Note 28 — CHAP. II. OF VISION; OF THE OPTICAL EFFECT OF MICROSCOPES, AND OF THE MANNER OF ESTIMATING THEIR MAGNIFYING POWERS.
Reading edition
How many useful and ingenious discoveries have arisen from accidental circumstances? To adduce one recent instance only—Aerostation, a science, which after having baffled the skill and ingenuity of philosophers for a series of years, and by many illiterate persons deemed an idea bordering on absurdity, has been of late discovered, and successfully applied to practice. Edit.