Oh, it smokes and blazes, and then nothing is left but some ashes.
What is it which burns away?
That I cannot tell.
It is the gaseous part which burns in a flame, like what you have seen come out of coal. But what do you call woody matter that will not blaze?
Charcoal, father. Then I understand now that wood is nothing but charcoal and the gases. What are these gases?
The gas which blazes so readily, my dear, is hydrogen: and it has a very strong smell too. The air we breathe is a mixture of two gases—oxygen and nitrogen. It is only the oxygen that we take into our lungs.
Well, that is curious.
I shall puzzle you more, Willie, when I tell you that water is nothing but a mixture of oxygen gas and hydrogen gas.
It certainly is funny that water, which puts out flame, should be partly composed of the burning gas.
You must also know, my lad, that hydrogen would not burn without oxygen. You blow air into a fire to give food for flame.