Heat Author:Jacob Abbott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FUNCTIONS OF OXYGEN. 33 CHAPTER III. GOING ON BOARD. John had been so much interested in what Lawrence had explained to him about the great function of ... more »oxygen in relation to the vast processes of vegetable and animal life, and in rendering possible their perpetual renovation, that he forgot the question about the comparative combustibility of wood and iron. And here, perhaps, I ought to remark, that although, in view of the rapacious appetite, so to speak, of the element oxygen, and the enormous quantities of the other elements which it continually consumes, it is natural enough, still, perhaps, it is hardly fair, to stigmatize it as simply a de- vourer. Its great function being, as we have seen, to receive the materials which have been employed by the principle of life, and, after having fulfilled their purpose, have been abandoned, and to convey them away, and keep them in its custody in the two great storehouses of nature, the soil and the air, until they are again required, it might, per- haps, as justly be designated as the great receiver and-cus- todian of nature's stores, ready to deliver them at any time on demand by the sun, as to be called a devourer; and to consider it as serving and co-operating with the sun in sustaining and carrying forward the vast cycle of birth, life, death, and dissolution in its eternal round, rather than as acting the part of an antagonist and enemy. The facts, however, are all clear, and in their general aspect easily to be understood; and they have a very grand significance to those qualified properly to appreciate them, under what- B 2 ever figurative disguises our fancy may amuse itself in representing them. About an hour after breakfast, while Lawrence and John were sitting in one of the small parlors, each with a light c...« less