posterior epoch, by floods and watercourses.
In short, a coal-basin is simply a dish of
stewed vegetables, of which the sauce, the
coal itself, is the primitive basis. To have
curried fowl, veal, or fish, you first prepare
the curry itself, and then add the thing to be
curried, whatever it may be; exactly so of
the palms and tree-ferns found in coal-mines,
and of the vegetable tissue which the microscope
detects in the substance of the coal
itself. Coal is a species of dark-coloured
mayonnaise invented before cooks or kitchens
were thought of, for the preparation of pre-
adamite salad. The origin and the future
destiny of coal are thus summed up: "Coal
came from the atmosphere by precipitation,
and returns to the atmosphere by combustion."

Such are samples of what may be deduced
from the observation of a drop of cold
water dancing on the surface of a red-hot iron
plate.

The spheroidal state, then —an expression
which has now taken its permanent place in
scientific language—is the phrase employed
by M. Boutigny to denote the molecular
modifications of matter, whose occurrence he
first published to the world in eighteen hundred
and forty-two. Those modifications
consist of the very remarkable phenomena
presented by bodies which are thrown on
surfaces heated to a temperature higher than
their own (the respective bodies') boiling
point. Thus, a drop of liquid, let fall on a
heated metal plate, does not instantly fly off
in vapour, as we might at first believe that it
would do, but remains trembling and spinning,
for a short definite time, without suffering
any visible change or diminution. The drop
has passed to the spheroidal state. At the
outset of the study of these novel facts, it
was believed that a white heat, or something
like fifteen hundred degrees of centigrade,
was required to throw water into the spheroidal
state; M. Boutigny has demonstrated
that it easily acquires those conditions at
two hundred degrees, with somewhat greater
difficulty at a hundred and seventy-one
degrees, and that it maintains them while
sinking as low as one hundred and forty-two
degrees.

Bodies in the spheroidal state differ
amazingly from the same bodies, even while
displaying merely their ordinary properties.
Take liquids, as defined by Liebig. "Liquid
bodies," says the celebrated chemist of
Giessen, "assume the form of the vessels
which hold them; their molecules are very
moveable. When they are at rest, their surface
becomes horizontal." A vessel filled with
ordinary liquid of a temperature differing
from its own, gradually acquires the
temperature of the liquid, while the liquid
acquires the temperature of the vessel; in
short, an equilibrium of temperature is
rapidly established between them. But an
equilibrium of temperature cannot be
established, and is never established, between
bodies in the spheroidal state and the vessels
which contain them. This default of equilibrium
alone suffices to prove that the present
theories respecting heat are defective and
incomplete. M. Boutigny tells us that a
body is in the spheroidal state when its
temperature remains fixed or unchanged
upon a surface with which it has no contact,
and the temperature of which surface may
be raised indefinitely. Reciprocally, that is,
turning the definition the other way, all
bodies whose temperature remains unchanged
while resting on a surface with which they
have no actual contact, and the temperature
of which surface may be raised indefinitely,
are in the spheroidal state. This definition,
comprising the general fact to which the
title of the spheroidal state has been given,
after years of persevering research, is based
upon certain characteristic principles and
fundamental properties, a few of which may
be briefly indicated to the reader. The
name itself is derived from the rounded form
assumed by matter on a surface heated to a
certain temperature.

But the temperature of the vessel, in which
a body is made to pass into the spheroidal
state, must be proportionally higher, according
as the boiling-point of that body is
higher. Now, water in the spheroidal
state evaporates fifty times more slowly,
even in a capsule heated to two hundred
degrees centigrade, than it does by
ebullition in the ordinary state of liquid, namely,
at one hundred degrees merely. The
temperature of bodies in the spheroidal state is
always lower than their boiling-point, whatever
may be the temperature of the vessel
containing them. M. Boutigny, combining
these facts with the proportional law for
water which he discovered, succeeded in
solving the singular problem: Given a place
at a white-heat, to congeal water therein
instantly. Our own distinguished chemist,
Faraday, has with the greatest facility
effected, in virtue of the spheroidal state, a
bold experiment which appears to have been
first imagined by M. Boutigny; it is no less
than the congelation of mercury inside a
red-hot crucible. He first heated to redness
a platina crucible; he put into it some ether,
then some carbonic acid, and into this mixture
in the spheroidal state he plunged a
metallic capsule containing about thirty-one
grammes of mercury, which was forthwith
solidified in the course of two or three
seconds. It was marvellous to behold mercury,
plunged into a red-hot crucible, come
out again frozen to a solid lump. Such a feat
as this last, however, performed by the aid
of carbonic acid, cannot be undertaken
without danger by any but the most practised
hands.

Bodies in the spheroidal state possess the
property of almost absolutely reflecting
(which implies a casting-off, a not-receiving