upon them by the agitation of the vessel, and which being poured out are easily resolved into drops, I doubt not but the rule already laid down may be accurate enough, especially if the experiments be made with larger pendulous bodies and more swiftly moved.
Lastly, since it is the opinion of some that there is a certain æthereal medium extremely rare and subtile, which freely pervades the pores of all bodies; and from such a medium, so pervading the pores of bodies, some resistance must needs arise; in order to try whether the resistance, which we experience in bodies in motion, be made upon their outward superficies only, or whether their internal parts meet with any considerable resistance upon their superficies, I thought of the following experiment. I suspended a round deal box by a thread 11 feet long, on a steel hook, by means of a ring of the same metal, so as to make a pendulum of the aforesaid length. The hook had a sharp hollow edge on its upper part, so that the upper arc of the ring pressing on the edge might move the more freely; and the thread was fastened to the lower arc of the ring. The pendulum being thus prepared, I drew it aside from the perpendicular to the distance of about 6 feet, and that in a plane perpendicular to the edge of the hook, lest the ring, while the pendulum oscillated, should slide to and fro on the edge of the hook: for the point of suspension, in which the ring touches the hook, ought to remain immovable. I therefore accurately noted the place to which the pendulum was brought, and letting it go, I marked three other places, to which it returned at the end of the 1st, 2d, and 3d oscillation. This I often repeated, that I might find those places as accurately as possible. Then I filled the box with lead and other heavy metals that were near at hand. But, first, I weighed the box when empty, and that part of the thread that went round it, and half the remaining part, extended between the hook and the suspended box; for the thread so extended always acts upon the pendulum, when drawn aside from the perpendicular, with half its weight. To this weight I added the weight of the air contained in the box. And this whole weight was about of the weight of the box when filled with the metals. Then because the box when full of the metals, by extending the thread with its weight, increased the length of the pendulum, I shortened the thread so as to make the length of the pendulum, when oscillating, the same as before. Then drawing aside the pendulum to the place first marked, and letting it go, I reckoned about 77 oscillations before the box returned to the second mark, and as many afterwards before it came to the third mark, and as many after that before it came to the fourth mark. From whence I conclude that the whole resistance of the box, when full, had not a greater proportion to the resistance of the box, when empty, than 78 to 77. For if their resistances were equal, the box, when full, by reason of its vis insita, which was 78 times greater than the vis insita of the same when empty, ought to have continued its oscillating motion so
