Excerpt from The Theory of Optics There does not exist to-day in the English language a general advanced text upon Optics which embodies the important advances in both theory and experiment which have been made within the last decade. Preston's "Theory of Light" is, at present the only general text upon Optics in English. Satisfactory as this work is for the purposes of the general student, it approaches the subject from the historical standpoint and contains no fundamental development of some of the important theories which are fast becoming the basis of modern optics. Thus it touches but slightly upon the theory of optical instruments - a branch of optics which has received at the hands of Abbe and his followers a most extensive and beautiful development; it gives a most meagre presentation of the electromagnetic theory a theory - which has recently been brought into particular prominence by the work of Lorentz, Zeeman, and others; and it contains no discussion whatever of the application of the laws of thermodynamics to the study of radiation. The book by Heath, the last edition of which appeared in 1895, well supplies the lack in the field of Geometrical Optics, and Bassets "Treatise on Physical Optics"(1892) is a valuable and advanced presentation of many aspects of the wave theory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.