CHAPTER III 



ELEMENTS, THE ALPHABET OF ALL LIVING THINGS 



Vocabulary 

 Individual, separate. 

 Innumerable, very many. 



Oxidation, the union of any thing with oxygen. 

 Combustion, rapid oxidation, producing light and heat. 

 Restrain, to hold back. 



All the words of our language are made from less than thirty 

 letters. If we think of our big dictionaries we realize what an 

 enormous number of different combinations can be formed from 

 a few letters. 



Elements and Compounds. In something the same way, all 

 the matter in the world is composed of about eighty individual 

 substances called elements. These we might think of as the letters 

 in a chemical alphabet which spell all the substances both 

 organic and inorganic that are in existence. When elements 

 unite, they form all the innumerable things that compose the 

 world around us. -These substances, formed by the union of two 

 or more elements, are called compounds. For example, iron is an 

 element. Oxygen in the air is also an element. When these two 

 unite, they form a compound which we call iron rust. 



Organic substances utilize only about ten elements, but when 

 we stop to think of the thousands of kinds of plants and of animals, 

 and of all the different substances of which they are made, we see 

 that ten elements are enough to make a wide variety of compounds. 



What to Learn about Them. The complete study of these 

 elements and their compounds is called chemistry, but for the 

 present we need to learn only four things about the elements 

 which compose organic substances: (1) their names, (2) where 



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