MK. NifllOUS' ADi>lih;S;:>, 11 



The facts as stated arc'of themselves paradoxical, and difficult 

 of apprehension. There is no charcoal in the earth, none in the 

 air, and yet, if we allow fire to act upon a bit of the whitest wood, 

 a portion of wheat, or corn, or an apple, or starch, or sugar, it is 

 always produced. Does fire produce it, manufacture it ? or does 

 it simply develope what was positively in their substance before. — 

 Chemistry affords an answer to the question. Suppose a good 

 housewife places in her heated oven an apple, (a potato, a loaf of 

 bread, or any vegetable substance will answer the same purpose,) 

 and then amid the multiplicity of household cares, it is forgotten, 

 and when examined is found done, not brown, but black. The oven 

 has inadvertently acted the part of a charcoal manufactory. The 

 apple has disappeared, and in its place is found a dark and crispy 

 shell. In the growth of the apple it took from the earth its gase- 

 ous elements, its hydrogen, its oxygen, and also its mineral rock 

 food. From the air principally it procured its carbon, in the form 

 of carbonic acid, which is a gaseous acid composed of one atom of 

 carbon united to two of oxygen. Thus united to oxygen, it exists 

 in the air, and although itself always intensely black, except when 

 in a crystalized state, its color is not detected by the eye. We may 

 perhaps be led to conclude that the apple, in common with all other 

 vegetable substances, is ashamed of the color of its carbon ingredi- 

 ent, for before it can appropriate it to itself, it must first expel its 

 two oxygen attendants, and thus expose its hue, — but it instantly 

 so blends and combines it with the other elements, that we are una- 

 ble to see it until that merciless disorganizer, heat, drives ofi" again 

 its more fickle and volatile companions, and then the sable element 

 is seen in all its nakedness. The undue heat of the oven has done 

 this. While the oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen ingloriously fled, as 

 the flame curled around the iron dome, black carbon remained 

 faithful to his post. But let us try his courage a little further ; let 

 us see what curious results will follow if we apply flame to the 

 crispy mass. Ah, now we see changes, and new combinations, to 

 which perhaps the field of politics alone is capable of afibrding a 

 parallel. One of the substances, oxygen, which fled so precepi- 

 tately from the oven, now seems to repent of its inconsistency, and 

 as the flame grows more intense, it rushes in to the very centre of 

 the conflict, not singly, atom by atom, but in pairs, two individual 



