Page:The chemical history of a candle.djvu/214

212 a piece of it to the joint action of oxygen and hydrogen. I do this for the purpose of shewing you the value of lime as a material for the furnaces and chambers that are to contain the substances to be operated on, and that are consequently to sustain the action of this extreme heat. Here we have the hydrogen and the oxygen, which will give the most intense heat that can be obtained by chemical action; and if I put a piece of lime into the flame, we get what is called the lime-light. Now, with all the beauty and intensity of action which you perceive, there is no sensible deterioration of the lime except by the mechanical force of the current of gases rushing from the jet against the lime, sweeping away such particles as are not strongly aggregated. "Vapour of lime" some call it; and it may be so, but there is no other change of the lime than that under the action of heat of this highly-exalted chemical condition, though almost any other substance would melt at once.

Then, as to the way in which the heat is applied to the substance. It is all very well for me to take a piece of antimony, and fuse it in the flame of a blowpipe. But if I tried