Abstract
THE Monthly Microscopical Journal commences with the paper on “a new Callidina: with the results of experiments on the Desiccation of Rotifera,” by Mr. H. Davis, which was read before the Royal Microscopical Society in Apall, and in which the author, by means of several carefully performed experiments, proves that Rotifera, which survive after being exposed to a temperature of 200° F., or in a vacuum for some time, do not get desiccated, but only covered with an impervious gelatinous covering which retains a certain amount of moisture in them. This Mr. Slack shows to have been previously proved. Mr. Parfitt describes a new form apparently related to the Rotifera and the Annelida, named by him Agehisteus plumosus, with the oral a perture lateral and inferior. Dr. Braithwaite describes Sphagnum papillosum and S. auslini in his paper on Bog Mosses; and Mr. Wenham has anothsr valuable paper on “Binoculars for the highest powers.” A new slide for the microscope, designed by Mr. D. S. Holman, is described. It is a current cel or moist chamber for studying the blood and other organic fluids. The accompanying illustration will assist in explaining it. Two shallow circular cavities are excavated in a very flat thick glass slide, not far from one another. They are united by two or three grooves, which are cut as triangles in order that they may be of unequal depth in different parts. When the apparatus is to be used, each of the shallow cavities and the intermediate grooves are partly filled with the fluid to be examined, after the slide has been warmed by the hand, and a glass cover is laid over the whole, which soon becomes fixed from the cooling of the slide and the consequent rarification of the enclosed air. The grooves between the cavities form the field for inspection, and any degree of movement may be produced in the fluid which they contain by approaching the warm finger to the top of one of the cavities, as the air inside is thus made to expand and drive some of the fluid into the other which is not heated. There is scarcely any limit to the degree of delicacy of movement which may be attained with this instrument; the slightest movement, not sufficient to remove a body from the field of vision, being produced without difficulty after some practice.
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Scientific Serials . Nature 8, 79 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/008079a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/008079a0