41 A TREATISE ON THE CONNECTION OS 



lime: 



Is produced from chalky marble, limestone, coral, or 

 shells, when submitted to a sufficient degree of heat to 

 disengage the fixableair, or carbonic acid, with which, in 

 a natural state, these substances are always united. 



Water has a great tendency to combine with lime: heat 

 is disengaged, and there is reason to believe that the water 

 is decomposed in the process. Newly made lime, from its 

 power of destroying, or as it were burning vegetable and 

 animal bodies, is termed caustic. When applied to or- 

 ganic bodies, containing moisture, it rapidly destroys 

 their adhesion, or continuity of parts, and disengages from 

 them inflammable air, and azotic or phlogisticated air, 

 forming volatile alkali. The residuum will be found to 

 consist of charcoal, and of a combination of lime with 

 the phosphoric and other acids, forming saline matters, 

 which are nearly insoluble. The above effects are pro- 

 duced by the application of lime to peat, or to soils con- 

 taining 



