By means of a deeply coloured violet glass, we cut off almost the whole of the light of our electric beam; but this glass is peculiarly transparent to the violet and ultra-violet rays. The violet beam now crosses a large jar filled with water, into which I pour a solution of sulphate of quinine. Clouds, to all appearance opaque, instantly tumble downwards. Fragments of horse-chestnut bark thrown upon the water also send down beautiful cloud-like strife. But these are not clouds: there is nothing precipitated here: the observed action is an action of _molecules_, not of _particles_. The medium before you is not a turbid medium, for when you look through it at a luminous surface it is perfectly clear. If we paint upon a piece of paper a flower or a bouquet with the sulphate of quinine, and expose it to the full beam, scarcely anything is seen. But on interposing the violet glass, the design instantly flashes forth in strong contrast with the deep surrounding violet. President Morton has prepared for me a most beautiful example of such a design which, when placed in the violet light, exhibits a peculiarly brilliant fluorescence. From the experiments of Drs. Bence Jones and Dupré, it would seem that there is some substance in the human body resembling the sulphate of quinine, which causes all the tissues of the body to be more or less fluorescent. All animal infusions show this fluorescence. The crystalline lens of the eye exhibits the effect in a very striking manner. When, for example, I plunge my eye into this violet beam, I am conscious of a whitish-blue shimmer filling the space before me. This is caused by fluorescent light generated in the eye itself. Looked at from without, the crystalline lens at the same time is seen to gleam vividly. Long before its physical origin was understood this fluorescent light attracted attention. Boyle describes it with great fulness and exactness. 'We have sometimes,' he says, 'found in the shops of our druggists certain wood which is there called _Lignum Nephriticum,_ because the inhabitants of the country where it grows are wont to use the infusion of it, made in fair water, against the stone in the kidneys. This wood may afford us an experiment which, besides the singularity of it, may give no small assistance to an attentive considerer towards the detection of the nature of colours. Take _Lignum, Nephriticum_, and with a knife cut it into thin slices: put about a handful of these slices into two or three or four pounds of the purest spring water. Decant this impregnated water into a glass phial; and if you hold it directly between the light and your eye, you shall see it wholly tinted with an almost golden colour. But if you hold this phial from the light, so that your eye be placed betwixt the window and the phial, the liquid will appear of a deep and lovely ceruleous colour.'