ture, that they may as little
Looking-glasses each of them Reflect the Beams it receives, (or the little
Picture of the Sun made on it) without otherwise considerably Altering
them; whereas in most other Colours, they are wont to be much Chang'd, by
being also Refracted, or by being Return'd to the Eye, mixt with Shades or
otherwise. And next, that its Superficial parts be so Situated, that they
Retain not the Incident Rays of Light by Reflecting them Inwards, but Send
them almost all Back, so that the Outermost Corpuscles of a White Body,
having their Various Little Surfaces of a Specular Nature, a Man can from
no place Behold the Body, but that there will be among those Innumerable
_Superficieculae_, that Look some one way, and some another, enough of them
Obverted to his Eye, to afford like a broken Looking-glass, a confused
Idaea, or Representation of Light, and make such an Impression on the Organ,
as that for which Men are wont to call a Body White. But this Notion will
perhaps be best Explan'd by the same Experiments and Observations, on which
it is Built, And therefore I shall now advance to _Them_.

4. And in the first place I consider, that the Sun and other Powerfully
Lucid Bodies, are not only wont to Offend, which we call to Dazle our Eyes,
but that if any Colour be to be Ascrib'd to them as they are Lucid, it
seems it should be Whiteness: For the Sun at Noon-day, and in Clear
weather, and when his Face is less Troubled, and as it were Stained by the
Steams of Sublunary Bodies, and when his Beams have much less of the
Atmosphere to Traject in their Passage to our Eyes, appears of a Colour
more approaching to White, than when nearer the Horizon, the Interposition
of certain Sorts of Fumes and Vapours make him oftentimes appear either
Red, or at least more Yellow. And when the Sun Shines upon that Natural
Looking-glass, a Smooth water, that part of it, which appears to this or
that particular Beholder, the most Shin'd on, does to his Eye seem far
Whiter than the rest. And here I shall add, that I have sometimes had the
Opportunity to observe a thing, that may make to my present purpose,
namely, that when the Sun was Veil'd over as it were, with a Thin White
Cloud, and yet was too Bright to be Look'd upon Directly without Dazling,
by casting my Eyes upon a Smooth water, as we sometimes do to observe
Eclipses without prejudice to our Eyes, the Sun then not far from the
Meridian, appear'd to me not Red, but so Whi