Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/576

566 when microscopes of the best construction are employed, the determination of the intimate nature of the tissue, and the precise relation which one element of an organ bears to the other constituent elements, is, in many instances, a matter of difficulty. Hence additional methods have had to be devised in order to facilitate study and to give precision and accuracy to our observations. It is difficult for one of the younger generation of biologists, with all the appliances of a well-equipped laboratory at his command, with experienced teachers to direct him in his work, and with excellent text-books, in which the modern methods are described, to realize the conditions under which his predecessors worked half a century ago. Laboratories for minute biological research had not been constructed, the practical teaching of histology and embryology had not been organized, experience in methods of work had not accumulated; each man was left to his individual efforts, and had to puzzle his way through the complications of structure to the best of his power. Staining and hardening reagents were unknown. The double-bladed knife invented by Valentin, held in the hand, was the only improvement on the scalpel or razor for cutting thin, more or less translucent slices suitable for microscopic examination; mechanical section-cutters and freezing arrangements had not been devised. The tools at the disposal of the microscopist were little more than knife, forceps, scissors, needles; with acetic acid, glycerine and Canada balsam as reagents. But in the employment of the newer methods of research care has to be taken, more especially when hardening and staining reagents are used, to discriminate between appearances which are to be interpreted as indicating natural characters, and those which are only artificial productions.

Notwithstanding the difficulties attendant on the study of the more delicate tissues, the compound achromatic microscope provided anatomists with an instrument of great penetrative power. Between the years 1830 and 1850 a number of acute observers applied themselves with much energy and enthusiasm to the examination of the minute structure of the tissues and organs in plants and animals.

It had, indeed, long been recognized that the tissues of plants were to a large extent composed of minute vesicular bodies, technically called cells (Hooke, Malpighi, Grew). In 1831 the discovery was made by the great botanist, Robert Brown, that in many families of plants a circular spot, which he named areola or nucleus, was present in each cell; and in 1838 M. J. Schleiden published the fact that a similar spot or nucleus was a universal elementary organ in vegetables. In the tissues of animals also structures had begun to be recognized comparable with the cells and nuclei of the vegetable tissues, and in 1839 Theodore