Page:The wonders of optics (1869).djvu/65

 to be doubled; if we look at the object, it is the finger that undergoes duplication.

We know by experience that when we look at an object and press one of the eyeballs slightly with the finger, the image of it becomes doubled. The explanation of this phenomenon is not very easy, but it is generally supposed that in the case of ordinary vision the two eyes produce the sensation of a single image in consequence of the two impressions being formed at corresponding parts of each retina, and that habit causes us to see only a single object in such a case. But when the eyes are so disposed as to be capable of seeing distant objects distinctly, the two images formed by a near object are no longer found in the corresponding portions of each retina, and so produce the sensation of double vision. The same thing happens when either of the eyes is momentarily displaced.

These phenomena have given rise to the construction of a very simple instrument, the phantascope, with which many interesting experiments may be performed, and which was invented some years since by Dr. Lake, an eminent physician of New York.

In the middle of one of the edges of a thin piece of wood, say six inches or a foot in length, which serves as a base for the instrument, is fixed a rod fourteen or sixteen inches long, upon which slide a couple of ferules capable of being fixed at any height by means of thumb-screws. Each of these ferules holds a piece of cardboard five or six inches long, and of any convenient breadth, in a horizontal position. The upper card is pierced in a longitudinal direction with a slit rather less than a quarter of an inch broad, and about three inches long; that is to say, a little wider than the distance between the centres of two eyes. The second card has a similar slit of the same length, and corresponding vertically with the one above it; the width, however, in