Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/33

Rh diffused and penetrating every substance, it is absolutely imperceptible: only, when it is put in vibration, it becomes the essence of sound; for air is not the vehicle of sound as natural philosophers believe. But fire is fixed in a great number of bodies, where it accumulates, and becomes, in its highest degree of condensation, carbonic fire, the basis of all combustible substances, and the cause of all colours. When less condensed, and more liable to escape, it is acidific fire (feu acidifique), the cause of causticity when in great abundance, and of tastes and smells when less so. At the moment when it disengages itself, and in its transitory state of expansive motion, it is caloric fire. It is in this form that it dilates, warms, liquifies, and volatilizes bodies by surrounding their molecules; that it burns them by destroying their aggregation; and that it calcines or acidifies them by again becoming fixed in them. In the greatest force of its expansion, it possesses the power of emitting light, which is of a white, red, or violet-blue colour, according to the force with which it acts; and it is, therefore, the origin of the prismatic colours, as also of the tints seen in the flame of candles. Light, in its turn, has likewise the power of acting upon fire, and it is thus that the sun continually produces new sources of heat. Besides, all the compound substances observed on the globe are owing to the organic powers of beings endowed with life, of which,