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                                    (76
to the refractions; and that there was a possibility of refraction without any
divergency of the light at all.
Having, about the beginning of the year 1757, tried these experiments, I soon after set about grinding telescopic object glasses upon the new principles of refractions, which I had gathered from them; which object-glasses were compounded of two spherical glasses with water between them.  These glasses I had the satisfaction to find, as I had expected, free from the errors arising from the different refrangibility of light: for the refractions, by which the rays were brought to a focus, were every-where the differences between two contrary refractions, in the same manner, and in the same proportions, as in the experiment with the wedges.
However, the images formed at the focii of the object-glasses were still very far from being so distinct as might have been expected from the removal of so great a disturbance; and yet it was not very difficult to guess at the reason, when I considered, that the radii of the spherical surfaces of those glasses were required to be so short, in order to make the refractions in the required proportions, that they must produce aberrations, or errors, in the image, as great, or greater, than those from the different refrangibility of light.  And therefore, seeing no method of getting over that difficulty, I gave up all hopes of succeeding in that way.
And yet, as these experiments clearly proved, that different substances diverged the light very differently, in proportion to the refraction; I began to suspect, that such variety might possibly be found in different sorts of glass, especially as experience had already shewn, that some made much better object-glasses, in the usual way, than others: and as no satisfactory cause had as yet been assigned for such different, there was great reason to presume, that it might be owing to the different divergency of the light by their refractions.
  Wherefore, the next business to be undertaken, was to grind wedges of different kinds of glass, and apply them together, so that the refractions might be made in contrary directions, in order to discover, as in the foregoing experiments, whether the refraction and divergency of the colours would vanish together.  But a considerable time elapsed before I could set about that work; for tho' I was determined to try it at my leisure, for satisfying my own curiosity, yet I did not expect to meet with a difference sufficient to give room for any great improvement of telescopes; so that it was not till the latter end of the year that I undertook it, when my first trials convinced me, that this business really deserved my utmost attention and application.
I discovered a difference, far beyond my hopes, in the refractive qualities of different kinds of glass, with respect to their divergency of colours.  The yellow or straw-coloured foreign sort, commonly called Venice glass, and the English crown glass, are very near alike in that respect, tho' in general the crown glass seems to diverge the light rather the least of the two.  The common plate glass made in England diverges