William Nicol and Henry Clifton Sorby

Abstract

IN her short article on William Nicol and H. C. Sorby, Mrs. Eyles states¹ that Nicol “seems to have confined himself to making sections of fossil wood, and did not make rock sections”. Nicol stated in 1834², however, that when he came to prepare sections of fossil plants he “had recourse to a process I had practised upwards of fifteen years ago, in preparing thin slices of the most fragile substances, as calcareous spar, in order to examine their effects on polarized light”. The lapidary G. Sanderson had made thin sections after fixing the specimen to a block of wood with lapidary's cement; Nicol's process was essentially to substitute glass for wood and Canada balsam for the cement.