farther from, and others nearer to, the centre; and some being dark, and others luminous; while all of them are disunited. Let him now take a Telescopic Kaleidoscope, and direct it to the same object; he will instantly perceive the most perfect order arise out of confusion, and he will not scruple to acknowledge, that no two things in nature can be more different than the effects which are produced by these two combinations of mirrors. [Illustration: FIG. 55.] [Illustration: FIG. 56.] We come now to consider the claims of Mr. Bradley, Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge. In a work, entitled, _New Improvements in Planting and Gardening_, published in 1717, this author has drawn and described Kircher’s apparatus as an invention of his own; and, instead of having in any respect improved it, he has actually deteriorated it, in so far as he has made the breadth of the mirrors greater than their height. An exact copy of the mirrors used by Bradley is shown in Fig. 55, from which it will be at once seen, that it is precisely the same as Kircher’s, shown in Fig. 54. We are far from saying that Bradley stole the invention from Kircher, or that Kircher stole it from Baptista Porta, or that Baptista Porta stole it from the ancients. There is reason, on the contrary, to think that the apparatus had been entirely forgotten, in the long intervals which elapsed between these different authors, and there can be no doubt that each of them added some little improvement to the instrument of their predecessors. Baptista Porta saw the superiority of two mirrors, as a multiplying machine, to a greater number used by the ancients. Kircher showed the relation between the number of images and the inclination of the mirrors; and Bradley, though he rather injured the apparatus, yet he had the merit of noticing, that figures upon paper, which had a certain degree of irregularity, like those in Fig. 56, could still form a regular figure. In order that the reader may fully understand Bradley’s method of using the mirrors, we shall give it in his own words:— “We must choose two pieces of looking-glass (says he), of equal bigness, of the figure of a long square, _five_ inches in length, and _four_ in breadth; they must be covered on the back with paper or silk, to prevent rubbing off the silver, which would else be too apt to crack off by frequent use. This covering for the back of the glasses must be so put on, that nothing of it may appear about the edges on the bright side. “The glasses being thus prepared, they must be laid face to face, and hinged together, so that they may be made to open and shut at pleasure, like the leaves of a book; and now the glasses being thus fitted for our purpose, I shall proceed to _explain the use of them_.