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CHEMICAL AFFINITY.

there is no longer any gas remaining, if I place it over the jar and open the stopcocks again, up will go the gas, and we can have a second combustion; and so I might go on again and again, and I should continue to accumulate more and more of the water to which the gas has returned. Now is not this curious?—in this vessel (c) we can go on making from water a large bulk of permanent gas, as we call it, and then we can reconvert it into water in this way. [Mr. Anderson brought in another Leyden jar, which, however, from some cause would not ignite the gas. It was therefore recharged, when the explosion took place in the desired manner.] How beautifully we get our results when we are right in our proceedings!—it is not that Nature is wrong when we make a mistake. Now I will lay this vessel (g) down by my right hand, and you can examine it by and by: there is not very much water flowing down, but there is quite sufficient for you to see.

Another wonderful thing about this mode of changing the condition of the water is this—that we are able to get the separate parts of which it is composed, at a distance the one from the other, and to examine them, and see what