Note 387 — Chapter VIII · THE FORMS OF TISSUES OR CELL-AGGREGATES (continued)

The principle is well illustrated in an experiment of Sir David Brewster’s (Trans. R.S.E. XXV, p. 111, 1869). A soap-film is drawn over the rim of a wine-glass, and then covered by a watch-glass. The film is inclined or shaken till it becomes attached to the glass covering, and it then immediately changes place, leaving its transverse position to take up that of a spherical segment extending from one side of the wine-glass to its cover, and so enclosing the same volume of air as formerly but with a great economy of surface, precisely as in the case of our spherical partition cutting off one corner of a cube.