with the ground on which they are seen, the unsteadiness of the eye in long attending to them will not produce coloured lines by the edges of the letters, which is the principal cause of their confusion.  The beauty of colours lying in vicinity to each other, whose spectra are thus reciprocally similar to each colour, is owing to this greater ease that the eye experiences in beholding them distinctly; and it is probable, in the organ of hearing, a similar circumstance may constitute the pleasure of melody.  Sir Isaac Newton observes, that gold and indigo were agreeable when viewed together; and thinks there may be some analogy between the sensations of light and sound. (Optics, Qu. 14.)

In viewing the spectra of bright objects, as of an area of red silk of half an inch diameter on white paper, it is easy to magnify it to tenfold its size:  for if, when the spectrum is formed, you still keep your eye fixed on the silk area, and remove it a few inches further from you, a green circle is seen round the red silk:  for the angle now subtended by the silk is less than it was when the spectrum was formed, but that of the spectrum continues the same, and our imagination places them at the same distance.  Thus when you view a spectrum on a sheet of white paper, if you approach the paper to the eye, you may diminish it to a point; and if the paper is made to recede from the eye, the spectrum will appear magnified in proportion to the distance.

[Illustration:  Fig. 5.]

I was surprised, and agreeably amused, with the following experiment.  I covered a paper about four inches square with yellow, and with a pen filled with a blue colour wrote upon the middle of it the word BANKS in capitals, as in Fig. 5, and sitting with my back to the sun, fixed my eyes for a minute exactly on the center of the letter N in the middle of the word; after closing my eyes, and shading them somewhat with my hand, the word was distinctly seen in the spectrum in yellow letters on a blue field; and then, on opening my eyes on a yellowish wall at twenty feet distance, the magnified name of BANKS appeared written on the wall in golden characters.

Conclusion.

It was observed by the learned M. Sauvage (Nosol.  Method.  Cl.  VIII.  Ord. i.) that the pulsations of the optic artery might be perceived by looking attentively on a white wall well illuminated.  A kind of net-work, darker than the other parts of the wall, appears and vanishes alternately with every pulsation.  This change of the colour of the wall he well ascribes to the compression of the retina by the diastole of the artery.  The various colours produced in the eye by the pressure of the finger, or by a stroke on it, as mentioned by Sir Isaac Newton, seem likewise to originate from the unequal pressure on various parts of the retina.  Now as Sir Isaac Newton has shewn, that all the different colours are reflected or transmitted by the laminae of soap bubbles, or of air, according to their different thickness