Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/144

132 rather striking when seen for the first time. I have here some iron filings and gunpowder, and will mix them carefully together, with as little rough handling as possible; now we will compare the combustibility, so to speak, of the two. I will pour some spirit of wine into a basin and set it on fire: and, having our flame, I will drop this mixture of iron filings and gunpowder through it, so that both sets of particles will have an equal chance of burning. And now tell me which of them, it is that burns?—you see a plentiful combustion of the iron filings; but I want you to observe, that though they have equal chances of burning, we shall find that by far the greater part of the gunpowder remains untouched; I have only to drain off this spirit of wine, and let the powder which has gone through the flame dry, which it will do in a few minutes, and I will then test it with a lighted match. So ready is the iron to burn, that it takes, under certain circumstances, even less time to catch fire than gunpowder. [As soon as the gunpowder was dry, Mr. Anderson handed it to the Lecturer, who applied a lighted match to it, when a sudden flash showed how large a proportion of gunpowder had escaped