CHAOS. 
591 
winch \aluable sheets of parchment were anointed, to preserve them 
from corruption and moths. Perseus illustrates this, in th^ excellent 
version of Mr. Gifford : — 
Who would not leave posterity such rhymes, 
, As cedar oil might keep to latest times. 
Porousness and Durability of Charcoal. 
Charcoal consists of wood half burnt, and is chiefly used where 
a clear strong fire, without smoke, is re.quired ; the humidity of the 
wood being mostly dissipated in the fire wherein it is prepared. 
The microscope discovers a surprising number of pores in charcoal ; 
they are disposed in order, and traverse it lengthwise ; so that there 
is no piece of charcoal, how long soever, but may be easily blowm 
through. If a piece be broken pretty short, it may be seen through 
w ith a microscope. In a range, the eighteeenth part of an inch long. 
Dr. Hook reckoned one hundred and fifty pores; whence he concludes, 
that in a charcoal of an inch diameter, there are not less than five 
million seven hundred and twenty-four thousand pores ! It is to this 
prodigious number of pores, that the blackness of charcoal is owing ; 
for the rays of light striking on the charcoal, are absorbed in its pores, 
instead of being reflected, whence the body must of necessity appear 
black. 
Charcoal was anciently used to distinguish the bounds of estates 
and inheritances ; as being incorruptible, when let very deep within 
ground. In fact, it lasts so long, that there are many pieces found 
entire in the ancient tombs of the northern nations. M. Dodart says 
there is charcoal made of corn, probably as old as the days of Caesar ! 
he adds, that it has kept so well, that the wheat may be still distin- 
guished from the rye ; which he looks on as a proof of its incor- 
ruptibility. 
Chaos. 
Chaos is represented by the ancients as the first principle, ovum, 
or seed, of nature and the world. All the sophists, sages, naturalists, 
phiiosophers, theologians, and poets, held that chaos was the eldest 
and first principle. The Phoenicians, Egyptians, Persians, &c. all refer 
the origin of the world to a rude, mixed, confused mass of matter. 
The Greeks, Orpheus, Hesiod, Menander, Aristophanes, Euripides, 
and the writers of the Cyclic Poems, all speak of the first chaos. The 
Ionic and Platonic philosophers build the world out of it. The Stoics 
hold, that as the world was first made of the chaos, it shall at last be 
reduced to a chaos ; and that its periods and revolutions in the mean 
time are only transitions from one chaos to another. Lastly, the Latins, 
as Ennius, Varro, Ovid, Lucretius, Statius, &c. are all of the same 
opinion. Nor is there any nation or sect whatever, that does not 
derive the structure of the world from a chaos. 
Dr. Burnet observes, That besides Aristotle, and a few^ other pseudo** 
Pythagoreans, nobody every asserted that our world was always from 
eternity, of the same nature, form, and structure as at present; but 
that it had been the standing opinion of the wise men of all ages, that 
