the thickness at which a quantity of mercury will stand when spread out on glass, supposing the angle of contact still 140°, are found, by taking the proportion of the sines of 20° and of 70° to the sine of 45°, and are therefore .0484 and .1330 respectively. If, instead of glass, we employed any surface capable of being wetted by mercury, the height of elevation would be .141, and this is the limit of the thickness of a wide surface of mercury supported by a substance wholly incapable of attracting it. Now the hydrostatic pressure of a column of mercury .0484 in thickness on a disc of one inch diameter would be 131 grains; to this the surrounding elevation of the fluid will add about 11 grains for each inch of the circumference, with some deduction for the effect of the contrary curvature of the horizontal section, tending to diminish the height; and the apparent cohesion thus exhibited will be about 160 grains, which is a little more than four times as great as the apparent cohesion of glass and water. With a disc 11 lines in diameter Mr. Dutour found it 194 French grains, which is equivalent to 152 English grains, instead of 160, for an inch, a result which is sufficient to confirm the principles of the calculation. The depth of a quantity of mercury standing on glass I have found by actual observation, to agree precisely with this calculation. Segner says that the depth was .1358, both on glass and on paper: the difference is very trifling, but this measure is somewhat too great for glass, and too small for paper, since it appears from Dutour's experiments, that the attraction of paper to mercury is extremely weak.
If a disc of a substance capable of being wetted by mercury, an inch in diameter, were raised from its surface in a position perfectly horizontal, the apparent cohesion should be 381
