Curiosities of Science, Past and Present; A Book for Old and Young (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: he intently watches floating about till they burst. He is doubtless," she added, " now at his favourite amusement, for it is a fine day; do come and look at him." The gentleman smiled, and they went upstairs; when, after looking through the staircase-window into the adjoining court-yard, he turned and said: " My dear madam, the person whom you suppose to be a poor lunatic is no other than the great Sir Isaao Newton studying the refraction of light upon thin plates; a phenomenon which is beautifully exhibited on the surface of a common soap-bubble." LIGHT FBOM QUABTZ. Among natural phenomena (says Sir David Brewster) illustrative of the colours of thin plates, we find none more remarkable than one exhibited by the fracture of a large crystal of quartz of a smoky colour, and about two and a quarter inches in diameter. The surface of fracture, in place of being a face or cleavage, or irregularly conchoidal, as we have sometimes seen it, was filamentous, like a surface of velvet, and consisted of short fibres, so small as to be incapable of reflecting light. Their size could not have been greater than the third of the millionth part of an inch, or one-fourth of the thinnest part of the soap-bubble when it exhibits the black spot where it bursts. CAN THE CAT SEE IN THE DARK ? No, in all probability, says the reader; but the opposite popular belief is supported by eminent naturalists. Buffon says: " The eyes of the eat shine in the dark somewhat like diamonds, which throw out during the night the light with which they were in a manner impregnated during the day." Valmont de Bamare says: " The pupil of the cat is during the night still deeply imbued with the light of the day;" and again, " the eyes of the cat are during the night so imbued with light that they then ap...