159 
to think that, like the leucine previously discovered by him, 
it was a product of decomposition of indican under conditions 
of which he is at present ignorant, especially as some con- 
nection is supposed by chemists to exist between tyrosine 
and indigo-blue, and on the other hand tyrosine and leucine 
so frequently occur together as products of decomposition of 
protein compounds. 
“ On the Internal Cohesion of Liquids and the Suspension 
of a Column of Mercury to a height more than double that 
of the Barometer,” by Prof. Osborne Reynolds, F.R.S. 
Introduction. 
The ease with which under ordinary circumstances the 
different portions of liquid may be separated is a fact of 
such general observation that the inability of liquids like 
water to offer any considerable resistance to rupture appears 
to have been tacitly accepted as an axiom. In no work on 
Hydrostatics does it appear that the possibility of water 
existing in a state of tension is so much as considered; 
and suction is always described as being solely attributable 
to the pressure of the atmosphere. 
The limit of 32 feet, or thereabouts, to the height to which 
water can be raised by suction in the common pump and 
the sinking of the mercury in the barometer tube, leaving 
the Torricellian vacuum above, until the column is at most 
only 31 inches — sufficient to balance the highest pressure 
of the atmosphere — are phenomena so well known as to be 
almost household words with us. It is not, therefore, with- 
out some fear of encountering simple incredulity that I 
venture to state 
The object of this Communication. 
In the first place my purpose is to show that certain facts 
already fully established afford grounds for believing that 
almost all liquids, and particularly mercury and water, are 
capable of offering resistance to rupture commensurate with 
