Perhaps in all the world no greater marvels are to be seen than these extraordinary minute vegetable-cases.
PART OF DIATOM CASE (PLEUROSIGMA ANGULATUM)
Magnified 4,900 diams.
From a photo-micrograph by Dr. R. Zeiss
Reproduced by permission of Messrs. C. Zeiss and Co. and Messrs. J. and A. Churchill, publishers of Carpenter’s “The Microscope”
Face page 156
Minute! Yes. A mass of millions upon millions, held together, may be perceived and felt. But let a light scattering of them be dropped upon a slip of glass in broad daylight, and let a man of keen eyesight set himself to examine them. He will see—nothing! Not even an appearance of delicate dust. The diatoms are to him as if they did not exist.
Then let him put that fine scattering under a good microscope, changing lens after lens, to higher powers. A world of beauty, of finish, of originality, of unbounded variety in construction, will open out before him.
Each little shell is exquisitely shaped, exquisitely put together, exquisitely ornamented. Though thousands, nay, millions, of them might be packed into a cubic inch, yet there has been no carelessness, no scamping, in the work, no saying, “Nobody will see, so anything will do.”