, 1885-09-24
PAINTED WITH A HAIR.


ero.eoPist.
New YORK. SIM
A microscopic fancicr Of this city,
who does not ride his hobby out Of his
home. and would not for the world al
low himself to be interviewed upon his
pet sub ect for h newspaper, entertained
The other evening at his house n com
pany of persons. lie walked to a table
standing in the center Of the room, upon
which was his favorite miscroseope.
Il have several little things to Tell you
that are not known except by micro
scopists. Here is a slip Of glass, for in
stance, " he continued, as he picked up a
narrow glass slide, which contains
the representation Of n beautiful
Louquct Of flowers. The representation,
when looked at with tho naked eye, can
scarcely be seen at all. IL simply looks
like a small shot. The bouquet, when
You look at it through the instrument,
contains, as you can discover, eighty
two distinct flowers Of various shades
and eolors, and each is as perfect as it
would be possible for an artist to rep
resent it on canvas. The entire bou-
quet, containing all the flowers, leaves,
etc. were made from the scales and
hair of the Brazilian butter les. The
dust from the wings of the butterflies
was picked up and placed in position by
Henry Dalton, OF London, who is now
dead. Dalton, with the aid of a mi.
croscope, picked up n particle of
dust at a time on the end OF a hair and
adjusted it to the slide in such n man
ner that when his task was finished the
bouquet assumed its present beautiful
and perfect form.
Although Dalton was d%issipated, he
excelled most of his imitators in his pc
culiar line of art. Among microsco-
pists his works are priced rs highly as
the works of the great masters in paint
| ing are valued by artists who work on
can as. A painter who can paint u
complete scene on "A surface as small as
q sleo, c button. is considered skillful,
yet Dalton used a single hair for a
brush and dealt with particles of mat
ter. scarcely visible to the naked eye,
which he placed in their respective pc
sitions with the aid OF his microscope
with such accuracy that he finally pro
duced his representations, which are so
correct in every detail that artists who
have examined them critically have
been almost overcome with astOnish-
ment. This is what ! call one of the
! MbHltIlui htUltA tuitliAh VI Allt ttIluINs
'He was a fast WORKER, and, by labor
ing almost necessarily, he could finish
it, | think, in the course Of a week or
ten days. The Dalton slides are very
valuable in America. There not more
than fifty Dalton slides in this country,
and they scarcely be purchased for
love or money. In fact, as said before,
they are as highly priced by micro
scopists, throughout the world as a rare
painting by II celebrated master is
pri ed. ! have also one or two other
Slides executed by artists not % noted
rs Dalton. Gray $ lei egy," contain
ing thirty " verses, has been photo
graphed by the aid Of a microscope on
a Slide within a space of one-tenth of an
inch iuare, and is perfectly legible
when read through q powerful instru-
monj.
The company looked through the in
strument and saw. among other OBJ
jects, the tongue Of a fly, the toe nail
Of a gnat, the digestive apparatus Of a
fei, tue eyebrow OF an insect too small
10 Le detected with the naked eye, the
circulation Of the blood in a mosquito 5
lugular vein, an abseess on the back OF
a ily's neck. a fracture in an ants collar
bone, and n thousand other extraor-
binary sights.