Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1870-08-02
A NEW WORLD OF WONDERS.
An Astonishing Discovery.
From the New York Sun, June %.

From the New York Sun, June %.
The microscope has been called
mans sixth sonse. After exhaust
ing all the naturll powers, unaided
by science, there yet remains an I'M
known world Of nature to which the
senses have no access The micro
scope opens this amazing creation to
our vision; and we find it teeming
with organized life and beautiful
forms, bn comparison with which the
grosser structures seem quite imper-
feet.
The earth on which we tread is in
many places simply the remains of
living things.which once moved and
left the sunlight and died to build
up world of variety and usefulness
for man in his turn to live and die
upon. The city Of Richmond is
built upon such graveyard. The
chalk cliffs of England are made of
dead infusoria. The rotton stone
with which we polish metals is only
the shells of minute creatures whose
day OF existence was millions Of
years ago. The dirt-eaters of lap
land, of North Carolina, and Califor-
MIA, deyour the remains of the or
ganized life, and derive nourishment
from the animal matter which has
survived countless ages for those
wretched beings to feed upon.
All these things come to us through
the little tube upon which science
has conferred these marvellous pow
ers and science is yet consciously
working on to results more surpris-
ing. The last advance, which has
just been made in this city is very
large one. Until now the best mi.
croscope magnified an object not
more than two hundred million times
its actual size, and very few micro
scopes ever saw such power. The
president of the royal society of Eng
land last summer showed shell
magnitied one hundred and forty
four million times, and this excited
the establishment Of microscopists
throughout the world. But the new
optical combination just completed
here exhibits the same object under
enlargement of nine thousand million
times its natural magnitude. If an
ordinary domestic fly could be seen
entire under magnification, it would
seem to cover space as large as the
whole city of New York below Wall
street. \ man would appear more
than a hundred miles high ; and a
lady's hair would reach half way
from New York to New Haven.
This wonderful instrument is so
sensitive that a loud word spoken
near it destroys all distinctness of
vision, from the tremor impaired to
1t by the motion Of the air, and u
footstep on the floor shakes it ont of
adjustment. The field of view-that
is, the area which can be seen at
once-is a circle only the one twelve
thousandth of an inch in diameter.
A microscopic she'll called an augu-
latum of which about one hundred
and forty placed end to end will
reach an inch, and which is simply
marked with lines Of the most ex-
quisite delicacy when examined un-
der ordinarily powerful microscopes,
exhibits under the new instrument
half globes or white slick, whose di-
ameters appear to be an inch and
three quarters, and of which only
fifteen can be seen at once. In reali-
ty the point of cambria needle is
larger than the circle upon which
the fifteen half globes exist, and yet
that circle appears like a desert plate
covered with lady apples.
These wonders we have seen !; but
how they are produced only men of
science can fully explain and under
stand. The honor of the invention
belongs to Mr.. Edward N. Dickinson,
the distinguished lawyer and engin-
eer of this city. As q microscopical
expert however, he is but an anna
teur, and not professional devotee
Of the instrument, and he has arriv-
ed at this miraculous discovery by
profound study of the laws of optics,
and by elaborate and exhaustive
mathematical calculations. We
should add that he is a member of
the Bailey Microscopical Club, an as
ISOLATION composed of the most skill
full microscopists of the country.
which ia doing much to advance this
department of science, so interesting
and 80 useful to humanity.