Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/348

334 Result: When placed in the path of the beam, the spectrum disappeared, with the exception of the blue and violet end. To the eye the spectrum was thus reduced to a single broad band of blue-violet light. To the ear, however, the spectrum revealed itself as two bands of sound, with a broad space of silence between. The invisible rays transmitted constituted a narrow band just outside the red.

I think I have said enough to convince you of the value of this new method of examination, but I do not wish you to understand that we look upon our results as by any means complete. It is (often more interesting to observe the first totterings of a child than to watch the firm tread of a full-grown man, and I feel that our first footsteps in this new field of science may have more of interest to you than the fuller results of mature research. This must be my excuse for having dwelt so long upon the details of incomplete experiments.

I recognize the fact that the spectrophone must ever remain a mere adjunct to the spectroscope, but I anticipate that it has a wide and independent field of usefulness in the investigation of absorption spectra in the ultra-red.

 

HE vital processes of man, like those of all his fellow-creatures, are partly controlled by automatic tendencies. Some functions of our internal economy are too important to be trusted to the caprices of human volition; breathing, eating, drinking, and even love, are only semi-voluntary actions; and during a period varying from one fourth to two fifths of each solar day the conscious activity of the senses undergoes a complete suspense: the cerebral workshop is closed for repairs, and the abused or exhausted body commits its organism into the healing hands of Nature. Under favorable conditions eight hours of undisturbed sleep would almost suffice to counteract the physiological mischief of the sixteen waking hours. During sleep the organ of consciousness is at rest, and the energies of the system seem to be concentrated on the function of nutrition and the renewal of the vital energy in general; sleep promotes digestion, repairs the waste of the muscular tissue, favors the process of cutaneous excretion, and renews the vigor of the mental faculties.

The amount of sleep required by man is generally proportionate to the waste of vital strength, whether by muscular exertion, mental 