450 



an S, and one end piece be moved carefully, all will move with it 

 rigidly ; or, if the force be enough to break through the joint, the 

 rupture will be with a crackling noise, but the pieces will still adhere, 

 and in an instant become rigid again. As the adhesion is only by 

 points, the force applied should not be either too powerful or in the 

 manner of a blow. I find a piece of paper, a small feather, or a 

 camel-hair brush applied under the water very convenient for the 

 purpose. When the point of a floating, wedge-shaped piece of ice is 

 brought under water against the corner or side of another floating 

 piece, it sticks to it like a leech ; if, after a moment, a paper edge be 

 brought down upon the place, a very sensible resistance to the rupture 

 at that place is felt. If the ice be replaced by like rounded pieces of 

 wood or glass, touching under water, nothing of this kind occurs, nor 

 any signs of an effect that could by possibility be referred to capillary 

 action ; and finally, if two floating pieces of ice have separating forces 

 attached to them, as by threads connecting them and two light pen- 

 dulums, pulled more or less in opposite directions, then it will be seen 

 with what power the ice is held together at the place of regelation, 

 when the contact there is either in the flexible or rigid condition, by 

 the velocity and force with which the two pieces will separate when 

 the adhesion is properly and entirely overcome. 



II. " Notes on the apparent Universality of a Principle analogous 

 to Regelation, on the Physical Nature of Glass, and on the 

 probable existence of Water in a state corresponding to that 

 of Glass." By EDWARD W. BRAYLEY, Esq., F.R.S. &c. 

 Received April 26, 1860. 



1 . Recent experimental investigations, and the reasoning founded 

 upon them, have elevated the designation of an observed property of 

 ice to the character of a principle in physics. The growth of crystals 

 of camphor and of iodide of cyanogen, by the deposition of solid 

 matter upon them from an atmosphere unable to deposit like solid 

 matter upon the surrounding glass, except at a lower temperature ; 

 and that of crystals in solution, by the deposition of solid matter upon 

 them which is not deposited elsewhere in the solution, have been 

 adduced by Mr. Faraday to illustrate the extension of the principle 



