invtr 



CAPILLARY ATTRACTION. 



[ Friday Evening Lecture before the Royal Institution, January 29, 

 1886 (Proc. Roy. Inst., vol. xi. part inj]. 



THE heaviness of matter had been known for 

 as many thousand years as men and philosophers 

 had lived on the earth, but none had suspected 

 or imagined, before Newton's discovery of universal 

 gravitation, that heaviness is due to action at a 

 distance between two portions of matter. Elec- 

 trical attractions and repulsions, and magnetic 

 attractions and repulsions, had been familiar to 

 naturalists and philosophers for two or three 

 thousand years. Gilbert, by showing that the 

 earth, acting as a great magnet, is the efficient 

 cause of the compass needle's pointing to the 

 north, had enlarged people's ideas regarding the 

 distances at which magnets can exert sensible 



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