M0010758: Instrument for cutting thin transverse sections of wood for microscopical examination

Date:
September 1948
Reference:
WT/D/1/20/1/95/27
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: M0010758: Instrument for cutting thin transverse sections of wood for microscopical examination. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/868
    In the third chapter, the mod improved microfcopes, and home others which are in general ufe, are particularly defcribed; no pains have been fpared to leffen the difficulty of obfervation, and remove obfcurity from defcription ; the relative advantages of each indrument are briefly pointed out, to enable the reader to feleff that which is bed adapted to his purfuits. The method of preparing different objefts for obfervation, and the cautions neceffary to be obferved in the ufe of the microfcope, are the fubjeft of the fourth chapter. When I fird undertook the prefent effays, I had confined my- felf to a re-publication of my fathers work, entitled, Microgia- phia Illudrata; but I foon found that both his and Mr. Baker’s tracts on the microfcope were very imperfeCL Natural hidory had not been fo much cultivated at the period when they wrote^ as it is in the prefent day. To the want of that information which is now eafily obtained, we may, with propriety, impute their errors and imperfections. I have endeavoured to remedy their defeCts, by arranging the fubjeCts in fydematic order, and. by introducing the microfcopic reader to the fyftem of Linnaeus, as far as relates to infefls : by this he will learn to difcriminate one infedt from another, to charadlerize their different parts, and thus be better enabled to convey indruCtion to others, and to avoid error himfelf As the transformations which infeCts undergo, conditute a prin*- cipal branch of their hidory, and furnifh many objeffs for the microfcope, I have given a very ample defcription of them; the more fo, as many microfcopic writers, by not confidering thefe changes with attention, have fallen into a variety of midakes. Here