Micrographia - Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon by Robert Hooke
page 178 of 465 (38%)
page 178 of 465 (38%)
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Chancing to break a Flint stone in pieces, I found within it a certain
cavity all crusted over with a very pretty candied substance, some of the parts of which, upon changing the posture of the Stone, in respect of the _Incident_ light, exhibited a number of small, but very vivid reflections; and having made use of my _Microscope_, I could perceive the whole surface of that cavity to be all beset with a multitude of little _Crystaline_ or _Adamantine_ bodies, so curiously shap'd, that it afforded a not unpleasing object. Having considered those vivid _repercussions_ of light, I found them to be made partly from the plain external surface of these regularly figured bodies (which afforded the vivid reflexions) and partly to be made from within the somewhat _pellucid_ body, that is, from some surface of the body, opposite to that superficies of it which was next the eye. And because these bodies were so small, that I could not well come to make Experiments and Examinations of them, I provided me several small _stiriƦ_ of Crystals or Diamants, found in great quantities in _Cornwall_ and are therefore commonly called _Cornish Diamants_: these being very _pellucid_, and growing in a hollow cavity of a Rock (as I have been several times informed by those that have observ'd them) much after the same manner as these do in the Flint, and having besides their outward surface very regularly shap'd, retaining very near the same Figures with some of those I observ'd in the other, became a convenient help to me for the Examination of the proprieties of those kinds of bodies. And first for the Reflections, in these I found it very observable, That the brightest reflections of light proceeded from within the _pellucid_ body; that is, that the Rays admitted through the _pellucid_ substance in their getting out on the opposite side, were by the contiguous and strong |
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