_A._ What think you is the reason why a drop of water, though heavy, will stand upon a horizontal plane of dry or unctuous wood, and not spread itself upon it? For let A B, in the sixth figure, be the dry plane, D the drop of water, and D C perpendicular to A B. The drop D, though higher, will not descend and spread itself upon it. _B._ The reason I think is manifest. For those bodies which are made by beating of water and air together, show plainly that the parts of water have a great degree of cohesion. For the skin of the bubble is water, and yet it can keep the air, though moved, from getting out. Therefore the whole drop of water at D, hath a good deal of cohesion of parts. And seeing A B is an horizontal plane, the way from the contact in D either to A or B is upwards, and consequently there is no endeavour in D either of those ways, but what proceeds from so much weight of water as is able to break that cohesion, which so small a drop is too weak to do. But the cohesion being once broken, as with your finger, the water will follow. _A._ Seeing the descent of a heavy body increaseth according to the odd numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, &c. and the aggregates of those numbers, viz. of 1 and 3; and 1 and 3 and 5; and of 1 and 3 and 5 and 7, &c. are square numbers, namely 4, 9, 16; the whole swiftness of the descent will be, I think, to the aggregate of so many swiftnesses equal to the first endeavour, as square numbers are to their sides, 1, 2, 3, 4. Is it so? _B._ Yes, you know it hath been demonstrated by Galileo. _A._ Then if, for instance, you put into a pair of scales equal quantities of quicksilver and water, seeing they are both accelerated in the same proportion, why should not the weight of quicksilver to the weight of water be in duplicate proportions to their first endeavours? _B._ Because they are in a pair of scales. For there the motion of neither of them is accelerated. And therefore it will be, as the first endeavour of the quicksilver to the first endeavour of the water, so the whole weight to the whole weight. By which you may see, that the cause which takes away the gravitation of liquid bodies from fish or other lighter bodies within them, can never be derived from the weight.