ILLUSTRATIONS. 263 



nor is it a whit more remarkable, than that red 

 hot iron should attract oxygen, sulphur, mer- 

 cury, and other bodies more strongly than cold 

 iron. 



In reply to the above facts, I have been told 

 by grave and learned men, that " fluidity is in- 

 dispensable to capillary attraction, and that the 

 only agency of caloric in the process is to cause 

 fluidity." But this does not explain why hot 

 water rises far more rapidly through lumps of 

 white sugar, salts, &c. than cold water, nor why 

 those bodies which have the strongest affinity 

 for caloric, attract and absorb water most ra- 

 pidly, such as the deliquescent salts that are 

 employed in freezing mixtures. 



If it be urged that the absorption of water by 

 sugar and salts, is not owing to capillary attrac- 

 tion, but to chemical affinity, I answer, that hot 

 water passes through numerous porous solids 

 and capillary tubes, with a force and velocity 

 proportionate to its temperature when there is 

 no solution that boiling water passes much 

 more rapidly through a glass capillary syphon 

 than when cold. This fact may be verified in the 

 following simple manner. Take two bunches of 

 spun glass about four inches long ; insert the end 

 of one into water at 50 F. and the other at 180, 

 when the latter will be found to rise with far 

 greater force and rapidity than the former in 

 the ratio of at least 3 to 1. 



The same is true of amianthus, flaxen thread, 



