Contact adhesion and sliding friction between orthgonally configured silica fibres were measured in water, hexadecane, and cyclohexane. In the adhesion model of friction, the friction is interpreted in terms of shearing the junction and the shear strength (tau) can simply be represented by tau = F/A where F is frictional force and A is the real area of contact. While this model works well for the frictional behaviour of silica fibre in air, this was not the case in liquid media. The influence of liquid on the force required to break the adhesive junction cannot simply be interpreted in terms of the reduction in adhesional forces between two fibres; but the interpretations have to also include the nature of the liquids.