The fourth,
seeing the fate of his comrades, took to flight. After this wholesale
execution, the dragoon, with perfect coolness, returned to the house,
finished his repast, tranquilly said his thanks and adieus, and went
off in the direction of Stirling. The next morning the country people
were summoned to bury the dead. The ground was thickly covered with
cranreuch, and life still remained in numbers of both armies, who
begged earnestly for water. But what struck my grandfather
particularly was, that the heads and bodies of a great many of the
slain royalists were horribly mutilated by the claymores of the
Highlanders; while on those of the Highlanders themselves nothing was
observed but the wound which had caused their death.--_Communicated by
Mr Alexander Wilson, shoemaker, Stirling._
THINNESS OF A SOAP-BUBBLE.
A soap-bubble as it floats in the light of the sun reflects to the eye
an endless variety of the most gorgeous tints of colour. Newton
shewed, that to each of these tints corresponds a certain thickness of
the substance forming the bubble; in fact, he shewed, in general, that
all transparent substances, when reduced to a certain degree of
tenuity, would reflect these colours. Near the highest point of the
bubble, just before it bursts, is always observed a spot which
reflects no colour and appears black. Newton shewed that the thickness
of the bubble at this black point was the 2,500,000th part of an inch!
Now, as the bubble at this point possesses the properties of water as
essentially as does the Atlantic Ocean, it follows that the ultimate
molecules forming water must have less dimensions than this
thickness.
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