CONTINUATION . 



OF 



EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS 



ON THE 



ADHESION OF THE PARTICLES OF LIQUIDS TO 

 EACH OTHER. 



BEFORE proceeding with the account of my ex- 

 periments, I shall take the liberty of going back 

 to a distant period, and of describing to the Class an 

 occurrence which first fixed my attention on this subject 

 and led me to engage in these researches. 



Being occupied in the year 1786 with a series of 

 experiments on the oxygen gas which is disengaged from 

 water when this liquid mixed with various solid sub- 

 stances is exposed to the action of the sun's rays, among 

 the substances employed in my investigation was a 

 quantity of raw silk, wound from the cocoon on pur- 

 pose for this experiment, in a single thread, just as it is 

 produced by the silkworm. 



It being necessary for completing my calculations that 

 I should determine with precision the amount of the 

 surface of this thread, which was almost two leagues in 

 length, and which weighed in the air only about 20 

 grains Troy, and having no means of measuring di- 

 rectly the exact diameter of the thread, I undertook to 

 calculate it from the known length of the thread and 

 the specific gravity of the substance. 



It was in weighing this substance in water to ascertain 

 its specific gravity, that I encountered difficulties which 



