Nitro- Glycerine. 



105 



a rapidity almost equal to that at which light travels ; that 

 a powder train you can beat by walking, and water con- 

 verted into steam requires five and one-half times the heat 

 that it requires to raise it to 212°, we can form an approxi- 

 mative idea of explosions. Surround or case every atom of 

 nitro-glycerine with a film of water, and the interference 

 of this water with its explosive force will be obvious. 



Unfortunately, humanity, after making nitro-glycerine, 

 is a little afraid of it, and therefore desires to get pay for. 

 it as soon as possible after it is made ; to tamper with it by 

 a refining or purifying process, so as to give the consumer 

 its best effects, is more than a mercantile mind can venture 

 upon, whatever the chemist's curiosity or conscientious- 

 ness may risk ; and as the purchaser never ventures nearer 

 to this or any of these explosives than the law allows, it will 

 be a long time before this the most powerful, and the safest 

 explosive, besides immeasurably the most economical 

 explosive known, attains its proper position in general esti- 

 mation ; and until the press distinguishes between the 

 rashness, ignorance or carelessness of those entrusted with 

 it, and the material itself, which the audience lam address- 

 ing knows fall well will always obey the laws of nature, how- 

 ever man in his ignorance may violate them ; I say, until 

 this discrimination between man's ignorance and nature's 

 fixed laws is recognized, nitro-glycerine must be content 

 to stand at the head of sensational paragraphs between the 

 prefix " another," and the affix " accident," a deeply 

 aggrieved and insulted power that requires simply intelli- 

 gent direction to secure the results of its enormous force, 

 in lightening and lessening the labors of the human race. 



[Trans. vii.~\ 



14 



