"Combustible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am still holding you. Are you me? What do you guess? Do you guess we were a couple of homesick ninnies, tired and weak and too combustible? Or do you guess it meant something about us finding each other out all in one second, like a flash of something? Do you guess we were frazzled up to the limit and not braced to hold back or anything, the way civilized ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... his foot in. The man with the combustible whiskers. Tad overhears an exciting conversation. His duty not clear to him. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... boil, digest, stew, cook, seethe, scald, parboil, simmer; do to rags. take fire, catch fire; blaze &c (flame) 382. Adj. heated &c v.; molten, sodden; rechauffe; heating &c v.; adust^. inflammable, combustible; diathermal^, diathermanous^; burnt &c v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... waiting impatiently for the keys until near the dinner-hour, and her husband not returning, she had them broken open, and, to her grief and astonishment, found nothing therein but shavings and other combustible matter. Her kinsman forthwith ordered his carriage, and went with her to the inn where they first stopped on landing from the vessel, where she inquired for Sir Thomas Hale. The landlord told her there was such a gentleman, but he had not seen him for some days. 'But he was ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... game to a fire is a far cry, but fire in the Philippines has such distinctive features that I cannot pass it without a word. The lack of all facilities for combating it makes it an ever present menace. The combustible materials of which houses are built, and their close crowding together, tend to spread it rapidly; while the thatched roofs make even the burning of an isolated house a danger to ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... that a great part of them were preserved in alcohol made them especially in danger from fire. A spark, a match carelessly thrown down, might destroy them all in half an hour, for with material so combustible, help would be unavailing. This fear was never out of his mind. It disturbed his peace by day and his rest by night. That frail structure, crowded from garret to cellar with seeming rubbish, with boxes, cases, barrels, casks still unpacked and piled one above the other, held ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... suggested suspicion of incendiarism and suicide. The papers, the books, the oil betrayed themselves as combustible materials, carried into the place for a purpose. The medicine chest was known (by its use in cases of illness among the servants) to contain opium. Adjourned inquiry elicited that the laboratory was not insured, and that the deceased was in comfortable ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... "is obtained in perfect purity in different things, especially in cotton, which is nothing but the skin of the seeds of the cotton plant. Now cotton, combined with cold nitric acid, is transformed into a substance eminently insoluble, eminently combustible, eminently explosive. Some years ago, in 1832, a French chemist, Braconnot, discovered this substance, which he called xyloidine. In 1838, another Frenchman, Pelouze, studied its different properties; and lastly, in 1846, Schonbein, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... because, when they burst, they make a great noise. They consist of a large shell of cast iron, which is round and hollow. A hole is made through the shell to receive a fusee, as it is called; this is a small pipe, or hollow piece of wood, which is filled with some combustible matter. When a bomb is about to be fired, it is filled with powder, after which the fusee is driven into the vent, ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown
... should take place in a ship at anchor in port or harbor, his attention must be given to prevent the communication of the fire to other vessels or combustible objects, and to have the cables ready for slipping, boats ready, and, if advisable, springs prepared to change the position of the ship, in order to prevent danger ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... kind. They died in torments, and their torments were imbittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse-race and honored with the presence of the emperor, who mingled with the populace in the dress ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... received," say the schools, "is received in proportion to the recipient." The power of a political treatise depends much upon the disposition of the people; the nation was then combustible, and a spark set it on fire. It is boasted, that between November and January eleven thousand were sold; a great number at that time, when we were not yet a nation of readers. To its propagation certainly no agency of power or influence was wanting. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... nightly couch. A piece of wood, a broken chair, an old chest for a table, more he needs not; a tea-kettle, a few pots and dishes, equip his kitchen, which is also his sleeping and living room. When he is in want of fuel, everything combustible within his reach, chairs, door-posts, mouldings, flooring, finds its way up the chimney. Moreover, why should he need much room? At home in his mud-cabin there was only one room for all domestic purposes; more than one room his family ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Sectional differences of a political and industrial complexion, forty years had sufficed to develop. Sectional differences of a moral and social character forty years had also sufficed to generate. To kindle all those differences, all that mass of combustible feelings and forces into a general conflagration a spark only was wanted. And out of the glowing humanity of one man the spark ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... of lumber in them; and so that the insurance companies would not have any possibility of having any 'moral risk.' Since that time I have put up numerous factory buildings all of steel and concrete, without any combustible whatever about them—to avoid this 'moral risk.' I am carrying further the application of this idea in building private houses for poor people, in which there will be no 'moral risk' at all—nothing whatever to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... embellished by the pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons. Meanwhile a great extent of building had been blown up; and it was hoped that by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration. But early in the morning a new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible matter which the gunpowder had scattered to right and left. The guard room was consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which had witnessed so many balls and pageants, in which so many maids of honour had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lower the flag of America, and substitute that of England in its place. On the approach, however, of an overwhelming army of the enemy in the autumn of the ensuing year it was abandoned by our troops, after having been dismantled and reduced, in its more combustible parts, to ashes. The Americans, who have erected new fortifications on the site of the old, still retain possession of a post to which they attach considerable importance, from the circumstance of its being a key to the more ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... seconded desire; as a reasoner, he has convinced those who had no doubt before; as a moralist, he has taught, that virtue may disgrace; and, as a patriot, he has gratified the mean by insults on the high. Finding sedition ascendant, he has been able to advance it; finding the nation combustible, he has been able to inflame it. Let us abstract from his wit the vivacity of insolence, and withdraw from his efficacy the sympathetick favour of plebeian malignity; I do not say that we shall leave him nothing; the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... perfectly sound conclusion was, that as long as the heap was not stirred, and the wind continued in the quarter it blew from then, the couch would not flame, and that there could be no shadow of danger to anything, even a combustible substance, though it were no more than ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the combustible accumulation he had been diligently heaping together and struck a spark which, seizing on the dry material, immediately kindled into ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... and must use their means to bring it about. Every thing that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the capsheaf of the abomination of desolation-full of all deviltry. In a short time, the world will take fire and dissolve; it is combustible already. All women, not obedient, had better become so as soon as possible, and let the wicked spirit depart, and become temples of truth. Praying is all mocking. When you see any one wring the neck of a fowl, instead ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... startled hearers listened in silence; but soon the passions of that adventurous age rose responsive to his words. The combustible French nature burst into flame. The enthusiasm of the soldiers rose to such a pitch that Gourgues had much ado to make them wait till the moon was full before tempting the perils of the Bahama Channel. His time came at length. The moon rode high above the lonely ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... stem, the next thing is to develop a long, well-filled ear. To this end, available ammonia or nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, and magnesia are indispensable. Ammonia (spirits of hartshorn) is necessary to aid in forming the combustible part of the seed. The other ingredients named are required to assist in making the incombustible part of the grain. In 100 parts of the ash of wheat, there are the following ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... consultation together, the English commanders determined to resort to stratagem. They sent for a number of useless hulks from Dover, and having filled them with every kind of combustible, sent them all aflame on Sunday night into the thick of the enemy. The result was a panic; cables were cut and frantic attempts made to escape what seemed imminent and wholesale destruction. The ships fell foul of each other; some were ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... leaves off the tree, hath driven us out of our own land, and scattered us among strangers. Sin and uncleanness and the filthiness of our righteousness prepared us for the storm, made us light matter that could resist no judgment, made us matter combustible, and then iniquities, and sin rising up to iniquities, coming to such a degree, hath accomplished the judgment, put fire among us, made us as ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... owned a large rambling Mansion. The pillars were rotten, the galleries tumbling down, the thatch dry and combustible, and there was only one door. Suddenly, one day, there was a smell of fire: the old man rushed out. To his horror he saw that the thatch was aflame, the rotten pillars were catching fire one by one, and the rafters were burning like tinder. But, inside, the children went on amusing themselves ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... twenty feet—perhaps higher. A bonfire is premeditated. You shall see anon, how the flames will rise. The preparations are completed; the fire is applied. Hear how it crackles and hisses! Slowly but spitefully it mounts from limb to limb, and from one combustible to another, until the whole welkin is a-blaze, and shaking as with thunder! It is a beautiful sight. The gush of unwonted radiance rolls in effulgent surges adown the vale. How the owl hoots with surprise at the interrupting light! Bird of wisdom, it is the Fourth! and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... consists of a three electrode vacuum tube exactly like the vacuum tube detector described in Chapter VIII and pictured in Fig. 38, except that instead of being filled with a non-combustible gas it is evacuated, that is, the air has been completely pumped out of it. The gas filled tube, however, can be used as an amplifier and either kind of tube can be used for either radio frequency or audio frequency amplification, though with the exhausted tube it is easier to obtain ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... generally puts a stop to the mischief; but parties of men are also sent out into the woods to "fight the fire." They tread out the flames among the dry leaves by trampling them down, and they rake away the combustible materials, to confine the enemy to its old grounds, when it soon exhausts itself. The flames spread more frequently along the earth, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... deadly. Now, as in Napoleon's time, the effect of the guns is moral rather than material. About midday French's horse-artillery guns came into action from the north. Smoke and flames from the dongas told that some of our shells had fallen among the wagons and their combustible stores. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their having to spend another winter upon Gallia, some means could not be devised by which the dreariness of a second residence in the recesses of the volcano might be escaped. Would not another exploring expedition possibly result in the discovery of a vein of coal or other combustible matter, which could be turned to account in warming some erection which they might hope to put up? A prolonged existence in their underground quarters was felt to be monotonous and depressing, and although it might be all very well for ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... enlisted in Singapore and taken to the scene of action by Mr. Fontaine. The "enemy" was seldom obvious, but during the war it inflicted a loss upon us of eight killed and twenty-three wounded. We took various stockades, shot from sixty to eighty Malays, burned a good deal of what was combustible, and gave stability to the shaky rule of the Datu Klana, Syed Abdulrahman. Of this prince, who owed his firm seat on the throne to British intervention, the Resident wrote in 1880:—"Loyal to his engagements, he had gained the good will of the British ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... mains, it would be possible to fix small Drummond lights in place of the gas burners now used in houses; this would greatly reduce the consumption of gas and increase the light obtained, or even render possible the employment of cheap non-illuminating combustible gases other than coal gas ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... exclaimed a maiden who discharged a similar duty under cover of the dwellings. Then followed a discharge of muskets, all of which were levelled at the glancing light that was glaring in fearful proximity to the combustible materials which filled the most of the out-buildings. A savage yell, and the sudden extinguishment of the blazing knot, announced the fatal ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... neither to the right hand nor to the left—we find of a sudden that all our gay hopes are flown; and the only slender consolation that some friend can give us, is to point where they were once to be found. And lo! if we are not of that combustible race, who will rather beat their heads in spite, than wipe their brows with the curate, we look round and say, with the nauseated listlessness of the king of Israel, "All is vanity and ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... construction are likewise of ornate treatment. All exterior doors and trim are of metal and all interior carpenter work is done with Kalomein iron protection, so that the building, in its strictest sense, will contain no combustible material. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... and burning the town, took up a position upon a hill opposite to the citadel, and there he had engines constructed to throw enormous arrows, on which tow that had been dipped in pitch was wound. This combustible envelopment of the arrows was set on fire before the weapon was discharged, and a shower of the burning missiles thus formed was directed toward the palisade. The wooden walls were soon set on fire by them, and totally ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cases already referred to. Dr. Lindsley has compiled a table of nineteen instances, from the Dictionnaire de Medecine,—not, however, of spontaneous combustion exactly, but of something akin to it; namely, the rapid ignition of the human body (which per se is not combustible) by contact with flame, as a consequence of the saturation of its tissues ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... priests had put forward as a god, he felt quite at his ease so long as he remembered his vast distance from the mighty capital of Media, to the eastward of the Tigris. The scratch, however, inflamed, for his intemperance had saturated his system with combustible matter; the inflammation spread; the pulse ran high: and he began to feel twinges of alarm. At length mortification commenced: but still he trusted to the old prophecy about Ecbatana, when suddenly a horrid discovery ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... had optical illusions favorable to the "darling" who deceived him. His most alluring illusion was a booby idea that his "pet" was an invalid, and she kept pouring oil on the joke to keep it burning, and pulled the wool down further and further so that hubby could not see the combustible fluid she was pouring into the flames. Her illness was one of those "to be continued" story kinds—better to-day, worse to-morrow—and she "took" to the blankets at the most annoying and inopportune ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... go along with combustible material. The officer must use his discretion about the time of assisting us. Pioneers must be prepared to construct a bridge or destroy one. They must have plenty of oakum and turpentine for burning, which will be rolled in soaked ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... of them shot dead and their bodies horribly mutilated. After their successful raid, the savages destroyed everything they found in the wagons, tearing the covers into shreds, throwing the flour on the trail, and winding up by burning everything that was combustible. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... had been elected year after year without opposition, was defeated. No one had openly opposed him, but a canvass of the returns disclosed a silent vote which was quickly charged to the Masons. This discovery, says Thurlow Weed, "was like a spark of fire dropped into combustible materials." Immediately, Rochester became the centre of anti-Masonry. In September, an anti-masonic convention nominated a legislative ticket, which, to the amazement and confusion of the old parties, swept Monroe County by a majority of over seventeen hundred. Direction was thus given ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... sensation comes over you, and just as you feel inclined to send for the cat's-meat man down the next court to come and fetch you away to the Dogs' Home, in bounces your landlady, and with two or three "Well, I nevers!" and "There's an imperent 'ussey, for you!" nearly bursts the patent non-combustible bootlace you lent her last night to hang the brass locket ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... Lignum-vitae, which is one of the heaviest woods known to science, and used extensively in the manufacture of mallets, etc., was displayed; also the San Juan wood, which has lately been discovered, and is found extensively on the coast. This wood is practically non-combustible, and is said to be the coming wood for car building, furniture, and interior finishing, being susceptible of a high polish. The mahogany, for which Honduras is noted, was shown in many varieties, as were rosewood, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... grapnel that had fallen on the poop, looked down on the fire-ship as she drifted along. The deck, which, like everything else, had been smeared with tar, was in a blaze, but the combustible had not been carried as far as the helm, where doubtless the captain had stood to direct her course. A sudden thought struck him. He ran along the poop until opposite the stern of the fire-ship, climbed over the bulwark and leapt down on to the deck, some fifteen feet below him. Then ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... question, and that is, whether it is a wise thing to live upon a surface that may be shattered at any moment; whether that is true peace which needs but a touch to melt away; whether you are wise with all this combustible material deep down in your conscience, in paying no regard to it but living and frolicking, and feasting and trafficking, and lusting and sinning on the surface, like those light-hearted, light-headed fools that build their houses on the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... introduce to the readers of the "Irish Monthly," and who found the heat of a short Northern summer simply "intolerable," the tropics and their environs rather allure me. True, soldiers and old residents speak of places between which and the lower regions there is but a sheet of non-combustible tissue paper. Nevertheless, the writer who has lived in both places would rather, as a matter of choice, summer in the Tropics than ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... the small bottle which had been taken from the unfortunate traveller, and added: "You see this? You had it in your pocket. Now, don't attempt to deceive me, for I know very well what is the nature of the green liquid which it contains—it is a combustible fluid with which you wanted to set ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... high, the flame soon spread itself over the roof of the palace, and catching at every combustible in its way, the invaders became so terrified at the quick progress of fire which threatened to consume themselves as well as their plunder, that they quitted the spot with precipitation. Decrying the count and ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... paper about "explosive buttons." Seems that combs, collars, cuffs, buttons and things made to imitate ivory and tortoiseshell are really highly combustible. Lady in West of England had her dress ignited by sudden explosion of a "fancy" button! In consequence, advise my wife "to use that new hairbrush I gave her very gingerly, or she'll be blown up." She wants to know "why I didn't find that out before buying it." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... is, however, no reliable evidence to support the belief in the spontaneous combustion of the body. A few apochryphal cases only have been recorded. The opinion that the tissues of drunkards might be so saturated with alcohol as to render the body combustible is disproved by the simple experiment of placing flesh in spirits for a long time and then trying to burn it. Liebig and others found that flesh soaked in alcohol would burn only until the alcohol was consumed. That various substances ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... water out of the glass jar into the earthenware one. In one second follows a series of sharp reports from inside the jar, which seems suddenly to have become filled with highly combustible crackers. The Professor drops the jar as if he had burnt his fingers, and the cracking and popping go on inside. Ladies rise frightened. ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... him. A kind of "Kuklux" society was organized at Charleston, known as the "Hint Club." Its purpose was to hint to such people that they had better look out. If they did not mend their ways, it was unnecessary to inform them more explicitly what they might expect. Houses were combustible then as now, and the use of firearms was well understood. In Georgia the legislature itself attempted coercion. Paper money was made a legal tender in spite of strong opposition, and a law was passed prohibiting any planter or merchant from ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Banyan flew to the rescue, and made a most enthusiastic attempt to check the fire; but the raging element was now past control. The flames spread through the combustible material which had been stored on the deck; and they were compelled to abandon the ill-starred steamer with the utmost precipitation, in order to save ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... Time, as I was assur'd by my Lord Lucas, Constable of it, upwards of twenty Thousand Barrels of Gun-powder, in that they call the White-Tower, when all at once the middle Flooring did not only give way, or shrink, but fell flat down upon other Barrels of Powder, together with many of the same combustible Matter which had been placed upon it. It was a Providence strangely neglected at that Time, and hardly thought of since; But let any considerate Man consult the Consequences, if it had taken fire; perhaps to the Destruction ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... idly think; but falling down the Valley of the Bober, or Bober and Queiss, into the Lausitz (to Gorlitz, Guben, where we have Magazines for him), comes upon it from the southeast,—nobody expecting any of them. Three simultaneous Armies hurled on the head of your Friedrich; combustible deluges flowing towards him, as from the ends of Germany; so opaque, silent, yet of fire wholly: will not that surprise him!' thinks Bruhl. These are the schemes of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... impure tales, which will be the eternal opprobium of their ingenious author'. JOHNSON: 'Sir, Lord Hales has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hales thinks there is, he must be more combustible than other people.' I instanced the tale of Paulo Purganti and his Wife. JOHNSON: 'Sir, there is nothing there but that his wife wanted to be kissed, when poor Paulo was out of pocket. No, sir, Prior is a lady's book. No lady is ashamed to have it standing ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... night was warm, for I happened to know that a good deal of the cargo which we were carrying was of a highly combustible character, such as furniture, pianos, Manchester goods, and the like, to say nothing of several cases of sporting ammunition. I knew that if once the fire happened to get a good hold upon such material as ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... were supposed to have the secret of a mysterious combustible known as "Greek Fire" which was unquenchable by water. I think that "Greek Fire" was nothing more or less than ordinary petroleum, which was practically unknown in Europe in 1866, though from personal experience I can say that it was ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... these vast estates and the arbitrary exclusion of the many from the land produced a combustible situation. An instantaneous and distinct cleavage of class divisions was the result. Intrenched in their possessions the landed class looked down with haughty disdain upon the farming and laboring classes. On the ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... looks curiously 'round, and then I see her make straight for your bedroom door, and goes into your room. In a minnit more she comes out, with nothin' in her hands. So then I says to myself, 'She's deposited some o' her combustible matter in ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... the burning candle may be thus explained. The radiant heat from the flame melts the tallow or wax, which then passes up into the texture of the wick by capillary attraction until it reaches the glowing wick, where the heat decomposes the combustible matter into carbonated hydrogen (C^{4}H^{4}), and into carbonic ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... air, That felt unusual weight; till on dry land He lights—if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, And such appeared in hue as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Etna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom all involved With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole Of unblest feet. Him followed his next ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... thought so necessary a measure by all the chieftains, that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize the act by his own example. He seized a torch previously prepared with materials the most durable as well as combustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general wreck except the portable part of the domestic utensils, and that part of the woodwork which could be applied to the manufacture of the long Tartar ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... France. The furnaces are fed, by the aid of a pulverizing apparatus, with the residue produced from the distillation of the naphtha, which Baku and Derbent produce in such inexhaustible quantities. At certain stations on the line there are vast reservoirs of this combustible mineral, from which the tenders are filled, and it is burned in specially adapted fireboxes. In a similar way naphtha is used on the steamboats on the Volga and the other affluents of ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the river," says Dr. Thacher, "I had a fine view of this splendid conflagration. The ships were enwrapped in a torrent of fire, which, spreading with vivid brightness among the combustible rigging and running with amazing rapidity to the tops of the several masts, while all around was thunder and lightning from our numerous cannon and mortars, and in the darkness of night presented one of the most sublime and magnificent spectacles that can be imagined. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... pile of readily combustible wood was prepared. The body was taken charge of by persons chosen to perform the last sacred rites, and firmly bound in skins or blankets, and then placed upon the funeral pyre, with all the personal effects of the deceased, together with numerous votive offerings ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... four little paperclips," he said, crawling from beneath her. "She's a wicker-willow lunch-basket below. She's a runnin' miracle. Have you had this combustible spirit-lamp long?" ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... purely feminine ruse to apply a test to love—both her own and that of her lover—to prove it true. A man would as soon as think of applying a match to a powder magazine to prove it combustible. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... short ladders. There is in London an almost universal absence of wooden additions and outbuildings, and the New York ash barrel or box kept in the house is also unknown. The local authorities in London keep a strict watch over the manufacture or storage of combustible materials in populous parts of the city. Although overhead telegraph wires are multiplying to an alarming extent in London, their number is nothing to be compared to their bewildering multitude in New York, where their presence is not only a hinderance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... are visible in the trumpeter-like cheeks of the well-fed John Bull. The domestic Anglo-Saxon is a mutton-eater. Let his offshoots here and elsewhere follow suit. There is no such timber to repair the waste of the human frame. It is a fuel easily combustible in the visceral grate of the stomach. The mutton-eater is eupeptic. His dreams are airy and lightsome. Somnus descends smiling to his nocturnal pillow, and not clad in the portentous panoply of indigestion, which rivals a guilty conscience in its night ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... clearly see that the nature of the conditions is of subordinate importance in comparison with the nature of the organism in determining each particular form of variation; perhaps of not more importance than the nature of the spark, by which a mass of combustible matter is ignited, has in determining the nature ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound as ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... ask me what had changed her regard for Ingram during that solitary year, so that she received him at the end of it as she did, I don't know that I can tell you. Slowly discovery—of herself, of him—came to her, slowly combustible stuff was heaped within her; it slowly kindled, and smouldered long. No doubt he himself blew it into clear flame by his let-drop news of Claire's death. She had not known that: she never read the newspaper, having neither ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... a hundred other laudations collected and printed by this modest author, we shall quote a few passages from his play, and illustrate his genius by pointing out their beauties—an office much needed, particularly by certain dullards, the magazine of whose souls are not combustible enough to take fire at the electric sparks shot forth up out of the depths of George Stephens's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... stones, striking against each other as they fell, broke into countless fragments, emitting sparks of fire, which caught whatever was combustible within their reach; and along the plains beyond the city the darkness was now terribly relieved, for several houses and even vineyards had been set on flames; and at various intervals the fire rose fiercely and sullenly against the solid gloom. The citizens had endeavoured to place rows of torches ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... of Congress, gave a page of his diary to one of Douglas's early speeches. "His face was convulsed,"—so the merciless diary runs,—"his gesticulation frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped and cast away his cravat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist. And this man comes ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... naturally. Now art fails in the operation of nature: because nature gives the substantial form, which art cannot give; for whatever form is given by art is accidental; except perchance when art applies a proper agent to its proper matter, as fire to a combustible; in which manner animals are produced from certain things by way ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... prisons; never was poor devil so fagged. It would have made your heart bleed to see him. Thrice did he go round the earth in every parallel of latitude; and at last, wearied and jaded out, back came he to Hecla in despair, and would have thrown himself into the volcano, if he had been made of combustible materials. Luckily at that time our sisters were engaged in settling the balance of Europe; and whilst they were looking over projects, and counter-projects, and ultimatums, and post ultimatums, the poor Devil, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... vegetable world and from the earth the food and drink it requires for its sustenance and motion. It receives colloidal food for its muscles: combustible food for its motion; water for the solution of its various parts; salt for constructive and other physical purposes. These have all to be arranged in the body; and they are arranged by means of the membranous envelopes. Through these membranes nothing can ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... mysteries, which all the initiated allow are suddenly unfolded, descending like lightening by the inspiration of the spirit and illuminating the darkened soul, to these mysteries no man perhaps was ever a more sudden or a more combustible kind of convert than myself. I beamed with gospel light; it shone through me. I was the beacon of this latter age: a comet, sent to warn the wicked. I mean, I was all this in my own imagination, which swelled and mounted to the very ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... to show that combustion is due to union with oxygen. Previous to his time combustion was supposed to be due to the presence of a substance or principle called phlogiston. One substance was thought to be more combustible than another because it contained more phlogiston. Coal, for example, was thought to be very rich in phlogiston. The ashes left after combustion would not burn because all the phlogiston had escaped. If the phlogiston ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... was sufficiently unpromising. The fire had kindled in a heap of combustible trumpery brought there for the tableaux. It had got far beyond management before any one discovered it; and now was making fast work in that corner of the room and creeping with no slow progress along the cornices of the bookshelves. Short time evidently ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... with little interruption, throughout the full season. The immense mass of vegetation with which the fertile soil loads itself during the summer is suddenly withered, and the whole earth is covered with combustible materials. A single spark of fire falling anywhere upon these plains at such a time, instantly kindles a blaze that spreads on every side, and continues its destructive course as long as it finds fuel, these fires sweeping on with a rapidity which renders it hazardous even ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... exercised over the awful loss of life at recent theater fires, especially the destruction of the Ringtheater in Vienna. When Mr. Cady planned the New York house, he set about making it as absolutely fireproof as such a structure can be. It was to be non-combustible from the bottom up. There was not a stud partition in it. The floors were all of iron beams and brick arches, the masonry being exposed in the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for comfort having a covering of wood in the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... imaginative temperament; and there are many persons who, short of a life-long domestic attachment, can conceive of nothing but sordid vice. But even an inconstant flame may burn brightly, if the soul is naturally combustible. Indeed these sparks and glints of passion, just because they come and vary so quickly, offer admirable illustrations of it, in which it may be viewed, so to speak, under the microscope ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... valuable and extremely useful manure on every farm, of which very few farmers avail themselves—the gathering together in one spot of all combustible waste and rubbish, the clippings of hedges, scouring of ditches, grassy accumulation on the sides of roads and fences, etc., combined with a good deal of earth. If these are carted at leisure times into a large circle, or in two rows, to supply the fire kindled in the center, ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... Besides, supposing that we had even taken the Lower Town by escalade, we would not have been further advanced. The English, in half an hour afterwards, by burning it, by throwing down from the Upper Town upon the roofs of the houses fire pots, shells and other combustible matter, could have soon chased us out of it, or buried us under its ruins. This project, after having furnished for a long time matter for the daily conversations of Montrealers, was at last considered by M. de Levis, and classed as it deserved, amongst the vagaries of bedlam; ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... then, has laws of motion, that are adapted to itself, and constantly acts or moves according to these laws; at least when no superior cause interrupts its action. Thus, fire ceases to burn combustible matter, as soon as sufficient water is thrown into it, to arrest its progress. Thus, a sensible being ceases to seek pleasure, as soon as he fears that ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... when thousands of barrels of petroleum had been stored up in vats, and when the combustible fluid was spouting from the wells at the rate of many hundred barrels per day. Before the present deep wells were bored, oil was not produced in sufficient quantities to cause such a conflagration, and there was never seen upon the creek a stratum ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... or maple. By nightfall the wagon had unsuccessfully traversed the streets and found not a single purchaser for its contents. Here and there a citizen had accepted a little as a gift, with a doubtful promise to test its combustible qualities. Eventually, Philo Scovill was persuaded into the purchase of a moderate quantity at two dollars per ton, and promised to put in grates at the Franklin House to properly test ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... self-scrutiny. We are all familiar with the addled ego of literature—the writer whom constant self-communion has made vulgar, acid, querulous, and vain. And yet it is remarkable that of so many who meddle with the combustible passions of their own minds so few are blown up. The discipline of living is a fine cooling-jacket ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... which, during the course of the war, the soldiers might have been guilty; together with satisfaction in arrears, freedom from pressing, relief of widows and maimed soldiers, and pay till disbanded.[*] The commons, aware of what combustible materials the army was composed, were alarmed at this intelligence. Such a combination, they knew, if not checked in its first appearance, must be attended with the most dangerous consequences, and must ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... gunner took his keys from their appointed place outside the door of the captain's cabin and went below to open the magazines in the flat appropriated to their combustible contents, in company with a working party to attend to the ammunition hoists; while the marine artillerymen and crews of the main-deck battery and upper-deck machine- guns hurried to their stations under charge of "Gunnery Jack," the lieutenant whose special function ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... soon as a streak was on, the whole work advancing, as it might be, pari passu. Planks for the decks were much wanted, for, in the terrible strait for fuel which had caused the original assault on the schooner, this portion of the vessel had been the first burned, as of the most combustible materials. The quarter-deck of the Vineyard craft, luckily, was entire, and its planks so far answered an excellent purpose. They served to make a new quarter-deck for the repairs, but the whole of the main-deck and forecastle remained to be provided ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the forest. The soil of the woodlands is everywhere green with the curling fronds; and where I do not cut, the foresters and miners will be preparing heaps to carry away for litter and bedding. By the end of July the forest beneath the oaks will be covered with a carpet of stuff as combustible as tinder. Let us but fire it at Newnham, Littledean, Blakeney, Coleford, and at Speech by the courthouse, and we shall lay tens of thousands of oaks in blackened ruin. Philip of Spain has but to scatter the present small navy ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Almost before the Arabs were aware of what was intended, the boat was up to the dhow, matches had been got ready, and the seamen springing on board, in less than a minute had set her on fire fore and aft. The combustible materials with which she was fitted quickly blazed up, and her destruction was inevitable. The men leapt back into the boat, which now pulled away out of gun-shot into ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... telegraphic and telephonic wires are extended so as to traverse practically all the streets of every city, the fire-insurance companies will find it to their advantage to promote a simple plan, depending on the use of a combustible thread passing round little pulleys in the corners of all the rooms and finally out to the front, where an electrical "contact-maker" is fixed, so that on the thread being burnt and broken at any point in its circuit, an electric message will be at once sent along the nearest wire ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... direct eighty thousand of their militia to hold themselves in readiness for service. But they reject the propositions to raise cavalry, artillery, and a provisional army, and to trust private ships with arms in the present combustible state of things. They believe the present is the last campaign of Europe, and wish to rub through this fragment of a year as they have through the four preceding ones, opposing patience to insult, and interest to honor. They will, therefore, immediately ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... themselves, and then laughingly throw from the windows into the street. Collected together in the story below and on the ground floor, transported to shops, to warehouses and into business cabinets, they find combustible material, piles of wood a long time accumulated, and here do the flames enkindle. The conflagration seems to have already begun, for the chimneys roar and a ruddy light gleams through the windows; but "No," say the people above, "those below would take care not to set the house on fire, for they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... begin to amount to something much quicker than that supplied by seed trees afterward. Nor is the system feasible where there is much fir or other species less fire-resisting than pine. It is dangerous in practice except where there is very little combustible matter on the ground and fire is generally easy of control, and exceedingly dangerous to advocate because serves as a pretext and example for indiscriminate carelessness with fire under all conditions. Finally, the alleged immunity of pine from injury by ground fires is exaggerated. ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... be blown up and the harbour fleet to be destroyed. If you will so far favour me, I should be gratified by having an opportunity of demonstrating to your strong mind, free from professional bias, the fact that combustible ships may be not only placed on a parity with stone forts fitted to fire red-hot shot, but secured from injury more effectually than if incased ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... new storehouse, which was covered in, but not sufficiently completed to admit provisions. One hundred feet by twenty-five were the dimensions of this building, which was constructed with great strength; yet the mind was always pained when viewing its reedy combustible covering, remembering the livid flames that had been seen to shoot over every part of this cove: but no other materials could be found to answer the purpose of thatch, and every necessary precaution was taken to guard against ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... found evidence of a hasty flight of the Confederates. By a detour we came into a valley flanked to the east by Raccoon Mountain, and we visited a large saltpetre works at Nick-a-Jack Cave. These works we destroyed by breaking the large iron kettles and by burning all combustible structures. A portion of the detachment was sent under cover of the thick woods to the railroad east of Shellmound, a station near the river, where we expected to cut off a train of cars engaged in loading, for removal, supplies of provisions. The engineer, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the depth diminished, but the fire was not three hundred paces distant! His heart sank within him! But when on the eve of returning to his former position, with a resolution to remove as much of the combustible matter as possible, a gleam of joy spread over his features, as, casting a glance in a direction from that they had recently pursued, he beheld the identical mound he had ascended before dark, and from which his unsteady and erratic riding ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... an hour, the huts were stripped of their most combustible material. This was heaped up under the platforms, where it would be safe from falling arrows. The women drew pots of water from the well, and a hundred men were then left in the courtyard, with orders ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... by dogs; were crucified, and set on fire, that they might serve for lights in the night-time. Nero offered his gardens for this spectacle, and exhibited the games of the Circus by this dreadful illumination. Sometimes they were covered with wax and other combustible materials, after which a sharp stake was put under their chin, to make them stand upright, and they were burnt alive, to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... town, which he observed, almost in a moment, to flash from one end of the dorf to the other, consuming all in its way,—and thus it was said to have been in these suburbs. The reason thereof is the combustible matter whereof their houses are built, being of fir timber and boards, which, especially being old, do suddenly take fire, and violently burn, hard to be quenched, few houses escaping, especially ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... half-way across the street. The fire had spread with astonishing rapidity. Some combustible material in the second story had exploded with great force, and this had seemed to scatter the fire. The entire second story was on fire now, as well as ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... floating on this substance, which is in the highest degree combustible? Where had this naphtha come from? Was it a natural phenomenon taking place on the surface of the Angara, or was it to serve as an engine of destruction, put in motion by the Tartars? Did they intend to ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... leaning his back against one of the bales. A short pipe was in his mouth, and he seemed to be enjoying his smoke. This was contrary to orders, for the cotton being combustible might easily catch fire; but this man, supposing that he would not be detected, indulged himself in ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... develops heat, and, if the heat be preserved, a high temperature may be thus attained. The destruction of the first Atlantic cable was probably due to heat developed in this way. Other metals are still more combustible than iron. You may ignite strips of zinc in a candle flame, and cause them to burn almost like strips of paper. But we must now expand our definition of combustion, and include under this term, not only combustion in air, but also combustion in liquids. Water, for example, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... for harmony. Mary Isabel's conscience would not let the doctor say anything uncomplimentary of Louisa, and the doctor's conscience would not let him say anything complimentary. So they left her out of the question and talked about the sea and the boats and poetry and flowers and similar non-combustible subjects. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had been more durable and sanguinarie' But as soon as the news of Argyll's landing on the west coast came, this is his note, 'Argile, minding the former animosities and discontents in the country, thought to have found us all alike combustible tinder, that he had no more adoe then to hold the match to us, and we would all blow up in a rebellion; but the tymes are altered, and the peeple are scalded so severely with the former insurrections, that they are frighted to adventure on a new on. The Privy Council, though ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... and I had waited for all along, in pursuance of our plan; so, long ere the old woman had reached her sanctum below, we were at work, having taken advantage of the time we were washing in the lavatory before breakfast to put our fireworks and combustible matter in our pockets, whence we now quickly proceeded to extract the explosive agents, and deposit them in certain fixed positions we had arranged beforehand after ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the Esquimaux live and make themselves comfortable in huts of ice or snow, and with no other combustible ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... inwrapped in burning hydrogen, which in consequence of some great convulsion had been liberated in prodigious quantities, and then combining with other elements, had set this hapless world on fire? In such a fierce conflagration, the combustible gas would soon be consumed, and the glow would therefore begin to decline, subject, as in this case, to a second eruption, which occasioned the renewed outburst of light ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... of assault was made use of the next day; and they went further, and got out in baskets to fight them, and fought them at their doors, and sent fire among them, and set their caves on fire, for there was a great deal of combustible matter within them. Now there was one old man who was caught within one of these caves, with seven children and a wife; these prayed him to give them leave to go out, and yield themselves up to the enemy; but he stood at the cave's mouth, and always slew that child of his who went out, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... became a sea of fire and was reduced, before Napoleon's eyes, to ashes. Every attempt to extinguish the flames proved unavailing. Rostopchin, the commandant of Moscow, had, previously to his retreat, put combustible materials, which were ignited on the entrance of the French by men secreted for that purpose, into the houses.[15] A violent wind aided the work of destruction. The patriotic sacrifice was performed, nor failed ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the whole company were soon in the wildest excitement with the work of building up a funeral pile upon the spot. At first they brought fagots and threw upon the fire, then benches from the neighboring courts and porticoes, and then any thing combustible which came to hand. The honor done to the memory of a deceased hero was, in some sense, in proportion to the greatness of his funeral pile, and all the populace on this occasion began soon to seize every thing they could find, appropriate and unappropriate, provided that it would increase ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... of combustible constitution" in Rousseau's, precocious nature were troublesome, and he felt premature sensations of erotic voluptuousness, but without any sin. He longed "to fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates or implore pardon." He only ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... cleaning of lamps, and, if the pipe-fitting work has been done properly, yields light absolutely unaccompanied by smell. Again, unless most carefully managed, the lamp-room of a large house, with its store of combustible oil, and its collection of greasy rags, must unavoidably prove a sensible addition to the risk of fire. The analogue of the lamp- room when acetylene is employed is the generator-house, and this is a separate building at some distance from the residence proper. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... of fat pine, and the fire spread with alarming rapidity. First the kitchen burst into a mass of flames that leaped along the roof of the piazza to the main part of the building. There had been no rain for some time, and the dry wood proved as combustible as if oil had been applied. The sparks flew over all the house until it was one blaze of fire. The servants were sleeping in their quarters, and did not discover the terrible danger of the inmates of ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... summoned into this danger. Her mother was one of those who throw out terrible possibilities, miserable probabilities, unfortunate chances of all kinds, as a rocket throws out sparks; but if the sparks light on some combustible matter, they smoulder first, and burst out into a frightful flame at last. Margaret was glad when, her filial duties gently and carefully performed, she could go down into the study. She wondered how her father ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in the group of the alkaline earths. It takes its name from the Greek [Greek: barus] (heavy) on account of its presence in barytes or heavy spar which was first investigated in 1602 by V. Casciorolus, a shoemaker of Bologna, who found that after ignition with combustible substances it became phosphorescent, and on this account it was frequently called Bolognian phosphorus. In 1774 K. W. Scheele, in examining a specimen of pyrolusite, found a new substance to be present ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... us that there were in use in ancient warfare javelins tipped with some kind of combustible, which were set on fire, and flung, so that they had not only the power of wounding but also of burning; and that there were others with a hollow head, which was in like manner filled, kindled, and thrown into the ranks of the enemy. I ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... An arc lamp without regulating mechanism, producing an arc between the ends of parallel carbons. It consists of two parallel rods of carbon, between which is an insulating layer of non-combustible material called the colombin. Kaolin was originally employed for this part; later, as the fusion of this material was found to short- circuit the arc, a mixture of two parts of calcium sulphate and one of barium sulphate was used. The carbons are 4 millimeters (.16 ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... absented himself upon some occasion, fastened upon the basis, which was of dry deal board, underneath; which suddenly conceiving flame, gave fire to the device of the masque, all of oiled paper, and dry fir, etc. And so, in a moment, disposed itself among the rest of that combustible matter that it was past any man's approach before it was almost discovered. Two hours begun and ended ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... at no time more remarkable than in the present Session, during the discussion of those arbitrary measures, the Treason and Sedition Bills, when sparks were struck out, in the collision of the two principles, which the combustible state of public feeling at the moment rendered not a little perilous. On the motion that the House should resolve itself into a Committee upon the Treason Bill, Mr. Fox said, that "if Ministers were determined, by means of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... years ago, where he mentions, 'those impure tales which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious authour.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, Lord Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hailes thinks there is, he must be more combustible than other people[548].' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... rods erected on elevated buildings. As this was not sufficiently demonstrative he succeeded at length in drawing the lightning from the clouds by means of a kite and silken string, so as to ignite spirits and other combustible substances by an electric spark similar to those from a Leyden jar. To utilize his discovery of the identity of lightning with electricity he erected lightning-rods to protect buildings, that is, to convey the lightning from the overhanging ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... but where was I to get the punk from? I had also heard that fire had been made with lenses of glass, which, being held up to the sun, concentrate the rays and make a great heat, sufficient to set wood and like combustible things on fire; but I had no lens. Of course, I have no need to tell you that I had no matches, such as ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... the tower was burning. The protons Georg had flung at it with his weapon had broken the electrical barrage. The interference heat had burned out the connections and fired everything combustible within the tower. A terrific heat. It began to melt and burn the blenite.[10] The upper portion of the tower walls began to crumble. Huge blocks of stone were shifting, tottering; and they began to fall through the glare of mounting flames and ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... and was observed at different extremities of the kingdom. The sound of an explosion was heard through Devon and Cornwall, and along the opposite coast of Bretagne. Halley conjectured this and similar displays to proceed from combustible vapors aggregated on the outskirts of the atmosphere, and suddenly set on fire by some unknown cause. But since his time, the fact has been established, of the actual fall of heavy bodies to the earth from surrounding space, which requires another hypothesis. To these bodies ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... hen yard in order. I hope in God, this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted. You ask me if anything transpires here on the subject of South America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible materials there, and that they wait the torch only. But this country probably will join the extinguishers. The want of facts worth communicating to you, has occasioned me to give a little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... fuel ratio measures roughly the heat or calorific power of the coal, in other words, its fuel value. However, some bituminous coals have a higher calorific power than some anthracites, because a large part of their volatile matter is combustible and yields more heat than the corresponding weight of fixed carbon in the anthracite. The fuel ratio pretty well discriminates coals of the higher ranks, and gives a classification corresponding roughly with their commercial uses. For the lower ranks of coal it is not so satisfactory, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... anchor before that place, in expectation that the duke of Parma, who had gotten intelligence of their approach, would put to sea and join his forces to them. The English admiral practised here a successful stratagem upon the Spaniards. He took eight of his smaller ships, and filling them with all combustible materials, sent them, one after another, into the midst of the enemy. The Spaniards fancied that they were fireships of the same contrivance with a famous vessel which had lately done so much execution in the Schelde near Antwerp; and they immediately cut their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... quantity of the seared grass, and heaped a dry couch upon which Ben laid his charge within the genial heat that came from the cedar tree. Then they gathered up all the combustible matter within reach, and began to kindle a fire so near to the place where she lay that its heat must help to drive back the chill of death if there was a spark of life yet vital ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... that they over-drink their allowance. The captain spoke pretty sharply to them.' It is true: I have the remark in my old note-book; I got it of the third mate in the hospital at Honolulu. But there is not room for it here, and it is too combustible, anyway. Besides, the third mate admired it, and what he admired he was likely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... others. And from vanity consequently flows that great sensibility of disrespect, that quick resentment, that tinder of the mind that kindles at every spark, and justly marks them out for the genus irritabile among mankind. And from this combustible temper, this serious anger for no very serious things, things looked on by most as foreign to the important points of life, as consequentially flows that inheritance of ridicule, which devolves on them, from generation to generation. As soon as they become authors, they become like Ben Jonson's ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the lines from the circumference of which meeting in a center, by holding it in the light of the sun they can collect and concentrate all its rays at this one point of convergence; where the air will now become rarefied, and any light, dry, combustible matter will kindle as soon as applied, under the effect of the rays, which here acquire the substance and active force of fire. Some are of opinion that these vestals had no other business than the preservation of this fire; but others conceive that they were keepers ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the ball from entering the piece; it is found, however, that the windage is still sufficient for loading with facility. These red-hot balls are principally used to fire wooden buildings, ships, and other combustible matter. They are therefore much used as a projectile for coast defence, and all fortifications on the seaboard should be provided with furnaces and grates, arranged so as to heat them ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... happy in his rationalistic explanations of the whole mass of myths. He supposes a terrific storm, in which the lightning kindled the combustible materials of the cities, aided perhaps by an earthquake; but this shows a disposition to break away from the exact statements of the sacred books which would have been most severely condemned by the universal Church during at least eighteen hundred years of its history. Nor would ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and destined never more to visit Dalkeith again, except with a wooden stump and a brass virl, or to have his head blown off his shoulders, mast high, like ingan peelings, with some exploding earthquake of combustible gunpowder.—Call in the laddie, I say, and see what he would like to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... upon my settlement, about forty yards from the creek of St. John, till I could build my house, and lodging {19} for my people. As my hut was composed of very combustible materials, I caused a fire to be made at a distance, about half way from the creek, to avoid accidents: which occasioned an adventure, that put me in mind of the prejudices they have in Europe, from the relations that ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Colonel, I thought you did, by your taking fire so quickly. I am glad to hear you say you did not. How soon a little spark kindles into a flame; especially when it meets with such combustible spirits! ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... with a smile of patronising pity on his face. It was the smile that touched to life the mass of combustible material that had been accumulating for the last hour in Cameron's soul. Instead of following the boy, he turned with a swift movement back to the manager's desk, laid his sheaf of letters down on Mr. Bates' papers, and, leaning over the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... French Revolution by this monster and the Montagnards of the Convention were in their eyes, in accordance with their moral system, heroic actions ennobled and sanctified by their aim." The same document goes on to explain why so many combustible elements had failed to ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... another, the thyroid may be compared to the accelerator of an automobile. That is a rough and superficial comparison because an accelerator lets in more of the fuel to be burned up, while the thyroid makes the fuel more combustible. It thus resembles more the primer, for a rich mixture of gasoline and air burns at a greater velocity than a poor one. But the action of thyroid could really be simulated only by some substance that could be introduced into the best possible of gasoline ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... "to be quite candid with you, dear, I do not. Whatever may be the cargo that the schooner carries, it is evidently of a highly combustible character, and now seems to be fairly ignited. The fire gains ground even as we stand and gaze; and if the crew could not conquer it at the outset, they are not likely to do so now. What think ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... kindled the fires of Smithfield, to assert that their practice was wholly barbarous. In the present case a pyre, some twelve feet high, was built at the foot of a huge granite boulder, near the sea-coast: it was constructed of dry wood, and was drenched with combustible materials. Jean was bound firmly to a strong hurdle, made of birch stems and withies securely lashed together. Judith, Garthmund, and the principal elders, placed themselves under the venerable oak; the ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... was immediately utilized in the fire of the "Alaska," and proved an excellent combustible. The only fault was that it choked up the chimney, which necessitated a daily cleaning. As for its odor, that would doubtless have been very disagreeable to southern passengers, but to a crew composed of Swedes and Norwegians, it was ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... done, Bog and Pet withdrew, and had hardly reached the foot of the tower, when the musical thunder of the great bell announced the constantly reiterated story of a fire in the Seventh—that most combustible of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... was paid to the household gods of the ancients. The temperature of these abodes ranges, both in summer and winter, from 70 degrees to 80 degrees. They are lighted at night by a pine stick stuck into the wall. As the interstices between the logs are filled up with hemp and other combustible materials, fires are very common, and whole villages are frequently burnt down. In order to extinguish these conflagrations, each serf is bound to bring some particular implement—a ladder, a pail, or an axe; and, that he may not forget ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... The residue of this combustible is still so precious, that when gathered up, ground anew with paper and sawdust, and at length amalgamated with a mucilaginous water composed of soaked flax-seed, one finally obtains a kind of pulp that one tries vainly to make ignite, but which obstinately ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... recommended himself wonderfully to the good graces of the ladies, by letting them into all the gallantries, amours, debaucheries, and other topics of scandal of the court of Flora, has fallen upon a theory worthy of his combustible imagination. According to his opinion, the huge mass of chaos took a sudden occasion to explode, like a barrel of gunpowder, and in that act exploded the sun—which, in its flight, by a similar convulsion, exploded the earth, which in like guise exploded the moon—and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving |
