Practical Hints on the Selection and Use of the Microscope

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877. Excerpt: ... ON THE SELECTION OF A MICROSCOPE FOR PRACTICAL PURPOSES. The object of all the information given in the preceding pages, is to enable the reader not only to understand and use the microscope, but to select one judiciously; and, therefore, in every section we have offered hints bearing in this direction. We now propose to give the reader such special instructions as are necessary in addition to those previously offered. In selecting a microscope, regard must be had, not only to the excellence of the instrument, but to its adaptability to the purpose for which it is intended, and to the person who is to use it. A complicated and expensive compound microscope, if placed in the hands of a person having little experience or skill, would evidently be worse than wasted, while to attempt to conduct elaborate and delicate investigations by means of a cheap non-achromatic instrument, would simply be to throw away time, and wantonly incur the risk of serious errors. And yet no mistake is more frequently made. A microscope is wanted; the purchaser is liberal with his means, and he is saddled with an expensive instrument entirely unsuited to his requirements. Or, on the other hand, a physican or student of limited means requires an instrument, and being unable to afford the price of a really good one, he is induced to purchase a cheap affair, whose indications, when applied to the subjects for which he requires it, are entirely unreliable; whereas, he ought to be told that if he cannot afford a microscope with good objectives, he ought to leave microscopy in its applications to medicine and physiology alone. So, too, we often see compound microscopes sold to students of elementary botany, when a cheap dissecting microscope is really what they need. It would be imposs...