Year: 1870

WE are permitted to publish the 10llOW-
| ing interesting extract from the paper
read few evenings ago by Richard Will
liams, Esq before the Buffalo Society of
Natural Sciences:


A friend recently handed me file of
English papers containing partial report
of lecture or lectures recently delivered
before the Royal Institute by Professor
| Tyndall, and announcing what seemed to
me ali important discovery. No account
of these lectures having as yet appeared
in our own papers or journals, L have
thought slight abstract from them, with
a few observations of my own, might be
interesting and instructive.


The discovery announced by Prof. Tyn-
dali is, that paradoxical as it may seem,
Eight itself is a perfectly invisible thing. P"
1t seems that Tyndall, in his experiments
on the decomposition of vapors by light.
was much troubled by the dancing NOTES
or dust which we have all seen occasion
ally when small body of light is let into
| a partially darkened room. These NOTES
he found were both organic and morgan
| ic; he was much troubled in his endeav-
| ors to get rid of them, and after trying to
do so unsuccessfully, by passing the air
through caustic potash and sulphuric acid,
he finally succeeded in making the air
perfectly pure by burning them out. He
then showed by various experiments that
| light would not pass through perfectly
pure air, and proved cOnclusively that the
thing we call light is absolutely without
| witness of itself except it has something
to strike upon to reflect or fill with the
| mysterious and subtle life of illumination.
| One of the methods by which he proved
this was a flower shade with hydrogen
gas, or glass tube with common air free
| from those notes. On passing rays OF
| light through these vessels, or intercept
| ing the rays, they became perfectly dark
in the vessel and light again upon emerg-
| ing from the other side. Another way OF
showing it was to cover his mouth and
nostrils with thick batting of cotton
wool. The notes were caught in the
lungs and cotton, and the exhaled breath
instantly abolished the light in its path
Verify, the Bible and science are not at
war here, for we are told that "The light
shineth in darkness and the darkness
comprehended it not tan exact descrip-
tion of this physical phenomenon.


One would naturally infer from the
multitude of stars we see in the heavens
every one Of which is sun like our own
that the universe would be filled with
light but il is not so, and it is certain
that the orbs of heaven, guided by Hand
that needs no light, wheel in their ap
pointed paths amidst the most profound
and inconceivable darkness. This discOv
cry of Tyndall may explain the mystery
of the darkness of the great stellar spaces
which the astronomers have heretofore
been unable to account for. In reading
the history of scientific truths, one is con
stantly surprised at the important parts
mere chance has played in their advance
ment. The means of measuring the in
conceivable velocity of light, a problem
which Newton was unable to solve, were
discovered by accident, and often, il
searching after trifles we stumble upOI
facts of the greatest value. This discovery
OfTyndall's Isl striking illustration ofthii
truth, and of that constant revolution o
knowledge from knowledge ever going on
it is full of significance, opening, as i
does, vast field for inquiry and maybe
of the greatest practical value to man
kind Tyndall also showed that iron
when heated only to the temperature o
boiling water, partially burnt up these
notes. A French chemist recently an


nounced that one of the most poisOnou


of the gases emitted in the combustion o
coal went through red hot iron as easil.
as water does through sieve; we know
that in the best constructed furnace


there is always more or less leakage O
gas which is imperceptible to the senses
and that, notwithstanding every one re
cognises the fact that Easements are no
healthy places To live and sleep in, w,
take air from its lowest strata on tn


earth's surface, and from cellar
to warm our houses. These fact
may go far toward explaining tn


alleged unhealthiness of hot air furnaces


The air filed with these notes we ar
constantly passing through our lungs
One of the scientific men of Europe, year
ago, asserted that when n decoction G
meat was shut off from common air, an,
only exposed tQ that which had beel
rais, d to high temperature, putrefaotio


never sets in-.hus showing that some
thing more than oxygen of the air wa