363 Dr. HerscheVs 'Reviewer reviewed. 



remarkable success, observed those new sets of coloured 

 rings whilst unijergoing a variety of surprising and intricate 

 changes, all of which he has leduced to order, and fullv 

 explained. From this store of facts, enliiely jiiew, he has 

 jnorcover established, beyond all contradiction, the four 

 general propositions, in pages 47 and 48 of his paper, con- 

 cerning the formation of the Newtonian rings themselves. 



This reviewer, however, makes very short work in de- 

 claring the whole of this research as good for nothing. For 

 in the 13th Number of The Retrospect, page 24, it is said, 

 *' Tiie principal novelty of those experiments appears to'be 

 the unnecessary complication that is introduced into them; 

 the rings, exhibited by a series of successive rejections, are 

 confessedly repetitions of those which Newton observed in a 

 simpler form : and from this complication Doctor Herschel 

 obtains only J'uinum ex Julgore." Indeed ! highly decorous 

 latinity to be sure, and given us, by way of boast, in an 

 appropriate character. 



We can scarcely conceive any thing more unreasonable, 

 or less worthy of a serious reply, than this most strange 

 objection to such a detail of instructive experiments as has 

 been just alluded to; and on the unmeaning grounxls that 

 the rings exhibited by a series of reflections are unneces- 

 sary complications, because repetitions of those which 

 Newton observed in a simpler form. For on that very ac- 

 count, of their being so seen by a series of reflections, much 

 knowledge has been derived concerning the nature of all the 

 rings. This has been most particularly and clearly shown 

 in the essay. 



Had this reviewer lived in the days of the celebrated 

 Hadley, the inventor of that noble instrument known all 

 over the world by his name, he surely, according to his 

 seeming capacity of judging of matters of this kind, would 

 have thought Hadley very idly employed in having to 

 do with the moon and stars by means of reflections, 

 when to be seen at a single glance in the reviewer's 

 simpler form : and yet it is well known that by the aid of 

 seeing these luminaries bv reflections a great object was ac- 

 complished, for the benefit of mankind, by the construc- 

 tion of the sea quadrant. Or let us ask the reviewer, what 

 is the case when viewing distant objects through a tele- 

 scope ? Here aUo we find that by having availed ourselves 

 of a little of that complication so decried by the reviewer, 

 and of images formed by reflections, we see much further, 

 and much better, than he could do by looking at the same 

 things in their simpler form as he calls it; that is, wilhoift 



the 



