our ideas of the genius of man, and to 
 enlarge our views of the glory of our Maker. 
 Chief among these inventions we venture to 
 class the Telescope and the Microscope. What 
 worlds, vast beyond conception, and by human 
 eye previously altogether unseen, have been 
 brought to view by the Telescope, as, in the hand 
 of a Newton or Rosse, this instrument has swept 
 the face of the sky : or, as directed by the mind 
 of the English Adams, or the French Leverrier, 
 it has revealed a new planet, dwelling up to that 
 moment beyond the ken of man in the remotest 
 distance of the limitless universe, and thus 
 achieved a discovery more wondrous, if possible, 
 than when Columbus sought and found a new 
 world beyond the Atlantic wave ! 
 
 3. Not less marvellous than the Telescope is 
 that other instrument which we have named, 
 and to which our attention is now to be more 
 specially directed ; the Microscope, which re- 
 veals to us the minute worlds which lie ever 
 near and around us, and which but for its use 
 would never have been disclosed to our view. 
 It is indeed hard to say which of these two in- 
 struments, the Telescope or the Microscope, has 
 
MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 5 
 
 most fully evidenced the powers of rnan ? and 
 most clearly illustrated the perfections of God. 
 For the universe which the Microscope subjects 
 to our ken seems as boundless in its very 
 minuteness, as that other universe which, in its 
 magnitude, still eludes the far-searching glance 
 of the Telescope. 
 
 4. When declaring the care of the Almighty 
 and the Infinite One for the smallest as well as 
 the greatest of His creatures, and marking the 
 singularly gracious providence by which the Te- 
 lescope and the Microscope, that revealed alike 
 the mightiest and the minutest of God's worlds, 
 were invented about the same time, Dr. Chal- 
 mers, with equal truth and beauty, says of these 
 instruments : " The one led me to see a system 
 in every star the other leads me to see a world 
 in every atom. The one taught me that this 
 mighty globe, with the whole burden of its 
 people and of its countries, is but a grain of sand 
 on the high field of immensity. The other 
 teaches me that every grain of sand may har- 
 bour within it the tribes and the families of a 
 busy population. The one told me of the insig- 
 nificance of the world I tread upon the other 
 
O THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 redeems it from all its ID significance ; for it tells 
 me that in the leaves of eveiy forest, and in the 
 flowers of every garden, and in the waters of 
 every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, 
 and numberless as are the glories of the firma- 
 ment. The one has suggested to me, that be- 
 yond and above all that is visible to man, there 
 may lie fields of creation which sweep immea- 
 surably along, and carry the impress of the 
 Almighty's hand to the remotest scenes of the 
 universe. The other suggests to me, that within 
 and beneath all that minuteness which the aided 
 eye of man has been able to explore, there may 
 lie a region of invisibles ; and that, could we 
 draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds 
 it from our senses, we might there see a theatre 
 of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, 
 a universe within the compass of a point so 
 small as to elude all the powers of the micro- 
 scope, but where the wonder-working God finds 
 room for the exercise of all His attributes, where 
 He can raise another mechanism of worlds, and 
 fill and animate them all with the evidences 
 of His glory." 1 
 
 1 Dr. Chalmers's Astronomical Discourses, Disc. iii. 
 
MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 7 
 
 5. If the state of science forty years ago jus- 
 tified these glowing reflections, what language 
 would the matchless writer have employed to 
 depict the progress of discovery, through the 
 aid of the Microscope, in our day, and to enforce 
 the arguments thence arising for the presence 
 of God in all His worlds, and His care for all 
 His works ! Forty years ago the Microscope 
 was comparatively but a mere " toy ;" its capa- 
 bilities of being advanced to its present perfec- 
 tion were not anticipated ; and still less were 
 its recent discoveries dreamt of, even by the 
 most sanguine of those who sought its assist- 
 ance in their researches. This instrument had 
 been for two centuries in the hands of the most 
 gifted students of nature, but still a thick and 
 apparently impenetrable veil wrapped in deep 
 obscurity many a world of exquisite variety and 
 beauty, that had been lying all undiscovered 
 under the eye of man, or had been trodden 
 under his foot at every step he took in the 
 journey of life ! The most favoured of nature's 
 explorers stood only in the outer court of her 
 temple, seeing through a cloud darkly ; and 
 over the gate by which he strove to penetrate 
 
8 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 to the inner sanctuary, the irrevocable sentence 
 seemed to be written, " Hitherto shalt thou 
 come, and no farther." Now, through the use 
 of the instrument in its more perfect form, 
 the curtain has been raised, the veil has been 
 rent asunder, a way into the inmost shrine has 
 been opened up, and the observer may, with 
 mingled reverence and joy, behold many of the 
 deep mysteries of nature for the first time un- 
 folded to his view. Here, indeed, the humble 
 grateful observer may regard himself as stand- 
 ing on awful ground ; and he may hear pro- 
 claimed to him, by the voice of nature, lessons 
 at least analogous to those delivered to the 
 high-priest as he bowed his head once a year 
 before the mercy-seat, in the special dwelling- 
 place of the God of Israel, in the Holiest of all. 
 Of old the high-priest standing on this sacred 
 spot surrounded by its dread mysteries look- 
 ing in faith to the rod that budded, and the 
 manna that had fallen from heaven, then lifted 
 his eyes to the mercy-seat, and ventured to 
 gaze even up to the brightness of the Shechinah 
 itself, and so received from the Holy One the 
 precious pledge, that God the Lord, who had 
 
** MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 9 
 
 made that rod to bud in Aaron's hand, and 
 blessed that manna that " little thing" to 
 nourish the thousands of Israel, would ever be 
 Israel's Guide, and Guardian, and God. So the 
 observer of nature, now permitted to enter the 
 hitherto untrodden and unseen court of her 
 temple, as he sees her strangest mysteries re- 
 vealed to his view ; as he beholds the amazing 
 expenditure of wisdom, and power, and good- 
 ness, on the minutest objects of the Divine 
 workmanship ; as he looks upon the tiny insect, 
 that ages ago fluttered away its brief existence 
 in a few hours, still preserved after the lapse 
 of ages in all the exquisite perfection of its 
 structure ; or as he surveys the organism which 
 at the distance of millions of years may have 
 found its dying bed in the bosom of that flinty 
 rock, and yet remains to this day after an 
 ordeal, perchance, of many floods and fires 
 with its gorgeous shield of elaborate carving 
 and delicate tracery all unscathed, here stands 
 confronted with over-awing and overwhelming 
 evidences, even from the very least and lowest 
 of organized beings, of the being and perfections 
 of the Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omni- 
 
10 - THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 sclent; and here finds a new and mighty 
 illustration of the blessed truth, that God re- 
 gards no portion of His universe as too minute 
 for His notice, and no creature of His hand as 
 too humble for the visitation of His care. And 
 shall not God the God who so formed that 
 insect, and so preserved that organism the God 
 who feeds the fowls of heaven, and adorns the 
 lilies of the field shall not He much more keep 
 and care for, bless and save His people, and be 
 their Father, and Friend, and God, for ever- 
 more ! 
 
 6. Let us now proceed to examine more spe- 
 cially the instrument by the use of which these 
 discoveries have been achieved the Compound 
 Achromatic Microscope. It is called Compound, 
 from more than one lens being employed ; and 
 Achromatic, or without colour, from being so 
 constructed as by a combination of lenses to 
 bring the light, broken by one lens into various 
 rays of different colours, to be re-collected, or 
 nearly so, by another lens, in such a way that 
 the object to be viewed is seen in a distinct and 
 full light. In the Compound Microscope, at 
 least two compound lenses must be employed ; 
 
MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 11 
 
 one to form the enlarged image of the object, 
 and which, from being nearest to the object, is 
 called the Object-glass ; while the other lens 
 magnifies that image, and, from being placed 
 between it and the observer, is called the Ocular, 
 or Eye-piece. In good Compound Microscopes, 
 a greater and more varied combination of lenses 
 is used, both for the object-glass and the eye- 
 glass ; by means of which, according to the 
 power used, any object under the glass may be 
 magnified in lineal measure from a small 
 degree up to 2000 times (or diameters) ; or, if 
 we calculate this superficially (including breadth 
 as well as length), up to 2000 x 2000, or four 
 million times. 1 
 
 7. The Compound Achromatic Microscope, as 
 we shall presently see, is the invention of a very 
 recent period. The Single Microscope, as it 
 may be called, is nothing more than a convex 
 lens, having generally a short focal distance. 
 The earliest convex lens that we have any 
 knowledge of was brought recently from the 
 East. Among the strange fruits of Layard's 
 
 1 To make these statements thoroughly clear, and some of 
 the succeeding illustrations fully intelligible, diagrams would 
 be necessary. 
 
1 2 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 labours in the midst of the ruins of old Nineveh, 
 not the least singular was the discovery of a 
 plano-convex lens of rock crystal. "Its pro- 
 perties/' says the distinguished discoverer, 
 "could scarcely have been unknown to the 
 Assyrians, and we have, consequently, the ear- 
 liest specimen of a magnifying and burning 
 glass." 1 Seneca, in the first Christian century, 
 alludes to the magnifying power of a glass globe 
 filled with water, and thus rendering the smallest 
 letters of the alphabet larger and more distinct. 2 
 But at this time lenses of glass were chiefly 
 used as burning or reading-glasses, and it was 
 only about the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century that even the simple Microscope was 
 used to enter upon the field of those great dis- 
 coveries, which the more elaborate Compound 
 Microscope has effected in our day. 
 
 As in many other cases, it seems now impos- 
 sible to name any one individual, to whom, 
 above his fellows, belongs the honour of invent- 
 ing the Single Microscope. Some claim it for 
 Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century ; and 
 
 1 Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 197. 
 
 2 North British Review, August 1 856. 
 
MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 13 
 
 he is said to have exhibited, by the use of a 
 
 particular glass, such extraordinary appearances 
 
 at Oxford, as to have gained the reputation of 
 
 dealing with the powers of darkness. By others, 
 
 again, the claims of natives of Italy, Holland, 
 
 and Germany, have been respectively advanced ; 
 
 and, perhaps, all of them may now be justly 
 
 allowed to share the honour. In the year 1621, 
 
 a Compound Microscope was certainly used in 
 
 England. It was a very different instrument, 
 
 however, both as to appearance and power, 
 
 from the present Compound Microscope ; for 
 
 the instrument then bearing that name is said 
 
 to have been about six feet long, and only an 
 
 inch in diameter ; its tube was of gilt copper, 
 
 resting on brass and ebony, and adorned with 
 
 figures of ebony. It was, in fact, much more 
 
 like the Telescope, than the Microscope of the 
 
 present day. About the end of the seventeenth 
 
 century, this instrument was constructed after 
 
 a form scarcely less remarkable; one having 
 
 been made at Home nearly a foot and a half 
 
 long, as thick as a man's thigh, and having an 
 
 eye-glass as large as the palm of a man's hand. 
 
 Many and great changes, with corresponding 
 
1 4 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 results in new discoveries, were successively 
 made on the instrument ; Sir Isaac Newton 
 himself not deeming it beneath his transcen- 
 dent genius to lay down the Telescope, and turn 
 away from the contemplation of sun, and moon, 
 and stars, in order to use the Microscope for the 
 purpose of advancing it to greater perfection, 
 and of prosecuting the study of the minute 
 worlds which it revealed to the eye of man. 
 
 8. But though the Microscope had been em- 
 ployed in the study of nature by many of the 
 most distinguished in the land for two hundred 
 years, and though important discoveries had 
 been made from time to time, the instrument, 
 as has been justly remarked, was little more 
 than "a scientific toy," until about the year 
 1820. Up to that period, two great difficulties 
 prevented the development of its powers. We 
 will attempt briefly to state these difficulties, 
 and to explain the methods employed for over- 
 coming them. Those who are even slightly 
 acquainted with the science of optics, are aware 
 that rays of light, transmitted through a lens, 
 are differently affected in the passage. Some 
 rays are more, some less, refracted. The rays that 
 
MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIE RESULTS. 15 
 
 pass through the peripheral portion of the lens 
 (or near its outer edges) are more refracted than 
 those which pass through the central portion of 
 the lens ; consequently 3 all the rays do not 
 come to the same focus, and the object of vision 
 is less distinctly seen at the focus. This is 
 called Spherical A berration. This difficulty has 
 been obviated by making use of a combination 
 of lenses of different forms (convex and con- 
 cave), by which their several aberrations correct 
 each other, and bring the rays of light to one 
 and the same point, thus placing the object to 
 be viewed in the focus of the now combined 
 rays of light. A second difficulty remained to 
 be removed. It is known that rays of different 
 colours make up ivliite, or colourless light. 
 These rays possess different degrees of refrangi- 
 bility, and this difference causes them, passing 
 through a lens, to come some to one focus, some 
 to another. This is called Chromatic A berra- 
 tion. This difficulty is overcome by a combina- 
 tion of lenses of a different density, flint-glass 
 and croiun-glass affording the materials for their 
 construction. These lenses correct each other ; 
 bring the different coloured rays to the same 
 
16 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 focus, and present the object that is to be 
 viewed in a perfectly colourless, or white light. 
 Unimportant as this improvement may seem 
 to us, it baffled the most eminent men of science 
 to accomplish it until within these twenty-five 
 years. " When it is considered," says Dr. Car- 
 penter, " that in the highest powers now made, 
 the largest of three pairs of lenses is very little 
 larger than a pin's head, and the smallest much 
 smaller than a pin's head, we can easily under- 
 stand the difficulty of producing the required 
 achromatic corrections in these cases, and ad- 
 mire the marvellous mechanical skill to over- 
 come in such a space the difficulty of chromatic 
 aberration/' 
 
 9. How important the results flowing from 
 the invention of such lenses ! Through an open- 
 ing, large as the prick of a pin might make, 
 they revealed to us new worlds, and the extra- 
 ordinary structures of many of the most delicate 
 and beautiful objects in nature. What Young 
 said of the human eye, we may well apply to 
 the Microscope, which 
 
 " Takes in at once the landscape of the world 
 At a small inlet, which a grain might close, 
 And half creates the wondrous world we see." 
 
MODERN INVENTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS. 17 
 
 Who, indeed, can anticipate the discoveries that 
 may still be made of the great and marvellous 
 works of God through the use of this little instru- 
 ment ! Our own gifted countryman, Sir David 
 Brewster, to whom the Microscope owes so many 
 of its excellencies, and who, above all others, is 
 entitled to speak of its future possible perform- 
 ances, hopes that lenses of still higher power than 
 any now used may be obtained, from employing, 
 in their formation, fluids or diamonds, instead 
 of glass, as at present ; and thus writes, in his 
 recent article on the subject in the last issue of 
 the Encyclopedia Britannica : " The Micro- 
 scope promises to be the means of disclosing the 
 structure and the laws of matter, and of making 
 as important discoveries in the infinitely minute 
 world as the Telescope has done in that which is 
 infinitely distant." x By some, it is indeed main- 
 tained that the Microscope has already attained, 
 as regards its structure, the highest possible ex- 
 cellence. Mr. Quekett and Dr. Carpenter, two 
 of the greatest authorities in England, have 
 recorded it as their decided opinion that the 
 Compound Achromatic Microscope is the most 
 
 1 Encydop. Brit. Art. Microscope, vol. xiv. p. 763. 
 B 
 
18 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 perfect of instruments. " These Microscopes," 
 says Mr. Quekett, speaking of those made by 
 our first-rate opticians, Koss, Powell, Smith, 
 and Beck, " approach, as far as we can judge 
 at present, the limits of conceivable perfection." 1 
 " The Microscope," says Dr. Carpenter, in his 
 elaborate treatise published in 1856, " has ac- 
 quired the deserved reputation of being one of 
 the most perfect instruments ever devised by art 
 for the investigation of nature." 2 Notwithstand- 
 ing these very positive assertions, we would be 
 exceedingly loath to forego the hopes which 
 Sir David Brewster allows us to cherish of still 
 higher progress towards perfection in the future 
 of the instrument. We may remember, for our 
 encouragement, that so late as 1821, M. Biot 
 regarded " the introduction of achromatic ob- 
 ject-glasses as out of the question, from the im- 
 practicability of making achromatic lenses as 
 small as those which the microscope requires." 3 
 But this object has been triumphantly attained. 
 
 1 Quekett's Practical Treatise on the Microscope, p. 67. 
 - Carpenter's Microscope and its Revelations, p. 10. 
 ; Encydop. Brit. Art. Microscope, vol. xiv. p. 777. 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 1. WHAT have been the applications and the 
 discoveries of the Microscope ? 
 
 " Of all the instruments which have yet been 
 applied to scientific research, there is certainly 
 none whose use has been more largely or more 
 rapidly productive of most valuable results/' 
 than the Microscope. There is scarcely a region 
 of the world, or an element of nature scarcely 
 an art or science scarcely an atom of unor- 
 ganized matter scarcely a thallogen or acrogen 
 scarcely a sea- weed or fern of the Silurian or 
 Red Sandstone systems, onward to the loftiest 
 dicotyledon of our own forests and gardens 
 scarcely an organ or tissue of animal, from the 
 humblest crustacean or mollusc up to man 
 ' monarch of all," upon which the Microscope 
 has not fixed its clear far-searching eye, and 
 by which it has not triumphantly proved its 
 
20 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 powers. Thus in all, and from all, creatures 
 around us, the instrument finds ever new illus- 
 trations of the infinite variety and exquisite 
 perfection of the forms of matter, and so leads 
 us to the best and highest of all science. It 
 tends to enlarge our minds with the knowledge, 
 and fill our hearts with the adoration and love 
 of that awful Being, who has left the impress 
 of His perfections, the proof of His presence, 
 and wisdom, and goodness, and power, every- 
 where and in all things, throughout the vast of 
 all past ages, and of all surrounding space. 
 
 2. Selection and condensation in the prose- 
 cution of our remarks are here all the more 
 difficult, from the very extent of the field of 
 inquiry, and the variety of illustrations that we 
 might adduce. But let us so far attempt to 
 show how the Microscope reveals to us the 
 marvels of the earth beneath our feet, and of 
 the waters around us, and of the heavens above 
 the new worlds that exist in the clouds of 
 the sky, in every dust of the flower, in every 
 drop of river or ocean, and in every atom of 
 sand upon which we tread. Look back, then, 
 one hundred years. 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 21 
 
 3. About 1750, M. Trembley of Geneva gave 
 to the world his researches on the Fresh-water 
 Polype, or Hydra. The results were alike un- 
 expected and astounding. It seemed as if a 
 new continent, with a new and hitherto utterly 
 unknown race of inhabitants, was starting into 
 existence. The facts were so extraordinary, as 
 to appear to contradict the experience of all 
 former ages, and to overturn some of the most 
 established notions of animal life. Even the 
 scientific world was amazed, and its members 
 passed through all the various processes of 
 dogmatizing, disbelieving, denying, ridiculing, 
 wondering, hesitating, doubting, believing, until 
 at length the conclusions of M. Trembley were 
 fully confirmed and universally admitted. " We 
 are now so familiar," says a distinguished na- 
 turalist, " with the outlines of the history of 
 the fresh-water polype, and its marvellous re- 
 productive powers, that we can scarcely appre- 
 ciate the vividness of the sensation felt when it 
 was all novel and strange ; when the leading 
 men of our learned societies were daily experi- 
 menting on these poor worms, and transmitting 
 them to one another from distant countries by 
 
22 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 careful posts, and as most precious gifts ; and 
 when even ambassadors interested themselves 
 in sending early intelligence of the engrossing 
 theme to their respective courts." l 
 
 The discoveries of Trembley may still be 
 regarded as a most important epoch in the 
 history of Microscopic inquiries. Up to that 
 time the Hydra had been classed with plants, 
 but it was then found to be a true animal. It 
 presented, moreover, quite a new type of ani- 
 mal life. For it was immediately ascertained 
 that it could propagate itself by buds like a 
 plant; that it could produce afresh any part 
 that might be cut away ; . that if cut across the 
 upper part, it would produce a new body and 
 tail, and the lower part as rapidly produce arms 
 and head ; that if the head was divided, each 
 portion would provide for itself the wanting 
 part ; that if minced into thirty or forty pieces, 
 each piece would grow into a new and perfect 
 polype ; and that if two individuals were grafted 
 together head to head, or tail to tail, or the head 
 of one to the tail of another, still the animal 
 economy would be complete as ever : Ay, more 
 
 1 Johnston, Brit. ZoopTi. p. 126. 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 23 
 
 wonderful than all, it was found that this ex- 
 traordinary creature could endure to be turned 
 inside out like a glove, so that what had been 
 outer skin should become stomach, and the 
 lining of the stomach become the outer cover- 
 ing or skin ; while, from all this cutting and 
 dissecting, grafting and transforming, the ani- 
 mal itself seems to suffer not the slightest 
 inconvenience, being apparently blessed with 
 exemption from everything like bilious attacks 
 or stomach complaints in that department of 
 the body from which so many of man's ailments 
 arise ! However happily Dryden's famous de- 
 scription fitted a versatile character of old, 
 
 " Was everything by starts, and nothing long," 
 
 it might in some respects be as truly applied 
 to this very curious little gentleman, the Fresh- 
 water Polype, or Hydra. Trembley gives us the 
 following episode in the life of these strange 
 beings, which alone would stamp them with 
 the mark of singularity : On one occasion, 
 he tells us, two hydras, one stronger than the 
 other, had seized a worm ; neither would let go 
 its hold of the prey, and each went on devour- 
 ing it. As the victim disappeared, it soon be- 
 
24 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 came evident that, as in the case of many a 
 nobler conflict, a collision would ensue between 
 the allies in the process of destruction. The 
 collision came, and at length the stronger hydra 
 made short work of it with his rival ; for he not 
 only swallowed the small worm, but its destroyer 
 on the opposite side of the field of battle. It 
 might be expected that this tragic occurrence 
 would put an end at least to one of the com- 
 batants, that the curtain had finally dropped 
 upon the scene, and that over the strange grave 
 of the departed the inscription might now be 
 recorded " De eo actum est !" " It is all over 
 with him !" But not so ; for, after an impri- 
 sonment of an hour or so in this novel dungeon 
 the stomach of its antagonist the smaller 
 Hydra marched forth, if not with all the ho- 
 nours of war, at least without apparent serious 
 injury. As boys, we have all wondered and 
 laughed at the old story of the water-serpent, 
 the Hydra of the marsh of Lerna ; but how often, 
 in after-life, are we reminded that the realities 
 in God's works are more marvellous than all 
 the romance of fable ! 
 
 4. Let us pass over the Microscopic history 
 
EARLY DISCOVEETES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 25 
 
 of nearly one hundred years, and come down to 
 1839. In that year, Professor Ehrenberg of 
 Berlin announced the astounding tidings that 
 he had discovered, beneath the foundations of 
 his own city of Berlin, a widely-extending bed 
 of earth teeming with living organisms. The 
 name Infusoria was first given to this newly 
 discovered race, because it was supposed that 
 they were chiefly to be found in infusions of 
 vegetable or animal matter. It is now under- 
 stood that this name, though still retained as a 
 general designation, is not, on the above ac- 
 count, thoroughly appropriate, as the infusoria 
 are found not merely when there is an infusion 
 of vegetable or animal substances, but where- 
 ever there is water. 
 
 5. Ehrenberg still regards these creatures 
 generally as animacules, but many microscopists 
 deny this name to these organisms, and class 
 them with plants. In this, and in other ana- 
 logous cases, Professor Carpenter's remarks may 
 be carefully borne in mind. " The boundary 
 between the two kingdoms" (animal and vege- 
 table) " is not less keenly debated among natu- 
 ralists than that of many a disputed frontier 
 
26 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 has been between adjacent nations. For many 
 parts of this border country have been taken and 
 retaken several times ; their inhabitants having 
 first been considered on account of their general 
 appearance to belong to the vegetable kingdom ; 
 then, in consequence of some movements being 
 observed, in their being claimed by the zoolo- 
 gists ; then, owing to the supposed detection of 
 some new feature in their structure or phy- 
 siology, being again claimed as members of the 
 animal kingdom ; and, lastly, on the discovery of 
 a fallacy in these arguments, being once more 
 laid hold of by the Botanist, with whom, for 
 the most part, they now remain." 1 
 
 Professor Carpenter further remarks, that the 
 most generally applicable test to distinguish 
 between any organism of the animal and vege- 
 table kingdom, " is not, as was formerly sup- 
 posed, the presence or absence of spontaneous 
 motion, but the dependency of the being for 
 nutriment upon organic compounds already 
 formed, which it takes, in some way or other, 
 into the interior of its body ; or its possession 
 of the power of obtaining its own alimentary 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, pp. 262, 263. 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 27 
 
 matter by absorption from the inorganic ele- 
 ments on its exterior. The former is the cha- 
 racteristic of the animal kingdom as a whole ; 
 the latter is the attribute of the vegetable." 1 
 
 In the application of his definition, Dr. Car- 
 penter would very much restrict the old term 
 Infusoria, banish the term Polygastrica, and 
 class the Desmidiacece,Dmtomacew, Volvocinece, 
 &c., as Protophytes. Mr. Pritchard, again, con- 
 tends that many of the groups which have 
 recently been regarded as plants are true ani- 
 mals. Thus, speaking of the Volvocineas, he 
 states, in his work on Infusorial Animalcules 
 (p. 153, 1852), that " his own observations, con- 
 tinued through twenty-five years, induce him 
 firmly to believe in the animal nature of these 
 organisms" But it seems generally ruled by 
 the ablest naturalists, that Messrs. Kalfs and 
 Smith have decisively proved the former in his 
 work upon the Desmidice the latter in his 
 work upon the Diatomacece that both groups 
 must be reft from the Animal kingdom, in 
 which Ehrenberg would range them, and placed 
 in the Vegetable. In consequence, however, 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, p. 263. 
 
28 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 of the conflicting theories on these points main- 
 tained in the past, the various designations 
 above referred to may be used and interpreted 
 with considerable latitude. Microscopic inqui- 
 rers, too, must take care to pursue their future 
 researches with care and diffidence ; while from 
 those differences of opinion among the mem- 
 bers of the Microscopical, of the Geological, 
 and of other schools in the kingdom of Na- 
 ture, the student of the Inspired Word may be 
 the more stirred up to thank God that, in the 
 kingdom of grace, we have " His Oracles" the 
 ce more sure word of prophecy, whereunto we 
 do well that we take heed, as unto a light that 
 shineth in a dark place." 
 
 6. In 1839, as we have said, Ehrenberg dis- 
 covered a worli of organized beings beneath the 
 streets of Berlin, and gave to them the name 
 Infusoria. They exist at a depth of fifteen 
 feet, and descend in some places to twenty, in 
 others even to sixty feet. There, whether called 
 Infusoria or no whether animals, or according 
 to the later views, plants at a considerable 
 distance from the surface of the earth, beyond 
 the reach of heaven's light, without any direct 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 29 
 
 contact with heaven's air, they dwell, live, and 
 multiply. Berlin's streets above are crowded 
 with its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants ; 
 but beneath these same streets another living 
 world, with its countless millions and billions 
 of microscopic denizens, holds on its own way. 
 Thus Berlin has its ober and its wider land ; 
 and the inhabitants of the upper are not inde- 
 pendent of the inhabitants of the lower country : 
 for it has been found that, in some quarters of 
 Berlin, the stability of houses has actually been 
 endangered by the subterranean operations of 
 these minute tenants of the earth. 
 
 7. The discovery of Ehrenberg led imme- 
 diately to similar ones in different and distant 
 parts of the world. Pritchard tells us that 
 there has recently been found moist earth near 
 Newcastle, almost entirely composed of living 
 Infusoria (Diatomacese ?) Masses of them, in 
 M fossil state, exist in Kichmond (Virginia), in 
 Hanover, Sweden, Norway, <fec. &c. Their 
 shields, or silicious coverings, are still preserved, 
 after the lapse of unnumbered ages, in most 
 exquisite perfection and beauty. A powder 
 from, the tripoli, or polishing slate, of Franzen- 
 
30 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 bad and Bilin in Bohemia, much used as an 
 admirable polish for metals and jewels, is seen, 
 under the Microscope, to consist chiefly of the 
 silicious cases of Diatomacese. What an idea 
 may we form of the immensity of life dis- 
 covered by the Microscope, when we are told 
 that the size of some of these silicious crea- 
 tures is no greater than a^Veth f an mcn 
 that in the tripoli, or polishing slate from 
 Bilin, a cubic line contains, in round num- 
 bers, 23,000,000 (23 millions) of the Diatom 
 called Gaillonella distans ; and a cubic inch, 
 41,000,000,000 (41 thousand millions:) 1 that 
 in a single grain of this polishing slate there 
 are 187,000,000 (187 millions) of these indivi- 
 duals ; or that the silicious coat of one of them 
 weighs the 187,000,000th (187 millionth) part 
 of a grain, as Sir David Brewster calculates; 2 
 or as Sir Charles Lyell puts it, that at every 
 stroke we make with this polishing powder, 
 perhaps tens of millions of perfect fossils are 
 crushed to atoms ! 3 
 
 1 Owen's Compar. Anat. vol. i. p. 48. 
 
 2 Encycl. Brit. Art. Microscope, vol. xiv. p. 805. 
 
 3 Ly ell's Elementary Geology, p. 25. 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 31 
 
 8. Our marvel at such discoveries must in- 
 crease, when we reflect that the organization of 
 many of these beings, whether animal or vege- 
 table, is by no means simple or uniform. The 
 animals possess stomachs and mouths, and 
 around their bodies are hairs a million of times 
 more minute than the most delicate hair in the 
 human head ! What a view does this give us 
 of the works of the Creator ! Into how infinitely 
 minute a point may the Great Author of all 
 existence compress the principle of life ! No won- 
 der, that here even the very infidel is constrained 
 to adore the Almighty's power and wisdom ! 
 that even Hobbes exclaimed, " The majesty of 
 God appears no less in small things than, in 
 great ; and, as it exceedeth human sense in the 
 immensity of the universe, so also doth it in 
 the smallness of the parts thereof/' The author 
 of the Vestiges of the Natural History of 
 Creation indeed tells us, that it were a most 
 inconceivably paltry exercise of the power of 
 God, to create certain of the lower creatures of 
 the earth. The very tiniest of those creatures 
 which the Microscope reveals, might silence 
 such an interpreter of Creation's works, or rather 
 
32 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 compel him to say, with Kousseau " Si FAu- 
 teur de la Nature est grand dans les grandes 
 choses, il est tres-grand dans les petites." 
 
 9. More profound still must be our admiration 
 of the discoveries effected through the Micro- 
 scope, when by its aid we discover that in His 
 past operations, the Author of all has been pleased 
 to employ these minute creatures, whether ani- 
 mal or vegetable, whether plants or shells, in 
 building up vast portions of His universe ! Thus 
 one wide region of the south of France, a great 
 portion of the Jura, the clay beds of London, 
 the wide-stretching chalk cliffs and downs of 
 the south of England, and innumerable moun- 
 tain masses of limestone, spread up and down 
 the island, are mainly made up of the remains 
 of such organisms. Almost the whole sea bottom 
 of the Levant is formed, and is still at this day 
 increasing in thickness, from their remains. The 
 accumulation of the deposits of infusoria is said 
 to be now choking up some of the harbours in 
 the Baltic Sea. And to conclude, the nummu- 
 litic limestone, forming a band often 1800 miles 
 in breadth, frequently of enormous thickness, 
 which stretches from the western shores of 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 33 
 
 Europe and Africa, to India and China, and 
 also covers vast areas of North America, is found 
 to consist chiefly of microscopic remains. How 
 true the poet's words 
 
 " The dust we tread upon was once alive !" 
 
 The towns of Richmond and Petersburg, TJ. S., 
 it may be mentioned, are built of stones made 
 up of myriads of the silicious skeletons of these 
 organisms. The pavement of the quadrangle of 
 the Koyal Exchange of London is composed of 
 Turkey stone. It may be here also noticed as 
 an interesting fact, that the great Pyramid of 
 Egypt is built of nummulitic limestone. : The 
 operations of some of the lowest creatures in the 
 universe of God, are thus placed in contrast with 
 works which the mightiest of mankind have 
 raised. And how great the contrast ! For what 
 are the Pharaohs of Egypt, and their countless 
 hosts, and the toils endured by them through 
 centuries, and the Pyramids which they thus 
 reared, when compared with these invisible ani- 
 malcules these tiny servants of the Lord, 
 which, during the untold ages of the past, were 
 employed at Heaven's command, in fixing the 
 
 1 Lyell's Elementary Geology, p. 231. 
 
34 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 foundations of the earth, and in laying the floors 
 of the ocean, and in building up the walls of the 
 everlasting hills ! And if the works of these 
 minute labourers are so much more extensive, 
 so, as Professor Owen remarks, " they will be 
 infinitely more durable than the proudest mau- 
 solea by which Egyptian kings endeavoured to 
 perpetuate the memory of their existence." l 
 
 As the earth receives much of its bulk from 
 this source, so hence also it derives much of its 
 fertility at the present hour. Vast masses of the 
 richest mud that lines the banks of our rivers, 
 and forms the beds of our seas, consist of infu- 
 soria, partly living, partly dead. The waters of 
 the Nile, e.g., are proverbially the wealth of 
 Egypt. It was generally supposed that the de- 
 gradation of rocks, and the decay of vegetable 
 remains, rendered the waters of the Nile thus 
 enriching. But the Microscope, in the hands of 
 Ehrenberg, has brought to light the strange fact 
 that this river owes its most fertilizing proper- 
 ties to the minute infusorial earths contained in 
 its water. For it is found that when the flood 
 of the Nile subsides, it leaves behind accumu- 
 
 1 Owen's Compar. Anat. vol. i. pp. 40, 41. 
 
EARLY DISCOVERIES BY THE MICROSCOPE. 35 
 
 lations of mud studded with masses of minute 
 living forms. The extent of their numbers may 
 be conceived, when we are told that a particle 
 of the earth of the size of half a pin's head 
 contains multitudes of the infusoria. Indeed, 
 Ehrenberg states that particles of rnud sent to 
 him from many points of the globe, and not 
 exceeding one-twelfth of an inch in thickness, 
 often contained hundreds of distinct species ! 
 
 " Oh, there are curious things of which men know- 
 As yet Imt little ! Secrets lying hid 
 Within all natural objects. Be they shells, 
 Which ocean flingeth from off her billows, 
 Or the low sand or flowers, or trees, or grasses, 
 Covering the earth ; rich metals or bright 'ores 
 Beneath the surface. He who findeth out 
 Those secret things hath a fair right to gladness ; 
 For he hath well performed, and doth awake 
 Another note of praise on Nature's harp 
 To hymn her Great Creator." 
 
36 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. 
 
 1. THE Microscope has vastly extended the 
 domains of the Botanist, and presents to his view 
 new and amazing discoveries in the vegetable 
 world. Two or three groups of minute plants, 
 thus brought under the notice of the human 
 eye, may specially engage our attention for a 
 little : the Desmidice, or Desmidiacece. (so called 
 from their division into symmetrical halves) ; 
 the Diatomacece (i.e. easily cut through or 
 broken) ; and the Volvocinece, (a name derived 
 from their rolling motion). 
 
 2. The Desmidice. grow in fresh, the Diato- 
 macece in fresh or salt water. 1 It seems now 
 generally ruled that these organisms are veget- 
 ables, having, however, in their appearance and 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, pp. 285, 320, 327. 
 
MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. ?>7 
 
 habits, much resemblance to animals. These 
 plants have the property of withdrawing silex 
 from the water in which they exist, and thus 
 their bodies, or at least their coverings, are in- 
 destructible. Here, again, we are called to 
 admire the wondrous operations of the Framer 
 of the universe, and to observe how by the most 
 minute agencies He accomplishes his mightiest 
 plans. If man would obtain one small dwelling 
 to shelter himself from the icy cold, or to shade 
 himself from the burning heat, what a mighty 
 preparation of means ! what an array of mate- 
 rials ! what trenches and foundations ! what 
 scaffolding and heaps of rubbish ! what a crowd 
 of operatives of all classes ! But by the small 
 drops of heaven's dew, or rays of heaven's light 
 by the almost invisible particles of earth's 
 frost, or the minute polypes of ocean's water, or 
 by the countless agents of worlds of Desmidice 
 and Diatomacece, the Great Master Builder rears 
 and upholds the fabric of the material universe. 
 Thus these Microscopic plants had their part in 
 past ages in building up the walls of the world ; 
 and still day by day, unseen by the naked eye, 
 unknown to the millions of earth, they are in- 
 
38 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 creasing the soil of every land, and laying anew 
 the foundations of every sea ! 
 
 3. The Naturalists of the United States' recent 
 exploring expedition brought up thousands of 
 Diatomacece by every cast of the deep-sea sound- 
 ing apparatus, alike in the Atlantic, Pacific, and 
 Australian oceans. According to Dr. "W. J. 
 Hooker, these Microscopic vegetables abound 
 throughout the South Polar Sea, between the 
 parallels of 50 and 70 S. Diatomacece exist 
 everywhere, stain the ice of a brown colour, 
 or when put into water, render it cloudy like 
 inilk, and take hours to subside. A deposit of 
 mud, 400 miles long, and 200 miles in breadth, 
 stretches along the shores of the Victoria Bar- 
 rier, and wherever soundings were here made, 
 the average depth of the water being 1800 feet, 
 they were invariably charged with diatomaceous 
 remains the immense deposit being thus 
 proved to consist chiefly of these Microscopic 
 organisms. 1 The Paris Basin, 180 miles long, 
 and 90 miles in breadth, abounds in infusoria 
 (so called) and other silicious remains. 2 
 
 1 Dr. Hooker's Flora Antarctica, vol. ii. pp. 503-505. 
 
 2 Hogg on the Microscope, p. 156. 
 
MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. 39 
 
 In all this there is a most wise and beneficent 
 arrangement of Providence ; for, as Dr. Hooker 
 remarks, the universal prevalence of this invi- 
 sible vegetation throughout the South Polar 
 Ocean serves a great end. There is a marked 
 deficiency, he tells us, of the higher forms of 
 vegetation, and were it not for these Diatomacece 
 there would be no food for the aquatic animals ; 
 nor, supposing these animals to exist by preying 
 on each other, could the ocean waters, without 
 the Diatomacece, be purified of the carbonic acid 
 imparted to them by animals. 
 
 " How wondrous is the scene ! where all is formed 
 With number, weight, and measure ; all designed 
 For some great end ! Where not alone the plant 
 Of stately growth, the herb of glorious hue, 
 Or food-full substance ; nor the labouring steed, 
 The herb and flock that feed us ; nor the mine 
 That yields us stores for elegance and arts ; 
 The sea that loads our table, and conveys 
 The wanderer, man, from clime to clime, with all 
 Those rolling spheres, that from on high shed down 
 Their kindly influence ; nor these alone 
 Which strike e'en eyes incurious, but each moss, 
 Each shell, each crawling insect holds a rank 
 Important in the scale of Him who framed 
 This scale of beings ; holds a rank, which, lost, 
 Would break the chain, and leave a gap behind, , 
 Which Nature's self would rue!" 
 
 4. We think much of the changes produced 
 
40 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 on the material universe by the earthquake, the 
 volcano, the hurricane by rain, frost, and snow ; 
 we mark the additions made to it by the decay 
 of its thousand forests, and the degradation of 
 its lofty mountain-rocks, and the interment of 
 its gigantic inhabitants, the elephant, the rhino- 
 ceros, the whale ; but how striking is it to find 
 that vastly more ancient, and still more exten- 
 sive changes have been wrought by those minute 
 creatures, which the Microscope has for the first 
 time presented to the eye of man ! And while 
 such views should exalt our conceptions of the 
 perfections of the Deity, how ought they to fill 
 man's breast with humility and gratitude : with 
 humility, as he thinks how his interests have 
 been dependent on the agency of these least of 
 all existences ; and with gratitude, as he realizes 
 how much, in the mysterious economy of nature, 
 he owes to the silent, secret, but ceaselessly ac- 
 tive, invisible agents, who, by land and water, 
 are thus ever elaborating the atmosphere neces- 
 sary for man's existence, or soil for his occu- 
 pancy, or higher vegetables and animals for his 
 food ! Well may the author of that delightful 
 little volume, The Sea-side Book" say" We 
 
MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. 41 
 
 know not what we owe to these Invisible 
 Plants." 
 
 " Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, 
 Nor comprehend their motions, till minute 
 And curious observation caught the clue 
 To this live labyrinth, where every one, 
 By instinct taught, performed its little task. 
 Millions of millions, thus from age to age, 
 With simplest skill, and toil unweariable, 
 No moment and no movement unimproved, 
 Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread, 
 To swell the heightening, brightening, gradual mount. 
 Each wrought alone, yet all together wrought, 
 Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments 
 By which a Hand Invisible was rearing 
 A new creation in the secret deep. 
 Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them ; 
 Hence what Omnipotence alone could do, 
 Worms did. 
 
 Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives, 
 Their masonry imperishable." 
 
 5. The Volvocinece are an extremely interest- 
 ing class, both on account of the beauty and 
 regularity of their forms, and their striking re- 
 semblance in their movements to real animals. 
 They derive their name from the manner in 
 which they revolve upon their own axis. Thus 
 Leeuwenhoeck, who described some of the group 
 at the distance of 150 years, speaks of an ani- 
 malcule (then so regarded) " a thousand times 
 
42 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 smaller than a louse's eye, which exceeded all 
 the rest in briskness/' and turned itself round 
 as it were upon a point, with the celerity of a 
 spinning-top. 
 
 The Volvox Globator, or " Globe Animalcule " 
 is the most remarkable of the Volvocinece. It 
 is frequently found in fresh-water pools during 
 spring and summer, and being ^Vth of an inch 
 in diameter may be seen by the naked eye, 
 when the drop of water containing it is held up 
 to the light. Viewed under the microscope, it 
 is seen to consist of a hollow transparent sphere, 
 which is studded at intervals with very small 
 circular green spots. This circular creature was 
 long supposed to be a single animal ; but the 
 Microscope, with its higher powers, now proves it 
 to be a composite vegetable structure, existing in 
 clusters, under a covering or mantle, and separa- 
 ted into cells to accommodate its many tenants. 
 These cells often contain smaller cells, which are 
 sometimes seen bursting through the side of the 
 parent cell ; and thus the process of multiplica- 
 tion is carried on. 
 
 The Croniunij or " Tablet-Animalcule" is also 
 an interesting microscopic organism ; especially 
 
MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. 43 
 
 iheGonium Pectorale, or "High Priest's Breast- 
 plate" so called from its resemblance to the 
 breastplate of the Jewish high-priest. It con- 
 sists of sixteen bright green spherical bodies 
 contained within a transparent mantle, like 
 jewels reflecting light on both sides ; or, as Mr. 
 Gosse observes, " like emeralds set in a plate of 
 the purest glass." 1 These " emeralds" are dis- 
 posed in quadrangular form, like the precious 
 stones in the high-priest's breastplate, the four 
 centre ones being generally larger than the 
 others, and each " emerald" is joined to its 
 neighbour by six links or cords. How many 
 and beautiful are the archetypes of the Lord, 
 both in Creation and ^Redemption ! 
 
 6. Ere we leave the vegetables, we would 
 glance at one group among the Volvocinece at 
 the Monas Crepusculum, or " Twilight Monad" 
 It is the most minute and simple of all living 
 beings which the Microscope, in the exercise of 
 its highest powers, has yet discovered. This 
 monad is r^oinrth of an inch in size ! Twelve 
 thousand of these plants would be easily dis- 
 posed of within the length of an inch, if they 
 
 1 Life, p. 21. 
 
44 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 were placed, like the beads of a necklace, side 
 by side in contact with each other. One drop 
 of water would contain a thousand millions 
 of them, though each was separated from its 
 neighbour by a space as large as its own dia- 
 meter. Thus, that globule of water would con- 
 tain as many Monads as the great globe has of 
 human beings on its wide surface in our own 
 day ! 
 
 It is still contended that the Monad must 
 be classed with animals. If so regarded, the 
 " Twilight Monad" may supply a standard for 
 comparing the size of different objects. If the 
 Rorqual (whale), the largest animal, is one 
 hundred feet in length, and the Monad 12 Q 00 th 
 of an inch, then the common house-fly may 
 be considered as occupying the middle place in 
 creation. 1 But in that least, as certainly as in 
 that largest, of organized material creatures, we 
 have full proof of the presence and perfections 
 of the Creator. " Are we struck with admira- 
 tion," Coleridge asks, in one of his pregnant 
 sentences, " at beholding the cope of heaven 
 imaged in a dew-drop ? The least of the ani- 
 
 1 Gosse's Life, p. 10. 
 
MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. 45 
 
 malcules, to which that drop would be an ocean, 
 contains in itself an infinite problem, of which 
 God omnipresent is the only solution." l 
 
 " I tell thee that those living things 
 To whom the fragile blade of grass 
 
 That springeth in the morn 
 
 And perisheth ere noon, 
 
 Is an unbounded world 
 I tell thee that those viewless beings, 
 Whose mansion is the smallest particle 
 Of the impassive atmosphere, 
 
 Enjoy and live like man ; 
 
 And the mimitest throb 
 That through their frame diffuses 
 
 The slightest, faintest motion, 
 
 Is fixed and indispensable 
 
 As the majestic laws 
 That rule yon rolling orbs." 
 
 1 Coleridge's Lay Sermons. 
 
46 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 
 
 1. WE would now introduce to our general 
 readers a few of the Infusoria, these marvel- 
 lously minute works of the Lord of the Uni- 
 verse, " whose glory is no less displayed in the 
 construction of an Animalcule than in the 
 creation of a Solar System." 
 
 2. The Polygastrica, or " Many -stomached" 
 as a very extraordinary race of beings, may well 
 occupy our attention for a little. Ehrenberg 
 observed in the bell or funnel-shaped body of 
 this animalcule, numerous pellucid little globes 
 or beads, and concluding these to be stom- 
 achs, applied to it the designation, " Many- 
 stomached." Later naturalists seem to agree in 
 denying that these globules are to be regarded 
 as stomachs, but the original appellation is con- 
 tinued. The class comprises very minute forms 
 
MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 47 
 
 of life. A drop of water, it is said, may con- 
 tain 500 millions of a certain kind. They are 
 of various colours. They multiply themselves 
 by buds, or by spontaneous division sometimes 
 in the length, and sometimes in the breadth. 
 Sometimes one parent is seen to contain many 
 offspring, and the offspring often passes into a 
 separate state of existence through the shell, or 
 covering of its parent ! 
 
 3. To one singular feature in the history of 
 the Polygastrica we must still more particularly 
 refer. They have apparently no articulated 
 limbs, yet by means of cilia (eye-lashes or fila- 
 ments, resembling very small hairs), some of 
 which are only 13 ^ 00 th of an inch in length, 
 they can move with a velocity which the eye 
 can scarcely follow ; ay, perform feats which 
 the most famous performer at Astley's might 
 well admire, but would hardly venture to imi- 
 tate ; walking, running, jumping, wrestling, 
 flying, swimming, creeping ; so that there is no 
 kind of animal movement which they do not oc- 
 casionally exhibit. Their gymnastics are truly 
 extraordinary I One part of the frame, of some 
 of them at least, the cilia, has attained what 
 
48 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 man's head and hand have long in vain sought 
 to discover the perpetual motion. For these 
 strange filaments, like our glohe itself, never 
 cease to revolve : whether it be day or night, 
 light or darkness, the cilia exhibit the same 
 circling movements, which seem to cease only 
 with life. Do these movements indicate consci- 
 ousness ? The question has perhaps not yet been 
 fully answered. Dr. Carpenter, though favour- 
 ing the negative, speaks doubtfully. 1 Professor 
 Owen's remarks on the subject are especially 
 worthy of consideration : " If you watch the mo- 
 tions of the Polygastric infusoria, you will per- 
 ceive that they avoid obstacles to their progress ; 
 rarely jostle one another ; yet it is difficult to detect 
 any definite cause or object of their movements. 
 The motions of the Polygastrica have appeared 
 to me, long watching them for indications of 
 volition, to be in general of the nature of re- 
 spiratory acts, rather than attempts to obtain 
 food, or avoid danger. Very seldom can they 
 be construed as voluntary, but seem rather to be 
 automatic, governed by the influence of stimuli 
 within or without the body, not felt but reflect- 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, pp. 476, 478. 
 
MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 49 
 
 ed upon the contractile fibres, and therefore are 
 motions which never tire. We may thus ex- 
 plain the fact which Ehrenberg relates not 
 without an expression of surprise namely, that 
 at whatever period of the night he examined 
 the living Infusoria, he invariably found them 
 moving as actively as in the day-time ; in short, 
 it seems to him that these little beings never 
 sleep." 1 
 
 This life of ceaseless activity is indeed not 
 long : but the watchful devotee of science has 
 traced an infusoria through a course of exist- 
 ence, extending to an old age of twenty-three 
 days ! 
 
 4. To a true Animalcule, of high and com- 
 plex organization, brought to view by the 
 Microscope, we must still request our reader's 
 attention ; namely, the Rotifer, or " Wheel 
 Animalcule" These animalcules belong to the 
 articulated division of the animal kingdom, 
 and seem to constitute a class in that lower 
 portion of it, to which the designation worm 
 
 1 Lectures on the Compar. Anatomy and Physiology of the 
 Invertebrate Animals, p. 19. 1843. 
 D 
 
50 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 
 
 is given. 1 The name Kotifera, or " Wheel 
 Animalcules," was assigned to them from their 
 having, in the anterior part of their body, little 
 organs like wheels ; and which, like wheels, 
 continually move upon their own axis. This 
 appearance is as extraordinary, as if the head 
 of a man ivere seen to be continually whirling 
 round on the axis of his neck. 
 
 Though the Kotifer is not the -^th of an 
 inch long, it possesses tail and eyes, chin and 
 mouth, jaws, teeth, and stomach. Mr. Gosse 
 states that the muscular, the nervous, the 
 digestive, and the reproductive systems of the 
 " Wheel-bearers/' are particularly well deve- 
 loped. 2 By their cilia, these Infusoria create a 
 lilliputian whirlpool in the water, and by the 
 movement suck their prey into their mouth. 
 They produce their progeny by eggs, from 
 which the young often pass while yet in the 
 body of the parent ! And so rapid is the pro- 
 cess, that, according to Ehrenberg, seventeen 
 millions may be produced within twenty-four 
 days from one individual ! They are evidently 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, p. 473. 
 
 2 Life, p. 198. 
 
MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 51 
 
 a decidedly anti-Malthusian race ! As the Ko- 
 tifer is remarkably transparent, all these facts 
 are easily observed with a good Microscope. 
 
 5. In this class, the Melicerta Ringens, or 
 " Beaded Melicerta" claims special notice. It 
 is called " Beaded " from the cylindrical tube, 
 or house which it inhabits, being made up of 
 little round pellets glued together, which give 
 the tube a granulated or beaded character. The 
 Melicerta builds its own house, and also makes 
 the stones that are laid in its walls. It exudes, 
 from a cup-like organ in its own body, a viscous 
 matter for forming little beads or pellets, and 
 with these it raises, course after course, and 
 storey after storey, its tubular abode. Mr. Gosse 
 tells us that he enjoyed the privilege of witness- 
 ing the operations of the little mason, as it was 
 rearing its tasteful mansion, after an order still 
 more ancient than the Doric. He observed 
 beneath the Melicerta 's chin a small disk-like 
 organ, having the appearance of a revolving 
 ventilator (" like that fixed in the upper pane 
 of a kitchen- window for curing smoke"), when 
 the wheels are at work. Towards this disk, 
 through the action of the cilia, particles of 
 
52 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 matter are drawn from the surrounding liquid 
 into the vortex of the wheel organs, and so ac- 
 cumulate there, until the pellet the stone for 
 the wall is framed of the necessary materials. 
 It requires about three minutes to prepare the 
 pellet. Then the little architect, having popped 
 up its head out of its tube (" like a sweep 
 peeping out of a chimney-top "), bends down its 
 body, seizes the pellet, and lays the stone in its 
 bed in other words, attaches the newly formed 
 pellet to its own niche on the edge of the 
 gradually rising tubular structure. The head 
 is then lifted up, and the same process of col- 
 lecting materials and bringing them to the 
 stone-manufactory, of making the pellets, and 
 of raising the walls, commences anew. 1 This 
 Architect-Mason animalcule is about two-thirds 
 of a line in length ; 2 and when young has two 
 eyes, teeth, and gizzard. Its teeth are like 
 toothed hammers, fixed on the movable end of 
 the jaw, to strike, or pound as on an anvil. Re- 
 spiratory tubes are sometimes seen. Ehrenberg 
 maintains that this creature has brains ! 
 
 1 Transactions of the Microscopical Society, ii. 3, 4, 5. 
 
 2 A line is one-twelfth of an inch. 
 
MICEOSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 53 
 
 6. If the contemplation of one animalcule pre- 
 sents so marvellous a spectacle, what shall we 
 say when we behold them in multitudes which 
 no man can number ? Well has it been ob- 
 served : " To see a shoal of these lively crea- 
 tures in a drop of water, avoiding each other in 
 their many courses, and performing a thousand 
 mingled evolutions, is, perhaps, one of the most 
 interesting spectacles which the reflective can 
 contemplate ! But this delight gives way to 
 astonishment when we perceive that these crea- 
 tures are elaborately constructed ; that they 
 are organized with an express relationship to 
 their destined mode of life ; and that they 
 enjoy their existence like the fishes of the sea, 
 the birds of the air, or the wild beasts of the 
 desert." 
 
 Contemplating such a scene, we may well 
 adopt the words of the poet : 
 
 " Sec thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth, 
 All matter quick, and bursting into birth. 
 Above, how high progressive life may go ! 
 Around, how wide ! How deep extend below ! 
 Vast chain of being ! which from God began ; 
 Nature ethereal, human, angel, man ; 
 Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, 
 
54 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 No glass can reach ; ,from Infinite to Thee, 
 From Thee to nothing ! " 
 
 " How wonderful are thy works, Lord ; sought out of all 
 them that have pleasure therein." 
 
 7. The marvel of marvels regarding the Koti- 
 fera still remains to be told ; their tenacity of life. 
 They may be taken out of water, kept dry as 
 dust, and retained in this condition for almost any 
 length of time ; yet, when exposed to the influ- 
 ence of moisture and heat, they may be restored 
 again to all their former animation ! Fontana, 
 an Italian naturalist, kept some Eotifera in 
 dried sand for two years and a half ; but, after 
 an application of rain-water for two hours, most 
 of them appeared to return to life and motion. 1 
 Spallanzani, after keeping the creatures for four 
 years in a torpid state, repeated these experi- 
 ments with the same success. He further tried 
 the power of revival after apparent death, by 
 alternately drying and moistening the same 
 individuals. At each trial some failed to re- 
 cover ; some recovered many times ; one of 
 them actually revived fifteen times, but died 
 on the sixteenth trial. 2 Individuals of one 
 
 1 Paterson's Zoology, p. 8. 
 
 2 Owen's Comp. Anat., vol. i. p. 39. 
 
MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 55 
 
 tribe have been kept in a vacuum for thirty 
 days ; they have been subjected to the most 
 trying species of desiccation known, by the use 
 of sulphuric acid and chloride of calcium, and 
 yet they have revived again. 1 Professor Owen 
 says, that he witnessed at Freiburg, in 1838, 
 the revival of an Arctiscon which had been 
 preserved by Professor Schultze in dry sand up- 
 wards of four years. 2 Some have hence ventured 
 to conclude that there is here a true and complete 
 revivification a restoration of life ! The highest 
 authorities, Ehrenberg and Humboldt, justly 
 maintain that in such cases there had been no 
 death; that the principle of life, though en- 
 feebled and dormant, had never actually fled. 3 
 But even with this explanation, how startling 
 the phenomenon, that an invisible animalcule, 
 with an amazingly minute and delicate organi- 
 zation of head, eyes, mouth, jaws, teeth, throat, 
 stomach, should be dried up to dust, remain 
 dormant, as if dead, for years, and yet revive 
 again ! How strange such a sleep ! How 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, p. 497. 
 
 2 Owen's Comp. Anat., vol. i. p. 40. 
 
 3 Humboldt's Aspects of Nature, p. 240. 
 
56 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 strange such a waking ! Such an entombment 
 and such a resurrection ! Yet the evidence is 
 undoubted. Well, then, may we ask with the 
 poet 
 
 " And deems weak man tiie future promise vain, 
 When worms can die, and glorious rise again ?" 
 
 Well may we ask with Paul, and in words 
 supplied by Him who is Himself the Eesurrec- 
 tion and the Life, " Why should it be thought 
 a thing incredible (with you) that God should 
 raise the dead ?" 
 
 11 Can it be ? 
 
 Matter immortal ? And shall spirit die ? 
 Above the nobler, shall less noble rise ? 
 Shall man alone, for whom* all else revives, 
 No resurrection know? 
 
 Here dormant matter waits a call to life ; 
 Half-life, half-death, join there ; here, life and sense ; 
 There, sense from reason steals a glimm'ring ray ; 
 Eeason shines out in man. But how preserved 
 The chain unbroken, upward to the realms 
 Of incorporeal life ? Those realms of bliss 
 SVhere death hath no dominion ?" 
 
 " The time draws on 
 When not a single spot of burial earth, 
 Whether on land, or in the spacious sea, 
 But must give back its long-committed dust 
 Inviolate : And faithfully shall these 
 
MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 57 
 
 Make up the full account ; not the least atom 
 Embezzl'd, or mislaid, of the whole tale. 
 Each soul shall have a body ready furnish'd ; 
 And each shall have his own. Hence, ye profane ! 
 Ask not how this can be ? Sure the same power 
 That rear'd the piece at first, and took it down, 
 Can re-assemble the loose scatter'd parts 
 And put them as they were. Almighty God 
 Has done much more : nor is His arm impair'd 
 Thro' length of days : And what He can, He will : 
 His faithfulness stands bound to see it done." 
 
 8. The discovery of the existence and agency 
 of these microscopic plants and animacules un- 
 folds to us clearly the power, wisdom, and good- 
 ness of the Almighty, as put forth in all nature 
 around us. Before the invention of the Micro- 
 scope, not a conception could be formed by man 
 of the vast world of animated nature in every 
 drop of water. But it is now known that if a 
 few leaves or grasses are immersed in this ele- 
 ment, and then left exposed to the sun for a 
 little time, innumerable multitudes of micro- 
 scopic forms, many of them evidently possessed 
 of the most amazing powers of locomotion, are 
 brought to light. We see this realized every 
 day in every little stagnant pool which we pass 
 by on the road-side. On the surface of that 
 pool you observe a mass of apparently putrid 
 
58 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 matter ; but by and by, vegetable and animal 
 life appears, and the putrifying process ceases. 
 The water becomes pure and fit for use, and so 
 continues as long as the vegetation is healthy. 
 Professor Quekett tells us, in his interesting 
 Lectures on Histology (published in 1852-4), 
 that there was before him, on his lecture-table, 
 a vessel with water, which had thus been kept 
 pure for four years, and which, he stated, would 
 still continue for any length of time in the same 
 condition, so long as that water was tenanted 
 with living plants and animalcules. 1 Shall we, 
 then, any longer despise that little roadside pool, 
 or count these microscopic plants and animals 
 useless ? We are apt to be astonished, ay, 
 disgusted, when we hear of these objects existing 
 in water. But mark the beneficence of God. 
 The plants require carbonic acid as their food, 
 and the animalcules require oxygen to keep 
 them alive. The plants obtain carbonic acid 
 from the decomposition of animal matter, and 
 again give out oxygen for animalcules. The 
 animalcule receives this oxygen, and, in return, 
 by breathing, liberates carbonic acid gas, to be 
 
 1 Lectures on Histology, vol. ii. p. 99. 
 
MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 59 
 
 again decomposed by the plants. The fact of 
 oxygen gas being so produced was carefully 
 tested by Liebig. In order to satisfy himself of 
 its accuracy, he placed several kinds of Infusoria 
 (Protophytes) in a jar of water, and found, as 
 the result, that oxygen gas was rapidly manu- 
 factured, and accumulated in the upper part of 
 the jar. At the end of fourteen days, one-third 
 of the water had been forced out, and the gas, 
 which had taken its place, was capable of ignit- 
 ing a glowing mass of wood. Thus these mi- 
 croscopic plants and animalcules perform the 
 office of scavengers to the important element of 
 water, removing all dead and putrifying organic 
 matter, and rendering the water bright and 
 inodorous. And so exquisite is the balance 
 between animals and plants, that the streams of 
 a thousand rivers, and the waters of the great 
 ocean itself, are thus kept in clearness and purity 
 throughout their wide extent. Professor Owen 
 has well and happily styled these minute crea- 
 tures " Nature's invisible police." 1 
 
 1 Owen's Compar. Anat. vol. i. p. 27. 
 
GO THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 MICROSCOPIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1. THE marvels of the invisible world, as thus 
 illustrated by the Microscope, may explain many 
 perplexing passages that we meet with in the 
 records of history, and in the events of every- 
 day life. 
 
 2. In his Aspects of Nature, Humboldt states 
 that the Otomacs, a tribe inhabiting the banks 
 of the Orinoco, subsist by eating earth during 
 a part of the year when they have no other 
 food. They knead this earth into balls, bake 
 them, and use them as their only sustenance 
 during two or three months of the year. " If 
 an Otomac be asked," says Humboldt, " what 
 are his winter (the rainy season) provisions, 
 he will point to the heaps of clay in his hut." 1 
 Nay, this race so much relish their earthen 
 
 1 Aspects of Nature, pp. 142-4. 
 
MICROSCOPIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 61 
 
 balls, that, while other food aboun'ds, they eat 
 them by way of dessert, or as a bonne bouche. 
 Similar reports have prevailed as to men eating 
 earth in Finland, Guinea, Java, and other 
 places ; and the propensity of slaves in the West 
 Indies to follow this practice, even to the injury 
 or destruction of their health, is well known. 1 
 The Microscope explains the mystery, at least 
 in some of these cases, and so confirms the state- 
 ments. This earth, examined by our instrument, 
 is found to consist of infusorial matter, i.e., is 
 mainly made up of minute organized beings, 
 either animal or vegetable. It is found in 
 many places, in Algeria, Bermuda, Kichmond 
 in Virginia, Dolgelly in North Wales, Mull 
 in Scotland, Lough Mourne in Ireland, &c. 
 The Swedes and Norwegians have deposits of 
 this infusorial earth, and call it by the very 
 appropriate name of Berg-mehl, or mountain 
 meal. In times of dearth, in China, such earth 
 has been used for food, and is called fossil flour. 
 3. Who has not heard, and, hearing, who has 
 not smiled at apparently incredible stories of red 
 
 1 Aspects of Nature, pp. 145-6. Chambers's Paper on the 
 Microscope, p. 13. 
 
THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 snow and green snow, red rain and black rain ? 
 We thought, perhaps, that we were fully war- 
 ranted to give up to the scoffer, Livy's old stories 
 of showers of blood descending in the Forum 
 and Capitol, and of earth being rained down 
 upon the streets in Kome (Livy, xxxiv. 45) ; 
 but the tidings of rain and snow red, black, 
 and green came from so many quarters, and 
 were vouched for by so many respectable autho- 
 rities, that our early scepticism began to sit 
 somewhat uncomfortably upon us. At length 
 the Microscope has rendered a large portion of 
 it perfectly untenable. Illustrations are here 
 very numerous. 
 
 Thus on January 31, 1687, a great mass of a 
 black substance, said to be like paper, fell during 
 a storm in Courland. The wise said it was 
 meteoric matter, but most men wondered, and 
 pronounced the event a mystery. Fortunately, 
 a portion of the " black mass" was laid up in the 
 Berlin Museum, to puzzle the learned for one 
 hundred and fifty years. But more fortunately 
 still, at the end of that long dark age, Ehrenberg 
 one day applied his Microscope to the marvel, 
 and found it to be a matted heap of minute 
 
MICROSCOPIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 63 
 
 organisms, a few Confervce, and about thirty 
 kinds of infusoria. Thus a glance with the 
 Microscope solved a riddle which had perplexed 
 Europe's philosophers for more than a century. 
 Murray tells us, in his Handbook for Swit- 
 zerland, that red snow is common among the 
 high Alps. Rose-coloured snoiv fell to the 
 depth of six feet in the Tyrol in 1808. Green 
 snow has been collected in Spitzbergen. Sir 
 John Koss collected red snow upon a range of 
 Arctic hills 800 feet above the level of the sea. 
 Black rain fell in Ireland in April 1849, over a 
 surface of 700 square miles. Humboldt observed 
 red hail near Bogota. 
 
 4. Again the Microscope unties the knot. It 
 has been found that in such cases a minute 
 red, sometimes green, coloured plant, called 
 the Protococcus, penetrated and pervaded the 
 snow, and so imparted the colouring. In other 
 cases, vast numbers of microscopic animals, 
 floating in the air, had descended with rain or 
 snow, and so produced the phenomena. 
 
 5. In a work entitled Passat-Staub und Blut- 
 Regen, Ehrenberg has investigated this whole 
 subject very carefully, and records the occur- 
 
64 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 rerice of no fewer than 340 showers of blood-rain 
 and dust-rain. In this treatise he advances the 
 remarkable position, " that there must exist some 
 law of nature according to which these living 
 organisms may develop themselves in the air." 
 He also calls special attention to extraordinary 
 cases, viz., the dust-shower at Lyons in 1846, 
 where an immense mass of matter must have 
 fallen, weighing 7200 cwt. ; the occurrence of red 
 mist, and then a descent of blood-rain at Locarno, 
 near Lago Maggiore in 1755, leaving a red de- 
 posit, which must have covered forty German 
 miles square ; and a shower of dust which fell 
 upon the deck of a vessel in the Atlantic ocean, 
 about 500 miles from the west coast of Africa. 
 In this last case, the animalcules, fifteen species 
 in all, which fell with the dust, when collected 
 and examined by Darwin, proved that the wind 
 must have floated the mass from the shores of 
 South America. 1 This fact goes to support a 
 remarkable theory stated by Humboldt in his 
 Aspects, namely, that " many of these agglo- 
 merations of silicious-shelled microscopic organ- 
 
 1 It is to be remembered, that not a few of the Infusoria 
 are "to be found only in certain geographical areas. 
 
MICROSCOPIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 65 
 
 isms may perhaps float for years in the highest 
 strata of the atmosphere" P. 211. (See below, 
 Chap. viii. Sect. 11.) 
 
 6. These facts cast light on a mysterious page 
 in D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation. 
 The scene to which we refer, is depicted with all 
 the historian's graphic felicity in vol. iv. book 
 xvi. ch. v. 3 where he treats of Zwingle and the 
 Reformation in Switzerland. It is amusing to 
 observe that while DAubigne makes a kind of 
 apology for introducing the story, he carefully 
 refrains from committing himself either to its 
 truth or falsehood. 
 
 " On the 26th July (the year was 1531), a 
 widow, chancing to be alone before her house in 
 Castelenschloss, suddenly beholds a frightful 
 spectacle blood springing from the earth all 
 around her. She rushes in alarm into the cot- 
 tage, but oh, horrible ! blood is flowing every- 
 where from the wainscot and from the stones ; 
 it falls in a stream from a basin on a shelf, 
 and even the child's cradle overflows with it. 
 The woman imagines that the invisible hand of 
 an assassin has been at work, and rushes in 
 distraction out of doors, crying ' Murder, mur- 
 E 
 
66 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 der !' The villagers and the monks of a neigh- 
 bouring convent assemble at the noise they suc- 
 ceed in partly effacing the stains ; but a little later 
 in the day, the other inhabitants of the house, 
 sitting down in terror to eat their meal under 
 the projecting eaves, suddenly discover blood 
 bubbling up in a pond, blood flowing from the 
 loft, blood covering all the walls of the house, 
 blood, blood, everywhere blood! The bailiff 
 of Schenkeuberg, and the pastor of Dalheim 
 arrive, inquire into the matter, and imme- 
 diately report it to the lords of Berne and to 
 Zwingle." 
 
 By the help of the Microscope, we may safely 
 conclude that the bloody omen, which three 
 hundred years ago caused such consternation in 
 the canton of Berne, and which doubtless im- 
 mediately formed the topic of solemn delibera- 
 tion in the council-chamber of the Lords of 
 Berne, and in the circle of the Hero of the Swiss 
 Reformation, was nothing more than an extraor- 
 dinary descent of microscopic coloured plants or 
 vegetables, which, as we have seen from Murray's 
 Handbook, is often witnessed at this day in the 
 higher regions of the Alps. Thus science, truly 
 
MICROSCOPIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 67 
 
 applied, solves many a strange phenomenon 
 explains many a fairy tale and destroys many 
 a superstitious prejudice ; while it opens to 
 us a fresh page in the book of nature, and con- 
 strains us anew to say, " Great and marvellous 
 are thy works, Lord God Almighty ! " 
 
 7. These brief, and necessarily imperfect 
 illustrations, must convince us that boundless 
 and glorious as is that universe afar off, whose 
 realms the Telescope has surveyed, and whose 
 remotest depths it still vainly attempts to fa- 
 thom, there is another universe at hand, which 
 the Microscope brings under our ken, and whose 
 beauties and glories it still more fully subjects 
 to our gaze ! Yea, as we reflect how the Micro- 
 scope conducts man into the hitherto inaccessible 
 and most mysterious regions of this minute 
 universe, lights up the darkest abodes of re- 
 cently unseen and unsuspected existence, pre- 
 sents forms of surpassing beauty and matchless 
 delicacy to our view, and reveals to us new races 
 of beings, new modes of production and new 
 laws of organization, new powers of vital action 
 and new functions in exercise ; we may almost 
 venture to ask if this little Instrument, with its 
 
68 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 scarcely visible lenses, has not, in the hands of 
 an Ehrenberg, or an Owen, achieved discoveries 
 even more unexpected and marvellous, than 
 when Herschel, with his Telescope, saw the 
 broad milky way that belts the heavens as a 
 vast girdle of blazing stars, lying like glittering 
 dust along heaven's dark sky; or when Lord 
 Eosse, traversing the firmament with his gigan- 
 tic instrument, in a moment resolved the great 
 Nebula in Orion into a cluster of glowing stars, 
 or surveyed the planet Neptune in its far distant 
 home ? Yet after all that those instruments 
 have revealed to us after we have with the one 
 penetrated to that remote heaven, and seen its 
 stars in their brightness and grandeur ; or with 
 the other pierced into the minutest fragments 
 of matter, and surveyed the delicacy and beauty 
 of its organized atoms, we are but the more im- 
 pressively taught this lesson at once the highest 
 and the most humbling that beyond the far 
 distant Neptune which the Telescope has brought 
 to our view, and beyond the little Monad which 
 the Microscope has looked upon, there are worlds 
 upon worlds above that planet, and beneath that 
 animalcule ; and that the unknown infinities on 
 
MICKOSCOPIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 69 
 
 their farther sides may yet more fully display 
 the wisdom, and power, and goodness, of their 
 Author, than do all the known infinities that lie 
 between them. For the infinite is everywhere, 
 and in all things the infinitely great and the 
 infinitely small. In the material as well as in 
 the spiritual world, " eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, neither have entered into the heart of man 
 the things of God ! " What need then, even 
 here, of the wisdom that cometh from above ! 
 and of the teaching of that Spirit who searcheth 
 all things, even the deep things of God ! And 
 in a better world what boundless fields of en- 
 nobling contemplation may await the student of 
 nature instructed also in the still more pre- 
 cious volume of inspired truth when, with a 
 mind taught by the Omniscient, and a heart 
 purified by the thrice Holy One, he enters upon 
 the vision of the new Heaven and new Earth, 
 amid the unclouded and full-orbed light of that 
 land, of which Immanuel is at once the Sun and 
 the Glory ! 
 
 " What numerous tribes 
 Evading even the Microscopic eye ! 
 
70 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 Full nature swarms with life ; one wondrous mass 
 Of animals, or atoms organized. 
 
 And lives the man, whose universal eye 
 Has swept the unbounded scheme of things, 
 Mark'd their dependence so, and firm accord, 
 As with unfaltering accent to conclude 
 That this availeth nought ? Has any seen 
 The mighty chain of beings, lessening down 
 From Infinite Perfection to the brink 
 Of dreary nothing, desolate abyss ! 
 From which astonish'd thought, recoiling, turns ? 
 Till then, alone let zealous praise ascend, 
 And hymns of holy wonder to that Power 
 Whose wisdom shines as lovely on our minds, 
 As on our smiling eyes his servant Sun." 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 71 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 
 
 1. DID space permit us fully to examine the 
 wide field of observation and discovery over 
 which the Microscope conducts us, we should 
 find that while this tiny instrument may gratify 
 curiosity to the uttermost, it will also aid us in 
 the practical duties of every-day life subserve 
 our best interests, even in matters affecting our 
 prosperity, our health, our honour, our good 
 name, ay, our very life and help us to solve 
 great questions connected with the glory of 
 God and man's destinies for eternity. Thus 
 the theologian and the philosopher, the natur- 
 alist and the antiquarian, the merchant and the 
 manufacturer, the agriculturist and the chemist, 
 the anatomist and the physician, the lawyer 
 and the judge, may, in the most ordinary de- 
 tails of business, or in the highest departments 
 
72 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 of their profession, oft summon this instrument 
 to their help, and with rarest success. 
 
 2. In reference to that great, and in our day 
 vexed, question, whence, and ivhat is the origin 
 of living beings ? the Microscope aids us at least 
 to detect and expose the fallacies, of men whose 
 solution of this question seems as unphiloso- 
 phical as it is evidently antiscriptural. The 
 Microscope gives no countenance either to a 
 generatio spontanea, or a transmutatio speciei. 
 Notwithstanding the famous experiments of 
 Mr. Crosse and Mr. Weekes, and their " Crea- 
 tion" of the " Acarus" or certain hypotheses 
 regarding the Entozoa, or recent speculations 
 regarding the primitive production of Infusoria, 
 or doctrines about " Creation by Organic 
 Law," our instrument authorizes us still to 
 maintain, that organic life can arise only from 
 organic life ; that the very lowest of plants 
 and animalcules are never produced from in- 
 organic matter by any fortuitous combination 
 of circumstances ; that while there may seem 
 to be different stages of development in the 
 same being, or in its descendants for one or 
 two generations, there is never a final passing 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 73 
 
 away from the original type ; and that while 
 all organized beings may be traced up to ele- 
 mentary cells, the cell of every plant and 
 animal is peculiar to itself, and never develops 
 itself into that of another. 
 
 3. The " Law of the Alternation of Genera- 
 tions," as it has been termed, may present us 
 with facts which, at first sight, appear startling, 
 and inconsistent with the generally received laws 
 of organic life. But these phenomena, when fol- 
 lowed out and fully considered, instead of shut- 
 ting out the thought of the Creator and Pre- 
 server of all living things, only give us new 
 views of that Being whose works are as mani- 
 fold as they are great. One fact connected 
 with the " Alternation of Generations" seems 
 undoubted ; namely, that whatever be the de- 
 gree or duration of the alternation, the original 
 type of existence eventually re-appears. We 
 at once admit that the changes under this law 
 are not to be explained satisfactorily, by com- 
 paring them with the metamorphoses of certain 
 insects and crustaceans. In the latter cases, 
 as Mr. Gosse observes, one individual passes 
 through a succession of forms by casting off a 
 
74 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 succession of garments that concealed, and as it 
 were masked the final form. Thus the cater- 
 pillar actually contained the butterfly. The 
 new form was within the old. But in the alter- 
 nation of generations, we have the appearance 
 of repeated births or descents, where the pro- 
 geny is different from the parent, and possibly 
 quite dissimilar. But sooner or later there is a 
 return to the likeness of the early branch of the 
 family. The pages of Professor Carpenter sup- 
 ply us with abundance of illustration and argu- 
 ment on this point. In the Vorticella, for ex- 
 ample, what a dissimilarity between parent and 
 progeny ! The Vorticella passes into the form 
 of an Acineta ; and this acquires a new stalk, 
 which exhibits the appearance of a Podophrya. 1 
 And so great is this difference between the 
 Vorticella and the Acineta, that Ehrenberg 
 himself regarded them as of a different genus. 2 
 Similar metamorphoses are presented by another 
 animalcule, as it passes through the various 
 changes in which it is styled the Trychoda 
 lynceus, Aspidisca, and Oxytriclia? The Pro- 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, pp. 481, 482. 
 
 2 Gosse's Life, p. 15. 3 Carpenter, pp. 483, 484. 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 75 
 
 tens Amoeba receives its very name from the 
 great variety of forms which it assumes. 1 It is 
 always changing its outline, and to such a 
 degree, that not only are no two ever found 
 alike, but the same specimen does not retain 
 the same shape for two successive minutes. 2 
 And so we have the most extraordinary alterna- 
 tions of forms in the same animalcule, Hydra, 
 Strobila, Medusa, where the parent for the time 
 does not produce its own likeness, but something 
 wholly diverse, " each individual being alto- 
 gether unlike its mother, or its daughter, but 
 exactly resembling its grandmother or its grand- 
 daughter." 
 
 The school of naturalists who draw conclu- 
 sions in favour of their law of development, 
 from the circumstance of a microscopical ani- 
 malcule passing into another form, or appa- 
 rently giving origin to a totally different crea- 
 ture, should carefully ponder the following 
 words of a keen-eyed microscopic observer : 
 " There is a very strong analogical probability, 
 that many even of the most dissimilar forms of 
 these animalcules will prove to be different 
 
 1 Carpenter, p. 464. 2 Gosse's Life, p. 22. 
 
76 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 states of one and the same ; for their multipli- 
 cation, by binary subdivision, being not a true 
 generative process, but merely (so to speak) 
 the growth of an individual, we may be almost 
 certain that sooner or later a new phase will 
 present itself, consisting in the evolution of 
 proper sexual bodies, which will perform a true 
 generative act, the products of which may be 
 very probably quite different from the forms 
 we are accustomed to regard as peculiar to 
 each species." l 
 
 4. It is pleasing to find that the highest 
 authorities among naturalists (without a dis- 
 cordant voice) oppose the conclusions in favour 
 of the hypotheses of a generatio spontanea, or a 
 transmutatio speciei, which some have recently 
 attempted to draw from such phases of life and 
 reproduction as the preceding. 
 
 5. " The hypothesis of equivocal generation," 
 says Professor Owen, " has been deemed to apply 
 more strongly to the appearance of internal 
 parasites (Entozoa) in animal bodies, than to 
 the origin of animalcules in infusions. But if a 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, pp. 18, 20. 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OP LIFE. 77 
 
 tapeiuorm might be organized from a fortuitous 
 concourse of organic particles, or by the meta- 
 morphosis of an organic cell in the animal it 
 infests, why that immense complication and ex- 
 tent of the organs for the production of normal 
 fertile ova P" 1 
 
 6. " The universality," says Professor Car- 
 penter, " of simple forms of fungi upon all 
 spots favourable to their development, has given 
 rise to the belief that they are spontaneously 
 produced by decaying vegetables ; but there is 
 no occasion for this mode of accounting for it, 
 since the extraordinary means adopted by Na- 
 ture for the production and diffusion of the 
 genus of these plants adequately suffices to ex- 
 plain the facts of the case." " A single indivi- 
 dual of the puff-ball tribe has been computed 
 to send forth no fewer than ten millions of 
 sporules. Their minuteness is such, that it is 
 difficult to conceive of a place from which they 
 should be excluded. This mode of explanation 
 has received further confirmation from the facts 
 recently ascertained in regard to the great num- 
 
 1 Owen's Comp. Anat. vol. i. p. 54. The ova in one indi- 
 vidual of the Entozoa amount to sixty -four millions. 
 
78 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 her of forms under which a single germ may 
 develop itself." * 
 
 Professor Carpenter elsewhere pursues a simi- 
 lar course of argument in reference to the Infu- 
 soria : " When we consider the extraordinary 
 rapidity of the multiplication of these animal- 
 cules, and the fact that a succession of different 
 forms may be presented by one and the same 
 being, the difficulty of accounting for the uni- 
 versality of their diffusion, which has led some 
 naturalists to believe in their ' spontaneous ge- 
 neration/ and others to regard them as isolated 
 particles of higher organisms set free in their 
 decomposition, so as to constitute an equivocal 
 generation,' is as easily got over as we have 
 seen it to be in the case of the fungi/' 2 
 
 7. At one period the Yeast-plant was adduced 
 as a striking example of the spontaneous pro- 
 duction of cellular substances. A few lines from 
 the pen of the late Professor James F. W. John- 
 ston scatter such fancies to the winds : " The 
 yeast with which we raise our bread is a minute 
 plant belonging to the division of the Confervce. 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, p. 383. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 485. 
 
THEOEIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 79 
 
 If we make a thick syrup of cane-sugar, and 
 strew a few particles of this yeast upon it, they 
 will begin to grow and propagate, will cause 
 minute bubbles of gas to rise, and the whole 
 syrup gradually to ferment. . . . In the juice of 
 ripe grapes, it has a more favourable medium 
 still. If we filter this juice, we obtain a clear, 
 transparent liquid. Within half an hour this 
 liquid begins to grow first cloudy, and after- 
 wards thick, to give up bubbles of gas, or to 
 ferment, and in three hours a greyish yellow 
 layer of yeast has been already collected on its 
 surface. In the heat of the fermentation the 
 plants are produced by millions a single cubic 
 inch of such yeast, free from adhering water, 
 containing eleven hundred and fifty-two mil- 
 lions of the minute organisms. . . . The cells, 
 or globules, vary in size from y-gVcr to ^Vir of 
 an inch. . . . Whence come the seeds of this 
 yeast-plant, which propagates itself with such 
 wonderful rapidity ? Do they exist already in 
 the juice of the living grape ? Do they cling to 
 the exterior of the fruit, or do they float perpe- 
 tually in the air, ready to germinate and mul- 
 tiply wherever they obtain a favourable oppor- 
 
80 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 tunity ? Whichever way they come, it would 
 be too sloiv a process to wait for the natural 
 appearance of these plants in the worts of the 
 brewer and distiller/' 1 The juice of the grape 
 propagates the seeds of the yeast with this won- 
 derful rapidity, " because it contains the food 
 which, in kind, in form, and in quantity, is best 
 suited to its rapid growth. . . . The minuteness 
 of the yeast-plant, consisting in its simplest 
 form of only a single cell, long prevented it from 
 being generally regarded as a form of living 
 matter. But the changes it undergoes in the 
 fermenting tub, day by day, as shown by the 
 Microscope, prove it to be unquestionably a 
 growing vegetable" 2 
 
 8. In his Bridgewater Treatise, Dr. Prout 
 thus disposes of the theories we have been con- 
 sidering : " All hypotheses assumed to explain 
 organization by laws, whether by laws of matter, 
 or by what are called laius of development, must 
 be rejected. . . . We are drawn irresistibly to 
 the conclusion, that when a new and specific 
 organized being is required, a new and specific 
 
 1 Chemistry of Common Life, vol. i. pp. 84, 85. 
 
 2 Ibid., vol. i. pp. 298, 299. 
 
THEOEIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 81 
 
 act, equivalent to an act of creation, must be 
 performed." 1 
 
 9. In his work in the same series, Dr. Roget, 
 who was strangely represented by the author of 
 the Vestiges to be in favour of his own peculiar 
 views, as thoroughly condemns the " develop- 
 ment theory." " Whatever may be the appa- 
 rent similarity between one animal and another, 
 during different periods of their respective deve- 
 lopments, there still exist specific differences, 
 establishing between them an impassable barrier 
 of separation, and effectually preventing any 
 conversion of one species into another, however 
 nearly the two may be mutually allied. The 
 essential characters of each species, amidst oc- 
 casional varieties, remain ever constant and 
 immutable." And alluding to Lamarck's pro- 
 position, that there was originally no distinc- 
 tion of species, but that each higher race had 
 originally sprung from a lower, " and that 
 infusorial animalcules, spontaneously formed 
 out of original molecules, gave birth, by succes- 
 sive transformations, to att other animals now 
 existing on the globe," Dr. Roget justly con- 
 
 1 Prout's Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 409, 410. 
 F 
 
82 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 eludes, " If this be philosophy, it is such as might 
 have emanated from the college of Laputa" 1 
 
 10. Professor Whewell maintains similar views 
 with equal earnestness, quoting the opinions 
 of the most eminent . naturalists (Cuvier being 
 specially named), as giving an " indisputable 
 preponderance to that decision which rejects the 
 transmutation of species," and which accepts 
 the principle " that the changes of which each 
 species is susceptible, though difficult to define 
 in words, are limited in fact." 2 
 
 11. In Professor Sedgwick's invaluable Dis- 
 course, we have a note on the " Alternate Gene- 
 rations of Steenstrup," " Parthenogenesis of 
 Owen," &c., well worthy of the careful study of 
 those who would investigate these interesting 
 questions. We select a few quotations : 
 
 " In some of the lower families of the ani- 
 mal kingdom larvae are incredibly fruitful, and 
 for several successive generations (sometimes 
 amounting to eight or ten) have an inherent 
 power, without any new sexual union, of ma- 
 turing and bringing forth new forms of larval 
 life, till the specific organic cycle is complete ; 
 
 1 Roget's Bridge-water Treatise, vol. ii. pp. 636, 638. 
 * Whe well's Indications of the Creator, pp. 97-101. 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE OKIGIN OF LIFE. 83 
 
 and then the two sexes are perfected, either in 
 the same or in different individuals (as the case 
 may be), by the union of which the same cycle 
 may begin again, with similar successive changes 
 of larval development. But in cases such as 
 these, there is no specific change in the perfect 
 animals. They are of the same species with the 
 parents from which they originally sprang, and 
 though they may originate once again a most 
 complicated series of organic changes, yet all 
 such changes are governed by stern laws, where- 
 by they are resolved into cycles, and in the 
 end produce but another repetition of the old 
 animal forms." 
 
 " If animals, from the first appearance of 
 their nascent germs to their full specific ma- 
 turity, exhibit a cycle of organic changes, what 
 is the beginning of the cycle ? What are the 
 conditions of generation ? It is the union of a 
 spermatozoon with the germinal vesicle of an 
 ovum. And these two (the spermatozoon and 
 the ovum) are the organic products of two per- 
 fect animals male and female. These condi- 
 tions being satisfied, there commences that cycle 
 of changes, which, however complicated, are de- 
 fined by the constant laws of nature, whereby 
 
84 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 two beings are again produced identical in spe- 
 cies with the two beings from which the two 
 fecundating elements, above-mentioned, were 
 first derived. 
 
 " The first set of changes is, in all animals, of 
 the same kind, and consists in the formation of 
 a vital germinal cell, and its propagation of a 
 numerous offspring by repeated spontaneous di- 
 visions. . . . Among the higher vertebrate animals 
 all the derivative germ-cells are employed in the 
 formation of the foetal tissues and organs, and 
 all the foetal changes up to the moment of full 
 development are represented in one simple 
 cycle. Not so, if we descend low on the organic 
 scale. All the germ-cells are not employed in 
 laying down the embryonic tissues. Part o 
 them, with their full spermatic power, are en- 
 tangled among the tissues, t and by virtue of 
 their assimilatives and fissiparous forces lay the 
 foundation of a new organism/ (Owen on Par- 
 thenogenesis, p. 31.) In this way we not merely 
 state a fact, but we give a physiological reason 
 for it (compatibly with elementary vital laws), 
 when we say that a new form of larval life may 
 spring from a previous larva by Parthenogenesis 
 i. e.j without sexual union : but at the same 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 85 
 
 time by an organic process actually dependent 
 on, and directly derived from, a true sexual 
 union ; out of which union sprang the first larval 
 form in the complicated cycle of changes. Thus 
 a pair of Aphides may produce, compatibly 
 with this view, a larval progeny that is fruitful 
 without any new sexual union, and this may go 
 on, time after time, till out of one union spring 
 a progeny amounting to millions of millions. 
 Still, this cycle of transformed vitality has its 
 termination ; and it ends inevitably with a 
 brood of perfect animals, male and female, of 
 identical species ivith the two out of ivhich the 
 cycle was set in its complicated movement. . . It 
 matters not whether, in speaking of the marvel- 
 lous transformations in the larval forms of any 
 given species, we tell of Parthenogenesis with 
 Owen, or of Ammen or ivet-nurses with Steen- 
 strup. Each set of phenomena is in a true 
 organic cycle, and the perfect animal, with 
 which the cycle ends, is but a repetition of the 
 same species with which the cycle started. To 
 this rule there seems to be no exception ; and 
 the theory of transmutation from one perfect 
 species to another, derives no support from mo- 
 dern Microscopic observations carried on with 
 
86 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 unwearied skill in illustrating the generative 
 progress of the lowest animals onnatures scale" 1 
 
 12. " The experiments of Ehrenberg," ob- 
 serves Professor James Buchanan in his excel- 
 lent work. Faith in God, " instituted with the 
 view of testing the doctrine of spontaneous ge- 
 neration, may be said to have decided the whole 
 question. They show that as far as our clear 
 knowledge extends, the one uniform law, ' Omne 
 vivum ex ovo,' universally prevails. As the doc- 
 trine of spontaneous generation stands opposed 
 to the maxim, that organic life can be pro- 
 duced only by organic life ; so the doctrine of a 
 transmutation of species stands opposed to the 
 equally certain maxim, that like produces like 
 both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. 
 There may arise changes of appearance or struc- 
 ture, and some of these changes are transmissible 
 to the offspring, but the mutations thus super- 
 induced are governed by constant laws, and 
 confined within certain limits. " 2 
 
 13. And now to conclude our list of authori- 
 ties, we may quote Professor Schultz as deci- 
 
 1 Professor Sedgwick's Discourse, pp. 195-199. See also 
 pp. xx. xl. 
 
 2 Professor J. Buchanan's Faith in God, vol. i. pp. 451-453. 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 87 
 
 sively disproving the hypothesis of spontaneous 
 generation by subjecting it to the experimentum 
 crucis. Two vessels were filled with distilled 
 water, and in them were placed various animal 
 and vegetable substances. One vessel was left 
 uncovered, the other was firmly closed, and 
 treated by a peculiarly trying process for de- 
 stroying and excluding all life, by boiling, &c., 
 while the air was renewed in it, after being 
 filtered of any germs that might be in it^by 
 passing through a red-hot tube, and strong sul- 
 phuric acid. " Thus every living thing," says 
 Schultz, " and all germs in the vessel all por- 
 tions of living matter, or of matter capable of 
 becoming animated, were destroyed/' The open 
 vessel on the second day contained Vibriones 
 and Monads, to which were soon added Poly- 
 gastrica and Eotatoria. " From the 28th of 
 May till the beginning of August/' says Schultz, 
 " I watched the closed vessel, without being 
 able, by the aid of the Microscope, to perceive 
 any living animal or vegetable substance. When 
 at last, I separated the different parts of the 
 apparatus, / could not find in the whole liquid 
 the slightest trace of Infusoria, of Conferva, or 
 of Mould. But all the three presented them- 
 
88 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 selves in great abundance a few days after I had 
 left the vessel standing open." l 
 
 14. The Microscope, then, in its widest range 
 over the vast and varied worlds of organized 
 beings which it submits to our study, gives no 
 support to the philosophers of our day who 
 would persuade us to believe in " spontaneous 
 generation" in " physiological development" in 
 the " transmutation of species" or in " organic 
 creation by law" Whoever receives such un- 
 philosophical hypotheses, can certainly with no 
 propriety be called an " unbeliever" Of him it 
 may rather be said in the words of the London 
 wit of our own century : " Why, he is the most 
 capacious believer that is to be found anywhere ! 
 He believes almost more than any other man. 
 He believes in no cause at all ; in the existence 
 of all things from all eternity, without any 
 beginning whatever that they could not be 
 otherwise than as they are !" 2 The minute in- 
 fusoria itself covers with ridicule the theories of 
 those who would make the genealogical Tree of 
 Creation to take root spring up bud blos- 
 som and bear fruit, after this fashion,, Fire- 
 
 1 Pritchard's History of In f us. Animalcules, pp. 54-56. 
 
 2 Lord John Russell's Life of Moore, vol. vi. p. 284. 
 
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 89 
 
 Mist ! Mucus ! Monad ! Mussel ! Mite ! Mam- 
 mal ! Monkey ! MAN ! ! ! We prefer to abide by 
 the grand conclusion to which all Nature guides 
 us that the same creative wisdom which regu- 
 lates and governs the smallest satellite, and the 
 largest starry world, through boundless space, 
 " has established the same law for the develop- 
 ment of every living atom, as is manifested in 
 the largest animal that inhabits this planet/' 
 
 " The mind indeed enlighten 'd from ahove 
 Views God in all ; ascribes to the grand cause 
 The grand effect ; acknowledges with joy 
 His manner, and with rapture tastes His style. 
 But never yet did philosophic tube, 
 That hrings the planets home into the eye 
 Of Observation, and discovers, else 
 Not visible, His family of worlds, 
 Discover Him that rules them ; such a veil 
 Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth, 
 And dark in things divine. Full often, too, 
 Our wayward intellect, the more we learn 
 Of nature, overlooks her Author more ; 
 From instrumental causes proud to draw 
 Conclusions retrograde, and mad mistake. 
 But if His Word once teach us, shoot a ray 
 Through all the heart's dark chambers, and reveal 
 Truths undiscern'd but by that holy light, 
 Then all is plain. Philosophy, baptized 
 In the pure fountain of eternal love, 
 Has eyes indeed ; and viewing all she sees 
 As meant to indicate a God to man, 
 Gives Him His praise, and forfeits not her own." 
 
90 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 1. THE Microscope has been of inestimable 
 value to the Palaeontologist. Who has not been 
 astonished to find that Cuvier, lighting upon a 
 few fossil bones, never before seen by man, lying 
 scattered at Montmartre, could tell to what 
 species of animals each of these bones had be- 
 longed, and could reconstruct the animals of which 
 these had formed a part, perhaps at the distance 
 of millions of ages, and all this with the most 
 perfect success, as was afterwards demonstrated 
 when these fossil animals were found entire ? 
 Not less striking have been the skill and the 
 success of Professor Owen, as with a glance of 
 the Microscope at fragments of fossil nail, or 
 tooth, or joint, he has unerringly assigned each 
 fragmentary part to the class of animals to 
 which it belonged. Nothing but this instru- 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 91 
 
 ment, he himself states, could have conducted 
 him to some of his most remarkable discoveries. 
 By the Microscope alone, it was determined 
 that the Sandstone of Warwickshire, and the 
 " Keuper-Sandstein" of Wirtemberg, were equi- 
 valent formations. 1 By the Microscope, it was 
 determined that the teeth in the " Keuper- 
 Sandstein," supposed by Jaeger to belong to a 
 Saurian reptile, by him named Mastodonsaurus, 
 or Pliytosaurus, were really the same as those 
 in the Trias of Warwickshire ; that they had 
 belonged to a primeval gigantic Batrachian a 
 frog-like animal of five or six feet long to 
 which, from its extraordinary teeth, the name 
 Labyrintlwdon was given ; and that this Laby- 
 rinthodon might almost to a certainty be re- 
 garded as the Clieirotherium of the Trias in the 
 Stourton quarries of Cheshire, whose strange 
 footprints had so long exercised the skill and 
 ingenuity of the Palaeontologist. 2 By the Micro- 
 scope, the Basilosaurus, once the acknowledged 
 monarch of the Saurian tribes, has been de- 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, p. 758. 
 
 2 Owen's Odontography, vol. i. pp. 196, 217 ; Lyell's Ele- 
 ments, pp. 335-342 ; Morris's British Fossils, p. 350 ; Carpen- 
 ter on the Microscope, p. 758. 
 
92 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 posed from its throne, but lifted up to a higher 
 family ; since now, as the Zeugledon Cetoides, 
 it takes its place among the lower orders of the 
 mammalia. 1 By the Microscope, the Sauro- 
 cephalus has been exiled from the class of rep- 
 tiles to that of fishes ; 2 and, by the Microscope, 
 doubts long entertained by the highest autho- 
 rities as to the affinities and habits of the 
 gigantic Megatherium have been satisfactorily 
 determined. 3 
 
 (1.) Nor let it be supposed that such disco- 
 veries affect only questions of abstract science. 
 They often stand connected with matters of the 
 highest importance in everyday life. Owen's dis- 
 coveries supply us with a case strikingly in point. 
 With his Microscope, our distinguished com- 
 parative anatomist and palaeontologist finally 
 settled a question of vast importance to the 
 financial and commercial interests of a mighty 
 empire. For recently, it was observed that a 
 rock-formation spread extensively over Livonia 
 and Northern Eussia, where the relative posi- 
 
 1 Lyell's Elements, p. 234. 
 
 2 Morris's British Fossils, p. 343. 
 
 3 Hogg on the Microscope, p. 375. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 93 
 
 tion of the rock to other strata left its own 
 place in the series undetermined, and where 
 the mineral characters seemed so indistinct as 
 to be referrible either to the Old or New Bed 
 Sandstone. Was the formation the Old Red 
 Sandstone ? Then no coal-measures could be 
 expected below it. Was it the New ? Then 
 the precious mineral might exist below the 
 rock. Until the question, New or Old Red 
 Sandstone ? was determined, it was unsafe to 
 expend money in mining, otherwise many for- 
 tunes might be squandered in Russia, as they 
 had been formerly thrown away in Great Bri- 
 tain, in hopelessly digging for coal beneath the 
 Old Red, or even still more ancient rocks. 1 
 " There is no science/' it is justly remarked by 
 the distinguished author of the Old Eed Sand- 
 stone, " whose value can be adequately estima- 
 ted by economists and utilitarians of the lower 
 order. Its true quantities cannot be repre- 
 sented by arithmetical figures or monetary 
 tables ; for its effects on mind must be as 
 surely taken into account as its operations on 
 
 1 Murchison's Silurian System, vol. i. p. 328; Siluria, 
 pp. 93, 388. 
 
94 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 matter ; and what it has accomplished for the 
 human intellect as certainly as what it has 
 done for the comforts of society, or the interests 
 of commerce. Geology, in a peculiar manner, 
 supplies to the intellect an exercise of this en- 
 nobling character. But it has also its cash 
 value. The time and money squandered in 
 Great Britain alone, in searching for coal in 
 districts where the well-informed geologist could 
 have at once pronounced the search fruitless, 
 would much more than cover the expense at 
 which geological research has been prosecuted 
 throughout the world." 1 From the peculiar 
 circumstances connected with the case to which 
 reference is now about to be made, geology 
 could not determine whether coal was likely 
 to be found or not ; but the Microscope, when 
 appealed to, gave a certain answer. 
 
 (2.) Sir Koderick Murchison states, that ma- 
 nifestly " the place of the great upper coal- 
 fields of England is unoccupied by any clue re- 
 presentative in the Kussian empire." 2 But not 
 so, once thought the palaeontologists of Eussia. 
 
 1 Miller's Old Red Sandstone, pp. 227, 228. 
 
 2 Siluria, p. 334. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 95 
 
 They were disposed to conclude that the great 
 formation, above referred to, was the New Eed, 
 for they found in it some gigantic teeth, which 
 they at first concluded must belong to a Saurian 
 reptile, as they bore a very close resemblance 
 to those of crocodiles. But the teeth were sub- 
 mitted to Professor Owen, and, examining them 
 by the aid of the Microscope, he found that 
 they did not belong to the Saurian order, as 
 the Eussian paleontologists had unhesitatingly 
 concluded, but to the Dendrodus, a fish exclu- 
 sively Palaeozoic. " If other proofs had not 
 been obtained of the age of these deposits, this 
 tooth alone would have decided the question." 1 
 And the conclusion, thus farther reached, that 
 this extensively deposited formation was the 
 Old Red Sandstone, not only established an 
 important point in geology, but perhaps also 
 saved many a Eussian fortune. 
 
 (3.) The value of the application of the 
 Microscope did not stop here ; for Sir Rode- 
 rick Murchison adds, " Whilst we write, Pro- 
 fessor Agassiz acquaints us, that availing him- 
 
 1 Murcliison's Russia, vol. i. pp. 635, 636 ; Carpenter on 
 the Microscope, pp. 757, 758 ; Agassiz's Monographic des 
 Poissons Fossil.es, p. 83. 
 
96 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 self of the weapons which Professor Owen had 
 so skilfully wielded, he has commenced a series 
 of researches not^only into the teeth, but also 
 into the structure of the hard-enamelled bones 
 of the Eussian fossil-fish, and by which he will 
 be enabled to show the same distinctions in the 
 other bones of the different genera of this class, 
 which Professor Owen has so successfully esta- 
 blished in relation to the bones of the higher 
 orders of animals." In proof of the justice of 
 such an expectation, Sir B. Murchison calls 
 special attention to three diagrams in his great 
 work, Russia, representing the distinctive osteo- 
 logical characters of the remarkable genera, 
 Gfyptosteus, Chelonichthys, and Psammolepis. 1 
 Well might Owen declare, while such disco- 
 veries were made by the Microscope, that it 
 was indispensable to the Palaeontologist. 
 
 (4.) A few weeks ago, some fossil remains 
 of a large animal were discovered near to the 
 shore of Stirling. They were embedded in clay 
 at the depth of eight or ten feet from the sur- 
 face of the ground, at the distance of two or 
 three hundred yards from the Forth, and not 
 
 1 Murchison's Russia, vol. i. p. 67 ; plate ii. 7, 8, 9. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 97 
 
 many feet above the present level of the river. 
 The remains are chiefly vertebral ; and it is 
 believed that nearly the entire skeleton may 
 yet be found, when, on the subsidence of the 
 water presently covering the spot, the research 
 can be prosecuted and completed. It was con- 
 cluded that these fossil bones had belonged to 
 a whale; but the conclusion was denied by 
 some. To settle the question, the writer of this 
 little work forwarded a fragment, of what he 
 believed to be one of the cartilaginous vertebral 
 disks of a whale, for examination by Professor 
 Quekett of London. Of date 19th Feb. 1858, 
 this distinguished Microscopist thus replies : 
 " The piece of bone received this morning is 
 certainly part of an intervertebral disk of a 
 large whale, one which, no doubt, was stranded 
 many years ago. From its size, it probably was 
 a Rorqual, which, I think, is the species most 
 commonly cast on shore, at least in the south of 
 England, the Orkney whale not being so large. 1 
 Had you not told me what you suspected the 
 bone to be, I could have told you at the first 
 glance." 
 
 1 See below, Sect. 3. 
 G 
 
98 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 2. The instrument is an equally necessary 
 auxiliary to the Botanist. It has aided him to 
 determine many important or curious questions 
 connected with fossil plants. Professor Nicol 
 of Aberdeen, e.g., by subjecting the ashes of a 
 Silurian anthracite, occurring in Peeblesshire, 
 to the Microscope, detects in it minute tubular 
 fibres ; and observes, that they seem to indicate 
 a higher class of vegetables than was previously 
 supposed to exist at that period. 1 
 
 (1.) Mr. Hugh Miller notices, that an organ- 
 ism found by him at an early period of his 
 geological discoveries, in a nodule of the ichthy- 
 olite beds of Cromarty, although understood 
 by him to be a vegetable remain, was only re- 
 cently certainly determined to be a true wood. 
 " Though I described it," says he, " in the first 
 edition of my little work on the Old Ked Sand- 
 stone in 1841, as exhibiting the woody fibre, it 
 was not until 1845, that, with the assistance of 
 the optical lapidary, I subjected its structure to 
 the test of the Microscope. It turned out, as I 
 had anticipated, to be the portion of a tree ; 
 and, on my submitting the prepared specimen 
 
 1 Testimony of the Socks, p. 424. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 99 
 
 to one of our highest authorities, the late Mr. 
 William Nicol, he at once decided that the 
 1 reticulated texture of the transverse section, 
 though somewhat compressed, clearly indicated 
 a coniferous origin/ A farther interest accom- 
 panies the case, viz., that in this specimen the 
 Microscope presented to our view the most an- 
 cient of Scottish lignites." 1 
 
 (2.) Those who have not examined, under 
 the Microscope, thin sections of fossil organized 
 matter very fine slices of vegetable or animal 
 remains prepared according to the ingenious 
 plan first adopted, and with such success, by the 
 late Mr. Nicol, can have no adequate idea either 
 of the beauty so revealed in these specimens, or 
 of the nature of the evidence supplied for the 
 determination of nice and difficult questions 
 connected with fossil organisms. In a treatise 
 still unpublished, but destined, we would 
 fondly hope, to be presented to the public eye 
 at no- distant period recently written by the 
 
 1 Testimony of the Bocks, pp. 435, 436 ; Old Bed Sand- 
 stone, p. 134. " One unique specimen, a true wood of the 
 Araucarian family, the oldest which has yet presented its 
 structure to the Microscope." From seventh edition (1858) 
 of the Old Bed Sandstone, p. 361. 
 
100 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 late distinguished Professor of Natural Science 
 in the New College, Edinburgh, the lamented 
 Dr. Fleming, justice is done to the originality 
 of Mr. Nicol's labours, and to the value of his 
 invention as an aid to palasontological research. 
 " In connection with organic remains/' Dr. 
 Fleming writes, " we briefly refer to the disco- 
 veries and labours of an individual who contri- 
 buted towards the elucidation of the intimate 
 structure of recent and fossil organisms to an 
 extent of which few seem to be aware. To the 
 late William Nicol, Esq., Inverleith, Edinburgh, 
 the students of fossil organisms are indebted for 
 the processes by which thin slices of petrifac- 
 tions can be prepared, so as to permit the appli-* 
 cation of the Microscope to the examination of 
 their intimate structure. It is to the processes 
 and the manipulations of this observer, that we 
 are indebted for our knowledge of the relation 
 of the fossil-trees of Craigleith and Granton 
 quarries to the firs, or rather to the Araucarias 
 of the present day. Indeed, without borrowing 
 from the resources of Mr. Nicol, the work of 
 Witham on Fossil Vegetables would have pos- 
 sessed little interest, the Fossil Flora would 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICEOSCOPE. J01 
 
 have been greatly limited, while the Odonto- 
 grapliy might not have had a being." 1 
 
 (3.) The Microscope has unfolded to us the 
 organization of many of those gigantic plants 
 out of which the coal-measures have been ela- 
 borated, and enabled us to ascertain that here 
 the huge fern, there the quaintly-sculptured 
 sigillaria, here the stately calamite, there the 
 graceful lepidodendron played their parts, while 
 the wondrous providence of God was, in the 
 depths of past ages, and long before man ap- 
 peared on the scene, preparing those inestimably 
 precious stores of fuel, which were destined in 
 the future to make our own island the work- 
 shop of the world, and to aid in exalting Britain 
 to the foremost place among the nations. 
 
 (4.) The author of these pages has lying before 
 him on his table, while he writes, a very minute 
 but instructive proof of the value of the Micro- 
 scope in the field of botany. In the Crystal 
 Palace Exhibition of 1851, in the West Main 
 
 1 Dr. Fleming's LithoJogy of Edinburgh, pp. 13, 14. Mr. 
 Nicol's valuable collection is in the possession of one who can 
 both appreciate and increase its interest, Alexander Bryson, 
 Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
102 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 Avenue, near to the well-known Crystal Foun- 
 tain, a noble collection of woods from our colo- 
 nies, called the '" Canadian Trophy," attracted 
 much attention. An enormous petrified tree, 
 from Yan Diemen's Land, lay at the base of 
 the " Trophy." This trunk was about ten feet 
 high, and three feet in diameter. The exterior 
 was white and glossy, and the interior presented 
 the appearance of opal. On some places of the 
 tree there was a very fine white powdery dust, 
 the debris of the petrified wood. The writer 
 carried away a few pinches of this dust, and, 
 after preparing it by the ordinary process, sub- 
 jected it to the Microscope. Under the glass 
 these scarcely-perceptible particles of dust exhi- 
 bited the organic structure of the tree, and 
 proved it to belong to the genus Araucaria. 
 Though the tree had been completely converted 
 into silex, yet the original tissues are so perfectly 
 replaced by the silex, that they display the most 
 minute features of the original organization. 
 The characteristic disks or glands, arranged in 
 alternate order, exhibit the well-known marks 
 of the Araucaria. According to Mr. Nicol, the 
 diameter of one of these disks does not exceed 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 103 
 
 the Two-th part of an inch ; whilst the smallest 
 of these again is of enormous size, when com- 
 pared with the fibres of the partitions bounding 
 the vessels in which they occur. 1 
 
 (5.) The Microscope also pours its light 
 upon another interesting section of wood on the 
 writer's table. Mr. Layard tells us that while 
 pursuing his remarkable discoveries among the 
 ruins of Nineveh, he one day felt the sweet 
 smell of burning cedar. The Arabs had dug a 
 beam of wood from the mounds of Nimroud, 
 and, as the weather was cold, had made a fire to 
 warm themselves. The wood was cedar, and 
 retained all its original fragrance. " It was 
 probably/' says Mr. Layard, " one of the very 
 beams which an inscription discovered on the 
 walls mentions as having been brought from the 
 forests of Lebanon by the king who built the 
 edifice." 2 A piece of the cedar, thus strangely 
 disinterred, was sent home to our distinguished 
 India Missionary, Dr. Duff. The specimen in 
 the writer's possession, prepared as a microscopic 
 
 1 Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. pp. 484, 487 ; 
 vol. ii. pi. 56 a. 
 
 2 Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 357. 
 
104 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 object, is only t^-ths by -f^th of an inch in size, 
 yet under the instrument, it exquisitely repre- 
 sents the partitions of the wood, and the disks 
 in them placed side by side, and not alternately, 
 as in the previously-noticed specimen of the 
 Araucaria. 
 
 (6.) In the examination of living plants, the 
 Microscope traverses a boundless field, and un- 
 folds to us, in every spray, and leaf, and flower, 
 examples of previously unimagined and otherwise 
 unseen manifestations of the power, and wisdom, 
 and goodness of Him who created all " from the 
 cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the 
 hyssop that springeth out of the wall." Justly, 
 therefore, does Professor Balfour observe, that 
 the structure of the cells and vessels of plants 
 can only be fully seen by the aid of the Micro- 
 scope, and that " for this study the Instrument 
 is indispensable. 1 
 
 3. Who would expect that the Antiqua- 
 rian's researches, as to events in the dark ages, 
 would be facilitated by the Microscope ? But 
 so it is. In 1847, Sir Benjamin Brodie asked 
 Mr. Quekett if it was possible to determine 
 
 1 Balfour's Phyto- Theology, p. 50-58. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 105 
 
 whether skin, that had been exposed to the 
 air for many years, " was human or not ?" 
 " If there are any hairs on the skin/' was the 
 reply, " their examination under the Microscope 
 will at once determine the question/' The an- 
 swer was tested, and passed through the ordeal 
 with triumph. A tradition long existed at 
 Worcester, that, centuries ago, a man had been 
 seized in the very act of robbing the Cathedral, 
 and that for this sacrilege the offender had been 
 flayed alive, and his skin nailed to the door of 
 the Cathedral. A few years ago, the old doors 
 of the Cathedral being under repair, a portion 
 of skin, with two hairs, was found under the 
 rusty hinges of the door. This skin, to which 
 Sir B. Brodie had referred, was placed under 
 the Microscope, and it at once appeared that the 
 old tradition was true, as the hairs on this frag- 
 ment of skin were, beyond a doubt, those of a 
 man ! 
 
 The author of these pages is obligingly in- 
 formed by Mr. Quekett, that there are no less 
 than three other places where human skin has 
 been proved by the Microscope so to exist, at 
 Copford and at Hadstock (both in Essex), and 
 
106 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 at the door of the Treasury chamber in West- 
 minster Abbey. Mr. Quekett farther states, 
 that in January 1858, he has ascertained, by the 
 assistance of the instrument, that certain bones 
 found in a Pict's house in Orkney, were those of 
 a whale ; adding, that scarcely a week passes 
 during which he is not called upon to prosecute 
 similar examinations. 
 
 4. Is the Chemist, the Merchant, the Parent 
 of a delicate child, anxious to test the purity of 
 arrowroot ? The Microscope may unerringly 
 guide him in his inquiries. For, as the hair of 
 every animal differs from that of another, as 
 the blood of one living creature is unlike that 
 of every other living creature, so the granules 
 of the starch of wheat, rice, potatoes, tous-les- 
 mois, tapioca, and arrowroot, all differ in ap- 
 pearance under the Microscope, each present- 
 ing its own peculiar form and proportionate 
 size. The Microscope was called in to decide 
 an important question in connexion with these 
 articles, which arose a few years ago. An at- 
 tempt was then made to import a large quantity 
 of the starch of the Cassava or tapioca, which 
 bore a duty, under the name of arrowroot (ma- 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 107 
 
 ranla arundinacea), upon which there was no 
 duty. If the attempt had been successful, the 
 revenue would have been defrauded to a large 
 amount. Government employed a distinguished 
 chemist. Dr. Ure, to examine into the matter, 
 and to ascertain what was the real character of 
 the cargo. The skill of the chemist failed to 
 elicit the truth, but Dr. Ure called in the aid of 
 the Microscope, when it was proved that the 
 article was not arrowroot, but tapioca. 1 With- 
 in a few years, the question of the comparative 
 merits and characters of coffee and chiccory was 
 discussed throughout the empire. It formed 
 the subject of debate in Parliament. An exa- 
 mination into the question took place before a 
 Committee of the House of Commons, when 
 three professional men, chemists, declared that 
 it was impossible to detect chiccory if it was 
 mixed loith coffee. But the Microscope's aid 
 was employed, and wherever the mixture had 
 taken place the fact was at once discovered. Who 
 has looked into the pages and illustrations in the 
 work of Dr. A. H. Hassall on Food and its Adul- 
 
 1 Professor Quekett's Lectures on Histology, vol. i. pp. 
 31, 32. 
 
108 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 terations, without being struck with the re- 
 markable place the Microscope has occupied on 
 this subject of national interest ? 
 
 5. The Microscope offers singular advantages 
 to the Anatomist and the Physician. To this 
 instrument, e.g., we owe the first proof seen by 
 the eye of man of the truth of the theory which 
 has immortalized the name of Harvey. He 
 reasoned out the theory of the circulation of the 
 blood, but never himself saw blood to circulate. 
 The Microscope shows us the blood as it actually 
 pursues its marvellous course. By examining 
 the veins and arteries of transparent animals, 
 such as the water-newt, eel, and especially the 
 frog, under the Microscope, we can discern the 
 exquisitely beautiful process; and we can scarcely 
 imagine a more striking evidence of the Divine 
 skill manifested in our physical conformation 
 than that which is thus presented to us. 
 
 In 1837, M. Audouin announced that the silk- 
 worms, then for years widely perishing in the 
 south of France, were destroyed by the growth 
 of a fungous vegetation in the interior of their 
 bodies ; and it appears that the farther propa- 
 gation of the disease was at that time arrested 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 109 
 
 by appropriate remedies. " Wherever/' says 
 Professor Carpenter, " the precautions obviously 
 suggested by the knowledge of the nature of the 
 disease afforded by the Microscope, have been 
 duly put in force, its extension has been kept 
 within comparatively limited bounds." 1 Pro- 
 fessor Goodsir of Edinburgh stated some years 
 ago, that a peculiarly severe and unmanageable 
 affection (sarcina ventriculi), was connected 
 with what appeared under the Microscope to be 
 parasitic vegetables of low organization ; and 
 Mr. Quekett recently remarked that remedies to 
 destroy vegetable life might probably arrest a 
 complaint hitherto almost always fatal. 2 Dr. 
 Mantell, again, suggests that as the cell is the 
 extreme point to which we can trace the life of 
 animals and vegetables, and that, as their many 
 important processes are performed through the 
 agency of cells, there in the cell disease may 
 probably be most early detected, and in the cell, 
 too, remedial measures may be most beneficially 
 employed. 3 
 
 1 Carpenter on the Microscope, p. 377. 
 
 2 Quekett's Lectures on Histology, vol. i. pp. 19, 20. 
 8 Mantell's Invisible World, p. 24. 
 
110 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 6. Results still more important, even the 
 honourable name, and the very existence of in- 
 dividuals, have been found to depend upon the 
 testimony of the Microscope ; and the Lawyer 
 at the bar, and the Judge on the bench, have 
 found its evidence all-powerful in deciding the 
 most solemn questions. It is to be remembered 
 that, as seen under the Microscope, the hairs 
 and blood-globules (or red corpuscles of blood) 
 of different kinds of animals are very dissimilar. 
 The smallest blood-globule is that of the Java 
 musk deer, being (on an average) 12 ^ 25 th of an 
 inch ; the largest is that of the Proteus, an 
 animal of the Batrachian family, being -^rth of 
 an inch. The average dimension of the blood- 
 globule of a sheep, is Woirth of a dog, ^T^-d 
 of a mouse, ^rrth and of a man, ^roth of 
 an inch. Differences in the form and colour, 
 as well as in the size, of blood-globules, assist in 
 the determination of the species to which they 
 belong. There is an equally striking dissimi- 
 larity between the hairs of different kinds of 
 animals ; and not only does the hair of one 
 species differ from that of another, but in the 
 same species the form of the hair differs in dif- 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. Ill 
 
 ferent parts of the body. Professor Quekett 
 observes, that the minute structure of the hair 
 of different species of the same genus or family 
 is so constant, that a practised eye can readily 
 discriminate between them. 1 A specific variety, 
 with a general similarity, has been observed in 
 the hair of sixteen species of the Bat tribe. The 
 hair of the Indian Bat is well known as one 
 of the most beautiful examples of microscopic 
 illustration. The studies of the Microscope thus 
 ever and anon reveal to us infinite variety, as 
 well as exquisite uniformity, in the very smallest 
 of the works of the Almighty, and suggest the 
 question, " Who can by searching find out God ?" 
 The apparently endless diversities of the struc- 
 ture of the parts of animal bodies, as surveyed 
 by the Microscope, have frequently in our own 
 and foreign countries, determined the issues of 
 life and death in cases of the last importance. 
 
 (1.) A remarkable instance occurred in France 
 in 1837. A savage murder was committed on a 
 summer's eve, on the edge of one of the forests 
 in Normandy. A labourer, returning from his 
 daily toils, was stricken down by the hand of an 
 
 1 Quekett on the Microscope, p. 432. 
 
112 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 assassin, and from the nature of the injury in- 
 flicted, it was concluded that the deadly blow 
 had been dealt with a hatchet. Another indi- 
 vidual had been seen on the same eve, and about 
 the hour of the commission of the dark deed, 
 near to the scene of the murder. Suspicion fell 
 upon him, he was arrested, imprisoned, and in 
 due course, tried. As witness appeared after 
 witness, their evidence brought the foul deed 
 more and more closely home to the accused, and 
 when it was at length proved, that, upon this 
 man's cottage being searched on the very night 
 after the murder, a hatchet with some stains of 
 blood, and with some hairs upon it, had been 
 found in an outhouse the murmur went round 
 the court that the evidence was complete the 
 counsel regarded the conviction as certain the 
 judge seemed ready to pronounce his doom, and 
 the unhappy accused himself felt that he was 
 lost. But in God's good providence one man 
 was there, who had clearly watched the progress 
 of the trial, and who by no means concurred in 
 the otherwise unanimous opinion of the guilt of 
 the pannel. It was M. Orfila, the distinguished 
 toxicologist. He asked leave from the judge to 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 113 
 
 examine the hatchet ; and to such a man as 
 Orfila his request was not refused. Orfila, on 
 submitting the blood and the hairs to the scru- 
 tiny of the Microscope, ascertained that the 
 hairs were the hairs of a deer, and the blood 
 the blood of the same animal, which the accused 
 HAD SAID he had found wounded, and had killed 
 with his hatchet, as he returned from his daily 
 toils ! Orfila communicated the results of his 
 microscopic trial a thrilling sensation ran 
 through the audience the counsel were con- 
 founded the judge felt himself constrained, at 
 the eleventh hour, to find that the charge was 
 not proved, and the pannel was released from 
 the bar, and as from under the sharp axe of the 
 guillotine. The worth of the testimony of the 
 Microscope, and the justice of the decision of 
 the court, were soon proved to the satisfaction 
 of all, for the real murderer was thereafter dis- 
 covered, acknowledged his guilt, and was exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 (2.) As in this last case the Microscope saved 
 
 the innocent, so in our own country it has often 
 
 condemned the guilty. Many melancholy proofs 
 
 have recently appeared, that unprincipled mem- 
 
 H 
 
114 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 bers of society are largely availing themselves 
 of the facilities supplied by our marvellous pro- 
 gress in art and science, for the more daring 
 commission of enormous crime ; but, providen- 
 tially, the same progress in art and science, 
 which aids the criminal in the perpetration of 
 the darkest deeds, assists the law, and in a still 
 higher degree, in detecting the crime, and in 
 bringing the guilty to condign punishment. 
 The Microscope has played a very remarkable 
 part in such cases. A few examples may prove 
 interesting and instructive. 1 
 
 At the Cumberland Spring Assizes, in 1855, 
 an individual named Munroe was tried for the 
 murder of the paymaster of a colliery, who had 
 been waylaid in a lonely spot, robbed of thirty 
 shillings, and deprived of life, his throat being 
 savagely cut from ear to ear. Munroe had been 
 seen about the time of the murder in a field 
 near to the spot ; he had changed a half-sove- 
 reign soon thereafter, and had attempted to 
 disguise himself, and altogether change his ap- 
 pearance, by employing a blacksmith to cut off 
 the whole of his whiskers. These, and many 
 other striking points of circumstantial evidence, 
 
 1 Chambers's Papers on the Microscope. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 115 
 
 were deponed to ; but, after the trial had pro- 
 ceeded for two days, and many witnesses had 
 appeared, it was felt that the evidence was in- 
 complete and unsatisfactory, though the actual 
 guilt of the pannel could scarcely be doubted. 
 But the Microscope was called into court, and 
 its evidence adduced in support of the charge. 
 A Microscopist had been employed to examine 
 a pair of corduroy trousers and a razor, which 
 belonged to the prisoner at the time of the 
 commission of the murder. The Microscopist 
 deponed, that he found on the trousers several 
 small spots, the largest not so large as a swan- 
 shot ; that he discovered, by the aid of the eye 
 of the Microscope, that the spots were blood; 
 that they were human blood; and that these 
 spots of human blood had been made by small 
 streams of blood " spirting" upward from the 
 divided artery of a living human body. He 
 farther deponed that particles of soap attached 
 to the spots of blood ; that an attempt had been 
 made to wash them out ; and that ink had been 
 carefully poured over some of them. He declared, 
 in conclusion, that the handle of the razor, 
 which had belonged to the pursuer, was stained 
 with blood, and that this blood also ivas human. 
 
116 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 The counsel for the prisoner was prepared to 
 dispute and to demolish all the previous evi- 
 dence that had been adduced, but all his efforts 
 failed to shake the testimony of the Microscope. 
 A verdict of guilty was returned by the jury, 
 and the prisoner paid the due penalty of his 
 atrocious crime on the gibbet. 
 
 (3.) In another case which occurred a few 
 years ago, the question of guilt or innocence 
 hung upon still more doubtful evidence, until 
 the Microscope, bringing its powers to bear upon 
 a few hairs, and upon a few drops of blood, 
 determined a righteous issue. A girl, nine 
 years of age, was found lying dead, her throat 
 cut, in a plantation in Norfolk. Suspicion fell 
 upon the poor murdered girl's mother, who had 
 been seen by several persons to lead her child 
 to that plantation on the day on which the 
 murder was committed. But the accused coolly 
 and confidently maintained her innocence, ad- 
 mitted that she had been with the murdered 
 girl near the spot where she had perished, but 
 declared that the girl had wandered from her 
 side in quest of flowers ; and that after long in 
 vain searching for her, she (the mother) had 
 left her child in the wood where her dead body 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 117 
 
 was afterwards found. No evidence could at 
 first be discovered to support the early suspicion 
 that the mother was a murderess. A long and 
 sharp knife was indeed found upon her, but, 
 after a keen scrutiny, nothing particular was 
 observed about it, except that there were on 
 the handle a few hairs, so very small as to be 
 scarcely visible. " Here is hair on the handle 
 of your knife !" was the remark made to the 
 suspected mother, in whose presence the exa- 
 mination was conducted. " Yes, very likely," 
 was the immediate and composed reply ; " and 
 perhaps there is blood on it, too ; for, as I re- 
 turned from the wood, I found a rabbit in a 
 snare, and cut its throat with my knife/' The 
 knife was despatched to London for microscopic 
 examination. It was there found that it had 
 been washed. Alter very minute investigation, 
 it was farther found that a fluid had penetrated 
 between the horn-handle and the steel-lining. 
 It was blood, but certainly not the blood of a 
 rabbit rather, apparently, the blood of a hu- 
 man being. After examining the hairs on the 
 handle, the Microscopist, who had been inten- 
 tionally kept from all knowledge of the special 
 facts of the case, unhesitatingly declared that 
 
118 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 they were the hairs of a squirrel. This was a 
 damning fact for the wretched mother ; for a 
 tippet hung around her poor child's neck on 
 the day of the murder ; over that tippet the 
 weapon which did the cruel deed must have 
 passed ; and that tippet was of squirrel's hair ! 
 On the trial the jury deemed this one fact, in 
 connexion with the circumstantial evidence, so 
 conclusive, as to warrant them in finding the 
 accused guilty ; and, before the day of execution, 
 the mother-murderess fully confessed her crime. 
 
 " The times have been 
 
 That when the brains were out the man would die, 
 And there an end : but now they rise again 
 With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns, 
 And push us from our stools : This is more strange 
 Than such a murther is." 
 
 (4.) In the summer of 1855, a large sum of 
 gold belonging to the Prussian Government was 
 forwarded, packed in a box, along one of the 
 lines of railway in Prussia. On the arrival of 
 the box at its destination, it was found that 
 the gold had been abstracted, arid a quantity 
 of sand substituted in its room. The national 
 police detectives were immediately set to work, 
 but all their efforts, backed by all the appliances 
 of the wealth and power of the Government, 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 119 
 
 failed to lead to any discovery. At first, it was 
 supposed that the sand might show at what 
 station the robbery had been effected ; but there 
 was sand at one station, and sand at another, 
 and sand at all the stations along the railway 
 line ; and so the trace seemed lost. But it was 
 shrewdly suggested that the sand in the box 
 should be submitted to the Microscope ; and 
 when so examined, this sand was found to con- 
 tain a peculiar minute organism. Specimens 
 of sand were then brought from all the railway 
 stations. On being examined, it was found that 
 only the sand of one station contained the pecu- 
 liar organism discovered in the sand of the box. 
 At this station, then, the robbery must have 
 been committed. The clue thus given was fol- 
 lowed up ; and as the Microscope brought to 
 light that little organism in the box, so that 
 little organism brought to light the parties who 
 had placed the sand in that box, and committed 
 the robbery. 
 
 " It will have blood ; they say, Blood will have blood : 
 Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak ; 
 Augurs, and understood relations, have, 
 By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth 
 The secret'st man of blood." 
 
120 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 1 . WHERE is the use of the Microscope to ter- 
 minate, whether we regard the past or the pre- 
 sent ? the domain of air, or earth, or ocean ? 
 Lieutenant Maury of the United States Navy, 
 now Superintendent of the National Observa- 
 tory at Washington, has lately called in this 
 instrument to ascertain the nature of the bed 
 of the Atlantic, and to determine the course of 
 the great Electric Telegraph, shortly destined, 
 we trust, despite of distance, and winds, and 
 waves, to bind the Old and New Worlds closely 
 together, and to place, as far as rapid intelli- 
 gence is concerned, London and New York by 
 each other's gate and market-place. Could a 
 submarine plateau be found for the bed of the 
 cable from shore to shore ? Was that plateau 
 sheltered and safe from the roll of the Atlantic 
 
APPLICATIONS O*' THE MICROSCOPE. 121 
 
 water, or from the crush of the Arctic iceberg ? 
 These questions demanded an immediate and 
 satisfactory answer, in connection with the grand 
 idea of effecting instantaneous communication 
 between the two great nations of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race. But could an answer be obtained ? 
 2. No eye of man had seen that sea-bottom, 
 and it seemed, therefore, as if man would in 
 vain expect the much-desired response. " It 
 was found more difficult to sound out the sea 
 than to gauge the blue ether arid fathom the 
 vaults of the sky." But the little eye of the 
 Microscope has scanned these otherwise unseen 
 paths, and reported to us much of the geography 
 and natural history of these hitherto untrodden 
 and unknown regions ; for the dredgings brought 
 up from the Atlantic's most profound depths, and 
 subjected to the scrutiny of the Microscope, are 
 found to consist of the most tender and delicate 
 organisms, lying in their lowly bed all untouched 
 and unscathed by the roll of the raging floods, 
 or the pressure of the huge iceberg, as it floats 
 resistlessly on its southern course from the 
 Arctic circle towards the Equator. There, 
 then, where the Microscope shows us the little 
 
122 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 shell or the minute animalcule reposing in 
 tranquillity, may the great cable of the Inter- 
 national Telegraph remain all undisturbed, 
 however fiercely the war of the elements may 
 rage above. 
 
 3. On this point, the researches and disco- 
 veries of Lieutenant Maury are as interesting 
 as they are original. In the second edition of 
 that magnificent volume, Johnston's Physical 
 Atlas, published so late as 1856, we read: 
 " Between Cape Clear, in Ireland, and Cape 
 Kace, in Newfoundland, there is said to be a 
 remarkable steppe, or raised bottom, on which 
 the sea is estimated to be probably no more 
 than 10,000 feet in depth." 1 And in a note, it 
 is added, " This has been, perhaps hastily, 
 called the telegraphic plateau, from the pro- 
 jected submarine telegraph across the Atlantic. 
 The distance from shore to shore by the great 
 circle route is 1600 miles" (1640, Maury's [1856] 
 Physical Geography of the Sea) ; " and it is 
 believed, that while the depth is not so great as 
 to prevent the wires from sinking down and 
 resting on it, it is yet sufficient to guard them 
 
 1 Physical Atlas, p. 43. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 123 
 
 from the disturbing effects of currents or ice- 
 bergs. But the number of soundings is not yet 
 sufficient to warrant this deduction"* 
 
 4. More recent investigations, however, set 
 the question finally at rest. In the new edition 
 (the sixth, issued December 1856) of his re- 
 markable work, the Physical Geography of the 
 Sea, Lieutenant Maury informs us that the so- 
 lution of the question has been obtained, mainly 
 through the use of Brooke's Sounding Apparatus 
 and the Microscope. Former modes of sounding 
 the depths of the sea, and of bringing up spe- 
 cimens from the bottom, having proved uncer- 
 tain and unsatisfactory, the idea of a small but 
 strong twine for a sounding-line, and of a cannon 
 ball of 32 or 68 Ibs. for a sinker, was suggested. 
 The idea was improved by Mr. J. M. Brooke of 
 the United States Navy, who proposed a con- 
 trivance, by which the shot, on reaching the 
 sea-bottom, detaches itself from the line, and 
 sends up a specimen of the bottom ; for the 
 shot, having a hole through its centre, is made 
 to run easily on a rod (fixed to the end of the 
 line), which passes through the centre of the 
 
 1 Physical Atlas, note, p. 43. 
 
124 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 ball, and has a cup at its base with a little soap 
 or tallow on it for causing the specimens to 
 adhere ; or, what has been found to answer 
 better, the barrel of a common quill is attached 
 to the bottom of the rod to receive these speci- 
 mens. Thus the bottom of the North Atlantic 
 Ocean has certainly been reached at the depth 
 of 25,000 feet, and the most delicate specimens 
 safely raised from that depth. " What is to be 
 the use of these deep-sea soundings ?" Mr. Maury 
 asks, and quaintly follows it up with Franklin's 
 question, " What is the use of a new-born babe ?" 
 These deep-sea soundings, the moment they 
 were announced to the world, assumed a prac- 
 tical bearing in the minds of intelligent men, 
 with regard to the plan of a submarine tele- 
 graph across the Atlantic. First, the existence 
 of the great plateau from Cape Clear to Cape 
 Race, never probably at a greater depth than 
 10,000 or 12,000 feet, was ascertained ; and the 
 farther remarkable geographical fact was no- 
 ticed, that this plateau, now in the sea now 
 on the dry land probably encircles the earth. 
 Thus, between 45 and 50 north latitude, we 
 have the British Islands ; then on the Conti- 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICEOSCOPE. 125 
 
 nent, the great watershed between the Arctic 
 Ocean and the south ; the Asiatic chain of 
 steppes and mountains crossing that continent 
 from west to east, until it disappears on the 
 shores of the Pacific ; the chain of the Aleutian 
 Islands ; and, finally, along America from west 
 to east the watershed between the streams 
 that run to the north and south ! 
 
 5. Along this submarine plateau, the Sound- 
 ing Apparatus of Mr. Brooke brought up " its 
 first trophies" from the bottom of the North 
 Atlantic. They were submitted to an eminent 
 Microscopist of the United States, Professor 
 Bailey of West Point. He at once expressed 
 his surprise arid delight. " The bottom of the 
 ocean," he writes to Mr. Maury, " at the depth 
 of more than two miles, I hardly hoped ever to 
 have a chance of examining ; yet, thanks to 
 Brooke's contrivance, we have it clean and free 
 from grease, so that it can at once be put under 
 the Microscope. I was greatly delighted to find 
 that all these deep soundings are filled with 
 microscopic shells; not a particle of sand or 
 gravel exists in them. . . . The results al- 
 ready obtained are of very great interest, and 
 
126 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 have many important bearings on geology and 
 zoology." 1 
 
 6. The specimens, " bits of down from the 
 bed of the ocean," gave microscopic Foramini- 
 fera in abundance ; Diatoms, Polycistias, and 
 Spongiolites. " The unabraded appearance of 
 these organisms, and the almost total absence 
 of the mixture of any detritus from the sea, or 
 foreign matter, suggest most forcibly the idea 
 of perfect repose at the bottom of the deep sea." 
 Thus the appearance of these deep-sea remains, 
 under the close examination of the Microscope, 
 appear clearly to warrant the conclusion at 
 which Mr. Maury arrives, as to the soft cha- 
 racter of the bottom of the Atlantic, its quies- 
 cent state, and its adaptation for a telegraphic 
 cable. 
 
 But this new and strange field of observation, 
 subjected to the Microscope, might naturally 
 be expected to disclose great truths altogether 
 apart from the conclusions originally sought. 
 So it has turned out. These little mites of 
 organisms seem to form but slender clews for 
 threading nature's mysteries, yet they suggest 
 
 1 Maury's Physical Geography of the Sea, pp. 254, 255. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 127 
 
 new views concerning the physical economy of 
 earth and ocean, as any one may at once per- 
 ceive on opening Maury's pages. We shall 
 select one lesson thus taught as to the nature 
 of the great ocean-bed, and the beneficent and 
 wise ends thereby accomplished by Him, who, 
 in the beginning, gathered together the waters 
 into one place. Not only in the Atlantic, but 
 from the Pacific and Coral Seas, have speci- 
 mens been now brought up, and, on examina- 
 tion, they all tell the same story, namely, that 
 the bed of the ocean is a vast cemetery. " The 
 ocean's bed, wherever Brooke's sounding-rod has 
 touched, is found to be soft, consisting almost 
 entirely of the remains of infusoria. . . . Some of 
 the specimens are as pure and free from the sand 
 of the sea as the snow-flake that falls, when it 
 is calm upon the lea, is from the dust of the 
 earth. Indeed they suggest the idea that the 
 sea, like the snow-cloud, with its flakes, in a 
 calm, is always letting fall upon its bed showers 
 of these microscopic shells ; and we may readily 
 imagine that the ' sunless wrecks/ which, strew 
 its bottom, are, in the process of ages, hid under 
 this fleecy covering, presenting the rounded ap- 
 
128 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 pearance which is seen over the body of the 
 traveller who has perished in the snow-storm. 
 The ocean, especially within and near the 
 tropics, swarms with life. The remains of its 
 myriads of moving things are conveyed by cur- 
 rents, and scattered and lodged in course of 
 time all over its bottom. This process, con- 
 tinued for ages, has covered the depths of the 
 ocean as with a mantle, consisting of organisms 
 as delicate as the macled frost, and as light as 
 the undrifted snow-flake on the mountain." 
 What a marvellously wondrous result is effected 
 by the entombment there of these unnumbered 
 myriads of once living things, and by the deep 
 unbroken silence of this universal ocean church- 
 yard ! For let us again quote Maury's words, as 
 he is about to close his volume : a Brooke's 
 sounding-rod has brought up from the depth of 
 more than 2000 fathoms, under the Gulf Stream, 
 the remains of organisms so delicate, yet so 
 perfect, that evidently they had never been 
 rolled along the bottom of the sea by any cur- 
 rent. At the depth of 2000 fathoms in the sea, 
 the pressure is 6000 pounds upon a square inch. 
 Suppose we imagine the currents of the Gulf 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 129 
 
 Stream, where it is four knots the hour, to be 
 2000 fathoms in depth, and to reach down, to 
 the bed of the ocean with that velocity and 
 pressure, the scouring action of water under 
 such a weight and motion would fret and wear^ 
 break and tear up the very bed and bottom of 
 the sea." 
 
 7. " Many are the great truths of Nature, 
 which, when once suggested, appear so obvious 
 and simple, that we wonder why reason did not 
 suggest them, or common sense point them out 
 before. So it appears with this cushion ofstiU 
 water, which seems to be everywhere interposed^ 
 between the bottom of the deep sea and its cur- 
 rents. We are surprised now that it never 
 occurred to us that it must be so ; how, if it 
 were not so, the scouring action of such cur- 
 rents upon the bed of the ocean would have 
 worn it into deep scores, furrows, and gashes, 
 which, the deeper they grow, the faster they 
 would wear, until finally the solid crust of oiw 
 planet would have been worn through. Thus, 
 while the deep places would grow deeper, the 
 shallow places would grow shallower, the pro- 
 portion of land and water surface would be 
 I 
 
130 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 altered, and thus that beautiful system of ter- 
 restrial economy which regulates the amount 
 and kind of work to be performed by every one 
 of the myriads of physical agencies that have 
 been employed, under the guidance of Supreme 
 Intelligence since the beginning, in bringing 
 this world to the state in which we actually 
 find it, would have been marred long ago." 1 
 
 ** So He ordained, whose way is in the sea, 
 His path amid great waters, and His steps 
 Unknown ; whose judgments are a mighty deep, 
 Where plummet of archangel's intellect 
 Could never yet find soundings, but from age , 
 To age let down, drawn up, then thrown again 
 With lengthened line, and added weight, still fails, 
 And still the cry in Heaven is, " the depth !" 
 
 8. If it is passing strange that the little eye 
 of the Microscope should thus pierce to scenes 
 to which the eye of man never penetrated, and 
 where even the light of the sun never shone, 
 what shall we say if this Instrument can trace 
 the very steps of the wind, and so unfold to us 
 some of those great laws which guide the course 
 of this proverbially fickle element, as certainly 
 
 1 Maury's Physical Geography of the Sen, pp. 358, 350. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 131 
 
 as the laws of gravitation unerringly direct the 
 heavenly bodies in their orbits ? If Lieutenant 
 Maury's theory can be maintained, even this 
 seemingly hopeless achievement has been so far 
 effected. To illustrate thoroughly his process 
 of reasoning, we must at some length state his 
 views, and after all, from lack of the diagrams 
 represented in the Physical Geography of the 
 Sea, perhaps very imperfectly succeed in ex- 
 plaining the theory. 
 
 9. Currents of air or wind arise, it is well 
 known, from causes which tend to disturb the- 
 equilibrium of the atmosphere, such as changes 
 of temperature, or amount of aqueous vapour 
 contained in it. Two adjoining regions being 
 unequally heated, an upper current of air will 
 proceed to the colder region, and an under cur- 
 rent in the opposite direction. The difference 
 of temperature between the polar and equatorial 
 regions, amounting to upwards of 82, of neces- 
 sity produces a constant exchange of air between 
 them. The cold and dense air of the polar re- 
 gions seeks to replace the warm rarefied air of 
 the equator, while it again ascends and forms a 
 current towards the poles, in order to restore the 
 
132 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 equilibrium. 1 Two systems of currents, an up- 
 per and an under, are thus ever travelling be- 
 tween the equator and the poles, and the causes 
 above-mentioned, in connexion with the rotary 
 motion of the earth from west to east, produce 
 permanent north-easterly or south-easterly cur- 
 rents, forming the " magnificent phenomena" 
 of the Trade Winds, perpetually extending 
 round the earth, from the parallels of about 30 
 north and south, nearly to the equator. 
 
 It is evident that these two currents of air, 
 ever pouring from the poles to the equator, must 
 return by some channel to the poles, otherwise, 
 as Maury observes, the wind of the polar regions 
 would soon be exhausted, and it would all be 
 piled up about the equator. But if they return 
 from the equator to the poles, two things follow ; 
 first, this return current must be in a direction 
 opposite to that wind the place of which it goes 
 to supply ; and, secondly, this return current 
 must be in tlie upper regions of the atmosphere, 
 at least until it has passed over those parallels 
 where the trade-winds are always blowing on 
 the surface, and in a direction contrary to them. 
 
 1 Johnston's Physical Atlas, p. 61,. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 133 
 
 To explain this, and to meet the difficulties 
 connected with these various currents meeting 
 and crossing at the equator, the Calms of Cancer 
 and Capricorn, and the North and South Poles, 
 Maury, with the help of diagrams, traces the 
 course of a hypothetical " particle of northern 
 air" (or a particle of air supposed to pass from 
 the north), and follows it in a round from the 
 North Pole, onward across the equator to the 
 South Pole, and back again to the North. This 
 particle of air (" for reasons," says Mr. Maury, 
 " not very satisfactorily explained by philoso- 
 phers"), instead of proceeding on the surface all 
 the way from the pole to the equator, travels in 
 the upper regions of the atmosphere, until it 
 gets near the parallel 30 N. Here it meets a 
 "hypothetical particle" also in the clouds, that is 
 passing in similar fashion from the south toward 
 the pole. Here these two particles must press 
 against each other, and produce a calm (the 
 Calms of Cancer). From under this bank of 
 calms, two currents of air are ejected, one to- 
 ward the equator as the north-east trades, the 
 other toward the pole, as the south-west passage 
 winds. The barometer, it is noticed in support 
 
134 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 of these positions, stands higher in this calm 
 region than it does either to the north or south ; 
 a proof, Maury remarks, of the banking up of 
 the atmosphere here from the meeting of the 
 two currents, and of pressure from its downward 
 motion. 
 
 The imaginary northern particle having pass- 
 ed the calm belt of Cancer, now moves on the 
 surface, as the north-east trade wind. As such 
 it proceeds until it arrives near the equator. 
 Here it meets a similar hypothetical particle 
 which has started from the south pole at the 
 same time that the other left the north pole, 
 and which blew as the south-east trade wind. 
 Again then, there must be another collision of 
 winds a pressure against each other, and an- 
 other calm (" the belt of the equatorial calms"). 
 Thus these two hypothetical particles pause in 
 their course ; then, warmed by the heat of the 
 sun, they begin to ascend. Our imaginary par- 
 ticle (from the north) travels in the upper re- 
 gions (counter to the south-east trades, which 
 blow at the surface below), until, in nearly 30 s. 
 latitude, it meets another particle from the south 
 pole. As before, they must contend, then pro- 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 135 
 
 duce a calm (the Calms of Capricorn), when the 
 northern particle will descend, and pass on as a 
 surface wind from the north-west toward the 
 south pole, where it finds a " vortex" or calm 
 place, and finally ascends to the higher regions to 
 commence a corresponding course back towards 
 the north. 1 
 
 Having stated his theory, Mr. Maury ob- 
 serves : " As our knowledge of nature and her 
 laws has increased, so has our understanding of 
 many passages in the Bible been improved. 
 The Psalmist called the earth ' the round world,'' 2 
 yet for ages it was the most damnable heresy 
 for Christian men to say the world is round ; 
 and finally, sailors circumnavigated the globe, 
 proved the Bible to be right, and saved Chris- 
 tian men of science from the stake." 3 
 
 1 In a subsequent part of his volume, Mr. Maury supports 
 his general theory by arguments derived from evaporation 
 the rainy winds the dry winds the supply of moisture 
 afforded by the waters on the south of the equator, to the 
 land and rivers north of the equator. He regards 'magnetism 
 as the motive cause of his hypothetical particles. 
 
 2 Ps. xcvi. 10, in English Church Psalter, ' the round 
 world ;' in the Vulgate, ' orbs terrce? See Tsa. xl. 22, ' the 
 circle of the earth.' 
 
 3 Physical Geography of the Sea, p. 79. 
 
136 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 " As for the general system of atmospherical 
 circulation/' it is added, " which I have been so 
 long endeavouring to describe, the Bible tells it 
 all in a single sentence : i The wind goeth to- 
 ward the south, and turneth about unto the 
 north ; it whirleth about continually ; and the 
 wind returneth again according to his circuits/ " 
 (See the connection, Eccles. i. 7.) At the point 
 where we have arrived, Maury admits, that while 
 this theory of the winds seems " highly probable" 
 from reasoning, proof is still wanting to establish 
 it as a fact, that the north-east and south-east 
 trades, after meeting and rising up in the equa- 
 torial calms, do cross over and take the paths 
 above described, and represented in his diagrams. 
 
 10. He proceeds to adduce the wanting proof, 
 and it is supplied mainly by the testimony of 
 the Microscope. 
 
 " Were it possible/' he says, " to take a por- 
 tion of air, representing, as it travels along with 
 the south-east trades, the general course of at- 
 mospherical circulation, and to put a tally on 
 it, by which we could follow it in its circuits, 
 and always recognise it, then we might hope 
 actually to prove, by evidence the most positive, 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 137 
 
 the channels through which the air of the trade 
 winds, after ascending at the equator, returns 
 whence it came." 
 
 The air is invisible, and even if it could be 
 seen and seized, where is to be found the tally 
 that is to be attached to the air ? and supposing 
 it to be found, how is it to be placed upon the 
 wings of the wind ? The task seems hopeless, 
 and the very expectation utterly Utopian. But 
 it has actually been done. The Footprints of 
 the Wind may be traced through the region of 
 the clouds. " Ehrenberg, with his Microscope, 
 has established, almost beyond a doubt, that the 
 air which the south-east trade-winds bring to 
 the equator, does rise up there and pass over 
 into the northern hemisphere." 1 " The Micro- 
 scope, under the eye of Ehrenberg, has enabled 
 us to put tallies on the wings of the wind, to 
 learn of them something concerning its cir- 
 cuits." 2 
 
 11. It occurred to Mr. Maury, that as Infu- 
 soria are found in sea-dust, rain-drops, hail- 
 stones, and snow-flakes, it might be possible to 
 ascertain from what localities these organisms 
 
 1 Physical Geog. of the Sea, p. 117. * Ibid. p. 260. 
 
138 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 had been brought. " If by any chance it should 
 turn out that the locus of any of the microscopic 
 i Infusoria/ so falling, could be identified as 
 belonging to regions travelled by the south-east 
 trade-winds in their hypothetical northern 
 course, strength would be added to many " clews 
 which conduct us into the chambers of the wind, 
 and tell whence it coineth, and whither it goeth." 
 In a previous page we have called attention 
 to Ehrenberg's Passat-Staub und Blut-Regen, 
 and showed how microscopic infusoria, certainly 
 originally belonging to South America, have 
 fallen from the heavens along the western shores 
 of Africa, and the northern shores of the Medi- 
 terranean sea. 1 Maury observes that seamen 
 tell us of " red fog," which they occasionally 
 encounter, especially near the Cape de Verd 
 Islands. Elsewhere they meet showers of dust. 
 The Mediterranean precipitation has been called 
 " Sirocco dust," or " African dust," because sup- 
 posed to come from the deserts of Africa. But 
 this dust, when microscopically examined, is 
 found to consist of organisms whose habitat is 
 not Africa, lout South America, and in the south- 
 
 1 See p. 64. 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 139 
 
 east trade-wind region of South America ! 
 Professor Ehrenberg has examined specimens 
 of sea-dust from the Cape de Verd Islands and 
 neighbourhood, from Malta, Genoa, Lyons, and 
 the Tyrol. Their similarity is as striking as if 
 all the specimens had been taken from the same 
 pile. Every specimen is found to consist chiefly 
 of South American forms. How could the wind 
 carry them from South America along this track ? 
 Mark the prevailing course of the north-east 
 trade-wind along the surface over all this direc- 
 tion. It might carry dust to South America 
 it could not possibly carry any from it. The 
 many feathered arrows in Maury's Plate (vui.) 
 show at a glance, how strongly and steadily the 
 north-east trades bear down on South America 
 to the south of the Calms of Cancer. But the 
 supposed course of the south-east trades after 
 they cross the equator, and as they travel north- 
 ward, would carry the South American organ- 
 isms directly along all the course in which they 
 have been found the Cape de Verd Islands, 
 Lyons, Genoa, Switzerland, the Tyrol. For 
 proof, turn again to Maury's Plates (vn. and 
 vui.) ; observe how the feathered arrows fly 
 
140 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 in clouds from the south-east toward the eastern 
 shores of South America ; and then, mark how 
 (Plate vn.) the arrows turn to the north-east 
 in their upper current, and bear along the very 
 course " the track of the Passat-Staub" from 
 which the winds have dropped their infusorial 
 visitors from the New World. 
 
 12. Well may Maury conclude that he has 
 established the fact that there is a perpetual 
 upper current of air from South America to 
 North Africa, and that tallies have been put on 
 the air, and labels placed on the wings of the 
 wind, " to tell whence it cometh, and whither 
 it goeth." Thus the winds, uncertain and un- 
 stable as they are, would, if we could fully fol- 
 low them in their circuits, be found as obedient 
 to the laws of God as the planets are in their 
 paths ; and would as certainly proclaim to us 
 their Maker's praise, as the morning stars when 
 they " sang together." 
 
 Who can tell what achievements are yet in 
 the future of Science, when thus the waves in 
 the lowest depths of Old Ocean, and the fickle 
 winds in their most wayward course through 
 the high heavens, can be called upon to reveal 
 
APPLICATIONS OF THE MICROSCOPE. 141 
 
 to us some of Nature's most deeply hidden 
 secrets, and anew to proclaim the power and 
 wisdom and goodness of Him " who walketh 
 upon the wings of the wind, and measureth 
 the waters in the hollow of His hand ?" 
 
 " Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste 
 His works. Admitted once to His embrace, 
 Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before ; 
 Thine eye shall be instructed ; and thine heart, 
 Made pure, shall relish with delight divine 
 Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought. 
 
 The soul that sees Him, or receives sublimed 
 New faculties, or learns at least to employ 
 More worthily the powers she own'd before, 
 Discerns in all things, what, with stupid gaze 
 Of ignorance, till then she overlook'd, 
 A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms 
 Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute ; 
 The unambiguous footsteps of the God 
 Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, 
 And wheels His throne upon a rolling world.'' 
 
142 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES OF THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 1. IN the most recent appliances of the 
 Microscope, we find it, after traversing worlds 
 after scanning heaven's heights, and fathom- 
 ing ocean's depths, and digging deep into the 
 bowels of the earth after penetrating to the 
 remotest past ages, and making us acquainted 
 with many a new form of existence, and many 
 a new race of beings at length bringing us 
 back to look again on old familiar faces, but' 
 in an extraordinary and interesting way : We 
 allude to the exquisitely beautiful microscopic 
 photographs taken by Mr. Dancer of Man- 
 chester. 
 
 2. Many as are the portraits of her Majesty 
 Queen Victoria, our beloved Sovereign, we re- 
 gard as among the most interesting and singu- 
 lar of them all that little speck, that scarcely 
 
ITS APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES. 143 
 
 visible point where the Koyal Mother sits with 
 her two eldest-born in her arms. 
 
 3. What a marvel, again, is that other micro- 
 scopic photograph, the " Arctic Council/' where, 
 on a space not larger than a pin's head, you 
 have thirteen distinct portraits where, with a 
 table before them, and charts and despatches 
 outspread in their hands, you look upon the 
 great chiefs of the then living Arctic naviga- 
 tors, Sir Edward Parry, Sir J. C. Koss, Sir 
 J. Back, and others as illustrious, in anxious 
 council, discussing the plan of search for Sir 
 John Franklin, while, on the wall behind, 
 alongside of the likenesses of Captain Fitz- 
 james and Sir J. Barrow, is seen suspended 
 the portrait of the illustrious though ill-fated 
 Franklin himself! " It is indeed marvellous," 
 as Sir D. Brewster remarks, " that 10,000 single 
 portraits could thus be included in a square 
 inch ;" and that, as he farther suggests, " Mi- 
 croscopic copies of despatches and plans might 
 be transmitted by post, and important secrets 
 placed in spaces not larger than afull stop, or 
 a small blot of ink!' l 
 
 1 Encyclop. Brit. vol. xiv. p. 802. 
 
144 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 4. It was the good fortune of the author of 
 this little work to have a recent opportunity 
 of employing the Microscope in circumstances 
 where its use led to a singular discovery, 
 fraught to one individual at least with intelli- 
 gence as interesting as it was unexpected. Two 
 or three years ago, a large collection of photo- 
 graphs, taken in the Crimea during the war, 
 was exhibited in Edinburgh. They belonged 
 to Mr. Fenton of London, amounted to about 
 four hundred in number, and represented the 
 most remarkable incidents and personages con- 
 nected with the Crimean conflict. The writer, 
 in course of an inspection of the photographs, 
 was contemplating with solemnized feelings 
 the memorable scene of Cathcart's Hill, studded 
 with sepulchral monuments, beneath which 
 sleep so many of Britain's noblest sons. As 
 he passed onward from this photograph, his 
 attention was immediately arrested by another, 
 representing a single sepulchral monument. It 
 occurred to him that this monumental stone 
 was, in outline and appearance, exactly like one 
 which he had just seen in the general group of 
 monuments on Cathcart's Hill. He employed 
 
ITS APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES. 145 
 
 his pocket Microscope to examine and compare 
 these stones in both photographs, when he 
 found that they were representations of the 
 same scene, one side of the monumental stone 
 being seen in the one photograph, and the 
 opposite side of the stone in the other. But, 
 on the face of the stone singly represented in 
 the second photograph, the writer, by the aid 
 of his Microscope, made a further discovery. 
 He traced on that stone the handwriting of the 
 sun, as, with unerring fidelity, it had painted 
 the original scene on the far-distant shores of 
 the Crimea ; for the Microscope revealed letters 
 written by the light of Heaven, which the eye 
 of man had not previously seen. It deciphered 
 in the photograph the name of the noble sol- 
 dier whose mortal remains the stone covered, 
 Captain Edward Stanley, who had fallen on the 
 bloody field of Inkermann ! When the atten- 
 tion of the party who had charge of the collec- 
 tion was called to the fact, he expressed his 
 mingled surprise and delight in a very marked 
 manner. The cause of his emotion at once ap- 
 peared, when he stated that, during the period 
 of the exhibition of the photographs in Edin- 
 K 
 
146 THE MICEOSCOPE. 
 
 burgh, the bereaved widow of Captain Stanley 
 had frequently visited the collection, and, with 
 many a glance at the representation of Cath- 
 cart's Hill, had earnestly, but hitherto in vain, 
 inquired if there was any mark by which she 
 could discover her husband's grave ? The ex- 
 hibitor now longed for the next visit, when he 
 could show to the mourner the very spot, with 
 the inscription on its monument, where the 
 dust of the departed lay. 
 
 5. While these pages are passing through the 
 press, we read a few sentences of an article 
 which evidently bears the impress of the genius 
 of one who is well known as occupying one of the 
 highest places in the ranks of the men of litera- 
 ture and science of our day. These sentences 
 more than justify our statements regarding the 
 past, and our anticipations of the future results 
 of Microscopic research. " The marvels of ani- 
 mal and animalcuiar life now disclosed by the 
 Microscope, stamp a high importance upon 
 zoology, and justify us in regarding it as the 
 most progressive of the sciences. The study of 
 the living world, of the hitherto unrecognised 
 tenants of the earth, the ocean, and the air, 
 
ITS APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES. 147 
 
 must for centuries to come call forth all the 
 resources of science, and summon to the Micro- 
 scope intellects of the highest order. We can 
 hardly look for discoveries of great novelty in 
 the planetary and sidereal systems. Telescopes 
 have nearly reached their limits in point of 
 size, if not in point of perfection, and it would 
 be presumptuous to hope that we shall ever 
 acquire any knowledge of the structure, or of 
 the inhabitants of the worlds above us. The 
 sciences of optics, mechanics, hydrostatics, and 
 pneumatics, have assumed, more or less, a sta- 
 tionary character, and it must, therefore, be 
 from the other departments of knowledge that 
 a rich harvest of discovery is to be realized. 
 
 " The Science of Life, however, the abode of 
 instinct and intelligence, has a character essen- 
 tially nobler than them all. Its objects are 
 infinite in number, and exciting in interest ; 
 and it will require ages to discover and to de- 
 velop the countless organizations of being, and 
 the strange functions of life, yet concealed from 
 our view. The Microscope, imperfect though 
 it be, is the instrument by which these great 
 results will be achieved ; and when it has ac~ 
 
148 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 quired new powers of penetration and enlarge- 
 ment, it cannot fail to reveal to us marvellous 
 secrets, lifting the veil which shrouds the mys- 
 teries of our intellectual nature, and throwing 
 light on questions which human reason has not 
 ventured to approach." * 
 
 6. When such have been the Applications of 
 the Microscope, and such its Kevelations, we 
 may be excused for repeating, that in this little 
 instrument we behold one of man's most perfect 
 inventions. Regarded only as a source of inno- 
 cent recreation, its excellencies are manifold. 
 Rightly used, it might save many a man from 
 passing his hours in listless ennui, or in frivo- 
 lous but degrading amusements. " I have seen." 
 says Mr. Kingsley, u the cultivated man craving 
 for travel, and for success in life, pent up in 
 the drudgery of London work, and yet keeping 
 his spirit calm, and perhaps his morals all the 
 more righteous, by spending over his Micro- 
 scope evenings which would too probably have 
 gradually been wasted at the theatre." 2 The 
 Microscope especially demands and deserves the 
 
 1 North British Review, No. LY. (Feb. 1858), p. 189. 
 
 2 Glaucu?, p. 49. 
 
ITS APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES. 149 
 
 patronage of those who would promote the in- 
 terests of youth, and advance the cause of en- 
 lightened education in our land. The Christian 
 poet, in his Tirocinium, has not failed to press 
 upon a father 
 
 " blessed with any brains," 
 
 the duty and privilege of combining, in the 
 education of his child, the contemplation of the 
 works of the Almighty with the study of the 
 writings of men : 
 
 " To show him in an insect or a flower, 
 Such microscopic proofs of skill and power, 
 As, hid from ages past, God now displays 
 To combat Atheists with in modern days." 
 
 It is now indeed felt, with increasing force from 
 day to day, that while the young should especially 
 study the Bible, the study of the Works of God 
 may be most advantageously combined with the 
 study of the Words of God. Both are Jehovah's 
 volumes; and while the Book of Inspiration alone 
 reveals to us the glory of the gracious Redeemer, 
 the Book of Nature especially reveals to us the 
 glory of the Great Creator. And just as, with- 
 out the Spirit's teaching, no one can savingly 
 read the Scriptures, so we may be excused for 
 remarking, that, without the aid of such instru- 
 
150 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 ments as the Telescope and Microscope, no one 
 can adequately read the wonders of Creation and 
 Providence. " C'est la Bible a la main que 
 nous devons entrer dans le temple auguste de 
 la Nature, pour bien comprendre la voix du 
 Createur." We believe, accordingly, that the 
 time will come when not only " every one of 
 our more important educational Institutes will 
 have its own Museum," but its own Telescope 
 and Microscope, that the eye of the pupil may 
 from time to time sweep across the firmament 
 of heaven, and survey its vast globes ; and turn 
 to the minutest creature in the particle of dust 
 and drop of water ; and in them also see mighty 
 worlds^ and marvellous races of organized beings. 
 7. Such an education, rightly conducted, may 
 be blessed for turning the eye of many a young 
 scholar, and of many an advanced saint, not 
 only to the order and beauty and excellence 
 of the Creator's works in this present material 
 world, but upward to the higher things of spi- 
 ritual life, and onward to the very glories of 
 Immanuel's land. 
 
 " What more prepares us for the songs of heaven ? 
 Creation, of archangels is the theme ! 
 What, to be sunjr, so needful ? What so Avell 
 
ITS APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES. 151 
 
 Celestial joys prepares us to sustain? 
 
 The soul of man, His face design'd to see, 
 
 Who gave these wonders to be seen by man, 
 
 Has here a previous scene of objects great 
 
 On which to dwell ; to stretch to that expanse 
 
 Of thought, to rise to that exalted height 
 
 Of admiration, to contract that awe, 
 
 And give her whole capacities that strength 
 
 Which best may qualify for final joy. 
 
 The more our spirits are enlarged on earth, 
 
 The deeper draught shall they receive of heaven." 
 
 Compare, under the Microscope, the most 
 exquisite works which the combined wealth 
 and power, skill and taste of man have ever 
 formed, with the tiniest, humblest work of 
 God, and at a glance the amazing difference 
 is seen. Let the keenest-edged razor, or the 
 sharpest -pointed needle that Sheffield ever 
 sent forth, be placed side by side with the 
 sting of wasp or bee, and while the former is 
 seen to be unequal, rough, jagged as file or saw, 
 the latter is found to be inconceivably fine and 
 smooth. Take the rarest web, or the finest lawn 
 that the looms of Glasgow or Manchester ever 
 manufactured, and place it beside the web of 
 the spider, or the thread of the silk-worm ; and 
 the difference between the most delicate gossa- 
 mer and the coarsest cable, or roughest door- 
 
152 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 mat, is as nothing, compared with the difference 
 between the workmanship of the human and 
 the insect weaver. Take the most elaborate 
 ornament which the jeweller fashions from gold 
 and silver, from pearl or diamond, and, placed 
 under the Microscope, it is poor, rude, dim, as 
 contrasted with the rainbow colours on shield of 
 beetle, and wing of butterfly ; or with the ex- 
 quisite carving and contour of flower, and in- 
 sect, and animalcule. Looked at in this light, 
 we find a new meaning in our Saviour's words : 
 " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; 
 they toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I 
 say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was 
 not arrayed like one of these !" We feel a fresh 
 power in the admonition to the Lord's people : 
 " Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the 
 field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into 
 the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 
 ye of little faith ?" 
 
 8. Such lessons should at once teach deepest 
 humility to poor ignorant man in his present 
 state ; and exalt the conceptions of the child of 
 God as to the glories of his home in a better 
 world. If this world fallen as it is is yet so 
 
ITS APPLICATIONS AND CAPABILITIES. 153 
 
 fair, and so full of the Divine glory, what must 
 be that coining world, which no curse of God 
 has blighted which no sin of man has ever 
 sallied ; and which the Redeemer is now pre- 
 paring to be the home and the heritage of his 
 people ! For if we should ever remember that 
 knowledge, and holiness, and love things spi- 
 ritual and not material are to be the excelling 
 glory of that other world, yet who can tell what 
 may be the glory, even in things material, of 
 that New Jerusalem, which the eye of the Seer 
 saw shining with its streets of gold, and its gates 
 of pearl, and its foundations of all manner of 
 precious stones ? And this Instrument may at 
 least aid us in attempting to form some faint 
 conception of that material glory ; for in taking 
 one glance with it at even a small fragment of 
 (copper) pyrites, we have felt as if that one 
 glance gave us a more exalted view of the new 
 heavens and the new earth, than we had ever 
 before received from the richest hue of the 
 flower, or the most dazzling lustre of the dia- 
 mond, or the varied colours of the rainbow, or 
 the very light of the sun itself ! And surely the 
 highest of all lessons should follow. If God's 
 
154 THE MICROSCOPE. 
 
 minutest creatures here are so glorious and if 
 God's mightiest works yonder and above are 
 so excellently glorious, what must be the Good- 
 ness, Greatness, Glory of Him who is Maker, 
 Preserver, King and Lord of All, " who is 
 glorious in His holiness, fearful in His praises, 
 ever doing wonders !" 
 
NOTE ON ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS 
 AND PARTHENOGENESIS. 
 
 THE theories of Spontaneous Generation, and of 
 the Progressive Development of animals from lower 
 to higher forms, wage open war with the great 
 truths of Theology, and, as altogether untenable, 
 seem now to be generally opposed by Naturalists. 
 The theories (or theory) of Alternate Generations and 
 Parthenogenesis do not maintain the same hostile 
 attitude to religion ; and the final decision regarding 
 them is accordingly of less importance. But they 
 present deep and difficult questions for the considera- 
 tion of the Naturalist, and seem destined for a time 
 to lead to much discussion and diversity of opinion. 
 
 They certainly present to us new and strange 
 modes of reproduction of life. Trembley's researches 
 in connexion with the Hydra, gave the first intima- 
 tion of them, when, in 1744, he apprised the world 
 of its singular and manifold powers of reproduction. 
 " Imagine a lily producing a butterfly, and the 
 butterfly producing a lily, and you would scarcely 
 invent a marvel greater than the production of Me- 
 dusae was to its first discoverers. Nay, the marvel 
 must go farther still ; the lily must first produce a 
 whole bed of lilies like its own fair self, before giving 
 
156 NOTE ON ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS 
 
 birth to a butterfly ; and this butterfly must separate 
 itself into a crowd of butterflies before giving birth 
 to a lily." l Trembley's discoveries were followed by 
 the scarcely less astounding revelations of Bonnet as 
 to the production of Aphides, or plant-lice. The 
 aphis, a winged insect, deposits its eggs on the axils 
 of the leaves of plants in the end of summer ; these 
 eggs are hatched in the following spring ; the produc- 
 tion is a wingless, sexless insect. This wingless insect, 
 while a virgin mother, produces its young alive with 
 marvellous rapidity, in repeated births, during the 
 course of a few days. Within twenty-one days, one 
 single aphis has been found to produce ninety-five 
 young ones. These wingless aphides (virgins), so 
 produced, give origin to broods of similar wingless 
 aphides, the reproduction going on to the tenth or 
 eleventh generation, until, in the course of a single 
 season, according to Professor Carpenter, no fewer 
 than ten thousand million millions are evolved. In 
 the end, some of these lamal aphides are fully deve- 
 loped into males and females, through whose agency 
 ova are again produced, and the same cycle of deve- 
 lopment is repeated the following year. Professor 
 Carpenter regards the multiplication by the larvae as 
 a process of gei*mination, analogous to the multiplica- 
 tion of cells by sub-division ; while he holds that the 
 true generative process, analogous to the conjugation 
 of cells, is only performed when perfect aphides of 
 distinct sexes are evolved. 2 
 
 The tabular view which Professor Owen gives of 
 
 1 Lewes's Sea-Side Studies, p. 281. 
 
 2 Carpenter on the Microscope, pp. 681, 682. 
 
AND PARTHENOGENESIS. 157 
 
 the viviparous increase of the aphides, is altogether 
 overwhelming : 
 
 Generation. Produce. 
 
 1st, .... 1 Aphis. 
 
 2d, . . . . 100, a hundred. 
 
 3d, .... 10,000, ten thousand. 
 
 4th, .... 1,000,000, one million. 
 
 5th, .... 100,000,000, one hundred millions. 
 
 6th, .... 10,000,000,000, ten billions. 
 
 7th, .... 1,000,000,000,000, one trillion. 
 
 8th, .... 100,000,000,000,000, one hundred trillions. 
 
 9th, .... 10,000,000,000,000,000, ten quadrillions. 
 
 10th, .... 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, one quintillion. 
 If the oviparous be added to the viviparous generation, the 
 result is thirty times greater ! l 
 
 Forty years ago, it began to be observed that 
 similar phases of reproduction were to be witnessed 
 in the case of other animals. In 1819, Chamisso 
 (the author of Peter Schlemil, the Shadowless Man) 
 observed that the Salpa t one of the humblest of 
 Molluscs, perpetuated its race by alternations, and 
 he first gave to such a succession the name, Alterna- 
 tion of Generations. When he announced his disco- 
 very, Chamisso was " laughed at as a dreamer ;" but 
 the accuracy of his statements is now no longer 
 doubted. The Salpa is sometimes a simple, some- 
 times a compound animal sometimes existing soli- 
 tary, like a hermit in a wilderness ; at other times in 
 long chains of many individuals, like the associated 
 brotherhood of a thronged city. Each individual, 
 however, is distinct from its brother, and is capable 
 
 1 Owen's Compar. Anal., p 414. 
 
158 NOTE ON ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS 
 
 of maintaining a separate existence, if this bond of 
 brotherhood be dissolved. But the grand peculiarity 
 is, that the solitary salpa produces chained salpse, 
 and the chained salpse produce the solitary salpa ; 
 nay, it has been ascertained, that invariably the 
 ovum of one of the chained salpse produces a so- 
 litary animal, while the ovum of a solitary salpa 
 produces the compound animal ; J or, as Charnisso 
 describes it, " A salpa-mother is not like its daughter, 
 or its own mother, but resembles its sister, its grand- 
 daughter, and its grandmother." 
 
 The process of alternation exists among the En- 
 tozoa. It has recently been established that Intes- 
 tinal Worms, long regarded as specifically or generi- 
 cally distinct, are but one and the same animal. 
 Von Siebold was the first to announce, in' 1844, that 
 these creatures assume quite different forms, and 
 possess different habits, according to the kind of ani- 
 mal in which they live. " For example, the micro- 
 scopic egg or embryo of a Tcenia, evolved in the 
 intestinal canal of a dog or cat, if taken with food 
 into the stomach of a rat, finds its way invariably 
 to the liver, and becomes a Cysticercus ; while, if it 
 be swallowed by a sheep, it travels by some recondite 
 road to the brain, and is transformed into that para- 
 site so fatally known as producing the ' staggers,' 
 Ccenurus. Let either of these now, in turn, be swal- 
 lowed by the carnivorous quadruped, and a Tcenia, is 
 the invariable result." 2 
 
 In 1856, Von Siebold published an account of 
 experiments with Moths and Bees, in which he main- 
 
 1 Harvey's Sec.-Side Book, p. 234. - Gosse's Life, p 120. 
 
AND PARTHENOGENESIS. 159 
 
 tains that female virgin moths produced eggs, and 
 that these eggs produced young caterpillars ; and that 
 bees, in similar circumstances, produced eggs, which, 
 however, invariably gave existence to male bees, the 
 fertilized bee-egg alone developing into a female, 
 either worker or queen. 1 
 
 Dr. Lankester stated at the meeting of the British 
 Association, in 1857, that Parthenogenesis exists 
 widely in the vegetable kingdom. 2 A remarkable 
 example is said to exist in Kew Garden, where a 
 certain solitary female plant, recently imported, con- 
 tinues to produce descendants yearly, though no male 
 plant has arrived in the land. 
 
 Professor Owen thus explains Parthenogenesis. 
 All organisms, plant or animal, originate in a cell. 
 This cell spontaneously divides into two, these two 
 into four, and so on, till, instead of a cell, a mass is 
 present, called the " germ mass." In the animal, 
 the cells are placed side to side, and form what is 
 called the " mulberry mass," each cell carrying with 
 it a portion of the yolk. The " germ mass" evolves 
 the animal, and each cell reproduces the powers and 
 capacities of the primary germ-cell. The cells have 
 become transformed into tissues. But all the progeny 
 of the primary germ-cell are not required for the 
 formation of the body in all animals ; certain of the 
 derivative germ-cells may remain unchanged, and be- 
 come included in that body which has been composed 
 of their metamorphosed and diversely combined or 
 confluent brethren. So included, any derivative germ- 
 cell may commence and repeat the same processes by 
 
 1 Lewes's Sea-Side Studies, p. U90. ' 2 Atherueum, 1857, p 1157. 
 
160 NOTE ON ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS, ETC. 
 
 imbibition, and of propagation by spontaneous fission, 
 as those to which itself owed its origin. 
 
 Owen maintains that this constitutes Partheno- 
 genesis. Some of the cells, instead of being trans- 
 formed into tissues, remain, unchanged as cells, in- 
 cluded in the body, where they repeat the original 
 process of sub-division, and produce offspring, as 
 they themselves were produced. Professor Owen also 
 states why this reproduction has its limits. The 
 original cell, by frequent sub-division, gradually loses 
 a portion of its plastic force. If at first starting it 
 had a force of 100, after passing through 50 sub- 
 divisions it is reduced to a force of 2. Thus Parthe- 
 nogenesis is not indefinitely prolonged. 
 
 To many, Owen's theory appears as satisfactory as 
 it is ingenious, while others maintain that it leaves 
 the subject unexplained. It may be regarded, there- 
 fore, as still subjudice. 1 
 
 1 Owen on Partheiingt-iusis , Lewes's Sfa-Side Studies. 
 
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