should have been Circular.
They were terminated at the sides with streight Lines, but at the ends, the decay of Light was so gradual, that it was difficult to determine justly, what was their Figure; yet they seem'd Semicircular.
Comparing the length of this colour'd Spectrum with its breadth, I found it about five times greater; a disproportion so extravagant, that it excited me to a more than ordinary Curiosity of examining, from whence it might proceed. I could scarce think, that the various thickness of the Glass, or the termination with shadow or darkness, could have any Influence on Light to produce such an effect; yet I thought it not amiss, first to examine those Circumstances, and so try'd what would happen by transmitting Light through parts of the Glass of divers thicknesses, or through holes in the Window of divers bignesses, or by setting the Prism without, so that the Light might pass through it, and be refracted before it was terminated by the hole: But I found none of those Circumstances material. The fashion of the Colours was, in all these Cases, the same.
Then I suspected, whether by any unevenness in the Glass, or other contingent Irregularity, these Colours might be thus dilated. And to try this, I took another Prism like the former, and so plac'd it, that the Light passing through them both, might be refracted contrary ways, and so by the latter return'd into that Course, from which the former had diverted it. For, by this means, I thought the regular effects of the first Prism would be destroy'd by the second Prism, but the irregular ones more augmented by the multiplicity of Refractions. The Event was, that the Light, which by the first Prism
was diffused into an oblong Form, was, by the second, reduc'd into an orbicular one, with as much regularity, as when it did not at all pass through them. So that whatever was the cause of that length, 'twas not any contingent Irregularity.
I then