United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The invention of the Nicol prism was a great step in practical optics, and quite recently such prisms have been constructed of a size and purity which enable audiences like the present to witness the chromatic phenomena of polarized light to a degree altogether unattainable a short time ago. William Spottiswoode, and they were manufactured by Mr. Colours of Films of Selenite in Polarized Light.
"I wore on the index finger of my right hand a selenite stone set in a ring, and on my left a jacinth, which I never took off my finger, this stone being large and hexagonal in shape. I took the selenite from my finger and put it beneath my pillow, for I fancied it kept off sleep, wearing still the jacinth because it appeared to have the opposite effect.
The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her colour. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.
"Well," resumed Barbicane, "that astonishment is reserved to the Selenite who inhabits the opposite side of the moon to the earth, a side for ever invisible to our fellow-beings of the terrestrial globe." "And which we should have seen," added Nicholl, "if we had arrived here at the epoch when the moon is new that is to say, a fortnight later."
The magnified images of these plates, with their axes at right-angles to each other, are now before you. Introducing between them a film of selenite, you observe that by turning the film round it may be placed in a position where it has no power to abolish the darkness of the superposed portions of the tourmalines. Why is this?
As to the pickaxes and different tools which were Nicholl's especial choice; as to the sacks of different kinds of grain and shrubs which Michel Ardan hoped to transplant into Selenite ground, they were stowed away in the upper part of the projectile. There was a sort of granary there, loaded with things which the extravagant Frenchman had heaped up.
And so he attains his end. "Or, again, a Selenite appointed to be a minder of mooncalves is from his earliest years induced to think and live mooncalf, to find his pleasure in mooncalf lore, his exercise in their tending and pursuit.
We had no desire to enter upon our engagement as guide and hunters. We should be too willing to abandon the role, even before beginning it. The last rays of the setting sun were sparkling on the selenite of the Silver Mountains, as we approached the encampment of the Saints. We had got near enough to make out the dimensions of the caravan.
The Selenite who untied me used his mouth to help his hands. "They seem to be releasing us," said Cavor. "Remember we are on the moon! Make no sudden movements!" "Are you going to try that geometry?" "If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first." We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their arrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us.
"I will own that I am still by no means indurated to the peculiar effect of the Selenite appearance, and to find myself, as it were, adrift on this broad sea of excited entomology was by no means agreeable.
Word Of The Day