MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Hi together,
when preparing the December meeting of our microscopy group about artificial ecosystems I came upon a nice old book that is still helpful to read today: Henry Scherren: Ponds and Rock Pools.
Our group celleague Georg Rosenfeldt has put this book in a new layout to make it better to read. it is availably as a free download on our website:http://www.mikrohamburg.de/Tips/SCHERREN-GESAMT.pdf

He wrote a comment at the end that is valuable to read for the reader today.

If you have no clue why it is important to always carry a walking stick when going out pond collecting you clearly have to read this book!

The book was written by someone who obviously had lots of practical experience in this field and it is still very valuable to read though it is over 100 years old!

Bob

P.S.: I think this was the first link to a document in english language I posted here!

Thanks for the link to that nice clean copy, Bob
... Much appreciated.

Was it you that also linked the original, recently ?
https://archive.org/details/b28128163/page/n6

MichaelG.
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Edit: Yes, I see it was:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6605&p=59288&hilit=scherren#p59288

Am I alone in finding Hardy's use of Lard as a solvent-adhesive rather surprising ?

But suppose that the drag has brought to bank a mass of weed and twigs. What is to be done with it? All cannot be taken home, and even if it could, probably only a portion would have on it microscopic life enough to make the labour profitable. Some plan of examining the weed is wanted. This is to hand in HARDY´S “flat bottle“. From a slab of vulcanized rubber, six inches long by four inches wide, and half an inch thick, a block is cut, so as to Ieave a U-shaped frame, of which each limb is to be half an inch square. Over this on each side is cemented a piece of glass. Marine glue and various other substances have been tried, but the inventor found that lard did “almost as well as anything“, for a portion of the rubber dissolved in the lard, forming a kind of cement.

MichaelG.

The book was written in the late 1800s and very few of the man made substances of today were known then.
Henry Scherren must have been comparatively well off to be able to afford equipment, travel expenses and instruments and have free time available for pond collecting.
Today it is not uncommon to use vaseline to make an enclosed well slide for observing water samples - quite comparable to Hardy's flat bottle assembly method.

It would be interesting to make a time journey and accompay these gentleman on a pond collecting trip!

Bob

MicroBob wrote: Today it is not uncommon to use vaseline to make an enclosed well slide for observing water samples - quite comparable to Hardy's flat bottle assembly method.

I do realise that, Bob ... but [unless I misunderstood what was written] Hardy describes a solvent action, resulting in a 'cement' ... whereas vaseline only 'sticks' by surface tension.

I will investigate further ...

MichaelG.

Hi Michael,
I'm not sure what kind of material his India rubber was actually. It might have been an early hard rubber or soft rubber like bicyle inner tubes.
The traditional red soft rubber had a tendency to stick to certain things but I don't know the mechanism behind this.

I'm quite happy to have todays wide portfolio of materials available!

Bob

MicroBob wrote: I'm quite happy to have todays wide portfolio of materials available!

Me too, Bob
... I just find the old techniques and recipes fascinating.

MichaelG.

MichaelG. wrote:Am I alone in finding Hardy's use of Lard as a solvent-adhesive rather surprising ?

It is surprising that vulcanized rubber dissolved in Lard. The rubber might have swelled, but dissolved ? Which Whale was it that the Lard arrived from ?

Searching the Quekett CD ROM, I have found a reference to the 'bottle' but unfortunately no explanation regarding the Lard.

"Some chemical action seemed to take place which hardened the lard."

SERIES 2, VOLUME II, 1884-1886 Page 55

MichaelG.

On the curious matter of Vulcanised Rubber and Lard [*]

It appears that SoyBean oil was used as an ersatz Lard
... and it is also used in the production of cold-vulcanised rubber
See page 476
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OWG ... &lpg=PA476

So ... Perhaps Hardy was not using real Lard.

MichaelG.
.
.
[*] which is an opening line that I never expected to use !

Add another thanks, Bob, for posting this.

Hi Bob
Thanks very much, these old texts are absolutely fascinating. Always something new to learn.

A delightful read, with nice illustrations.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for posting that! It's obvious a lot of work went into preparing the modern version, and it does have a lot of interesting information.

Hi Rick,
the new layout comes especially handy when you want to print the book. The scanned original would be printed with the gray paper background making it toner-consuming to print and difficult to read. The original book is als quite small and re-formatted to A4 format the number of pages is reduced a lot.

When you look on our homepage you will find a couple of other standard documents on a couple of microscopy topics which Georg has put into a new layout.

Bob