OF CARBON. 37 



The difficulty here arises how to prove 

 that substances so dissimilar as carbon in the 

 gaseous state, charcoal, and the diamond, are 

 one and the same substance. To detail the 

 history of all the researches which have justi- 

 lied the first chemists in arriving at such a 

 conclusion, would be to far exceed the limits 

 of this work; this fact must be admitted, and 

 the proof that such may be the case, must 

 be demonstrated by an appeal to a substance 

 which is more familiar, and which in its 

 three states of solid, liquid, and aeriform is 

 quite as dissimilar in its appearance as the dia- 

 mond, charcoal, and carbon. 



Water exists in three states, according to 

 the temperature in which it is placed. It 

 exists as steam at a high temperature, as 

 water at a medium, and as ice at a low tempe- 

 rature ; and yet who, who had not cognizance 

 that such is the case, could have believed that 

 ice and water w^ere merely modifications of 

 the same substance, or that steam was only 

 water in a different state ? So it is with car- 

 bon; an increase of temperature causes the 

 diamond itself to burn and resolve itself into 

 an aeriform state. Charcoal does the same ; 

 the only difference is, that we cannot repro- 

 duce these substances from the gaseous state, 

 with the same facility that we can reduce 

 steam to water, but still this is no argument 

 against the proposition that charcoal, carbon 

 and the diamond are the same substances, 

 produced or existing under a different form ; 



