It is capable of showing electric phenomena when rubbed, giving out slight sparks, and first attracting and then repelling light bodies, such as small pieces of paper, etc. It is so bad a conductor of heat, that if grasped suddenly in a hot hand, it will crack and split into pieces just as glass does when suddenly heated or cooled--of course I am speaking of the roll brimstone. Water has no effect on it, as may be seen in the pans placed for pet dogs to drink out of, where the same piece of brimstone lies for years entirely unaltered, though it is supposed to prevent the dogs from having the mange! Sulphur is largely used in the arts, principally in the manufacture of gunpowder, and fireworks of various kinds. It combines with hydrogen and forms a gaseous compound called sulphureted hydrogen, which is almost the most poisonous of all the gases. It fortunately has so abominable a smell that due notice is given of its presence. Rotten eggs, a dirty gun-barrel, cabbage water, putrid animal and vegetable matter, etc., are indebted to this gas for their inviting odor; and it is found in certain mineral springs, as at Harrogate, where the water contains a considerable quantity of this gas, and is found useful in many diseases of the skin. It is also given off in a gaseous form by some volcanoes. This gas may be obtained by pouring dilute hydrochloric acid upon a metallic sulphuret, such as that called crude antimony, being a native sulphuret of that metal. The gas may be kept for a short time over water. It is colorless and transparent, inflammable, but quite irrespirable, a small bird dying instantly when placed in air containing only 1-1500th of this gas. Its most remarkable property perhaps is the effect it has on certain metallic oxides and other metallic salts, blackening them instantly. White paint is easily stained by this gas, and it will darken the color of a metal in a solution, especially of lead, even when diluted with 20,000 times its weight of water. By way of experiment slips of ribbon, silk, or even paper, may be wetted with various metallic solutions, such as silver, mercury, lead, etc., or words may be written with the solutions, and on holding them over a stream of this gas they will be instantly darkened. If this gas be collected in the pneumatic trough, which is usually painted _white_, you will have the pleasure of seeing the color changed to a very dark brown when your experiments are finished. With this very limited description of some of the non-metallic elements and their combinations, we must, for want of space, take leave of this division of chemistry, “the beginning of which is pleasure, its progress knowledge, its objects truth and utility.” Metals. We have a few words to say about a class of bodies called metals, which are of the utmost importance to mankind, and indeed without some of them, especially iron, few of the arts of civilized life could exist.