That refraction may exhibit its effects without producing an appearance of colour, is not to be demonstrated so perfectly in objective as in subjective experiments. We have, it is true, unlimited spaces which we can look at through the prism, and thus convince ourselves that no colour appears where there is no boundary; but we have no unlimited source of light which we can cause to act through the prism. Our light comes to us from circumscribed bodies; and the sun, which chiefly produces our prismatic appearances, is itself only a small, circumscribed, luminous object.
We may, however, consider every larger opening through which the sun shines, every larger medium through which the sun-light is transmitted and made to deviate from its course, as so far unlimited that we can confine our attention to the centre of the surface without considering its boundaries.
If we place a large water-prism in the sun, a large bright space is refracted upwards by it on the plane intended to receive the image, and the middle of this illumined space will be colourless. The same effect may be produced if we make the experiment with glass prisms having angles of few degrees: the appearance may be produced even through glass prisms, whose refracting angle is sixty degrees, provided we place the recipient surface near enough.