Let useful knowledge, well and soundly taught,
     Endow the poor man with exhaustless treasures;
That when his hands their daily task have wrought,
     His mind may revel in ennobling pleasures.

Then Peace will hallow every cottage home,
     Gathering their inmates round her sacred altar;
Where, as they comment on some valued tome,
     With thrilling joy their tongues will often falter!

        MAN MAGNIFIED.

THE flea magnified, until he looks as large
as an elephant, and as ugly as a crawfish, is
an old friend with all sight-seers. Neither are
such marvels of the microscope, as the terrible
combat displayed in the circle of light on the
walls of the Polytechnic Institution—where
animals, like all sorts of tigers and snakes,
beetles and flying fish, dart and twist and
jerk, in all directions—unfamiliar even to
juvenile and nervous spectators. These are
amongst the chosen subjects for popular
illustrations. But far more startling objects
may be seen through the lenses nearer home.
Man may be magnified as well as fleas. The
fancies of Swift have been paralleled by the
discoveries of the microscopist. The rough
skin of the Brobdignagian has been shown in
reality under the object glass, with other
things much more strange than any the,
Dean ventured to imagine. Nowadays from
the crown of the head to the sole of the foot,
every tissue of the human frame has, in turn,
become the subject of investigation. The
bones on which the body is built—the muscles
that move it—the brain that exerts the will
—and the nerves that convey that will to each
limb—the blood that vitalises and repairs—
and the lungs which feed the blood with air
—have all been put to the test, and made to
reveal their peculiarities.

We need not, to see all this, set up one of
Ross's fifty guinea microscopes, or trouble
anatomists for specimens. The whole task
has been gone through by various medical
inquirers, and we have the results told in
scientific terms by Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall,
in his volumes on the " Microscopic Anatomy
of the Human Body, in Health and Disease,"
recently completed and published. Without
troubling the doctors for terms, let us see
what facts they afford us.

No microscope ever was made (nor ever
will be made, probably) large enough to grasp
any whole specimen of the genus Homo at
once. You cannot catch a lifeguardsman, or
even a Tom Thumb, and put him under the
power of eight or nine hundred diameters.
But though we cannot magnify the entire
animal at once, we can yet examine him in
detail, portion by portion. One hair, or one
drop of blood, displays the characteristic
features of its construction, just as completely
as though the whole scalp, or the entire contents
of the heart, could be seen at once.
Knowing one, we know all.

A small piece of skin, for instance, displays
a series of ridges and furrows, having a somewhat
scaly surface; between the ridges, little
openings are seen. They are the mouths of
the perspiratory ducts. Under the surface,
and forming the most important and interesting
portion of the skin, is the layer in which
resides the sense of touch; but if this be
valuable, it is even less beautiful, as we see
under the microscope, than the scaly cuticle provided
for its protection, for it looks more like a
dense crop of double teeth than anything else
—each tooth having four sharp tubercles.
Between each tooth, we see the continuation of
the perspiratory duct winding its way deeper
into the frame; just as a good farmer places
tiles to drain his lands. These fleshy teeth
are known as the papillary portion of the
skin, and where they are most numerous, there
is the sense of touch most keen. On the soft,
sensitive hand and fingers of a young lady,
looking the perfection of whiteness and
delicacy, they are ranged thick and threefold;
and so, too, are they on the skilful fingers of
the workman trained to the more delicate
manipulations of art. In the rough labourer,
they become buried under a hard crust of
coarse cuticle. The naked eye can easily
detect the ridges into which the papillæ are
arranged; each ridge being, in fact, two rows
of papillæ—two rows of double teeth—but
the microscope is wanted, if we wish to behold
them in their exact forms—beautifully
adapted to the work they have to do, but
rougher than the rind of a pine-apple, or the
scales of a French artichoke, and by no means
so picturesque as the scale armour of the
magnified flea.

The hair may be called the offspring of the
skin; and in health and disease, youth and
age, there is a close sympathy between the
two. A fine growth of hair, when magnified,
might be compared to a plantation of osiers,
when the leaves are off: with some differences,
of course. Human hair is not perfectly
round, as it seems to be when seen with the
naked eye; nor is it of the same thickness
through its whole length. At its origin in
the skin, it swells out into a bulbous form,
like a crocus-root, or the body of a young
spring onion, before the leaves have opened.
From this base the hair springs forth, and
gradually becomes bulkier as it lengthens.
This goes on to a certain point, at which the
greater growth is attained; and then the
hair grows fine by degrees and beautifully
less; until, if allowed its full growth as on
the head of a young damsel, its point is many
times smaller and more delicate than the
portion near the centre of its length. Some
hair is much rounder, more cylindrical, than
other; some being oval, and some flattened.
The flat hair it is that curls most. Adonis
and the negro are, therefore, alike in one
point at least. Hairs vary very much, both
in thickness and in length; those on the
female scalp being, naturally, the longest of