Recall for a few minutes the facts I brought before you in my last lecture. The first point we discussed was the preparation of the tinder. I explained to you that tinder was nothing more than carbon in a finely-divided state. The second point was, that I had to strike the steel with the flint in such manner that a minute particle of the iron should be detached; the force used in knocking it off being sufficient to make the small particle of iron red-hot. This spark falling upon the tinder set fire to it. The next stage of the operation was to blow upon the tinder, in order, as I said, to nourish the flame; in other words, to promote combustion by an increased supply of oxygen, just as we use an ordinary pair of bellows for the purpose of fanning a fire which has nearly gone out into a blaze.

And now comes the next point in my story of a tinder-box. Having ignited the tinder I want to set fire to the match. Now I have here some of the old tinder-box matches, and you will see that they are simply wooden splints with a little sulphur at the end. Why (you say) use sulphur? For this reason the wood is not combustible enough to be fired by the red-hot tinder. We put therefore upon the wood a substance which is more combustible than the wood. This sulphur which most people call brimstone has been known from very early times. In the middle ages it was regarded as the “principle of fire.” It is referred to by Moses and Homer and Pliny. A very distinguished chemist, Geber, describes it as one of “the principles of nature.” Having fired my tinder, as you see, and blown upon it, I place my sulphur match in contact with the red-hot tinder. And now I want you to notice that the sulphur match does not catch fire immediately. It wants, in fact, a little time, and as you see a little coaxing. Now I have got it alight. But note, it is the sulphur that at the present moment is burning. The burning sulphur is now beginning to set fire to the wood. The whole match is well alight now! But it was the sulphur that caught fire first, and it was the sulphur that set fire to the wood. A little time was occupied, we said, in making the sulphur catch fire. Ask yourselves this question Why was it that the sulphur took a little time to catch fire? This was the reason because before the sulphur could catch fire it was necessary to change the solid sulphur (the condition in which it was upon the match end) into gaseous sulphur. The solid sulphur could not catch fire. Therefore the heat of my tinder during the interval that I was coaxing the match (as I called it) was being exerted in converting my solid into gaseous sulphur. When the solid sulphur had had sufficient heat applied to it to vapourize it, the sulphur gas immediately caught fire. Now understand, that in order to convert a solid into a liquid, or a liquid into a gas, heat is always a necessity. I must have heat to produce a gas out of a solid or a liquid. I will endeavour to make this clear to you by an experiment. I have here, as you see, a wooden stool, and I am about to pour a little water on this stool. I place a glass beaker on the stool, the liquid water only intervening between the stool and the bottom of the glass. You see the glass is perfectly loose, and easily lifted off the stool notwithstanding the layer of water. I will now pour into the beaker a little of a very volatile liquid i. e. a liquid that is easily converted into a gas (bisulphide of carbon). I wish somewhat rapidly to effect the change of this liquid bisulphide of carbon into gaseous bisulphide of carbon, and in order to accomplish this object I must have heat. So I take this tube which, as you see, is connected with a pair of bellows, and simply blow on my bisulphide of carbon. This effects the change of the liquid into a gas with great rapidity. Just as I converted my solid sulphur into a gas by the heat of the tinder, so here I am converting this liquid bisulphide of carbon into a gas by the wind from my bellows. But my liquid bisulphide of carbon must get heat somewhere or another in order that the change of the liquid into a gas, that I desire should take place, may be effected; and so, seeing that the water that I have placed between the glass and the stool is the most convenient place from which the liquid can derive the necessary heat, it says, “I will take the heat out of the water.” It does so, but in removing the heat from the water it changes the liquid water into solid ice. And see, already the beaker is frozen to the stool, so that I can actually lift up the stool by the beaker (Fi. Understand then why my sulphur match wanted some time and some coaxing before it caught fire, viz. to change this solid sulphur into gaseous sulphur.

But let us go a step further: why must the solid sulphur be converted into a gas? We want a flame, and whenever we have flame it is absolutely necessary that we should have a gas to burn. You cannot have flame without you have gas. Let me endeavour to illustrate what I mean. I pour into this flask a small quantity of ether, a liquid easily converted into a gas. If I apply a lighted taper to the mouth of the flask, no gas, or practically none, being evolved at the moment, nothing happens. But I will heat the ether so as to convert it into a gas. And now that I have evolved a large quantity of ether gas, when I apply a lighted taper to the mouth of the flask I get a large flame (Fi. There it is! The more gas I evolve (that is, the more actively I apply the heat) the larger is the flame. You see it is a very large flame now. If I take the spirit lamp away, the production of gas grows less and less, until my flame almost dies out; but you see if I again apply my heat and set more gas free, I revive my flame. I want you to grasp this very important fact, upon which I cannot enlarge further now, that given flame, I must have a gas to burn, and therefore heat as a power is needed before I can obtain flame.

Well, you ask me, is that true of all flame? Where is the gas, you say, in that candle flame? Think for a moment of the science involved in lighting a candle. What am I doing when I apply a lighted match to this candle? The first thing I do is to melt the tallow, the melted tallow being drawn up by the capillarity of the wick. The next thing I do is to convert the liquid tallow into a gas. This done, I set fire to the gas. I don’t suppose you ever thought so much was involved in lighting a candle. My candle is nothing more than a portable gas-works, similar in principle to the gas-works from which the gas that I am burning here is supplied. Whether it is a lamp, or a gas-burner, or a candle, they are all in a true sense gas-works, and they all pre-suppose the application of heat to some material or another for the purpose of forming a gas which will burn.

Before I pass on, I want to refer to the beautiful burner that I have here. It is the burner used by the Whitechapel stall-keepers on a Saturday night (Fi. (Fig. a is an enlarged drawing of the burner.) Just let me explain the science of the Whitechapel burner. First of all you will see the man with a funnel filling this top portion with naphtha (c). Here is a stop-cock, by turning which he lets a little naphtha run down the tube through a very minute orifice into this small cup at the bottom of the burner (a). This cup he heats in a friend’s lamp, thereby converting the liquid naphtha, which runs into the cup, into a gas. So soon as the gas is formed in other words, so soon as the naphtha has been sufficiently heated the naphtha gas catches fire, the heat being then sufficient to maintain that little cup hot enough to keep up a regular supply of naphtha gas. When the lamp does not burn very well, you will often see the man poking it with a pin. The carbon given off from the naphtha is very disposed to choke up the little hole through which the naphtha runs into the cup, and the costermonger pushes a pin into the little hole to allow the free passage of the naphtha. That, then, is the mechanism of this beautiful lamp of the Whitechapel traders, known as Halliday’s lamp.

Now I go to another point: having obtained the gas, I must set fire to it. It is important to note that the temperature required to set fire to different gases varies with the gas. For instance, I will set free in this bottle a small quantity of gas, which fires at a very low temperature. It is the vapour of carbon disulphide. See, I merely place a hot rod into the bottle, and the gas fires at once. If I put a hot rod into this bottle of coal gas, no such effect results, since coal gas requires a very much higher temperature to ignite it than bisulphide of carbon gas. I want almost not quite actual flame to fire coal gas. But here is another gas, about which I may have to say something directly, called marsh gas (the gas of coal-mines). This requires a much higher temperature than even coal gas to fire it. I want you to understand that although all gases require heat to fire them, different gases ignite at very different temperatures. Bisulphide of carbon gas, e. g., ignites at a very low temperature, whilst marsh gas requires a very high temperature indeed for its ignition. You will see directly that this is a very important fact. Sulphur gas ignites fortunately at a fairly low temperature, and that is why sulphur is so useful an addition to the wood splint by which to get fire out of the tinder-box.

And here I wish to make a slight digression in my story. I will show you an experiment preparatory to bringing before you the fact I am anxious now to make clear. I have before me a tube, one half of which is brass and the other half wood. I have covered the tube, as you see, with a tightly-fitting piece of white paper. The whole tube, wood and brass, has been treated in exactly the same manner. Now I will set fire to some spirit in the trough I have here, and expose the entire tube to the action of the flame. Notice this very curious result, viz. that the paper covering the brass portion of the tube does not catch fire, whereas the paper covering the wood is rapidly consumed (Fi. You see the exact line that divides wood from brass by the burning of the paper. Well, why is that? Now all of you know that some things conduct heat (i. e. carry away heat) better than other substances. For instance, if you were to put a copper rod and a glass rod into the fire, allowing a part of each to project, the copper rod that projects out of the fire would soon become so very hot that you dare not touch it, owing to the copper conducting the heat from the fire, whereas you would be able to take hold of the projecting end of the glass rod long after the end of the glass exposed to the fire had melted. The fact is, the copper carries heat well, and the glass carries heat badly. Now with the teaching of that experiment before you, you will understand, I hope, the exact object of one or two experiments I am about to show you. Here is a piece of coarse wire gauze I am about to place it over the flame of this Argand burner. You will notice that it lowers the flame for a moment, but almost immediately the flame dashes through the gauze (Fi A). Here is another piece of gauze, not quite so coarse as the last. I place this over the flame, and for a moment the flame cannot get through it. There, you see it is through now, but it did not pass with the same readiness that it did in the case of the other piece of gauze, which was coarser. Now, when I take a piece of fine gauze, the flame does not pass through at all until the gauze is nearly red-hot. There is plenty of gas passing all the time. If I take a still finer gauze, I shall find that the flame won’t pass even when it is almost red-hot (Fi B). Plenty of gas is passing through, remember, all the time, but the flame does not pass through. Now why is it that the flame is unable to pass? The reason is this because the metal gauze has so cooled the flame that the heat on one side is not sufficient to set fire to the gas on the other side. I must have, you see, a certain temperature to fire my gas. When therefore I experiment with a very fine piece of gauze, where I have a good deal of metal and a large conducting surface, there is no possibility of the flame passing. In fact, I have so cooled the flame by the metal gauze that it is no longer hot enough to set fire to the gas on the opposite side. I will give you one or two more illustrations of the same fact. Suppose I put upon this gauze a piece of camphor (camphor being a substance that gives off a heavy combustible vapour when heated), and then heat it, you see the camphor gas burning on the under side of the gauze, but the camphor gas on the upper side is not fired (Fi. Plenty of camphor gas is being given off, but the flame of the burning camphor on the under side is not high enough to set fire to the camphor gas on the upper side, owing to the conducting power of the metal between the flame and the upper gas. There is one other experiment I should like to show you. Upon this piece of metal gauze I have piled up a small heap of gunpowder. I will place a spirit-lamp underneath the gunpowder, as you see I am now doing, and I don’t suppose the gunpowder will catch fire. I see the sulphur of the gunpowder at the present moment volatilizing, but the flame, cooled by the action of the metal, is not hot enough to set fire to the gunpowder.

I showed you the steel and flint lamp if I may call it a lamp used by coal-miners at the time of Davy (Fi. Davy set to work to invent a more satisfactory lamp than that, and the result of his experiments was the beautiful miner’s lamp which I have here (Fi. I regard this lamp with considerable affection, because I have been down many a coal-mine with it. This is the coal-miner’s safety-lamp. The old-fashioned form of it that I have here has been much improved, but it illustrates the principle as well as, if not better than, more elaborate varieties. It is simply an oil flame covered with a gauze shade, exactly like that gauze with which I have been experimenting. I will allow a jet of coal gas to play upon this lamp, but the gas, as you see, does not catch fire. You will notice the oil flame in the lamp elongates in a curious manner. The flame of the lamp cooled by the gauze is not hot enough to set fire to the coal gas, but the appearance of the flame warns the miner, and tells him when there is danger. And that is the explanation of the beautiful miner’s safety-lamp invented by Sir Humphry Davy.

Now let me once more put this fact clearly before you, that whether it is the gas flame or our farthing rushlight, whether it is our lamp or our lucifer match, if we have a flame we must have a gas to burn, and having a gas, we must heat it to, and maintain it at, a certain temperature. We have now reached a point where our tinder-box has presented us with flame. A flame is indeed the consummated work of the tinder-box.

Just let me say a few words about the grand result the consummated work of the tinder-box. A flame is a very remarkable thing. It looks solid, but it is not solid. You will find that the inside of a flame consists of unburnt gas gas, that is to say, not in a state of combustion at all. The only spot where true combustion takes place is the outer covering of the flame. I will try to show you some experiments illustrating this. I will take a large flame for this purpose. Here is a piece of glass tube which I have covered with ordinary white paper. Holding the covered glass tube in our large flame for a minute or two, you observe I get two rings of charred paper, corresponding to the outer envelope of the flame, whilst that portion of the paper between the black rings has not even been scorched, showing you that it is only the outer part of the flame that is burning (Fi. The heat of the flame is at that part where, as I said before, the combustible gases come into contact into collision with the atmosphere. So completely is this true, that if I take a tube, such as I have here, I can easily convey the unburnt gas in the centre of the flame away from the flame, and set fire to it, as you see, at the end of the glass tube a long distance from the flame (Fi. I will place in the centre of my flame some phosphorus which is at the present moment in a state of active burning, and observe how instantly the combustion of the phosphorus ceases so soon as it gets into the centre of the flame. The crucible which contains it is cooled down immediately, and presents an entirely different appearance within the flame to what it did outside the flame. It is a curious way, perhaps you think, to stop a substance burning by putting it into a flame. Indeed I can put a heap of gunpowder inside a flame so that the outer envelope of burning gas does not ignite it (Fi. There you see a heap of gunpowder in the centre of our large flame. The flame is so completely hollow that even it cannot explode the powder.

I want you, if you will, to go a step further The heat of the flame is due, as I explained in my last lecture, to the clashing of molecules. But what is the light of my candle and gas due to? The light is due to the solid matter in the flame, brought to a state of white heat or incandescence by the heat of the flame. The heat is due to the clashing of the particles, the light is due to the heated solid matter in the flame. Let me see if I can show you that. I am setting free in this bottle some hydrogen, which I am about to ignite at the end of this piece of glass tube (Fi A). I shall be a little cautious, because there is danger if my hydrogen gets mixed with air. There is my hydrogen burning; but see, it gives little or no light. But this candle flame gives light. Why? The light of the candle is due to the intensely heated solid matter in the flame; the absence of light in the hydrogen flame depends on the absence of solid matter. Let me hold clean white plates over both these flames. See the quantity of black solid matter that I am able to collect from this candle flame (Fi B). But my hydrogen yields me no soot or solid matter whatsoever (Fi A). The plate remains perfectly clean, and only a little moisture collects upon it. The light that candle gives depends upon the solid matter in the flame becoming intensely heated. If what I say be true, it follows that if I take a flame which gives no light, like this hydrogen flame (Fi A), and give it solid particles, I ought to change the non-luminous flame into a luminous one. Let us see whether this be so or not. I have here a glass tube containing a little cotton wadding (Fi B a), and I am about to pour on the wadding a little ether, and to make the hydrogen gas pass through the cotton wadding soaked with ether before I fire it. And now if what I have said is correct, the hydrogen flame to which I have imparted a large quantity of solid matter ought to produce a good light, and so it does! See, I have converted the flame which gave no light (Fi A) into a flame which gives an excellent light merely by incorporating solid matter with the flame (Fi B). What is more, the amount of light that a flame gives depends upon the amount or rather the number of solid particles that it contains. The more solid particles there are in the flame, the greater is the light. Let me give you an illustration of this. Here is an interesting little piece of apparatus given to my predecessor in the chair of chemistry at the London Hospital by the Augustus Harris of that day. It is one of the torches formerly used by the pantomime fairies as they descended from the realms of the carpenters. I have an alcohol flame at the top of the torch which gives me very little light. Here, you see, is an arrangement by which I can shake a quantity of solid matter (lycopodium) into the non-luminous alcohol flame. You will observe what a magnificently luminous flame I produce (Fi.

I have told you that the light of a flame is due to solid matter in the flame; further, that the amount of light is due to the amount of solid matter. And now I want to show you that the kind of light is due to the kind of solid matter in the flame. Here are some pieces of cotton wadding, which I am about to saturate with alcoholic solutions of different kinds of solid matter. For instance, I have in one bottle an alcoholic solution of a lithium salt, in another of a barium, in a third of a strontium, and so on. I will set fire to all these solutions, and you see how vastly different the colours are, the colour of the flames being dependent on the various forms of solid matter that I have introduced into them.

I have not forgotten Frankland’s experiments on this subject,
but the lectures did not admit of dealing with exceptional cases.

Thus I have shown you that the heat of our flame is due to the clashing of the two gases, and the light of the flame to the solid matter in the flame, and the kind of light to the kind of solid matter.

Well, there is another point to which I desire to refer. Light is the paint which colours bodies. You know that ordinary white light is made up of a series of beautiful colours (the spectrum), which I show you here. If I take all these spectrum or rainbow colours which are painted on this glass I can, as you see, recompose them into white light by rotating the disc with sufficient rapidity that they may get mixed together on the little screen at the back of your eye. White light then is a mixture of a number of colours.

Just ask yourselves this question. Why is this piece of ribbon white? The white light falls upon it. White light is made up of all those colours you saw just now upon the screen. The light is reflected from this ribbon exactly as it fell upon the ribbon. The whole of those colours come off together, and that ribbon is white because the whole of the colours of the spectrum are reflected at the same moment. Why is that ribbon green? The white light falls upon the ribbon the violet, the indigo, the red, the blue, the orange, and the yellow, are absorbed by the dye of the ribbon, and you do not see them. The ribbon, as it were, drinks in all these colours, but it cannot drink in the green. And reflecting the green of the spectrum, you see that ribbon green because the ribbon is incapable of absorbing the green of the white light. Why is this ribbon red? For the same reason. It can absorb the green which the previous piece of ribbon could not absorb, but it cannot absorb the red. The fact is, colour is not an inherent property of a body. If you ask me why that ribbon is green, and why this ribbon is red, the real answer is, that the red ribbon has absorbed every colour except the red, and the green ribbon every colour except the green, not because they are of themselves red and green but because they have the power of reflecting those colours from their surfaces.

This then is the consummated work of our tinder-box. Our tinder-box set fire to the match, and the match set fire to the candle, whilst the heat and the light of the candle are the finished work of the candle that the tinder-box lighted.

The clock warns me that I must bring to an end my story of a tinder-box. To be sure, the tinder-box is a thing of the past, but I hope its story has not been altogether without teaching. Let me assure you that the failure, if failure there be, is not the fault of the story, but of the story-teller. If some day, my young friends, you desire to be great philosophers and such desire is a high and holy ambition be content in the first instance to listen to the familiar stories told you by the commonest of common things. There is nothing, depend upon it, too little to learn from. In time you will rise to higher efforts of thought and intellectual activity, but you will be primed for those efforts by the grasp you have secured in your studies of every-day phenomena.

“Great things are made of little things,
And little things go lessening, till at last
Comes God behind them.”