viously, experimented in this direction with great patience and perseverance, and tried to prove that the stories related of Archimedes were true. "The larger the surface of a mirror," says this philosopher (who, like Huyghens, was a practised astronomer), "the more light it reflects from the objects opposite to it. If it is only a foot square, it will throw a square foot of light upon any wall or screen placed before it. Experiment shows that this light is composed of an infinite number of rays reflected from different points on the surface of the mirror. Direct the rays from a second mirror upon the same place as those from the first, and the light and heat will clearly be doubled. They will become trebled if you direct the rays from a third mirror upon the same spot, and so on ad infinitum. In order to prove that the intensity of the light and heat is in direct proportion to the number of reflecting surfaces employed, I took five mirrors, and found that on exposing them to the sun I obtained with only one, less heat and light than if I used direct sunlight. With two the light and heat increased considerably; three gave as much heat as an ordinary fire, and four gave me a still greater effect. I therefore concluded that by multiplying these plane mirrors, I not only obtained greater effects than those got by using parabolic, hyperbolic or elliptical mirrors, but that I could use them upon objects at a much greater distance. With five mirrors I could obtain these effects at a distance of 100 feet, but what terrible phenomena would have taken place had I used one thousand instead of five?" He ends by begging mathematicians to experiment in this direction with greater care than they had hitherto done.
After Kircher we may cite as an experimentalist with these terrible instruments the French philosopher Villette, who constructed several mirrors, in direct imitation of those of Archimedes, for Louis XIV. and other
