STARR, Alfred Adolphus, lecturer, born in New York city, 25 January, 1820. He was educated in private schools in New York and in Mendham, New Jersey, after which he entered mercantile life, which he abandoned in 1845, and began to deliver lectures, which he illustrated with a crude solar microscope made of pasteboard. Afterward he made an oxy-hydrogen microscope, and several years later he procured a fine apparatus. He has given more than 2,500 lectures and exhibitions before schools and colleges, and was also connected with Phineas T. Barnum. Using a microscope of enormous power, he projected living specimens on his screen, and, being a skilful manipulator, regulated their performances with dexterity, showing water-insects and animalcules feeding upon or fighting with each other. Fie was one of the first to procure a patent (1858) to light railroad-cars with gas.