NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 161 



color, size, and arrangement of which would in every case be differ- 

 ent, the phenomena obtained being infinitely variable. Another im- 

 provement would be made if the colored discs were bent upwards, 

 and, when in motion, looked at across or horizontally, the eyes being 

 at their level, the blackened disc being removed, in which cases the 

 colored bands are arranged in vertical rows." 



MICROSCOPIC WRITING. 



At the London International Exhibition, 1862, a machine for the 

 execution of microscopic writing was exhibited by a Mr. Peters, 

 which has enabled the Lord's Prayer to be written in the 356,000th 

 of a square inch a space like a minute dot. The English Bible 

 contains 3,566,480 letters; the Lord's Prayer, ending with "deliver 

 us from evil," 223 letters; so that the Bible is 15,992 times longer 

 than the prayer, and if we employ round numbers we may say it 

 could be written in 16,000 tunes the space occupied by the prayer, 

 or in less than the twenty-second part of a square inch. In other 

 words, the whole Bible might be written twenty-two times in one 

 square inch ! This wonderfully minute writing is clearly legible when 

 placed under a good microscope. In using the machine the operator 

 writes with a pencil attached to one end of a long lever ; whatever 

 marks he makes on a piece of paper are infinitesimally reduced in 

 corresponding motions, by which a glass plate is moved over a minute 

 diamond point. By means of a geometric chuck, beautiful geometric 

 designs may be engraved on a similar scale of minuteness. 



The true value of the instrument, however, is shown in its applica- 

 tion to the purposes of microscopic science ; it is capable of produc- 

 ing Nobert's microscopic tests in bands of lines numbering 100,000 

 to the inch, and micrometers with divisions rising to the one 4000th 

 of an inch, which, when crossed, produce perfectly distinct and sharp 

 angled squares, each one sixteen millionth of an inch in size 

 (4000 X 4000 = 16,000,000). 



NEW VIEWS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF LIGHT. 



Mr. C. E. Townsend, of Locust Valley, N. Y., has propounded the 

 following theory respecting the origin and development of solar light 

 and heat. He says : 



Matter in space is reduced to a minimum, so that solar light and 

 heat can exert no appreciable effect, either by absorption or radia- 

 tion ; hence solar light and heat can only be developed into such on 

 reaching the atmosphere or body of a planet, and therefore all lights 

 seen in the heavens, whether from the sun, moon, planets, stars, 

 nebulas, comets, or erratic bodies, as meteors, are developed only as 

 light on reaching our atmosphere. In consequence, we look in vain 

 through space for light darting off to other planets from the sun, or 

 from one to the other. On the supposition that light and heat are 

 convertible into electricity, the Leyclen jar, charged with electricity, 

 is analogous to the sun, also so charged, and not until a conducting 

 body is brought within the required distance of the former (toes the 

 electricity develop itself, in the form of light and heat, upon or near 

 the conducting bodv. 



14* 



