The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-14
NEW WORLD OF WONDERS-AN ASTO-
NISHING DISCOVERY.

From the ". Y Sun.
The microscope has been called man
sixth sense. After exhausting all the natural
powers, unaided by science, there yet re-
mains an unknown world of nature to which
the senses have no access. The microscope
opens this amazing creation to our vision
and we find it teeming with organized life
and beautiful forms, in comparison with
which the grosser structures seem quite i'm
perfect.
The earth on which we tread is in many
places simply the remains of living things
which once moved, and felt the sunlight, and
died to build up world of variety and USE
fulness 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 rotten 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
Lapland, of North Carolina, and of California
devour the remains of organized life, and de-
rive nourishment from the animal matter
which has survived countless ages for these
wretched beings to feed upon.
All these things come to us through the
little tube upon which science has conferred
these marvellous powers; and science is yet
ceaselessly working on to results still more
surprising. The last advance, which has just
been made in this city, is very large one.
Until now the best microscope magnifed an
object not more than two hundred million
times its actual size, and very few microseo-
pists ever saw such power. The President of
the Royal Society of England last summer
showed a shell magnified one hundred and
forty-four million times, and this excited the
astonishment of microscopists throughout
the world. But the new optical combination
| just completed in this city exhibits the same
object under an enlargement of nine thousand
million times its natural magnitude. If an
| ordinary domestic fly could be seen entire
under such magnifcation, it would seem to
cover o space as large as the whole city of
| New York below Wall street. A man would
appear more than hundred miles high, and
lady's hair would reach half way from New
York to New Haven
This wonderful instrument is so sensitive
that aloud word spoken near it destroys all
distinetness of vision, from the tremor i'm
| parted to it by the motion of the air, and a
| footstep on the floor shakes it out of adjust
ment. The field of view-that is, the area
! which can be seen at once-is a circle only
the one -thOusandth of an inch In
diameter, but it appears to the eve to be
eight inches in diameter. microscopic
| shell scailed an dnglLdtunl, 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 exquisite delicacy
when examined under ordinarily powerful
powersul microscopes, exhibits under the new
instrument half globes of white slick, whose
diameters appear to be an inch and three
quarters, and of which only fifteen can be
seen at once. In reality the point of a cam
brio needle is larger than the circle upon
which these fifteen half globes exist, and yei
that circle appears like dessert plate covered
with lady-apples.
These wonders we have seen; but how they
are produced only men of science can fully
explain and understand. The honor OF the
invention belongs to Mr.. Edward N. Dicken
son, the distinguished lawyer and engineer o
this city. AS microscopical expert, how