ON THE CHANGE OF EEFRANGIBILITY OF LIGHT.
327
97. The sensibility of fresh leaf-green could not be made out on a washed paper by this mode of observation, but the sensibility of the substance extracted by alcohol from black tea, from which the brown colouring matter had been removed by hot water, was plainly exhibited by the redness which it produced in the highly refrangible part of the spectrum.
98. Paper washed with a solution of guaiacum seemed an exception to the general rule ; but this is not to be wondered at, since a paper prepared in this manner is turned green when exposed to the light, and it is difficult to prevent some degree of discoloration. That the fluid state is not essential to the exhibition of the sensibility of this substance, was however plainly shown by the high degree of sensibility of the solid resin from which the solution was made. In this case the bands H were seen on a greenish ground. The dispersion of a fine blue light under the influence of rays of still higher refrangibility was hardly, or not at all, exhibited by the solid resin,
99. Shell-lac, common resin, glue, are all highly sensitive. The ground on which the fixed lines in the neighbourhood of H are seen is brown in the case of shell-lac, and greenish in the case of resin and glue. The sensibility of glue is evidently not due to gelatine, for isinglass is almost, if not quite, insensible. These are merely a few instances of sensibility: I shall defer further mention of the subject till I have described a better mode of observation. I will merely observe for the present, that several washed papers proved not greatly inferior to turmeric paper for showing the fixed lines about and beyond H.
Effect of refracting a Narrow Spectrum in a Vertical Plane.
100. In the arrangement last described, when a short slit is used, the spectrum received on the washed paper or other substance is of course narrow, so that the fixed lines formed on the paper are but short, and may roughly be regarded as mere points. If, now, the whole be viewed through a prism, so as to be refracted in a vertical plane, the effect is very striking. For facility of explanation suppose the red to be to the left, and the rays to be refracted upwards, so that to the observer the image