Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 095.djvu/92

78 by the cohesion of the internal surface of the water exactly in the same manner as the form of a drop of water in the air. The delay of a bubble of air at the bottom of a vessel appears to be occasioned by a deficiency of the pressure of the water between the air and the vessel; it is nearly analogous to the experiment of making a piece of wood remain immersed in water, when perfectly in contact with the bottom of the vessel containing it. This experiment succeeds however far more readily with mercury, since the capillary cohesion of the mercury prevents its insinuating itself under the wood.

The apparent attraction of two floating bodies, round both of which the fluid is raised by cohesive attraction, is produced by the excess of the atmospheric pressure on the remote sides of the solids above its pressure on their neighbouring sides: or, if the experiments are performed in a vacuum, by the equivalent hydrostatic pressure or suction derived from the weight and immediate cohesion of the intervening fluid. This force varies ultimately in the inverse ratio of the square of the distance; for, if two plates approach each other, the height of the fluid that rises between them is increased in the simple inverse ratio of the distance; and the mean action, or negative pressure, of the fluid on each particle of the surface is also increased in the same ratio. When the floating bodies are both surrounded by a depression, the same law prevails, and its demonstration is still more simple and obvious. The repulsion of a wet and a dry body does not appear to follow the same proportion: for it by no means approaches to infinity upon the supposition of perfect contact; its maximum is measured