RECORDS 



GENERAL SCIENCE. 



Article I. 



Memoir of Dr. Thomas Young. By M. Arago. 



{Continued from page 251.) 



The finest discovery of Dr. Young, and one which will im- 

 mortalize his name, was suggested by a very trifling object — 

 soap-bubbles — so brightly coloured, and so light, that they 

 had scarce escaped from tbe pipe of the scholar, when they 

 became the sport of the most imperceptible currents of air. 

 I have, then, been enabled to trace up to the play of a 

 child the discovery which I am about to analyze, with the 

 conviction that it would not suffer from such an origin. In 

 every case, it is not necessary to recal the recollection 

 either of the apple, which, on being detached from the 

 branch, and falling accidentally at the feet of Newton, sug- 

 gested the ideas in this great man of the simple laws which 

 regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies ; or, of the 

 frog and bistouri to which natural philosophy owes the 

 remarkable pile of Volta. Without mentioning, in fact, 

 the name of soap-bubbles, I would suppose that a natural 

 philosopher has chosen for the subject of his experiments 

 distilled water, that is to say, a liquid whose transparency 

 has become proverbial, and which, in its state of purity, 

 exhibits some shades of blue and green scarcely sensible, 

 unless through a great thickness. I should ask then, what 

 would one think of the veracity of a person, who, without 

 any other explanation, announced, that to this limpid water 



VOL. III. Y 



