INHERENT INSTABILITY OF WATER PARTICLES 209. 



sional relation, and vice versa ; and observations and analyses which need 

 not be followed in detail indicate that the general proposition is true 

 regardless of the forms of the particles, provided they be similar and 

 equal (excepting, of course, the cube, which is variable in the internal 

 gravitative relation). This innate incongruity (or incompatibility) of 

 bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional relations is highly signiicant; it 

 would seem to explain directly the virtually endless instability of liquid 

 HoO and go far toward explaining the apparently inherent undulatory 

 property of water and the relation of this property to the saltatory move- 

 ments of its included particles; hardly less directly it would seem to 

 offer a physical explanation of liquidity as a state of matter, while in- 

 directly it would appear to lie at the foundation of (or a^ least extend 

 coterminously with) Spencer's generalization as to "the instability of 

 the homogeneous" among planetary phenomena. 



The same innate incongruity in the bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional 

 relations, coupled Avith consequent instability in suspended and saltant 

 contents, is attested by the peculiarly automatic behavior of natural and 

 artificial bubbles, which readily unite in hexagonal forms on a plane sur- 

 face, but with further combination become mutually destructive or at least 

 unstable, and in their instability (as in Biitschli's experiments with oil- 

 foams) display such properties as streaming and contractility passing into 

 motility, et al., simulating those of protoplasm in extraordinary degree. 

 In the visible internal movements of the oil-foams and soap-bubble groups 

 there is a tendency toward differentiation in size of the constituent units 

 manifestly due to interadjustment of external and internal stresses; the 

 persistence of such interactionary tendencies is illustrated by the beha- 

 vior of foam-clots in eddies of streams rendered viscid by sediment, which 

 grow below by capture of bubbles as the upper layers rupture by evapora- 

 tion, roll and overturn with the shifting center of gravity, coalesce with 

 other clots, multiply by fission, and continuously undergo' deformation 

 and transformation, yet as masses retain measurable integrity for hours or 

 days ; and this behavior of the heterogeneous units and groups can hardly 

 be wholly inconsistent with that of the homogeneous units attested, for 

 example, by Mendenhall's demonstration of liquidity by means of sus- 

 pended eggs, in which, both being set in motion alike, the raw egg con- 

 tinues in rotation and swing long after the boiled egg comes to rest. 



On integrating these and other indications of the inherent properties of 

 the water particle a final concept is gained, in which that particle is a 

 structural unit composed of a number of molecules varying with tempera- 

 ture and other molecular stresses but responding individually to gravity 

 and molar stresses (as in streams, waves, tides), each tending to assume 

 the hexagonal form at surfaces or in single layers and all tending to 



XX— Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 19, 1007 



