288 ON THE CHANGE OF REFRANGIBILITY OF LIGHT.
arose from nothing more than the different degrees of purity of .the spectra is now put past dispute, for my friend Mr Kingsley of Sidney Sussex College, to whom I recently showed some of the experiments mentioned in this paper, has kindly taken for me some photographs of spectra having nearly the same degree of extent and purity as those with which I worked, and these show the fixed lines just as they appeared in a solution of sulphate of quinine and in other media*.
24. The position of a point in the spectrum which does not coincide with one of the principal fixed lines, will be denoted by referring it to two of those lines, in a manner which will be most easily explained by an example. Thus ^GH> G^H, GH^ will be used to denote respectively a point situated at a distance below G
§ J | equal to half the interval from G to H, a point midway between
G and H, and a point situated at the same distance above H. In using this notation, the letters denoting fixed lines will be written in the order of refrangibility, and the fraction expressing the part of the interval between these lines, which must be conceived to be measured off in order to reach the point whose position it is required to express, will be written before, between, or after the letters, according as the measurement is to be taken from the first line in the negative direction, from the first line in the positive direction, or from the second line in the positive direction, the positive direction being that of increasing refrangibility.
25. From the experiments already described, it appears that the beam of dispersed light which was observed in the experiments of Sir David Brewster consisted of two very distinct portions, one arising merely from light reflected from motes, and the other having a far more remarkable origin. It will be convenient to have names for these two kinds of dispersion, and I shall accordingly call them respectively false internal dispersion and true internal dispersion, or simply false dispersion and true dispersion when the context sufficiently shows that internal dispersion is spoken of. When dispersion is mentioned without qualification, it is to be understood of true dispersion. Now that it appears that the mere reflexion of light from solid particles held in mechanical suspension has nothing to do with that remarkable
* See note A at the end.