It must be quite obvious to any person who attends to Kircher’s description, that the idea never once occurred to him of producing beautiful and symmetrical forms by means of plane mirrors. His _sole object_ was to multiply a given regular form a certain number of times; and he never imagined that, when the mirrors were placed at the angles marked with an asterisk, there could be no symmetry in the figure, and no union of the two last reflected images, unless in the case where a regular object was placed, either by design or by accident, in a position symmetrically related to both the reflectors. In Kircher’s mirrors the eye was placed in front of them. The object therefore was much nearer the eye than the images, and the light of the different reflected images was not only extremely unequal, but the difference in their angular magnitude was such that they could not possibly be united into a symmetrical whole. From the accidental circumstance of his using _lines upon paper_ as an object, the distortion of the pictures arising from the erroneous position of the eye was prevented; but if the same combination of mirrors were applied to the object-plates of the Kaleidoscope, it would be found utterly incapable of producing any of the fine forms which are peculiar to that instrument. If it were necessary to prove that Kircher and his pupils were entirely ignorant of the positions of the eye and the object which are necessary to the production of a picture, symmetrical in all its parts, and uniformly illuminated, and that they went no farther than the mere multiplication of forms that were previously regular and symmetrical, we would refer the reader to Schottus’ _Magia Universalis Naturæ et Artis_, printed at Wurtzbourg in 1657, where he repeats, almost word for word, the description of Kircher, and adds the following curious observation:—“But it is not only the objects placed in the semicircle in the angle of the glasses that are seen and _multiplied_, but also those which are more distant; for example, a wall, with its windows, and in this case the multiplication produced by the mirrors will create an immense public place, adorned with edifices and palaces.” This passage shows, in the clearest manner, not only that the multiplication of an object, independent of the union of the multiplied objects into a symmetrical whole, was all that Kircher and his followers proposed to accomplish; but also that they were entirely unacquainted with the effects produced by varying the distance of the object from the mirrors. If any person should doubt the accuracy of this observation, we would request him to take Kircher’s two mirrors, to direct them to a “wall with its windows,” either by Kircher’s method, or even by any other way that he chooses, and to contemplate “the public place adorned with edifices and with palaces.” He will see heaps of windows and of walls, some of the heaps being much larger than others; and some being