"From these accounts, we may conclude that the mirrors of Archimedes and Buffon were not very different either in their construction or effects. No question, therefore, could remain of the latter having revived one of the most beautiful inventions of former times, were there not one circumstance which still renders the antiquity of it doubtful: the writers contemporary with Archimedes, or nearest his time, make no mention of these mirrors. Livy, who is so fond of the marvellous, and Polybius, whose accuracy so great an invention could scarcely have escaped, are altogether silent on the subject. Plutarch, who has collected so many particulars relative to Archimedes, speaks no more of it than the former two; and Galen, who lived in the second century, is the first writer by whom we find it mentioned. It is, however, difficult to conceive how the notion of such mirrors having ever existed could have occurred, if they never had been actually employed. The idea is greatly above the reach of those minds which are usually occupied in inventing falsehoods; and if the mirrors of Archimedes are a fiction, it must be granted that they are the fiction of a philosopher." Supposing that Archimedes really did project the concentrated rays of the sun on the Roman vessels, one cannot help pitying the ignorance of the Admiral Marcellus. Had this officer been acquainted with the laws of the reflection of light, he might have laughed to scorn the power of Archimedes, and by receiving the unfriendly rays on one of the bright brazen convex shields of his soldiers, Marcellus could have scattered the concentrated rays, and prevented the burning of his vessels. In these days of learning it therefore appears strange to find any one advocating the possible use of specula or reflecting mirrors for the purposes of offence or defence, but M. Peyrard a few years ago proposed [Page 293] to produce great effects by mounting each mirror in a distinct frame, carrying a telescope so that one person could direct the rays to the object intended to be set on fire, and he gravely calculated, presuming on the ignorance of the attacked, that with 590 glasses of about twenty inches in diameter, he could reduce a fleet to ashes at the distance of a quarter of a league! and with glasses of double that size at the distance of half a mile! What effect a shell or shot would produce upon this ancient weapon is not stated; this we may safely leave our readers to determine for themselves. The experiment of Archimedes has long been a favourite one with the boys. (Fig. 281.) [Illustration: Fig. 281. One of the "miseries of _reflection_."]