Owing to its physical properties, diethylene glycol distearate is especially suited for obtaining thin sections of high quality with little or no compression. Tissues can be cut as thin as 1 µm on a steel knife without cooling, but a water trough is essential. The wax is translucent, so that specimens can be oriented for a desired plane of sectioning. The wax is also of sufficient hardness to serve as an embedding medium for osmium-fixed material and can readily be removed from such tissue sections for rapid phase contrast studies. A general method is described for embedding and sectioning with diethylene glycol distearate wax and examples of freeze-substituted and osmium-fixed material are illustrated. It is concluded that this synthetic wax can offer a convenient and simple means for obtaining thin sections for most aspects of high resolution light microscopy.