Note 280 — Chapter V · THE FORMS OF CELLS

These various movements of a liquid surface, and other still more striking movements such as those of a piece of camphor floating on water, were at one time ascribed by certain physicists to a peculiar force, sui generis, the force épipolique of Dutrochet: until van der Mensbrugghe shewed that differences of surface tension were enough to account for this whole series of phenomena (Sur la tension superficielle des liquides considérée au point de vue de certains mouvements observés à leur surface, Mém. Cour. Acad. de Belgique, XXXIV, 1869; cf. Plateau, p. 283).