WITHDRAWN FEOM THE ACTION OF GRAVITY. 



275 



As we are now acquaiuted with the entu-e course which the transformation 

 of a liquid cylinder into isolated spheres must take, we can represent it graphi- 



Fin. 30. 



I 



I 



cally. Fig. 30 represents the successive forms through which the liquid figure 

 passes, commencing with the cylinder up to the system of isolated spheres and 



of this theory cease to be applicable in the case of very great curvatures, or those the radii 

 of which are comparable to that of molecular attraction. Now, it follows from what has 

 been stated, that we may always suppose the thinness of the line to be such that the cor- 

 responding pressure may be equal to that existing in thick masses which have attained a 

 state of equilibrium. In this case, admitting that the lines are mathematically regular, so 

 that the pressure there may be everywhere rigorously the same, consequently that they have 

 no tendency to resolve themselves into small partial masses, equilibrium will necessarily 

 exist in the system. In this case the form of the thick masses will not be mathooiatically 

 spherical; for their surface must become slightly raised at the junctures with the lines by 

 presenting concave curvatures in the meridional direction. This form will be the.samd as 

 that of an isolated mass, traversed diametrically by an excessively minute solid line, (^ 10.) 

 This system, like those into the composition of which layers enter, is composed of surfaces 

 of a ditferent nature ; but this heterogeneity of form becomes possible here, us in the case of 

 the layers, in consequence of the change which the law of pressures undergoes in passing 

 from one to another kind of surface. 



We can, moreover, understand that the equilibrium in question, although possible theo- 

 retically, as we have shown, can never be realized, in consequence of the cylindrical form 

 of the lines. The same does not apply to the case of the plane layers; for, as we shall show 

 in the following series, the plane surfaces are always surlaces of stable equilibrium, whatever 

 may be their extent. 



