ing
been taught microscopic,--and those whose use I understood
theoretically were of little avail, until by practice I could attain
the necessary delicacy of handling. Still, such was the fury of my
ambition, such the untiring perseverance of my experiments, that,
difficult of credit as it may be, in the course of one year I became
theoretically and practically an accomplished microscopist.

During this period of my labours, in which I submitted specimens of
every substance that came under my observation to the action of my
lenses, I became a discoverer--in a small way, it is true, for I was
very young, but still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed Ehrenberg's
theory that the _Volvox globator_ was an animal, and proved that his
"nomads" with stomachs and eyes were merely phases of the formation of
a vegetable cell, and were, when they reached their mature state,
incapable of the act of conjugation, or any true generative act,
without which no organism rising to any stage of life higher than
vegetable can be said to be complete. It was I who resolved the
singular problem of rotation in the cells and hairs of plants into
ciliary attraction, in spite of the assertions of Mr. Wenham and
others, that my explanation was the result of an optical illusion.

But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully made
as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I found
myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like all active
microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed, it is a common
complaint against many such, that they supply the defects of their
instruments with the creations of their brains. I imagined depths
beyond depths in nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited
me from exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary
microscopes of immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce
through the envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed
those imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me
to use! How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose
magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the
object, and which at the same time should be free from spherical and
chromatic aberrations, in short from all the obstacles over which the
poor microscopist finds himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced
that the simple microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet
perfect power