uld not affect the decision of a reasoning
mind as to whether it was being: for that cyanogen, as a matter of fact,
was not rare in nature, though not directly occurring, being one of the
products of the common distillation of pit-coal, and found in roots,
peaches, almonds, and many tropical flora; also that it had been
actually pointed out as probable by more than one thinker that some salt
or salts of Cn, the potassic, or the potassic ferrocyanide, or both,
must exist in considerable stores in the earth at volcanic depths. In
reply to this, Stanistreet in a two-column article used the word
'dreamer,' and Rogers, when Berlin had been already silenced, finally
replied with his amazing 'block-head.' But, in my opinion, by far the
most learned and lucid of the scientific dicta was from the rather
unexpected source of Sloggett, of the Dublin Science and Art Department:
he, without fuss, accepted the statements of the fugitive eye-witnesses,
down to the assertion that the cloud, as it rolled travelling, seemed
mixed from its base to the clouds with languid tongues of purple flame,
rose-coloured at their edges. This, Sloggett explained, was the
characteristic flame of both cyanogen and hydrocyanic acid vapour,
which, being inflammable, may have become locally ignited in the passage
over cities, and only burned in that limited and languid way on account
of the ponderous volumes of carbonic anhydride with which they must, of
course, be mixed: the dark empurpled colour was due to the presence of
large quantities of the scoriae of the trappean rocks: basalts,
green-stone, trachytes, and the various porphyries. This article was
most remarkable for its clear divination, because written so early--not
long, in fact, after the cessation of telegraphic communication with
Australia and China; and at a date so early Sloggett stated that the
character of the devastation not only proved an eruption--another, but
far greater Krakatoa--probably in some South Sea region, but indicated
that its most active product must be, not CO, but potassic ferrocyanide
(K_4FeCn_6), which, undergoing distillation with the products of sulphur
in the heat of eruption, produced hydrocyanic acid (HCn); and this
volatile acid, he said, remaining in a vaporous state in all climates
above a temperature of 26.5 deg. C., might involve the entire earth, if the
eruption proved sufficiently powerful, travelling chiefly in a direction
contrary to the earth's west-to-east