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But a century elapsed before the nature of this "gas sylvestre," or, as it was afterwards called, "fixed air," was clearly determined, and it was found to be identical with that deadly "choke-damp" by which the lives of those who descend into old wells, or mines, or brewers' vats, are sometimes suddenly ended; and with the poisonous aëriform fluid which is produced by the combustion of charcoal, and now goes by the name of carbonic acid gas.
In my former letter I reminded you that three of the supposed elements of the ancients represent the forms or state in which all the ponderable matter of our globe exists; I would now observe, that no substance possesses absolutely any one of those conditions; that modern chemistry recognises nothing unchangeably solid, liquid, or aeriform: means have been devised for effecting a change of state in almost every known substance.
As a rule the arteries are empty after death, and Praxagoras believed that they were filled with an aeriform fluid, a sort of pneuma, which was responsible for their pulsation.
In Margrave there seemed to be wanting that mysterious something which is needed to keep our faculties, however severally brilliant, harmoniously linked together, as the string by which a child mechanically binds the wildflowers it gathers, shaping them at choice into the garland or the chain. "According to the views we have mentioned, we must ascribe life to a gas, that is, to an aeriform body."
We know that this characteristic of matter diminishes gradually with its transition from the solid to the liquid and aeriform states. We know also that this last state is characterized by a high degree of expansiveness, which is also the outstanding property of heat.
The opinion that the mass of the sun is gaseous now commands a very general assent; although the gaseity admitted is of such a nature as to afford the consistence rather of honey or pitch than of the aeriform fluids with which we are familiar. On another important point the course of subsequent thought was powerfully influenced by Faye's conclusions in 1865.
Other crater lakes of circular or oval form, and hollowed out of similar ancient strata, occur in the Upper Eifel, where copious aeriform discharges have taken place, throwing out vast heaps of pulverized shale into the air. I know of no other extinct volcanoes where gaseous explosions of such magnitude have been attended by the emission of so small a quantity of lava.
Thus there is reason to describe also from the modern point of view the solid and liquid states as essentially 'cold', and the aeriform state as 'warm'. But aeriform matter still has density and weight, and this means that matter in this state combines the two opposing qualities. Contrary to this, Air, as the second highest element in the old sense, is characterized by the pure quality, warm.
Through this process matter passes over from the aeriform condition into that of numerous separate, characteristically structured solid bodies the starch grains.
But a century elapsed before the nature of this "gas sylvestre," or, as it was afterwards called, "fixed air," was clearly determined, and it was found to be identical with that deadly "choke-damp" by which the lives of those who descend into old wells, or mines, or brewers' vats, are sometimes suddenly ended; and with the poisonous aëriform fluid which is produced by the combustion of charcoal, and now goes by the name of carbonic acid gas.
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