this stupid Analysis at fault again.

Nay, nay, again. Be patient with him. If he cannot tell you what carbon
is, he can tell you what is carbon, which is well worth knowing. He will
tell you, for instance, that every time you breathe or speak, what comes
out of your mouth is carbonic acid; and that, if your breath comes on a
bit of slacked lime, it will begin to turn it back into the chalk from
which it was made; and that, if your breath comes on the leaves of a
growing plant, that leaf will take the carbon out of it, and turn it into
wood. And surely that is worth knowing,--that you may be helping to make
chalk, or to make wood, every time you breathe.

Well; that is very curious.

But now, ask him, What is carbon? And he will tell you, that many things
are carbon. A diamond is carbon; and so is blacklead; and so is charcoal
and coke, and coal in part, and wood in part.

What? Does Analysis say that a diamond and charcoal are the same thing?

Yes.

Then his way of taking things to pieces must be a very clumsy one, if he
can find out no difference between diamond and charcoal.

Well, perhaps it is: but you must remember that, though he is very old--as
old as the first man who ever lived--he has only been at school for the
last three hundred years or so. And remember, too, that he is not like
you, who have some one else to teach you. He has had to teach himself,
and find out for himself, and make his own tools, and work in the dark
besides. And I think it is very much to his credit that he ever found
out that diamond and charcoal were the same things. You would never have
found it out for yourself, you will agree.

No: but how did he do it?

He taught a very famous chemist, Lavoisier, about ninety years ago, how
to burn a diamond in oxygen--and a very difficult trick that is; and
Lavoisier found that the diamond when burnt turned almost entirely into
carbonic acid and water, as blacklead and charcoal do; and more, that
each of them turned into the same quantity of carbonic acid, And so he
knew, as surely as man can know anything, that all these things, however
different to our eyes and fingers, are really made of the same
thing,--pure carbon.

But what makes them look and feel so different?

That Analysis does not know yet. Perhaps he will find out some day; for
he is very patient, and very diligent, as you ought to be. Meanwhile, be
content with him: remember that though he cannot see through a