Excerpt from Soil Gases Gas compressed by suifitce tension. - one factor, which may in places oper ate on the volume of gases in soils is surface tension. Suppose a bubble of gas to be surrounded by water in some small cavity in the soil, the circumstances being that the quantity of water is so large that it is free to enter or leave the cavity. Under such circumstances the tension of the wat er gas surface would tend to increase the pressure on the gas beyond that generally existing in the soil and which is approximately that of the atmosphere. This subject has not I think been referred to by others when discussing the physical properties of soils, and although no direct experimental data can be offered here, the matter is deserving of consideration, because quite small spheres would be exposed to considerable excess of pressure, and the corresponding decreased volume would be included in the difference between the volume of gas esti mated and found, and would not be differentiated from gas condensed on the surface of soil particles in the foregoing method of measurement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.