Supposing the ordeal of fiery purification to take place upon this earth, these experiments appear to indicate the mighty changes which would thence result. There would be no annihilation, but everything would be transformed from the centre of the globe to the verge of its atmosphere--old things would pass away, all things become new, and the beautiful mythos of the phœnix be realized in the fresh creation. The deductions to be drawn from the results obtained by abstracting heat from bodies are equally instructive. By taking advantage of the cooling produced by the rapid solution of salts of several kinds in water, an intense degree of coldness may be produced.[80] Indeed, the absorption of heat by liquefaction may be shown by the use of metallic bodies alone. If lead, tin, and bismuth, are melted together, and reduced to a coarse powder by being poured into water, and the alloy then dissolved in a large quantity of quicksilver, the thermometer will sink nearly 50 degrees. An intense amount of cold will result from the mixture of muriate of lime and snow, by which a temperature of 50° below the zero of Fahrenheit, or 82° below the freezing point of water, is produced. By such a freezing mixture as this, mercury will be rendered solid. A degree of cold, however, far exceeding it, has lately been obtained by the use of solid carbonic acid and ether.[81] Solid carbonic acid is itself procured from the gas liquefied by pressure; which liquid, when allowed to escape into the air, evaporates so rapidly that a large quantity of it is congealed by being robbed of its combined heat by the vaporizing portion. When this solid acid is united with ether, a bath is formed in which the carbonic acid will remain solid for twenty or thirty minutes. By a mixture of this kind, placed under the receiver of an air-pump, a good exhaustion being sustained, a degree of cold 166° below zero is secured. By this intense cold, many of the bodies which have hitherto been known to us only in the gaseous state have been condensed into liquids and solids. Olefiant gas, a compound of hydrogen and carbon, was brought into a liquid form. Hydriodic and hydrobromic acids could be condensed into either a liquid or a solid form. Phosphuretted hydrogen, a gas which inflames spontaneously when brought into contact with the air or with oxygen, became a transparent liquid at this great reduction of temperature. Sulphurous acid may be condensed, by pressure and a reduction of temperature, into a liquid which boils at 14° Fahrenheit, but by the carbonic acid bath it is converted into a solid body, transparent and without colour. Sulphuretted hydrogen gas solidifies at 122° below zero, and forms a white substance resembling a mass of crystals of sea-salt.