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
these pursuits, or his wonderful devotion and piety. On one hand, his
genius urged him to examine the miracles of the great Creator in his
natural, productions; whilst, on the other, the love of that same
all-perfect Being rooted in his mind struggled hard to persuade him that
God alone, and not the creatures, were worthy of his researches, love,
and attention.
M. Lyonet always drowned first those insects he intended to anatomize,
as by these means he was enabled to preserve both the softness and
transparency of the parts. If the insect, &c. be very small, for
instance one-tenth of an inch, or a little more in length, it should be
dissected in water, on a glass which is a little concave; if, after a
few days, there be any fear that the insect will putrefy, it should be
placed in weak spirit of wine, instead of water. In order to fix the
little creature, it must be suffered to dry, and then be fastened by a
piece of soft wax; after which it may be again covered with water.
Larger objects require a different process; they should be placed in a
small trough of thin wood; the bottom of a common chip box will answer
very well, by surrounding the edge of it with soft wax, to keep in the
water or spirit of wine. The insect is then to be opened, and if the
parts be soft, like those of a caterpillar, they should be turned back
and fixed to the trough by small pins; the pins are to be set by a pair
of small nippers, the skin being stretched at the same instant by
another pair of finer forceps; the insect must then be placed in water,
and dissected therein, and after two or three days it should be covered
with spirit of wine, which should be renewed occasionally; by these
means the subject is preserved in perfection, and its parts may be
gradually unfolded, without any other change being perceived than that
the soft elastic parts become stiff and opake, and some others lose
their colour.
M. Lyonet used the following instruments in his curious dissection of
the caterpillar of the cossus. As small a pair of scissars as could be
made, the arms long and fine; a small and sharp knife, the end brought
to a point; a pair of forceps, the ends of which had been so adjusted,
that they would easily lay hold of a spider’s thread or a grain of sand.
But the most useful instruments were two fine steel needles, fixed in
small wooden handles, about 2³⁄₄ of an inch in length.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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