POLARIZED LIGHT FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES. 245
which the results depended, though small, seemed to be beyond mere errors of pointing. Being impressed however with a strong conviction that the result depended in some way on the mode of observation, I was led to scrutinize the different steps of the process, and it occurred to me that the apparent inequality of eccentricities was probably due to defects of annealing in the rhomb. It is next to impossible to procure a piece of glass of such a size free from defects of that nature, for which reason I believe that even a good Fresnel's rhomb is not to be trusted for minute quantities, except. in the case of merely differential observations.
The same views lead to the conclusion that the two pencils transmitted through magnetized glass in a direction oblique to the lines of magnetic force are oppositely polarized. Some theoretical investigations in which I was engaged some time ago led me to the result that these polarized streams are circularly polarized, as well as those transmitted along the line of magnetic force, and that the difference between the wave-velocities varies as the cosine of the inclination of the wave-normal to the line of magnetic force. I hope at some future time to bring these researches before the notice of this Society.
8. After these preliminary investigations respecting the nature of opposite polarization, which indeed contain, it is probable, but little that has not already occurred to persons who have studied the subject, it is time to come to the more immediate object of this paper, which relates to the combination of independent streams. But first it will be convenient to state explicitly a principle which is generally recognized.
When any number of polarized streams from different sources mix together, after having been variously modified by reflexion, refraction, transmission through doubly refracting media, tourmalines, &c., the intensity of the mixture is equal to the sum of the intensities due to the separate streams.
The reason of this law may be easily seen. The components whereby the disturbance due to any one stream is originally expressed have to be resolved, their components resolved again, and so on • and of these partial disturbances the phases of vibration have to be altered by quantities independent of the time, and the