“Father,” said Rollo, “I want to see the iron filings burn again, and I am going out to ask Jonas to file a few more.”
So Rollo went out to get Jonas to make him some more filings, and Jonas did so. Presently Rollo returned bringing the paper in very carefully, with the filings upon it. He put them down upon the table, and his father contrived, by bending the paper in different directions, to gather all the filings together into the middle of it, and then, with the point of his penknife, he took up a few of the filings at a time, and let them drop upon the flame of the lamp. The burning of the filings produced, as before, the most brilliant scintillations.
“What bright sparkles!” said Rollo.
“Yes, it is very inflammable indeed,” said his mother.
Here Mr. Holiday dropped more filings upon the flame, from the point of his knife.
“Does inflammable mean,” continued his mother, “that a thing takes fire easily, or that it burns with a great flame when it does take fire?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Holiday; “I never thought of that distinction. Some things take fire very easily, but don’t make a great flame. There’s sulphur, for instance; it takes fire before it gets very hot, but it burns with a very small and faint flame.”
“Let us try it, father,” said Rollo.
“We can’t try it very well, because there is no fire. I suppose the fire in the kitchen is covered up. But if there was a fire, and we were to put a little sulphur upon a shovel, and a small piece of paper by the side of it, and hold them over the fire, we should find that the sulphur would take fire before the paper would even begin to be scorched; but it would make only a very small blue flame. The paper would not take fire nearly as easily; but we should find that when it did take fire, it would make a much larger and brighter flame.”