NOTE ON THE PRINCIPLE OF REGELATION, ETC. 63 
the joint, the rupture will be with a crackling noise, but the pieces 
will still adhere, and in an instant become rigid again. As the adhe- 
sion is only by points, the force applied should not be either too 
powerful or in the manner of a blow. I find a piece of paper, a small 
feather, or a camel-hair brush applied under the water very convenient 
for the purpose. When the point of a floating, wedge-shaped piece 
of ice is brought under water against the corner or side of another 
floating piece, it sticks to it like a leech; if, after a moment, a paper 
edge be brought down upon the place, a very sensible resistance to the 
rupture at that place is felt. If the ice be replaced by like rounded 
pieces of wood or glass, touching under water, nothing of this kind 
occurs, nor any signs of an effect that could by possibility be referred 
to capillary action ; and finally, if two floating pieces of ice have separa- 
ting forces attached to them, as by threads connecting them and two 
light pendulums, pulled more or less in opposite directions, then it 
will be seen with what power the ice is held together at the place of 
regelation, when the contact there is either in the flexible or rigid 
condition, by the velocity and force with which the two pieces will 
separate when the adhesion is properly and entirely overcome. 
NOTES ON THE APPARENT UNIVERSALITY OF A PRIN- 
CIPLE ANALOGOUS TO REGELATION, ON THE PHY- 
SICAL NATURE OF GLASS, AND ON THE PROBABLE 
EXISTENCE OF WATER IN A STATE CORRESPONDING 
TO THAT OF GLASS. 
BY EDWARD W. BRAYLEY, ESQ., F.R.S., &C. 
[From the Proceedings of the Royal Society; Read April 26, 1860.] 
1. Recent experimental investigations, and the reasoning founded 
upon them, have elevated the designation of an observed property of 
ice to the character of a principle in physics. The growth of crystals 
of camphor and of iodide of cyanogen, by the deposition of solid 
matter upon them from an atmosphere unable to deposit like solid 
matter upon the surrounding glass, except at a lower temperature ; 
and that of crystals in solution, by the deposition of solid matter upon 
them which is not deposited elsewhere in the solution, have been 
adduced by Mr. Faraday to illustrate the extension of the principle 
of action which is manifested in regelation; and “ many such like 
cases,’ he remarks, “may be produced.” In his reasoning on the 
