36 MOLECULAR ATTRACTION. LECT. II. 



tions, when introduced into the stomach of living animals, 

 disappear, but in unequal intervals of time, oil remaining 

 there for a very long period. 



Believing that it would be of importance to compare 

 alcohol at 36 Baume [sp. gr. 0-844] with distilled water, 

 I provided myself with tubes filled with sand, pounded 

 glass and sawdust, and here are the elevations that I ob- 

 tained. 



Thus we see clearly that with either sand or pounded 

 glass alcohol rises less than water ; a fact which is in ac- 

 cordance with that which happens with capillary tubes. 



In another experiment I plunged into the same liquid, 

 namely water, two tubes, both holding pounded glass, but 

 the one containing twice as much as the other ; conse- 

 quently the powder was finer in the first tube. The follow- 

 ing were the results obtained : 



In the first tube the liquid rose to 170 millimetres, in the 

 second to 107 millimetres only in the same period. 



It is not easy to give an explanation of the relation ex- 

 isting between the elevations in these two tubes. It is, 

 however, natural to suppose that the liquid should rise 

 more in the tube which contains double the quantity of 

 matter, if we reflect on the augmentation of the solid sur- 

 face which attracts the liquid, and on the smaller diameter 

 of the capillary cavities. 



This phenomenon of imbibition is continually witnessed 

 in a great number of instances in the tissues of animals and 



