Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/413

398 It may be thought that the beating has conferred a uniform strained condition upon the gold, a difference in quality in one direction which annealing takes away; but when the gold is examined by polarized light, there is no evidence as yet of such a condition, for the green and the colourless gold present like results; and there is a little difficulty in admitting that such an irregular corrugated film as gold-leaf appears to be can possess any general compression in one direction only, especially when it is considered that it is beaten amongst tissues softer than itself, and made up with it into considerable masses. The greening effect of pressure occurs with the deposited particles of electric discharges, and here it appears either amongst the larger particles near the line of the discharge, or amongst the far finer ones at a considerable distance. Such results do not suggest a dependence upon either the size of the particles or their quantity, but rather upon the relative dimensions of the particles in the direction of the ray and transverse to that direction. One may imagine that spherical or other particles, which, being disposed in a plane, transmit ruby rays or violet rays, acquire the power, when they are flattened, of transmitting green rays, and such a thought sends the mind at once from the wave of light to the direction and extent of the vibrations of the ether. For it does not seem likely that pressure can produce its peculiar result by affecting the relation of the dimension of the particle to the length-dimension of a progressive undulation of light, the latter being so very much greater than the former; but the relation to the dimension of the direct or lateral vibration of the particles of the ether may be greatly affected, that being probably very small and much nearer to, if not even less than, the size of the particles of gold.

Silver-leaf, as usually obtained by beating, is so opake, as perfectly to exclude the light of the sun. When this is laid by water on plates of rock-crystal and heated in a muffle, it begins to change at a temperature lower than that required for gold, and becomes very translucent, losing at the same time its reflective power: it looks very like the film of chloride produced when a leaf of silver is placed in chlorine gas. When examined by a lens or an ordinary microscope, the leaf seems to be as continuous as in its original state; the finest hole, or the finest line drawn by a needle point, appears only to prove the