ABSTRACT WHEN Henry Clifton Sorby laid the foundation of the science of microscopical petrology, in the year 1851, the instrumental means at his command were of the simplest kind; his

microscope had attached to it two Nicol-prisms, one above the eye-piece and the other below the stage, the latter being capable of rotation, thus rendering it possible to study the sections

of minerals in rocks by plane polarised light. Then, as is so often the case, necessity became “the mother of invention”, and Sorby himself, as well as several of his followers, devised

additions to their microscopes which converted them into more useful instruments for investigating the optical properties of minerals, as seen in thin sections of rocks. The designers of

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Petrographical Microscope_ . _Nature_ 94, 314–315 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094314a0 Download citation * Issue Date: 19 November 1914 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094314a0 SHARE THIS

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