=Chromatic Aberration.=--We have yet to deal with one of the most important of the phenomena of light, CHROMATIC ABERRATION, upon the correction of which, in convex lenses in particular, the perfection of the objective of the microscope so much depends. Chromatism arises from the unequal refrangibility and length of the different coloured rays of light that together go to make up white light; but which, when treated of in optics, is always associated with _achromatism_, so that a combination of prisms, or lenses, is said to be _achromatic_ when the coloured rays arising from the dispersion of the pencil of light refracted through them are combined in due proportions as they are in perfectly white light.
A lens, however, of uniform material will not form a single white image, but a series of images of all colours of the spectrum, arranged at different distances, the violet being nearest, and the red the most remote, every other colour giving a blurred image; the superposition of these and the blending of the different elementary rays furnishing a complete explanation of the beautiful phenomenon of the rainbow. Sharpness of outline is rendered quite impossible in such a case, and this source of confusion is known as _chromatic aberration_.
In order to ascertain whether it is possible to remedy this evil by combining lenses of two different materials, Newton made some trials with a compound prism composed of glass and water (the latter containing a little sugar of lead), and he found it impossible by any arrangement of these two, or by other substances, to produce deviation of the transmitted light without separation into its component colours. If this ratio were the same for all substances, as Newton supposed, achromatism would be impossible; but, in fact, its value varies greatly, and is far greater for flint than for crown glass. If two prisms of these substances, of small refracting angles, be combined into one, with their edges turned in opposite directions, they will achromatise each other.
The chromatism of lenses may, however, be somewhat further reduced by stopping out the marginal rays, but as the most perfect correction possible is required when lenses are combined for microscopic uses, other means of correction are resorted to, as will be seen hereafter. I shall first proceed to show the deviations which rays of white light undergo in traversing a lens.