Light and Colour. 75 



UPON LIGHT AND COLOUR IN RELATION TO 

 VITAL FORCE. 



From the humble attempt to acquire a more wide-spread 

 and pliant order of force or forces, with their endless shades 

 of affinities and repellents, than gravity can give, all blend- 

 ing into one great and general result namely, the diurnal 

 and annual motion of a planet round the sun, which is so 

 adjusted that the light and dark, heat and cold, in their 

 successive orders minister to the well-being of Nature on its 

 surface we next come into collision with the most de- 

 lightful and beautiful of all subjects which can please the 

 eye or fascinate the imagination. That subject is light, 

 a subject interwoven with every shade and variety of 

 vital force, as manifested in animal or vegetable life in all 

 the shades and varieties of the never-ending series of colours, 

 and their blendings. 



Ethereal undulations and fine matter, or corpuscles, 

 divide the field of honour in the court of theory in this 

 field of enquiry. 



One who cannot call himself so much as an ama- 

 teur, and whose acquirements are so shallow, can scarcely 

 be permitted to express any opinion whatever in such 

 a matter. Therefore, leaving the subtle points of Biot, 

 Arago, Hunt, Herschel, Brewster, and the marvellous tracts 

 by Airy, etc., that which is here advanced is of the simplest 

 character imaginable, and has relation only to reflected and 

 not transmitted light. 



First, whether correctly or incorrectly, the construction 



