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Aristotle METEOROLOGY Complete

Translated by E. Webster.

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100 pages - You are on Page 95

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.

Part 10

Homogeneous bodies differ to touch-by these affections and differences, as we have said. They also differ in respect of their smell, taste, and colour.

By homogeneous bodies I mean, for instance, 'metals', gold, copper, silver, tin, iron, stone, and everything else of this kind and the bodies that are extracted from them; also the substances found in animals and plants, for instance, flesh, bones, sinew, skin, viscera, hair, fibres, veins (these are the elements of which the non-homogeneous bodies like the face, a hand, a foot, and everything of that kind are made up), and in plants, wood, bark, leaves, roots, and the rest like them.

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/aristotle/meteorology.asp?pg=95