Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.Adams, George
Science
Essays on the Microscope: Containing a Practical Description of the Most Improved Microscopes, a General History of Insects, etc., etc.
Adams, George
Insects -- Early works to 1800; Microscopy -- Early works to 1800
The pleasure arising from a just view of a microscopic object, the
distinctness of vision, &c. depend on a due management of the light, and
adapting the quantity of it to the nature of the object, and the focus
of the magnifier; therefore, an object should always be viewed in
various degrees of light. It is difficult to distinguish in some objects
between a prominency and a depression, between a shadow and a black
stain; and in colour, between a reflection and a whiteness; a truth
which the reader will find fully exemplified in the examination of the
eye of the libellula, and other flies, which will be found to appear
exceedingly different in one position of the light from what they do in
another.
The brightness of an object depends on the quantity of light; the
distinctness of vision, on regulating the quantity to the object; for
some will be lost and drowned, as it were, in a quantity of light that
is scarce sufficient to render another visible, as a different portion
of light under the same apparatus will often exhibit in perfection, or
totally conceal an object in the substance to be examined. This is more
particularly the case with the animalculæ infusoriæ, whose thin and
transparent form blend as it were with the water in which they swim; the
degree of light must therefore be suited to the object, which, if dark,
will be seen best in a strong and full light, but if very transparent,
it should be examined in a fainter.
A strong light may be thrown on an object various ways: first, by means
of the sun and a convex lens; for this purpose, place the microscope
about three feet from a southern window; take a deep convex lens, that
is mounted in a semicircle and fixed on a stand, so that its position
may be easily varied; place this lens between the object and the window,
so that it may collect a considerable number of the solar rays, and
refract them on the object, or the mirror of the microscope. If the
light thus collected from the sun be too powerful, it may be tempered by
placing a piece of oil paper, or a glass lightly greyed, between the
object and the lens: by these means, a convenient degree of light may be
obtained, and diffused in an equal manner over the whole surface of an
object, a circumstance that should be particularly attended to; for if
the light be thrown in an irregular manner, that is, larger portions of
it on some parts than on others, it will not be distinctly exhibited.
Where the solar light is preferred, it will be found very convenient to
darken the room, and to reflect the rays of the sun on the above
mentioned lens, by means of the mirror of a solar microscope fitted to
the window-shutter; for, by this apparatus, the observer will be enabled
to preserve the light on his object, notwithstanding the motion of the
sun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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