and burning in it most brilliantly, as you see. And now let me tell you another thing, or you will go away with a very imperfect notion of the powers and effects of this affinity. There you see some charcoal burning in oxygen. Well, a piece of lead will burn in oxygen just as well as the charcoal does, or indeed better, for absolutely that piece of lead will act at once upon the oxygen as the copper did in the other vessel with regard to the chlorine. And here also a piece of iron; if I light it and put it into the oxygen, it will burn away just as the carbon did. And I will take some lead and show you that it will burn in the common atmospheric oxygen at the ordinary temperature. These are the lumps of lead which you remember we had the other day—the two pieces which clung together. Now these pieces, if I take them to day and press them together, will not stick, and the reason is that they have attracted from the atmosphere a part of the oxygen there present, and have become coated as with a varnish by the oxide of lead, which is formed on the surface, by a real process of combustion or combination. There you see the iron burning very well in oxygen, and I will tell you the
