[Book Reviews]

Abstract

ALTHOUGH hand-books and practical guides to the use of the microscope are by no means scarce, this little volume will be welcome to many. It more completely, and in a much smaller compass, meets the precise wants of the beginner who intends to acquire a practical knowledge of the use of the microscope, than the majority of kindred treatises. But it aims only at elementary instruction in the use of the instrument and its accessories. The author does not burden the eager and ambitious amateur who has just become possessed of, or is just about to obtain, a microscope, with the complexities of collecting, preserving, dissecting, preparing, and mounting. There can be no doubt that to obtain a fair initial mastery of a good instrument, with powers up to a quarter-inch objective, and to become facile in the use of all the apparatus which these may involve, for illuminating, polarizing, &c., and, in short, in putting to its best and highest use such a microscope, is by far the better course. To become hastily acquainted with the microscope and its adjuncts, and then to be diverted by elaborate processes for preparing and mounting, is not the surest way to increase the number of skilled and competent masters of the modern microscope. The Quekett Club Man is evidently practical, and sees this. He confines himself to a concise and useful statement, aided by illustrations, of what the microscope is and how its various accessories may be employed.

The Student's Hand-book to the Microscope: a Practical Guide to its Selection and Management.

By A Quekett Club Man. (London: Roper and Drowley, 1887.)