SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 35 



color is a property of light, or innate in light itself. 

 We speak of a thing as red because it reflects red, 

 and absorbs all the other colors. The green leaf 

 stops or absorbs the red, blue, and violet rays of 

 the white light, and reflects and transmits only 

 those which compose its green. 



He also found that the red rays are refracted or 

 turned out of their course least of all the colors, 

 and violet most, thereby discovering the different 

 refrangibility of the rays of light; "a discovery 

 which has had the most extensive applications to 

 every branch of science, and, what is very rare in 

 the history of inventions, one to which no other 

 person has made the slightest claim." 



His beautiful experiments with rings resulted in 

 his Scale of Colors, of great value in optical re-^, 

 search. 



In 1668, when Newton was twenty-six, he con. 

 structed a small reflecting telescope, and soon a 

 larger one, which he sent to the Eoyal Society ; and 

 was made a member of that body in 1671. Two 

 years previously he had been appointed to the Luca- 

 sian professorship of mathematics at Cambridge. 



He Avas now, at twenty-seven, spoken of as a 

 man of "unparalleled genius." He had discovered 

 the compound nature of white light, the attraction 

 of gravity, fluxions, and made the first reflecting 

 telescope ever directed toward the heavens, though 

 one had been invented previously, by James 

 Gregory, of Aberdeen. The boy who had thought 

 of a mouse to turn his windmill had thought out 



