ACTION OF SUNLIGHT ON GLASS. 67 



sphere does his best to alter it, by insisting on the improvement of 

 secondary schools. 



Tour present responsibility is of another, though not less serious, 

 kind. Institutions do not make men, any more than organization 

 makes life; and even the ideal university we have been dreaming 

 about will be but a superior piece of mechanism, unless each student 

 strive after the ideal of the scholar. And that ideal, it seems to me, 

 has never been better embodied than by the great poet, who, though 

 lapped in luxury, the favorite of a court, and the idol of his country- 

 men, remained, through all the length of his honored years, a scholar 

 in art, in science, and in life : 



" Wouldst shape a noble life ? Then cast 

 No backward glances toward the past: 

 And though somewhat be lost and gone, 

 Yet do thou act as one new-born. 

 "What each day needs, that shalt thou ask ; 

 Each day will set its proper task. 

 Give others' work just share of praise ; 

 Not of thine own the merits raise. 

 Beware no fellow-man thou hate : 

 And so in God's hands leave thy fate." 

 — Contemporary Heview. 



ACTION OF SUNLIGHT O^ GLASS. 



By E. S. DEOXE. 



IK a quiet street at the "West End" of Boston, there stands a 

 house, the window-sills and roof of which, for more than ten 

 years, have been covered with hundreds of pieces of glass, exposed to 

 the full force of the sun's rays during the whole or greater portion of 

 every day, only being protected by covers in the event of snow- 

 storms. The results of these experiments, instituted to show a change 

 produced in the color of glass by the actinic rays of the sun, have 

 been discussed in this country and in Europe, but as yet the cause of 

 this remarkable phenomenon has not been fully explained. 



As early as 1825, Prof. Faraday noticed a change of color in glass 

 containing oxide of manganese, due to the action of solar light, and 

 it was thoucjht that advantasre might in some cases be taken of this 

 action for the removal of color in glass. Prof. Faraday found that 

 glass of a pale color, or even colorless at first, became pink by long 

 exposure to solar rays, while portions of the same glass, not so ex- 

 posed, were apparently unaltered. This effect he attributed to the 

 solar light acting upon the manganese. In 1839 Splittgerber recorded 

 the following interesting fact in Poggendorf 's Amiale)i, published in 



