Box containing six microscope slides mounted with specimens which are marked AST1029.30.

AST1029.30 comprises of six mounted microscopial specimens of different sizes, two have red sealing wax around their edges. One slide contains an insect, another has scratched on the glass 'crocodile tear, a third is labelled 'Pollen of Pine-tree flowers at Crowthorne nr Wellington College 13. 6' 04 (microscopics)'. Crowthorne is in Berkshire and is where Joseph Alfred Hardcastle lived from 1903.

These microscope slides come from a 15-drawer cabinet found in the Herschel family home in the 1950s. The contents of this and a similar cabinet seem to suggest that they were used by successive generations of the family to store specimens, material and apparatus for carrying out experiments.

These are quite likely to have belonged to Constance Lubbock (nee Herschel), the youngest of John F.W. Herschel's children who took her examinations for the Natural History Tripos in 1878 having gone up to Girton College, Cambridge in 1878. Letters between her and her brother Alexander about her taking over the family laboratory in September/ October 1878 are extant.