SCIENCE AND WHISKEY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 10, 5 July 1873, Page 12

SCIENCE AND WHISKEY.

A most remarkable and not a little droll experiment — droll because of some of the elements employed in the process — is recorded in the Transactions of the British Association at its meeting at Bradford. The subject was that of mirage. The authoi of the paper, Professor Everett, exhibited a sketch showing a beautiful effect of an arti6cial mirage which he had obtained by an arrangement of three liquids. This liquid gave three images, the middle image being inverted. It is described thus :—": — " The lowest liquid was a saturated solution of alum, the Vighest water, and the intermediate liquid (winch formed a stratum only a quarter of an inch thick) was Scotch whisky about half taturated with sugar.' It" — the saturated whisky, continues the report — " is intermediate in specific gravity between the other two, but has a higher index of refraction than either." It produced an "inverted image." In plain English, the whisky medium — Btrong toddy— placed the image upside down, topsy-turvy. That "Scotch ■wlußky half saturated with sugar" — hot water not mentioned — should produce a mirage, that mirnge being inverted, and should help to produce three images is perhaps new, but it is not wonderful. Double sight, history tells us. has frequently been produced hv.n the ja 'ioious manipulation of similar chemical combinations and their proper or improper disposal ; the stratum of the last-meutioued lquid being generally rather more than a quarter of an inch thick. There are also nmny instances on record of the inversion of images produced by the effects of the same materials on those who use them, such inversion even going so far as to apply not only to the images seen, but also very practically to those who behold them, producing in the latter a change from the line of the perpendicular to an exact line with the plane of the horizon. The who'e thing is very curious, and the discovery of the applicability of the liquid, so saturated, for the production of such images is a step in the march of scientific investigation. To alter one word in Burns,' line — Science and whusky gang thegither ; — Tak' aff yer dram.