The majority of you think, perhaps, you know quite well the distinction between a liquid and a solid. And precisely persons who have never busied themselves with physics will consider this question one of the easiest that can be put. But the physicist knows that it is one of the most difficult. I shall mention here only the experiments of Tresca, which show that solids subjected to high pressures behave exactly as liquids do; for example, may be made to flow out in the form of jets from orifices in the bottoms of vessels. The supposed difference of kind between liquids and solids is thus shown to be a mere difference of degree. The common inference that because the earth is oblate in form, it was originally fluid, is an error, in the light of these facts. True, a rotating sphere, a few inches in diameter will assume an oblate form only if it is very soft, for example, is composed of freshly kneaded clay or some viscous stuff. But the earth, even if it consisted of the rigidest stone, could not help being crushed by its tremendous weight, and must perforce behave as a fluid. Even our mountains could not extend beyond a certain height without crumbling. The earth _may_ once have been fluid, but this by no means follows from its oblateness. The particles of a liquid are displaced on the application of the slightest pressure; a liquid conforms exactly to the shapes of the vessels in which it is contained; it possesses no form of its own, as you have all learned in the schools. Accommodating itself in the most trifling respects to the conditions of the vessel in which it is placed, and showing, even on its surface, where one would suppose it had the freest play, nothing but a polished, smiling, expressionless countenance, it is the courtier _par excellence_ of the natural bodies. Liquids have no form of their own! No, not for the superficial observer. But persons who have observed that a raindrop is round and never angular, will not be disposed to accept this dogma so unconditionally. It is fair to suppose that every man, even the weakest, would possess a character, if it were not too difficult in this world to keep it. So, too, we must suppose that liquids would possess forms of their own, if the pressure of the circumstances permitted it,--if they were not crushed by their own weights.