Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1893 — MINUTE MARVELS. [ARTICLE]

MINUTE MARVELS.

Brief Mention of Some Microscopic Works of Art. Dr. Hevlin, in his “Life of King Charles,” records that during the reign of Queen Elizabeth “there was one who wrote the ten commandments, the creed, the Pater Noster, the queen’s name and the prayer of our Lord within the compass of a. penny, aud gave her majesty a pair of spectacles of such an artificial making that by the help thereof she did plainly discern every letter,” says the London Bookworm. A somewhat similar feat was that “rare pieoe of work brought to pass by Peter Bales, an Englishman, who also exhibited before her majesty the entire Bible written in a book containing as many leaves as a fullsized edition, but fitting into a walnut.” - In St. John’s College, Oxford, is preserved a portrait of Charles I. in which the engraver’s lines, 09 they seem to be, are really microscopic writing, the facealone containing all the book of Psalms, with the creeds and several forms of prayers. The learned Porson is kDown to haveindulged in this species of “curious idleness’’ occasionally, and perhaps theGreek verses from the Medea of Euripides, with Johnson’s translation of thesame, for “Burney’s History of Music,”' were executed by him. Though consisting of 226 words, they are comprised ina circle half an inch in diameter, with a. small space in the center left bank. About forty years ago a specimen o£ ; microscopic penmanship was exhibited in America. It consisted of the following inscription written upon glass in a> circle much smaller than the head of an ordinary pin (1-625 part of an inch in diameter): “Lowell and Scuter, watchmakers, 61 Exchange street, Portland. Written by Fermat at Paris, 1852.” At the Dusseldorf exhibition a few years ago a gentleman showed a postal card upon which the whole of the first three hooks of the Odyssey were written, the remaining space being filled with the transcript of a long debate which had taken place in the German parliament a short time before. The whole card contained 33,000 words. In tbe,spring of 1,882 a Hungarian sent to a Vienna paper a grain of wheat on which he had written 309 words taken from Sissot’s hook of Vienna.

Layard, in his “History of Nineveh,” mentions that the national records of the Assyrian empire were written on bricks in characters so minute as to be scarcely legible without the aid of a microscope, and that, in fact, a variety of this instrument was found among the excavations. So much for dainty penmanship. That minute mechanical construction can lay claim to considerable antiquity was evidenced by the work of Pliny and Adrian, who relate that Myrmicides constructed out of ivory a ship with all her appurtenances and a chariot with four wheels and four horses, both so small that a bee could hide either of them with its wings. A still more wonderful work is that of Mark Scaliot, a London locksmith, who, in 1570, manufactured a lock consisting of eleven different pieces of steel, iron and brass, which together with the key belonging to it, weighed only one grain. The same artist constructed a chain of gold containing forty-three links, which he fastened to the lock and key, and upon these being attached to the neck of a flea the insect was able to draw them with ease. Hadianus Junius saw at Mechlin, in Brabant, a cherry stone carved in the form of a basket, in which were fourteen pairs of dice, the spots on the latter visible to the naked eye. A cherry stone carved by the Italian sculptor, Rossi, and containing a glory of sixty saints, was shown at Florence for many years. A still more marvelous curiosity was a set of 1,600 ivory dishes, which were said to have been purchased by one Shad from the maker, Oswald Northingerns, and exhibited before Pope Paul VI. These dainty turnings, though perfect in every respect, were scarcely visible to the naked eye, and could be easily inclosed in a casket the size of a peppercorn. A Jesuit, Pather Ferrarius, made twentyfive wooden cannon capable of being packed away in the same space. In on the birthday of King George 111., a watchmaker of London named Arnold presented himself before the king to exhibit a curious repeating watch of his manufacture. This watch was in diameter somewhat less than a silver two-pence, contained 120 distinct parts and weighed altogether less than six pennyweight. Not very long ago a London newspaper announced that a jeweler of Turin had made a tugboat formed of a single pearl. The sail is of beaten gold studded with diamonds and the binnacle light at the prow is a perfect ruby. An emerald serves as its rudder and the stand on which it is mounted is a slab of whitest ivory. The entire weight of this marvelous specimen of the jeweler’s craft is less than half an ounce, but the maker values it at £I,OOO.