difficulty in accounting for them. In former ages, when the knowledge of science was confined to a certain class the commonest optical facts of the present day were taken advantage of to delude the ignorant. The deceptions practised by the ancient priests of Egypt, Greece, and Rome were undoubtedly many of them of this description. It is a well known fact that both plane and concave metallic mirrors were used by the ancients, and a passage in Pliny gives an account of certain glass mirrors that were made at Sidon. Aulus Gellius, quoting Varro, speaks of the reflecting properties of hollow mirrors, and we shall see, as we go on, what a number of illusions may be practised by means of a series of plane mirrors arranged in a particular way. But we will first devote a short time to the curious historical facts connected with the principle of the magic lantern which took place long before the modern invention of this instrument by Father Kircher.
Brewster says, when treating of this subject, that there can be little doubt that the concave mirror was the principal instrument used in connexion with the pretended apparitions of the gods and goddesses in the ancient temples. In the meagre history of these apparitions that has come down to us, we can easily perceive the traces of an optical illusion. In the ancient temple of Hercules at Tyre, there existed a certain seat made of consecrated stone, out of which the gods rose, apparently at the will of the priests. Æsculapius appeared frequently to his worshippers in his temple in Tarsus, and the temple of Eugenium was famous for the number of gods and goddesses which were constantly visiting its sacred precincts. Iamblicus tells us that the priests showed the gods to the people in the midst of smoke; and when the great magician Marinus terrified his auditory by suddenly showing them the statue of Hercules in the midst of a cloud of
