In the year 1804 appeared what should be a very notable book in the history of our subject, written by Sir John Leslie, whose name survives perhaps in the minds of many students chiefly in connection with the "cube," which is still called after him. Leslie, however, ought to be remembered as a man of original genius, worthy to be mentioned with Herschel and Melloni; and his, too, is one of the books which the student may be recommended to read, at least in part, in the original; not so much for the writer's instructive experiments (which will be found in our text-books) as for his most instructive mistakes, which the text-book will probably not mention.
He began by introducing the use of the simple instrument which bears his name, and a new and more delicate heat-measure (the differential thermometer); and with these, and concave reflectors of glass and metal, he commenced experiments in radiant heat, than which, he tells us, no part of physical science then appeared so dark, so dubious, and so neglected. It is interesting, and it marks the degree of neglect he alludes to, that his first discovery was that different substances have different radiating and absorbing powers. It gives us a vivid idea of the density of previous ignorance, that it was left to the present century to demonstrate this elementary fact, and that Leslie, in view of such discoveries, says,"I was transported at the prospect of a new world emerging to view."
Next he shows that the radiating and absorbing powers are proportional, next that cold as well as heat seems to be radiated, and next undertakes to see whether this radiant heat has any affinity to light. He then experiments in the ability of radiant heat to pass through a transparent glass, which transmits light freely, and thinks he finds that none does pass. Radiant heat with him seems to mean heat from non-luminous sources; and the ability or non-ability of this to pass through glass is to Leslie and his successors a most crucial test, and its failure to do so a proof that this heat is not affiliated to light.
Let us pause a moment here to reflect that we are apt to unconsciously assume, while judging from our own present standpoint where past error is so plain, that the false conclusion can only be chosen by an able, earnest, conscientious seeker, after a sort of struggle. Not so. Such a man is found welcoming the false with rapture as very Truth herself. "What, then," says Leslie, "is this calorific and frigorific fluid after which we are inquiring? It is not light, it has no relation to ether, it bears no analogy to the fluids, real or imaginary, of magnetism and electricity. But why have recourse to invisible agents? Quod petis, hic est. It is merely the ambient AIR."
The capitals are Leslie's own, but ere we smile with superior
