Page:The wonders of optics (1869).djvu/156

148 its veins and arteries with inconceivable rapidity. Another interesting experiment consists in dissolving a small quantity of sal-ammoniac in warm water, and passing a small portion of the solution across a warm glass slide. When placed in the microscope the water gradually evaporates, leaving behind a mass of feathery crystals, whose growth may be watched atom by atom, each crystalline molecule grouping itself around the others in forms resembling a mass of fern-leaves."

The apparatus we have been describing is sometimes illuminated with the rays of the sun, as in the following figure.



It is then called the solar microscope, and exhibits objects with great beauty and clearness. The use of the sun's rays, however, has, in our own country at least, been entirely superseded by the electric and lime light. The latter method of illumination, which consists in projecting a stream of oxygen and hydrogen upon a ball of lime, is cheaper and more certain than the elec