The air flows in so
irregularly that you have what would otherwise be a single image, broken
up into a variety of forms, and each of these little tongues has an
independent existence of its own. Indeed, I might say, you have here a
multitude of independent candles. You must not imagine, because you see
these tongues all at once, that the flame is of this particular shape. A
flame of that shape is never so at any one time. Never is a body of flame,
like that which you just saw rising from the ball, of the shape it appears
to you. It consists of a multitude of different shapes, succeeding each
other so fast that the eye is only able to take cognisance of them all at
once. In former times, I purposely analysed a flame of that general
character, and the diagram shews you the different parts of which it is
composed. They do not occur all at once: it is only because we see these
shapes in such rapid succession, that they seem to us to exist all at one
time.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.]
It is too bad that we have not got further than my game of snapdragon; but
we must not, under any circumstances, keep you beyond your time. It will
be a lesson to me in future to hold you more strictly to the philosophy of
the thing, than to take up your time so much with these illustrations.
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