Page - 789 - in The Complete Aristotle

fumes, but vapour. Sweet wine does give off fumes, for it contains fat and behaves like oil. It does not solidify under the influence of cold and it is apt to burn. Really it is not wine at all in spite of its name: for it does not taste like wine and consequently does not inebriate as ordinary wine does. It contains but little fumigable stuff and consequently is inflammable. All bodies are combustible that dissolve into ashes, and all bodies do this that solidify under the influence either of heat or of both heat and cold; for we find that all these bodies are mastered by fire. Of stones the precious stone called carbuncle is least amenable to fire. Of combustible bodies some are inflammable and some are not, and some of the former are reduced to coals. Those are called ‘inflammable’ which produce flame and those which do not are called ‘non-inflammable’. Those fumigable bodies that are not liquid are inflammable, but pitch, oil, wax are inflammable in conjunction with other bodies rather than by themselves. Most inflammable are those bodies that give off smoke. Of bodies of this kind those that contain more earth than smoke are apt to be reduced to coals. Some bodies that can be melted are not inflammable, e.g. copper; and some bodies that cannot be melted are inflammable, e.g. wood; and some bodies can be melted and are also inflammable, e.g. frankincense. The reason is that wood has its moisture all together and this is continuous throughout and so it burns up: whereas copper has it in each part but not continuous, and insufficient in quantity to give rise to flame. In frankincense it is disposed in both of these ways. Fumigable bodies are inflammable when earth predominates in them and they are consequently such as to be unable to melt. These are inflammable because they are dry like fire. When this dry comes to be hot there is fire. This is why flame is burning smoke or dry exhalation. The fumes of wood are smoke, those of wax and frankincense and such-like, and pitch and whatever contains pitch or such-like are sooty smoke, while the fumes of oil and oily substances are a greasy steam; so are those of all substances which are not at all combustible by themselves because there is too little of the dry in them (the dry being the means by which the transition to fire is effected), but burn very readily in conjunction with something else. (For the fat is just the conjunction of the oily with the dry.) So those bodies that give off fumes, like oil and pitch, belong rather to the moist, but those that burn to the dry. < div class=“section” title=“10”> 10 789