Crossword-Solution: SPECULA 7 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

The study of the practical working of specula and lenses has also absorbed a good deal of my spare time during the last two years, and the work involved has been scarcely less difficult.

These were the specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper’s mirrors, in one of which Ostrog had shown him the coming of his rule.

The original improvers of telescopes would probably think, that as long as the size of the specula and the length of the tubes could be increased, the powers and advantages of the instrument would increase; but experience has since taught us, that the smallness of the field, the deficiency of light, and the circumstance of the atmosphere being magnified, prevent the beneficial results that were to be expected from telescopes of extraordinary size and power.

Hopkinson, I mentioned to him that the Abbe Rochon, who discovered the double refracting power in some of the natural crystals, had lately made a telescope with the metal called platina, which, while it is as susceptible of as perfect a polish as the metal heretofore used for the specula of telescopes, is insusceptible of rust, as gold and silver are.

William gave lessons to his private pupils, led his orchestra, played the organ and harpsichord, and managed to make ends meet, and would have gotten reasonably rich had he not invested his spare cash in lenses, brass tubes, eyepieces, specula and other such trifles, and stood most of the night out on the lawn peering at the sky.