these three or four experiments you will learn to see when carbon is
present, and understand what are the products of combustion, when gas or
other bodies are thoroughly burned in the air.
Before we leave the subject of carbon, let us make a few experiments and
remarks upon its wonderful condition as respects ordinary combustion. I
have shewn you that the carbon in burning burns only as a solid body, and
yet you perceive that, after it is burned, it ceases to be a solid. There
are very few fuels that act like this. It is, in fact, only that great
source of fuel, the carbonaceous series, the coals, charcoals, and woods,
that can do it. I do not know that there is any other elementary substance
besides carbon that burns with these conditions; and if it had not been
so, what would happen to us? Suppose all fuel had been like iron, which,
when it burns, burns into a solid substance. We could not then have such a
combustion as you have in this fireplace. Here also is another kind of
fuel which burns very well as well as, if not better, than carbon so
well, indeed, as to take fire of itself when it is in the air, as you see
[breaking a tube full of lead pyrophorus]. This substance is lead, and you
see how wonderfully combustible it is. It is very much divided, and is
like a heap of coals in the fireplace; the air can get to its surface and
inside, and so it burns. But why does it not burn in that way now, when it
is lying in a mass? [emptying the contents of the tube in a heap on to a
plate of iron]. Simply because the air cannot get to it. Though it can
produce a great heat, the great heat which we want in our furnaces and
under our boilers, still that which is produced cannot get away from the
portion which remains unburned underneath, and that portion, therefore, is
prevented from coming in contact with the atmosphere, and cannot be
consumed. How different is that from carbon. Carbon burns just in the same
way as this lead does, and so gives an intense fire in the furnace, or
wherever you choose to burn it; but then the body produced by its
combustion passes away, and the remaining carbon is left clear. I shewed
you how carbon went on dissolving in the oxygen, leaving no ash; whereas
here [pointing to the heap of pyrophorus] we have actually more ash than
fuel, for it is heavier by the amount of the oxygen which has united with
it. Thus you see the difference between carbon and lead or iron: if we
choose iron, which gives so wonderful a result in our application of this
fuel, either as light or heat. If, when the carbon burnt, the product went
off as a solid body, you would have had the room filled with an opaque
substance, as in the case of the phosphorus; but when carbon burns,
everything passes up into the atmosphere. It is in a fixed, almost
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