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 Water also makes paper semi-transparent, but it soon evaporates: fat does not evaporate.

Another test for fats is to mount a thin section of the endosperm of castor-oil seed in water and examine with high power. Small drops of oil will be quite abundant. Treat the mount with alcanin (henna root in alcohol). The drops of oil will stain red. This is a standard test for fats and oils.

To make or liberate Oxygen.—If there is a chemistry class in school, one of its members will doubtless be glad to prepare some of the gas called oxygen, and furnish several glass jars filled with it to the biology class. If it is desired to make oxygen, the following method may be employed: Provide a dry glass flask of three to four ounces capacity. It should have a glass delivery tube, inserted through a one-holed rubber stopper, and so bent as to pass under the surface of water contained in a deep dish. Fill several pint fruit-jars with water, cover with pieces of stiff pasteboard, and turn mouth downwards in the dish of water. From one half to two thirds ounces of an equal mixture of potassium chlorate and manganese dioxid (procured at drug store) is put in the flask and heated by means of a gas or alcohol lamp. When the oxygen begins to form, collect some in jars by inserting the end of delivery tube under the jars as they stand in water. Caution: Remove delivery tube from water before cooling the flask, to prevent any water being drawn back.

Oxidation.—That something besides wood or coal is necessary to a fire can be shown by shutting off entirely the draught of a stove. Fire and other forms of combustion depend on a process called oxidation. This consists in the uniting of oxygen with other substances. When