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In his Theory of Light and Colours, presented to the Royal Society inNovember 1801, Thomas Young defended a mechanical explanation of the colouredfringes observed outside of the shadow of an opaque object-the so-called'colours by inflection'-that was based on the hypothesis of an ethereal densitygradient surrounding all material bodies. However, two years later, he publiclyrejected that hypothesis, without giving much detail on his reasons. Now,although Geoffrey Cantor demonstrated the crucial role of mechanical andastronomical arguments in explaining the withdrawal of this fundamentalhypothesis long ago, the purpose of this article is to draw deeper attention ona set of experiments performed by David Brewster on the inflection of light,described in a letter he addressed to the Royal Society in January 1802, butwhich kept retained in the hands of William Herschel and never reached itsoriginal destination. For the hypothesis that will be evaluated here is thatthese unpublished experiments of Brewster's were eventually known to Youngthrough the mediation of William Herschel, and eventually played a significantrole in his rejection of his own ether distribution hypothesis too.

David Brewster's and William Herschel's experiments on inflection that  delivered the coup de gr{\^a}ce to Thomas Young's ether distribution  hypothesis