210 TRANSACTIONS OF THE NORTHERN 



5. Potassium — Equiv. 39.15. A white metal, lighter than water, so 

 soft as to yield to the pressure of fingers. The most combustible of the 

 simple substances. It will burn in common air, on water, with a blue 

 flame, forming potash or potassa — protoxide of potassium, Equiv. 39.15. 

 -||- O « , a white solid. Potash of the market has sulphate and muriate 

 of potassa, with other salts. ' It is widely disseminated in the rocks al- 

 though not in a large quantity. All the aluminous minerals contain it. 

 Feldsyjar, a constituent in granite, seventeen and three-fourths per cent, 

 of it. Basalt, clay, slate and loam, contain more or less of it. But it 

 is absorbed rapidly from the soils. 



6. Iron — Equiv. 27.14. When pure, nearly white, but pure iron 

 is never found in nature. 



Meteoric contains from eight to ten per cent, nickel, and often tin, 

 copper, etc. Widely scattered, gives colors to soils and rocks. 



As bread is said to be staff of life, so iron is the staff of business, 

 and almost of civilization. 



7. Hydrogen — Equiv. by weight i, vol. 100. A clear colorless gas. 

 the lightest known, and without odor or taste. Breathing it gives the 

 voice a shrill squeak but it soon suffocates. Forms one-ninth of water, 



—the ocean its home, but widely disseminated in the animal, vegetable, 

 and mineral kingdoms, and the air takes its portion. With oxygen form- 

 ing water, an almost universal servant in nature. 



8. Sodium — Equiv. :?3.3. A white opaque solid, with chlorine 35.42 

 it forms common sail, which is found in the ocean and rock ; extensive 

 and scattered ; and from below the coal in this country. 



Soda is a protoxide of sodium. 



9. Magnesium — Equiv. 12.7. A white metal, malleable and brill- 

 iant, magnesia, a protoxide of mag. -||- O 90.7. Quite abundant in na- 

 ture, in rocks and good soils. 



10. Manganese. Mn. — Equiv. 27.7. A brittle metal, grayish white, 

 and hard, granular texture. Perxide of — or black oxide of, 27.7 -||- 16 

 O. Valuable in the arts, laboratory, and soils. 



ri. Carbon — Equiv. 6.12, sp. gr. 3.52. Diamond a pure carbon, 

 of immense value in the arts and show of the world. Carbon is abun- 

 dant in the vegetable, mineral, and animal kingdoms, and as useful in 

 each, as it is abundaut. 



In creation, before the coal measures were formed, and while vege- 

 tation was growing with such rapidity and size, the air was doubtless 

 filled with carbonic acid, which would unfit it for the higher classes 0,f 

 animals, and in God's M'isdom they were not there. 



Elias Colbert, a late writer on the great northwestern fires, thinks there 

 have been three million tons of carbon from the country, and three hun- 

 dred thousand tons from the city of Chicago, liberated from its union 

 with other elements, and gone into the air. Every three and six-tenths 

 pounds of it would take eight jujunds of oxygen, forming eleven and 

 six-tenths pounds of carbonic acid gas. That the oxygen taken up, 

 would su|;ply men and animals all over the globe for ten months. 



