Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/59

Rh so make the least scratch upon the inside, the whole bottle will break to pieces,—it cannot hold together. [The Lecturer here dropped a small fragment of rock crystal into one of these glass vessels, when the bottom immediately came out and fell upon the plate.] There! it goes through, just as it would through a sieve.

Now, I have shown you these things for the purpose of bringing your minds to see that bodies are not merely held together by this power of cohesion, but that they are held together in very curious ways. And suppose I take some things that are held together by this force, and examine them more minutely. I will first take a bit of glass, and if I give it a blow with a hammer I shall just break it to pieces. You saw how it was in the case of the flint when I broke the piece off; a piece of a similar kind would come off, just as you would expect; and if I were to break it up still more, it would be as you have seen, simply a collection of small particles of no definite shape or form. But supposing I take some other thing, this stone for instance (fig. 15) [taking a piece of mica ], and if I hammer this stone I may batter it a great deal before I can break it