PREFACE.
If we glance at any of the numerous magazines devoted either wholly or in part to the subject of microscopy, we shall hardly fail to be struck with the numerous queries relating to SECTION-CUTTING, which are to be found in its pages. A simple explanation of this wide-spread want is afforded by the fact that the use of the microscope has at the present day extended to (and is still rapidly spreading amongst) vast numbers of students, who, in many instances, possess neither the leisure nor the means to refer for information to large and expensive text-books. Moreover, were they actually to consult such works, they would practically fail to obtain the information of which they are in need, for the coveted instruction is to be found in those treatises only in a scattered and fragmentary form—no work with which we are acquainted treating of the subject in anything like a detailed manner. To fill this vacuum in the literature of microscopy the present manualette has been prepared. Little claim is made to originality, yet the book is by no means a mere compilation, but the outcome of long and extensive personal experience in the cutting and mounting of microscopical sections. Every process described has been put to the test of actual trial, so that its worth may confidently be depended upon. Many of the little points insisted upon in the ensuing pages will doubtless to the practised microscopist appear superfluous or even puerile; but a vivid recollection of our own early failures and disappointments assures us that it is just these very minutiæ of detail which will be found most serviceable in directing and sustaining the faltering footsteps of the tyro.
St. Helens, September, 1878.