Book Meme

I saw this on Micah's blog and thought it looked entertaining. Here's an interesting thought: Where did the word 'meme' come from?

Here are the rules:
(1) Grab the nearest book
(2) open the book to page 56
(3) find the fifth sentence
(4) post the text of the next two to five sentences
(5) don’t dig for your favorite book. Pick the closest
(6) tag five people to do the same

Note that if you dig around for your favorite book, it ruins the whole point of the thing. It must be the book that is spacially closest to you.

Since I'm writing a research paper on the influence of alchemy in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, the spacially closest book to me is: Alchemy, by E.J. Holmyard...

The furnace has an iron bar running transversely through it, about five or six inches from the bottom, and the glass vessel containing the substance to be sublimed is supported so that it nearly but not quite touches the bar. The perforated disk is arranged over the neck of the flask and helps to keep it in position, the holes in the disk acting as exits for hot gases from the furnace.