Rascally Fluorine A Fairy With Fangs

Uncle Richard has his niece and nephew and their neighborhood friends sniff chlorine, bromine, and hydrogen sulfide. He also keeps a bottle of strychnine in the house to show to the children. He composes poetry Hg, Mercuree, What a poet, 1 be . 1 wouldn t want him near my children. Michael Faraday was inspired by J ane Marcet s book to become a chemist. Had he read Fairy Land of Chemistry he might have become a CPA. 

Uncle Richard finishes his lesson about the halogens by talking about fluorine  

Fluorine is the last of the cousins. Its fairies are very wilful [sic], harder to catch, and harder still to keep, it is supposed that they have very active feet and wings, and wear the invisible cloak, but they are such little rascals that no one is quite sure of ever having caught them, separate from everything else. 

I thank Professor Joel F. Liebman for this insight. 

Rayner-Canham, Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry, Freeman, New York, 1996, pp. 349-352. 

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