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Frontispiece, xx, 472 pp; 215 numbered text figures (I don't know why the title page says 241); 16 plates, each with a facing descriptive text printed on thin paper (like tissue guard paper). Original cloth. Small amount of bubbling in cloth of front cover. Very Good. This copy does NOT have any library markings. First American edition (also published in London in 1907 by John Murray). Quoting from the obituary of Spitta in Nature (Vol. 106, 1921, pp. 700 701): "By the death of MR. EDMUND J. SPITTA on January 21, at sixty-eight years of age, microscopical science has lost another earnest student and exponent. While in general medical practice for many years, Mr.Spitta found time to contribute to more than one branch of microscopy, and his retirement to Hove several years ago enabled him to devote the remaining years of his life to the subject. He took an active part in the proceedings of the Quekett Microscopical Club, of which he was, a past-president, and of the Royal Microscopical Society, of which, as well as of the Royal Astronomical Society, he was a past vice-president. Mr. Spitta made some contributions to the subject of pond life, but it was particularly photomicrography and the optics of the microscope to which he directed his energies. So far back as 1898 he published, in collaboration with Mr. Charles Slater, an 'Atlas of Bacteriology' containing more than a hundred plates of photomicrographs of bacteria. More recently he brought put his 'Photomicrography,' and many of his photomicrographs of diatoms are of great excellence. His book on 'Microscopy,' [first edition offered here] the third edition of which was published last year, is a general treatise on the construction, optics, and use of the microscope. To the Royal Microscopical Society Mr. Spitta contributed in 1911 a note on Winkel lenses and oculars and a report on the value of some Gray son's rulings, the latter entailing a considerable amount of work, and in 1913 he reported on a collection of lenses and other optical apparatus made by Joseph Jackson Lister, the father of Lord Lister, and presented to the Royal Microscopical Society on the death of the latter." Gilbert Hartley writes about his favorite books in microscopy, one of which was Spitta: "My second book was Spitta, combining the proper handling of the substage and the mechanical evolution of the instrument from the long-bodied English stand to the short Continental type. The photomicrographs guarantee the integrity of the work, and form a test for the rest of us, who can now use flash instead of exposures measured sometimes in hours, and tungsten-halogen instead of the limes and bottled gases alarmingly described in his work on photomicrography. Spitta may be recognised as the microscopist's Bible: time has added techniques, but the foundation is bedrock" (Gilbert Hartley, "A Dozen Favourite Books on Microscopy", Quekett Journal of Microscopy, Vol. 40, 2005, pp. 39 40; this brief and entertaining article can be read online for free).
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