Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries ThereuponHooke, Robert
History
Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon
Hooke, Robert
Magnifying glasses -- Early works to 1800; Microscopy -- Early works to 1800; Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works
This I should further proceed to hope, had any one been so inquisitive as
to have found out the way of making any transparent body, either more dense
or more rare, for then it might be possible to compose a Globule that
should be more dense in the middle of it, then in any other part, and to
compose the whole bulk, so as that there should be a continual gradual
transition from one degree of density to another; such as should be found
requisite for the desired inflection of the _transmigrating_ Rays; but of
this enough at present, because I may say more of it when I set down my own
Trials concerning the melioration of _Dioptricks_, where I shall enumerate
with how many several substances I have made both _Microscopes_, and
_Telescopes_, and by what and how many, ways: Let such as have leisure and
opportunity farther consider it.
The next Quæry shall be, whether by the same collection of a more dense
body then the other, or at least, of the denser part of the other, there
might not be imagin’d a reason of the apparition of some new fix’d Stars,
as those in the Swan, _Cassiope’s Charr_, _Serpentarius_, _Piscis_,
_Cetus_, &c.
Thirdly, Whether it be possible to define the height of the _Atmosphere_
from this inflection of the Rays, or from the Quicksilver Experiment of the
rarifaction or extension of the Air.
Fourthly, Whether the disparity between the upper and under Air be not
sometimes so great, as to make a reflecting superficies; I have had several
Observations which seem to have proceeded from some such cause, but it
would be too long to relate and examine them. An Experiment, also somewhat
analogous to this, I have made with Salt-water and Fresh, which two
liquors, in most Positions, seem’d the same, and not to be separated by any
determinate superficies, which separating surface yet in some other
Positions did plainly appear.
And if so, Whether the reason of the equal bounding or _terminus_ of the
under parts of the clouds may not proceed from this cause; whether,
secondly, the Reason of the apparition of many Suns may not be found out,
by considering how the Rays of the Sun may so be reflected, as to describe
a pretty true Image of the body, as we find them from any regular
Superficies. Whether also this may not be found to cause the apparition of
some of those _Parelii_, of counterfeit Suns, which appear coloured, by
refracting the Rays so, as to make the body of the Sun appear in quite
another place then really it is. But of this more elsewhere.
5. Whether the _Phænomena_ of the Clouds may not be made out by this
diversity of density in the upper and under parts of the Air, by supposing
the Air above them to be much lighter then they themselves are, and they
themselves to be yet lighter then that which is subjacent to them, many of
them seeming to be the same substance with the Cobwebs that fly in the Air
after a Fog.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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