If you take some apples, and squeeze the juice out of them, you will find it sweet and pleasant; let that juice stand for several days and what will happen to it?—"It will get bad." Yes; or, as grown people say, it will work or ferment; that is, the sugary part of the juice will be separated into a kind of gas and a liquid. The gas is called carbonic acid gas; the liquid is alcohol. Both the gas and the liquid are poisonous.
Alcohol may also be obtained from other fruits, as grapes, and from some grains and vegetables. But all these must first become rotten before alcohol will come out of them. This is
one reason why we think that God, who gives us good, wholesome food, did not intend alcohol to be a drink for man, else He would have put it into the delicious ripe fruit, and not made it impossible to get until they decay.
Now let us put upon the blackboard something which will help us remember what we have learned about
| ALCOHOL. | ||
| DISCOVERED BY Paracelsus. CALLED "The water of life." | DESCRIPTION. Water-like; with a pleasant odor; a hot, biting taste; and will burn with a flame. | MADE FROM Fruits, Grains, or Vegetables. |
USES OF ALCOHOL.
We put some sugar into water; the children see that it melts; then some glue or shellac is placed in the same liquid; they see that this is not melted, but that, when alcohol is used instead of water, the glue or shellac is dissolved. From this experiment they learn that alcohol is used in making varnishes.
Some water is poured into one saucer, and alcohol into another; a lighted match is applied to each; the class notices that the alcohol takes fire and burns, while the water does not.
Next, we fill a lamp with alcohol, and put a wick into it; when the wick becomes wet with the fluid it burns steadily and without smoke, as may be seen by holding a clean white saucer over the flame. This shows why jewellers and others, who wish to use a lamp to make things very hot, prefer alcohol to kerosene, which, as the children know, smokes lamp-chimneys, or anything else, so easily.