Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/102

90 the particles of which it consists chemically. Now we have never yet been able to reduce either oxygen or hydrogen to the liquid state; and yet their first impulse when chemically combined is to take up first this liquid condition and then the solid condition. We never combine these different particles together without producing water; and it is curious to think how often you must have made the experiment of combining oxygen and hydrogen to form water without knowing it. Take a candle, for instance, and a clean silver spoon (or a piece of clean tin will do), and if you hold it over the flame you immediately cover it with dew—not a smoke—which presently evaporates.

Fig. 30.

This perhaps will serve to show it better. Mr.