when I tell you that this piece of common charcoal is just the same thing, only differently coalesced, as the diamonds which you wear? (I have put a specimen outside of a piece of straw which was charred in a particular way—it is just like black lead.) Now, this charred straw, this charcoal, and these diamonds, are all of them the same substance, changed but in their properties as respects the force of cohesion.
Here is a piece of glass [producing a piece of plate glass about two inches square], (I shall want this afterwards to look to and examine its internal condition)—and here is some of the same sort of glass differing only in its power of cohesion, because while yet melted it has been dropped into cold water [exhibiting a "Prince Rupert's drop[1] (fig. 13)], and if I take one of these little tear-like pieces and break off ever so little from the point, the whole will at once burst and fall to pieces. I will now break off apiece of this. [The Lecturer nipped off a small piece from the end of one of the Rupert's drops, whereupon the whole immediately fell to pieces.] There! you see the solid glass has suddenly become powder, and more than that, it has knocked a hole in the glass vessel in
- ↑ Page 45. "Prince Rupert's Drops." These are made by pouring drops of melted green glass into cold water. They were not, as is commonly supposed, invented by Prince Rupert, but were first brought to England by him in 1660. They excited a great deal of curiosity, and were considered "a kind of miracle in nature."
