LITTLE leagues, when we find by a record in his journal that 

 JOURNEYS antique groan because there "were only twenty-four 



hours in a day, and that eight were required for sleep 

 and eight more for recreation ! 



A subject a little nearer home than planetary attraction 

 had now switched him off from measuring and weigh- 

 ing the stars. He was hard at work in his mother's 

 little sitting-room, with the windows darkened, much 

 to that good woman's perplexity. 



By shutting out all light from the windows and allow- 

 ing the sun's rays to enter by a single little circular 

 aperture, he had gotten the sunlight captured and tamed 

 where he could study it. This ray of light he exam- 

 ined by a small hand-glass that he himself had made. 

 In looking at the ray, quite accidentally, he found it 

 could be deflected and sent off at will in various direc- 

 tions. When thrown on the wall, instead of being sim- 

 ply white light it had seven distinct colors beginning 

 with violet & running down to red. So white light was 

 not a single element, it was made up of various rays 

 which had to be united in order to give us sunlight. 

 Q Eureka ! He had found the secret of the rainbow 

 the sun's rays broken up and separated by the refract- 

 ing agency of clouds ! 



Well does Darwin declare that the separation of sun- 

 light into its component parts, and the invention of the 

 spectrum, mark an advance in man's achievement such 

 as the world had not seen since the time of Archimedes. 



