XII. Further improvements in studying the optical characters of Minerals

Extract

In the following short paper I propose to describe what I have lately done in improving the method of studying the optical characters of the minerals which I treated at greater length in my address last year at annual meeting at Plymouth.

It is a curious example of how a method may be invented, and then lost sight of, that the determination of the index of refraction in the way there described was proposed by a French savant upwards of a hundred years ago. I have not yet consulted the original publication, but I very strongly suspect that the proposal was more theoretical than practical, and that with the instruments then at disposal the results were found to be so inexact that the whole system became obsolete and practically forgotten.