A single gas-burner will consume more oxygen, and produce more carbonic acid to deteriorate the atmosphere of a room, than six or eight candles.

And he tells us that wood can become lignite, or wood-coal, by parting with its oxygen, in the shape of carbonic acid gas, or choke-damp; and then common or bituminous coal, by parting with its hydrogen, chiefly in the form of carburetted hydrogenthe gas with which we light our streets.

If we conceive the anthracite cleared of all but its last atoms of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, till it has become all but pure carbon, it would becomeas it has become in certain rocks of immense antiquity, graphitewhat we miscall black-lead.

A corner, an atom of it, warms till it reaches the igniting point; the temperature at which it is able to combine with oxygen.

And then, like a dormant live thing, awaking after ages to the sense of its own powers, its own needs, the whole lump is seized, atom after atom, with an infectious hunger for that oxygen which it lost centuries since in the bottom of the earth.

It drinks the oxygen in at every pore; and burns.

But it is formed, as you all know, in the earth, not as a metal, but as a stone, as chalk or limestone, which is a carbonate of lime; that is, calcium combined with oxygen and carbonic-acid gases.

He would be more astounded to learn that beneath the appearances, the changes, so alarming him, there are profound alterations in the rate at which he is taking in oxygen, burning up sugar, accumulating carbon dioxide and excreting waste byproducts through the kidneys, which are responsible for them.

The air we breathe contains a most deadly poison, called by chemists azotic gas, which, by its being mixed with what is called vital air, (oxygen gas,) becomes necessary to our existence, as much as the one (vital air or oxygen gas) would be prejudicial without the other; and Prussic acid, the most violent of all poisons, is contained in the common bitter-almond.

Fires, candles, and breathing dependent on oxygen.

Proportions of oxygen and nitrogen in pure and impure air.

One of these is called oxygen, [Footnote: Oxygen gas is the chief supporter of combustion, as well as of respiration.

One of these is called oxygen, [Footnote: Oxygen gas is the chief supporter of combustion, as well as of respiration.

Nitrogen gas, on the contrary, while alone, will not support either respiration or combustion; mixed, however, with oxygen, it dilutes it, and in the most happy manner fits it for reception into the lungs.]

It is by means of the oxygen it contains, that air sustains life and combustion.

Breathing consumes this oxygen of the air very rapidly.

When the oxygen is present in about a certain proportion, combustion and respiration go on well, but when its natural proportion is diminished, the fire does not burn so well, neither does the candle; and no one can breathe so freely.

Not only are breathing and combustion impeded or disturbed by the diminution of oxygen in the atmosphere, but just in proportion as oxygen is diminished by these two processes, or either of them, carbonic acid is formed, which is not only bad for combustion, but much worse for health.

Not only are breathing and combustion impeded or disturbed by the diminution of oxygen in the atmosphere, but just in proportion as oxygen is diminished by these two processes, or either of them, carbonic acid is formed, which is not only bad for combustion, but much worse for health.

One needs no better proof that carbonic acid is formed on the surface of the body, than the fact that after the body has been closely covered all night, if you introduce a candle under the bed-clothes into this confined air, it will be quickly extinguished, because there is too much carbonic acid gas there, and too little oxygen.

The air, when pure, contains a little more than 20 parts of oxygen, and a little less than 80 of nitrogen.

Breathing this air, as I have already shown, consumes the oxygen, which is so necessary to life and health, and leaves in its place an increase of nitrogen and carbonic acid gas, which are not necessary to health, and the latter of which is even positively injurious.

But when the oxygen, instead of forming 20 or more parts in 100 of the atmosphere of the nursery, is reduced to 15 or 18 parts only, and the carbonic acid gas is increased from 1 or 2 parts in 100, to 5, 6, 8 or 10when to this is added the other noxious exhalations from the body, and from the lamp or candle, fire-place, feather bed, stagnant fluids in the room, &c., &c.is it any wonder that children, in the end, become sickly?

Soon afterwards, he made one of the most brilliant discoveries of modern times, in the decomposition of two fixed alkalies, which, in direct refutation of the hypothesis previously adopted, were found to consist of a peculiar metallic base united with a large quantity of oxygen.

During the greater part of 1810, he was employed on the combinations of oxymuriatic gas and oxygen; and towards the close of the same year, he delivered a course of lectures before the Dublin Society, and received from Trinity College, Dublin, the honorary degree of LL.