The caloric forces itself in greater abundance between the particles of the fluid, and drives them to such a distance from each other, that their attraction of aggregation is wholly destroyed: the liquid is then transformed into vapour.
MRS. B.
Very well; and this is precisely the case with boiling water, when it is converted into steam or vapour, and with all bodies that assume an aëriform state.
EMILY.
I do not well understand the word aëriform?
MRS. B.
Any elastic fluid whatever, whether it be merely vapour or permanent air, is called aëriform.
But each of these various states, solid, liquid, and aëriform, admit of many different degrees of density, or consistence, still arising (chiefly at least) from the different quantities of caloric the bodies contain. Solids are of various degrees of density, from that of gold, to that of a thin jelly. Liquids, from the consistence of melted glue, or melted metals, to that of ether, which is the lightest of all liquids. The different elastic fluids (with which you are not yet acquainted) are susceptible of no less variety in their degrees of density.
EMILY.
But does not every individual body also admit of different degrees of consistence, without changing its state?