THE METAMORPHOSES OF MATTER. 113 



Beyond the mere watery moisture of animal bodies, there 

 is yet some oxygen and hydrogen to be disposed of. Circum- 

 stances will determine the manner in which these elements 

 shall escape, and how, amongst themselves, or with other ele- 

 ments, they shall afterwards recombine. Wedding itself to 

 phosphorus, hydrogen may generate a spontaneously inflam- 

 mable gas, to dance and glimmer fairy-like about, a rollicking 

 Will-o'-the-wisp. Wedding with sulphur, some may expand 

 into that noxious and evil-smelling gas, hydro-sulphuric acid, 

 reeking pestilent ; a gas so laden with the germs of death, 

 that all who breathe an atmosphere holding no more than 

 twelve parts of it in a hundred fall down dead, as though they 

 had been touched by the wand of Azrael : a gas that can even 

 kill by skin-contact ;* and which, present under a still more 

 diluted form, as on the swampy coast of Western Africa, 

 breeds the desolating fever of that fatal region. But the pes- 

 tiferous gas has only a short time in which to wreak its ven- 

 geance. Oxygen lies in wait for it, unites with it by a kind 

 of slow combustion, and forms two other compounds water, 

 harmless water, the one; sulphurous acid (gas of burning 

 brimstone) the other. And to the latter is accorded a short 

 term of existence. By union with more oxygen, oil of vitriol 

 is next formed. Oil of vitriol must needs wed, and its spouses 

 are many. It combines with ammonia; it combines with lime; 

 with magnesia too : are not the marriage credentials of this 

 acid graven on the walls of the New Palace at Westminster ? 

 And now, my body, my flesh, my bones, but little remain of 

 ye! Some phosphorus has fleeted away, but some, united with 

 lime, still clings to the tomb in the form of phosphate of lime, 

 the chief material of bones. This material in process of time 

 is decomposed by natural agencies ; or greedy chemists, exer- 

 cising their mystic art, may grub-up my bones and extract my 



* Some years ago the experiment was tried in France of enveloping a 

 horse, all but the head, in a bag of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. The animal 

 was killed, 



