Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/310



were not incongruous to begin the History with a Retrospect into the very nature of Light it self (as to inquire whether the same be a Motion or else a Body;) nor to premise some Theorems about the Sun, Flame, Glow-worms, the Eyes of some Animals, shining Woods, Scales of some Fishes, the dashing of the Sea, strokes upon the Eyes, the Bolonian Slate (called by some the Magnet of Light) and of other light and lucid Bodies.

'It were also not improper to consider the very essentials of Colour and Transparencies (as that the most transparent Bodies, if shaped into many angles, present the Eye with very many colours;) That bodies having but one single superficies, have none at all, but are suscipient of every colour laid