8.—Cutting diamonds for cell-making and cutting slips of glass.
9.—Writing diamonds for cutting thin covering-glass and naming objects.
10.—Page’s wooden forceps, for holding glass slips or objects when heated, during mounting.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
Microscopic Forms of Life—Thallophytes—Pteridophyta, Phanerogamæ—Structure and Properties of the Cell.
The time has long since passed by since the value of the microscope as an instrument of scientific research might have been called in question. By its aid the foundation of mycology has been securely laid, and cryptogamic botany in particular has, during the last quarter of a century, made surprising progress in the hands of those devoted to pursuits which confer benefits upon mankind.
Little more than thirty years ago practically nothing was known of the life history of a fungus, nothing of parasitism, of infectious diseases, or even of fermentation. Our knowledge of the physiology of nutrition was in its infancy; even the significance of starches and sugars in the green plant was as yet not understood, while a number of the most important facts relating to plants and the physiology of animals were unknown and undiscovered. When we reflect on these matters, and remember that bacteria were regarded merely as curious animalculæ, that rusts and smuts were supposed to be emanations of diseased states, and that spontaneous generation still-survived among us, some idea may be formed of the condition of cryptogamic botany and the lower forms of animal life some eight or ten years after my book on the microscope made its first appearance (1854).
Indeed, long prior to this time, dating from that of even the earliest workers with the microscope, it was known that the water of pools and ditches, and especially infusions of plants and animals of all kinds, teem with living organisms, but it was not recognised definitely that vast numbers of these microscopic living beings (and even actively moving ones) are plants, growing on and in the various solid and liquid matters examined, and as truly as visible and accepted plants grow on soil and in the air and water. Perhaps the most important discovery in the history of cryptogamic botany was initiated here. The change, then, that has come over our knowledge of microscopic plant life during this last busy quarter of a century has been almost entirely due to the initiation and improvement, first in methods of growing them, and in the methods of “Microscopic Gardening”; and secondly, to the greater knowledge gained in the use of the microscope.