Refraction is a curving of the rays of light caused by their entering the earth's atmosphere, which is a denser medium than the very light ether of the outer sky.
"Lectures in Navigation"
Ernest Gallaudet Draper
You see how, on an afternoon taken at random, two nothings had made still denser by a fraction that background of which I was every moment conscious.
"The Debit Account"
Oliver Onions
If the survivors of a deceased Fanti be poor, the corpse is quietly interred in one of the denser spots of the jungles; and if rich, the funeral is at once costly and bloody; since gold and jewels are buried along with the dead body, and human victims as well.
"The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies"
Robert Gordon Latham