Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/123

Rh hot as to scorch wood and paper, and burn a match.

I am now going to shew you that we can obtain heat, not by chemical affinity alone, but by the pressure of air. Suppose I take a pellet of cotton and moisten it with a little ether, and put it into a glass tube (fig. 31), and then take a piston and press it down suddenly, I expect I shall be able to burn a little of that ether in the vessel. It wants a suddenness of pressure, or we shall not do what we require. [The piston was forcibly pressed down, when a flame, due to the combustion of the ether, was visible in the lower part of the syringe.] All we want is to get a little ether in vapour, and give fresh air each time, and so we may go on again and again getting heat enough by the compression of air to fire the ether-vapour.

This, then, I think, will be sufficient, accompanied with all you have previously seen, to shew you how we procure heat. And now for the effects of this power. We need not consider many of them on the present occasion, because