2 34 Of the Quantities of Moisture 



I did not add the silver wire to the bodies above men- 

 tioned, from any idea that that substance could possibly 

 imbibe moisture from the atmosphere; but I was willing 

 to see whether a metal, placed in air saturated with water, 

 is not capable of receiving a small addition of weight 

 from the moisture attracted by it, and attached to its 

 surface; from the result of the experiment, however, it 

 should seem that no such attraction subsists between the 

 metal I made use of, and the watery vapour dissolved in air. 



I was totally mistaken in my conjectures relative to 

 the results of the experiments with the other substances. 

 As linen is known to attract water with so much avidity; 

 and as, on the contrary, wool, hair, feathers, and other 

 like animal substances are made wet with so much diffi- 

 culty, I had little doubt but that linen would be found 

 to attract moisture from the atmosphere with much 

 greater force than any of those substances ; and that, 

 under similar circumstances, it would be found to contain 

 much more water ; and I was much confirmed in this 

 opinion upon recollecting the great difference in the ap- 

 parent dampness of linen and of woollen clothes, when 

 they are both exposed to the same atmosphere. But these 

 experiments have convinced me that all my speculations 

 were founded upon erroneous principles. 



It should seem that those bodies which are the most 

 easily wetted, or which receive water, in its unelastic form, 

 with the greatest ease, are not those which in all cases 

 attract the watery vapour dissolved in the air with the 

 greatest force. 



Perhaps the apparent dampness of linen to the touch 

 arises more from the ease with which that substance parts 

 with the water it contains than from the quantity of 

 water it actually holds ; in the same manner as a body 



