COTTAGES.--BY A. CAWSTON.]

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DELICATE SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS.

By EDGAR L. LARKIN, New Windsor Observatory, New Windsor, Illinois.


Within the past five years, scientific men have surpassed previous
efforts in close measurement and refined analysis. By means of
instruments of exceeding delicacy, processes in nature hitherto unknown,
are made palpable to sense. Heat is found in ice, light in seeming
darkness, and sound in apparent silence. It seems that physicists and
chemists have almost if not quite reached the ultimate atoms of matter.
The mechanism must be sensitive, as such properties of matter as heat,
light, electricity, magnetism, and actinism, are to be handled, caused
to vanish and reappear, analyzed and measured. With such instruments
nature is scrutinized, revealing new properties, strange motions,
vibrations, and undulations. Throughout the visible universe, the
faintest pulsations of atoms are detected, and countless millions of
infinitely small waves, bearing light, heat, and sound, are discovered
and their lengths determined. Refined spectroscopic analysis of light is
now made so that when any material burns, no matter what its distance,
its spectrum tells what substance is burning. When any luminous body
appears, it can be told whether it is approaching or receding, or
whether it shines by its own or reflected light; whence it is seen that