Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/234

Rh violet rays there exist luminous rays affecting the eyes with a sensation, not of violet, or of any other of the recognised prismatic hues, but of a colour which may be called lavender-grey, and exerting a powerful deoxidating action.

6. Chemical properties of the red end of the spectrum. The rays occupying this part of the spectrum were found to exert an action of an opposite nature to that of the blue, violet, and lavender rays. When the red rays act on prepared paper in conjunction with the diffused light of the sky, the discolorating influence of the latter is suspended, and the paper remains white ; but if the paper has been already discoloured by ordinary light, the red rays change its actual colour to a bright red.

7. The combined action of rays of different degrees of refrangibility is next investigated; and the author inquires more particularly into the effects of the combined action of a red ray with any other single ray in the spectrum; whether any, and what differences exist between the joint, and the successive action of rays of any two different and definite refrangibilities ; and whether this action be capable, or not, of producing effects, which neither of them, acting alone, would be competent to produce. The result was that, although the previous action of the less refrangible rays does not appear to modify the subsequent effects produced by the more refrangible; yet the converse of this proposition does not obtain, and the simultaneous action of both produces photographic effects very different from those which either of them, acting separately, are capable of producing.

8. In the next section, the chemical action of the solar spectrum is traced much beyond the extreme red rays, and the red rays themselves are shown to exercise, under certain circumstances, a blackening or deoxidating power.

9 . The author then enters into a speculation suggested by some indications which seem to have been afforded of an absorptive action in the sun's atmosphere ; of a difference in the chemical agencies of those rays which issue from the central parts of his disc, and those which, emanating from its borders, have undergone the absorptive action of a much greater depth of his atmosphere; and consequently of the existence of an absorptive solar atmosphere extending beyond the luminous one.

10. An account is next given of the effect of the spectrum on certain vegetable colours, as determined by a series of experiments, which the author has commenced, but in which the unfavourable state of the weather has, as yet, prevented him from making much progress.

11. The whitening power of the several rays of the spectrum under the influence of hydriodic salts, on paper variously prepared and previously darkened by the action of solar light. The singular property belonging to the hydriodate of potash of rendering darkened photographic paper susceptible of being whitened by further exposure to light is here analysed, and shown to afford a series of new relations among the different parts of the spectrum, with respect to their chemical actions.