Carbon and Hydrogen.
To the combination of these elements in various proportions, and with the occasional addition of other substances, we are indebted for all, or nearly all, our means of obtaining light and heat. Coal, wood, spirit, oil, and all the varieties of fats, are composed principally of carbon and hydrogen, and may easily be converted into the gas with which our houses and streets are lighted, which is nearly pure carbureted hydrogen.
The two chief definite gaseous compounds of those two elements are the light carbureted hydrogen and the heavy carbureted hydrogen, or olefiant gas. The first is easily procured by stirring the bottom of stagnant water on a hot summer’s day, and collecting the bubbles in a bottle filled with water and inverted over the place where the bubbles rise. This gas burns with a yellowish flame, and when mixed with a certain proportion of air, or oxygen gas, explodes with great violence on the application of a flame. It is the much dreaded fire-damp generated so profusely in some coal-mines, and causing such fearful destruction to life and property when accidentally inflamed.
The other compound, the heavy carbureted hydrogen, forms part of the gas used for illumination; and, in fact, whatever substance is employed for artificial light, whether oil, tallow, wax, etc., etc., it is converted into this gas by heat, and then furnishes the light by its own combustion.
This gas has some very curious properties, and may be obtained nearly pure by mixing in a retort, very carefully, one part of spirits of wine and four of sulphuric acid. A lamp must be placed under the retort, when the gas will be speedily disengaged, and come over in great abundance; it may be collected over water.
This gas is transparent, colorless, will not support combustion, but is itself inflammable, burning with a brilliant white light, and being converted into carbonic acid and water. If mixed with three or four times its bulk of oxygen, or with common atmospheric air in much larger proportion, it explodes with great violence.
This gas is sometimes called “olefiant gas,” from the property it has of forming an oily substance when mixed with chlorine.