attractive or retentive faculty be overcome: But the separation being once
made beyond the Sphere of the attractive activity of congruity, that virtue
becomes of no effect at all, but the _Mercury_ freely falls downwards till
it meet with a resistance from the pressure of the _ambient_ Air, able to
resist its gravity, and keep it forced up in the Pipe to the height of
about thirty inches.

Thus have I gently raised a Steel _pendulum_ by a Loadstone to a great
Angle, till by the shaking of my hand I have chanced to make a separation
between them, which is no sooner made, but as if the Loadstone had retained
no attractive virtue, the _Pendulum_ moves freely from it towards the other
side. So vast a difference is there between the attractive virtue of the
_Magnet_ when it acts upon a contiguous and upon a disjoyned body: and much
more must there be between the attractive virtues of congruity upon a
contiguous and disjoyned body; and in truth the attractive virtue is so
little upon a body disjoyned, that though I have with a _Microscope_
observed very diligently, whether there were any extraordinary
_protuberance_ on the side of a drop of water that was exceeding neer to
the end of a green stick, but did not touch it, I could not perceive the
least; though I found, that as soon as ever it toucht it the whole drop
would presently unite it self with it; so that it seems an absolute contact
is requisite to the exercising of the tenacious faculty of congruity.

* * * * *


Observ. VII. _Of some _Phænomena_ of Glass drops._

These _Glass Drops_ are small parcels of coarse green Glass taken out of
the Pots that contain the _Metal_ (as they call it) in fusion, upon the end