Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/63

Rh To which of these two ideals I myself lean has perhaps already betrayed itself; and that being so, I shall venture to consider your presence here a proof that, for this evening at least, you side with me, and that you are willing to spend an hour of your leisure in an intellectual effort to see a little deeper into those phenomena which Nature in this place and at this season displays with such profusion and splendor.

But at the outset I must warn you that we are met by a difficulty, for the surmounting of which you must rely upon yourselves rather than upon me. It is this: the phenomena to which I propose to draw your attention, although taking place nearly every day, and all day long, and in almost every direction, are veiled from our eyes; and it is only by the use of special appliances to aid our eyes that they can be made visible. It will be my business to supply these appliances, and, reproducing on such scale as may be possible within these four walls the optical processes which are going on in the sea and sky outside, to exhibit the hidden phenomena of which I am speaking. But it must be your part to transport yourselves mentally from the mechanism of the lecture-room to the operations of Nature, and by a "scientific use of the imagination" (to adopt what has now become a household word at these meetings) to connect the one with the other.

Now the main point in question is this: that light, when subjected to the very ordinary processes of reflection from smooth surfaces, such as a window, a mahogany table, or the sea itself, or when scattered to us from the deep clear sky, undergoes in many cases some very peculiar changes, the character and causes of which we have come here to investigate. The principal appliance which will be used to detect the existence of such changes, as well as to examine their nature, consists of this piece of Iceland spar, called from the man who first constructed a compound block of the kind—a Nicol's prism, and this plate of quartz or rock crystal; both of which, as you will observe when the light passes through them, are clear, transparent, and colorless, and both of which transmit the direct light from the electric lamp with equal facility, however they may be turned round about the beam of light as an axis.

If, however, instead of allowing the beam to fall directly upon the Nicol, we first cause it to be reflected from this plate of glass, we shall find that the process of reflection has put the light into a new condition. The light is no longer indifferent to the rotation of the Nicol; in one position of the Nicol the light passes as before, but as the instrument is turned round the light gradually fades, and when it is turned through a right angle the light is extinguished. Beyond this position the light reappears, and the same changes of fading and revival are observed in the light for every right angle through which the instrument is turned.

But these phenomena are susceptible of a very beautiful