248 



CAPILLARY TUBES, 



To Mr, NICHOLSON. 

 Dear Sir, 



I 



take the liberty of recommending for insertion in your 

 Journal, a paper of M. Laplace on " Capillary Tubes," pub- 

 lished in the Journal de Physique, for January last ; as I im- 

 agine it would be satisfactory to your readers to compare it 

 with the *' Essay on the Cohesion of Fluids," which you have 

 done me the honour to reprint. As far as M. Laplace has 

 pursued the subject, he has completely confirmed my conclu- 

 sions, although by a very different mode of calculation : his rea- 

 soning appears, however, to me to be defective, for want of 

 attending to the force of repulsion, which in most cases exactly 

 balances that of cohesion. I had contented myself with deter- 

 mining by an approximate construction the form assumed 

 by the surface of a fluid in a cylindrical tube of moderate 

 diameter ; I was in hopes that sO consummate a mathema- 

 tician as M. Laplace would have attempted a direct solution 

 of the problem : but he has left it wholly untouciied. I was 

 also anxious to find a confirmation of^ my conclusions respect- 

 ing the relation between the mutual force of attraction of a 

 solid and a fluid, and the angle formed by their surfaces : but 

 my expectations were again disappointed. The inferences 

 which 1 had made from the experiments of Taylor, Achard, 

 and Morveau, are such as might have been deduced without 

 much difficulty, either from M. Laplace's iheory or from 

 mine : if they had been so fortunate as to attract M. Laplace's 

 attention before his memoir was road to the Institute, he would 

 perhaps have confirmed and extended them with hia usual 

 accuracy and ingenuity. 



I am, Dear Sir, 



Your very obdient humble servant, 

 Wdbeck-sfreet, THOMAS YOUNG. 



28M May, 180(5. 



Errata. 

 Page 83, line 15, for .0054 read .054, 



— — . 21, for .1 read 1. 



J59, 21, for ,1 lead 1. 



Abstract 



