"Decompose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possession of the stage by the very pieces which Shakspeare altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. Elated with success and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no bookstall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... carcass of a dead animal that is left exposed upon the ground to decompose does not moulder away by the usual process of decay, but what is left of the body after the hungry buzzards and coyotes have finished their feast, dries up into a ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... is to see to the continuous freshening of the air in the sick-room and in all the house. Ventilation is, indeed, the first and most important method of disinfection. Chloride of lime and other disinfecting fluids will decompose the offensive and noxious odours, but pure air will sweep the organisms of disease themselves away. Fresh air kills the microbes of certain diseases, e.g., consumption, and is hostile to all disease. The stools of typhoid ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... not completely successful; in fact, metallic calcium remained a laboratory curiosity until the beginning of the 20th century. Davy, inspired by his successful isolation of the metals sodium and potassium by the electrolysis of their hydrates, attempted to decompose a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide by the electric current; an amalgam of calcium was obtained, but the separation of the mercury was so difficult that even Davy himself was not sure as to whether he had obtained pure ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... lover; In strange junctures, felt, with awe, His own symmetry with law; That no mixture could withstand The virtue of his lucky hand. He gold or jewel could not lose, Nor not receive his ample dues. Fearless Guy had never foes, He did their weapons decompose. Aimed at him, the blushing blade Healed as fast the wounds it made. If on the foeman fell his gaze, Him it would straightway blind or craze, In the street, if he turned round, His eye the eye 't was ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... more terrible than in the suburbs. The effects of the bombardment were evident on every side. Women and children lay frightfully mangled in the roadway. At one place a whole family had been crushed by a projectile. Dead Dervishes, already in the fierce heat beginning to decompose, dotted the ground. The houses were crammed with wounded. Hundreds of decaying carcasses of animals filled the air with a sickening smell. Here, as without the wall, the anxious inhabitants renewed their protestations of loyalty ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... second, though, his face lit up with a thought. "I remember reading that electricity will decompose bone, in time." And then he shuddered again as his foot stirred that lifeless, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... infinite, rush into rash and wicked suicide, that they may thus escape from the contradictions and complicated pangs of the finite. The rays of light from the everlasting sun of wisdom and love are indeed forever falling round us, but we no longer bear the prism of faith which would decompose them for us, giving them such direction as they fall upon the symbolic, the relative, that we might read in their three-fold splendor the symbolized, the Absolute. The human soul was created for the enjoyment of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Larva, be it remembered, is not subject to decay; a saint does not decompose in the flesh like mortal sinners. One of these, I have been told, dead fifty years ago and now canonised, can be seen yet in one of the monasteries of North Lebanon, keeping well his flesh and bones together—divinely embalmed. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... to be a saluting-battery; but the legend runs that the gunners require a week's clear notice before firing a salute.[B] There is no locomotion save in boxes and on the backs of quadrupeds; and quadrupeds of the inferior order are usually, when overtaken by death, thrown in the streets to decompose. But if the irregularity of the town would galvanize the late Monsieur Haussmann in his grave, its situation would satisfy the most exacting Yankee engineer. It is huddled in a sheltered nest on the fringe of a land of milk and honey; it has ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... white of a hard-boiled egg is not generally very thoroughly masticated. Unless finely divided, it offers more resistance to the digestive juices than the fluid or semi-fluid white, and undigested particles may remain in the digestive tract many days and decompose. From this deduction it is obvious that thorough mastication is a matter of importance. Provided mastication is thorough, marked differences in the completeness of digestion of the three sorts of eggs, in the opinion of the writer cited, will not ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... be, the Chalicodoma grub is none the less alive. The primrose tint and the glossy skin are unequivocal signs of health: Were it really dead, it would, in less than twenty-four hours, turn a dirty brown and, soon after, decompose into a fluid putrescence. Now here is the marvelous thing: during the fortnight, roughly, that the Anthrax' meal lasts, the butter color of the larva, an unfailing symptom of the presence of life, continues unaltered and does not change ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... with mastication and speech. The patient usually feeds himself by pushing small portions of bread or meat with the fingers through some gap between the badly opposed and badly formed and preserved teeth. As the patient is unable to keep the mouth clean, particles of food lodge and decompose there, causing irritation of the mucous membrane, caries of the teeth, and foetor of the saliva and breath. When osseous ankylosis occurs in childhood, it leads to arrest of development of the mandible, which is small and markedly ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... prove no fact; it only yields probabilities. Its end and result is to decompose documents into statements, each labelled with an estimate of its value—worthless statement, statement open to suspicion (strong or weak), statement probably (or, very probably) true, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Magnesia Instead we'd form that's named from Epsom. Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis, Our happy union should that compound form, Nitrate of Potash—otherwise Saltpeter. And thus our several natures sweetly blent, We'd live and love together, until death Should decompose the fleshly TERTIUM QUID, Leaving our souls to all eternity Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Briggs And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs? We will. The day, the happy day, is nigh, When Johnson ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... will later on appear in connection with means for promoting felting properties. If a hair such as described, with the scales lying flat on the shaft, be treated with certain substances or reagents which act upon and dissolve, or decompose or disintegrate its parts, then the free edges of these scales rise up, they "set their backs up," so to say. They, in fact, stand off like the scales of a fir-cone, and at length act like the fir-cone in ripening, at last becoming entirely loose. As regards wool and fur, these scales are of the ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... acids to the teeth cannot be too strongly deprecated: they decompose their substance, and lead to their rapid decay. Hence the whiteness produced by acid tooth-powders and washes is not less deceitful than ruinous in its consequences. As has been just observed, they perform all ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... even when they become slashing London critics, are more harmless than they themselves imagine, and after all inspire less awe than Ben-Nevis, or than the celebrated agriculturist who proposed to decompose that mountain with acids, and to scatter the debris as a fertiliser over the Lochaber moss. But a Highlander born, who has been nurtured on oatmeal porridge and oatmeal cakes; who in his youth wore home-spun cloth, and ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... state. Ordinary chemical forces resume their sway, and the oxygen of the air combines with the newly deposited carbon to reproduce a little carbonic acid. But this must be placed to the account of decomposing, not of growing vegetation; for by so much as plants grow, they decompose carbonic acid and give its oxygen to the air, or, in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... matter, which he calls protyle. While he admits that we have no direct evidence that the elements are different manifestations of the same form of matter, yet he thinks that the observed phenomena of chemistry and physics point very strongly to such a conclusion, and agrees with Faraday, that, "to decompose the metals, then to reform them, to change them from one to another, and to realize the once absurd notion of transmutation, are the problems now given to the chemist for solution." We consider Professor Crookes to be one ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... But of course, whenever the soul perishes, she must have on her last garment, and this will survive her; and then at length, when the soul is dead, the body will show its native weakness, and quickly decompose and pass away. I would therefore rather not rely on the argument from superior strength to prove the continued existence of the soul after death. For granting even more than you affirm to be possible, and acknowledging not only that the soul existed before birth, but also that ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... into what we call electricity, was previously embodied in the wood; and if we study the laws of vegetation, we find that the atmosphere being charged with carbonic acid (CO{2}), the leaves of plants, shrubs, and trees, breathing, take in the CO{2}, the sun rays decompose the CO{2}, set free the oxygen, and supply the necessary amount of caloric for the condensed state of the carbon. Thus we find that the force which we term electricity, developed from the oxidation of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... pressure gauge, and other testing apparatus, are here subjected to chemical analysis in order to determine the component materials and their exact percentages. Tests are also made to determine the stability of the explosive, or its liability to decompose at various temperatures, and other properties which are of importance in showing the factors which will control the safety of the explosive ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... also to learn, that Mr Hendrie intends to publish entire with notes, the "De Magerne MS." in the British Museum. I believe artists are already giving up the worst of vehicles, the meguilp, made of mastic, of all the varnishes the most ready to decompose, as well as to separate the paint, and produce those unseemly gashes which have been the ruin of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... but a semi-organized substance, of deficient vitality, it is very prone to disintegration and suppuration. Being foreign to the tissues in which it is embedded, like a thorn in the flesh, it excites a passive form of inflammation, and from lack of inherent vital energy it is apt to decompose and cause the formation of pus. Hence, infiltration of the muscles, glands, or other soft parts with tuberculous matter, when inflammation is aroused by its presence, and by an exciting cause, give rise to abscesses, as in ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... this is a more reasonable proposition, if we assume that the Babylonian narrator had the Genesis account as it now stands, and did not have to combine two separate statements. For surely if he had the separate Priestly and Jehovistic narratives we should now be able to decompose the Babylonian narrative just as easily as we do the one in Genesis. The Babylonian adapter of the Genesis story must have either been less astute than ourselves, and did not perceive that he had really two distinct (and ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... prominent source of malaria; throughout the whole district there is scarcely an attempt at it. The refuse vegetable and animal matters are also thrown by the cottagers in heaps near their dwellings to decompose; are sometimes not removed, except at very long intervals; and are always permitted to remain sufficiently long to accumulate in some quantity. Pigsties are generally near the dwellings, and are always surrounded by decomposing matters. These constitute ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... full instructions. And, for the present, you may know that it is a continuous explosion that drives the ship. I have learned to decompose water into its components and split them into subatomic form. They reunite to give something other than matter. It is a liquid—liquid energy, though the term is inaccurate—that separates out in two forms, and a fluid ounce ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... we shall decompose the coarse unity of the question presented by Van Dale and his Vandals, as though the one sole "issue," that could be sent down for trial before a jury, were the likelihoods of fraud and gross swindling. It is not with the deceptions ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... remedy does not necessarily condemn them as preventives. One dram of caustic potash or of hydrochloric acid may be given daily in the drinking water. In diametrically opposite ways these attack and decompose the less soluble salts and form new ones which are more soluble and therefore little disposed to precipitate in the solid form. Both are beneficial as increasing the secretion of urine. In cases in which the diet has been too highly charged with phosphates (wheat bran, etc.), these aliments ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... and gentle as The Age of Gold (when gold was yet unknown, By which its nomenclature came to pass;[gv] Thus most appropriately has been shown "Lucus a non lucendo," not what was, But what was not; a sort of style that's grown Extremely common in this age, whose metal The Devil may decompose, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... body are rigid, with the exception of the upper margin, the stomach, and the tentacles. The tentacles are soft and waving, projected or drawn in at will; they retain their flexible character through life, and decompose when the animal dies. For this reason the dried specimens of corals preserved in museums do not give us the least idea of the living corals, in which every one of the millions of beings composing such a community is crowned by a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... followed him. There was a fire, and some apparatus belonging to Paulett, which he had used in experiments upon the decreasing water of the basin. He knocked the stone out of its setting, and applied himself to decompose it over the fire. He put forth all his skill and all his power, and was successful; the diamond disappeared, and there remained a few drops of water. He looked at his wife and smiled; she raised her eyes to his, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... distance is to make colors merge into one another, to lower the values, but not all equally. Yellow loses itself first, tending toward white. The effect of distance, in general, is to disintegrate and decompose, thus giving "vibration" as it is called. A knowledge of these and kindred facts will save the architect from many disappointments and enable him to obtain wonderful chromatic effects ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Cankered, inveterate, Cantel, slice, strip, Careful, sorrowful, full of troubles, Cast (of bread), loaves baked at the same time, Cast, ref: v., propose, Cedle, schedule, note, Cere, wax over, embalm,; cerel, Certes, certainly, Chafe, heat, decompose,; chafed, heated, Chaflet, platform, scaffold, Champaign, open country, Chariot (Fr charette), cart, Cheer, countenance, entertainment, Chierte, dearness, Chrism, anointing oil, Clatter, talk confusedly, Cleight, clutched, Cleped, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... dispersion must be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an intense vital energy.... Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which compose it are living ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... this work with so short a text, so long a chant; and as he listened to, and read it with recollection, this magnificent prayer seemed to decompose as a whole, and to represent three different states of the soul, to exhibit the triple phase of humanity, during its youth, its maturity, and its decline; it was, in a word, an essential summary of prayer ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... protested Truesdale, "we don't look at a painting with our noses, but with our eyes. I decompose what is before me into the primary colors. Now the thing for you to do is to step back ten or twelve feet and recompose them. That armchair over there is just about your point of view precisely—and so inviting and comfortable! ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Reuss sous ses pieds elle ecume par-tout, il faut etre accoutume a ce spectacle pour n'en pas etre effraye. Les rochers de droite et de gauche sont par-tout a pic et d'une granit, qui est jaunatre dans differens endroits; dans d'autres, il est decompose, passant a l'etat d'argile; c'est le felds-path qui subit le premiere ce changement. Des quartiers de rochers des parties de montagnes sont epars; des chalets, des habitations solitaires sont place aux environs des endroits ou il y a quelque paturage. Il y a un de ces rochers qui ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... they had gained was viewed by the public as a collateral gain, indirectly adhering to a higher object, but forming no part at all of what the clergy had sought. It required the scrutiny of law courts to unmask and decompose their true object The obstinacy of the defence betrayed the real animus of the attempt. It was an attempt which, in connection with the Veto Act (supposing that to have prospered), would have laid the whole power of the church at their feet. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... of 1883 a Mr. J.B. Thompson, of New Cross, London, patented a new process of bleaching, the main feature of which consisted in the use of carbonic acid gas in a closed vessel to decompose the chloride of lime. The "chemicking" and "souring" operations he performed at one and the same time. The reactions which took place in his bleaching keir were stated by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... greedily swallow some new kind of cordial and then suddenly fall to the ground, foam at the mouth, act deliriously and writhe in convulsions, we at once surmise that this agreeable beverage contained some dangerous substance; but a delicate analysis is necessary to detect and decompose the poison. The philosophy of the eighteenth century contained poison, and of a kind as potent as it was peculiar; for, not only is it a long historic elaboration, the final and condensed essence of the tendency of the thought of the century, but again its two principal ingredients have ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... linked together in some way and seemed not to exist when gallic acid was used, for ink so made was found to precipitate only after a long exposure, it required no free acid to keep the precipitate in solution, and retained the indigo blue color for a long time; alkalis did not decompose the ink, and provided blacker and more permanent writing. Determination of the correct proportions of gallic acid and ferrous-sulphate was the subject of prolonged experiments conducted on similar lines to those already ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... a moderate saponification; thus, we heat the yellow precipitate with a small quantity of alkali to saponify the fatty body mixed with the xanthine, which even contains the xanthine dissolved. As the coloring matter is soluble in the soap solution, we do not treat the mass with water, but decompose it with an acid which isolates the xanthine and the fatty acids resulting from the saponification. This precipitate we treat with cold alcohol, which leaves behind the fatty acids, and dissolves the xanthine. This substance is a fine yellow color, insoluble in water, but soluble ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... characters are not something which you conceive apart from the words; you apprehend them from point to point in the words, and the words as expressions of them. Afterwards, no doubt, when you are out of the poetic experience but remember it, you may by analysis decompose this unity, and attend to a substance more or less isolated, and a form more or less isolated. But these are things in your analytic head, not in the poem, which is poetic experience. And if you want to ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... utmost extent; the apparent diameter of a great number of stars was accurately measured; and Mr. Clark, of the Cambridge staff, resolved the Crab nebula in Taurus, which the reflector of Lord Rosse had never been able to decompose. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... of the nature of the sunlight is seen in the rainbow. Here the sunbeams are refracted and reflected from tiny globes of water in the clouds; these convey to us the sunlight, and in doing so decompose the white beams into the seven primary hues—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. These will readily be absorbed by the atmosphere or be washed away by rain, so that all vestiges of the dead animal or plant disappear. But if the same substances be submerged in water, they decompose more gradually; and if buried in earth, still more slowly; as in the familiar example of wooden piles or other buried timber. Now, if as fast as each particle is set free by putrefaction in a fluid or gaseous state, a particle equally ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... so-called chemical waves that lie chiefly in the violet and ultra-violet end of the solar spectrum. What, then, is a chemical wave, its particular nature, and its exact properties? That we know it can decompose certain compounds, as Carbonic Acid Gas, CO2, and so give rise to chemical decomposition, has been proved by Professor Tyndall and others, but I have never yet seen any record of any attempt to find out what these chemical waves are. There may have ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... Dauphiny was held in 1788, is a Republican, actually undertook to 'ring up the curtain' on the Centennial of 1789 by representing Barnave and Mounier as clamouring in 1788 for a republic at Vizille! Of all which let us say with Mr. Carlyle, 'What should Falsehood do but decease, being ripe, decompose itself, and return to the Father of it?' To whom, alas! I fear, under this inexorable law must in due time revert too many of the fuliginous word-pictures of Mr. Carlyle's own dithyrambic prose ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... a white mass, which readily absorbs moisture and dissolves. It will not volatilize at a low red heat, nor will it decompose. Exposed to a strong heat, it is decomposed, yielding oxygen, and passing into ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... Nature. Human life would on an average last 144 years. The aurora borealis, which now rarely appears in northern regions, would become permanently visible and be fixed at the Pole. It would give out, not only light, as at present, but also heat. It would decompose the sea water by the creation of citric boreal acid and convert it into a kind of lemonade which would dispense with the necessity of provisioning ships with fresh water. Oranges would grow in Siberia and tame whales would pull becalmed sailing-ships. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... argosies of flame in space. Suppose we had felt the wind that came surging from all points of the compass to fan that conflagration till it was light enough a mile away to see to read the finest print, hot enough to decompose the torrents of water that were dashed on it, making new fuel to feed the flame. Suppose we had seen this spreading fire seize on the whole city, extend to its environs, and, feeding itself on the very soil, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... and vegetable fiber are used, they produce hydrocarbon gases on being heated—gases principally composed of hydrogen and carbon. These gases are unstable in the presence of hot iron: it seems to decompose them and sooty carbon is deposited on the surface of the metal. This diffuses into the metal a little, but it acts principally by being a ready source of carbon, highly active and waiting to be carried into the metal by the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... pulp, and thus a single button chopped up will contaminate a large portion of paper; occasionally these particles are so large that they reduce the silver solutions to the metallic state, which is formed on the paper; at other times they are so minute as to simply decompose the solution, and white spots are left, much injuring the effect of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... (when gold was yet unknown, By which its nomenclature came to pass; Thus most appropriately has been shown 'Lucus a non lucendo,' not what was, But what was not; a sort of style that 's grown Extremely common in this age, whose metal The devil may decompose, but never settle: ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... it, many non-gardeners have already scuffed up that thin layer of nearly pure humus forming naturally on the forest floor where leaves and needles contact the soil. Most Americans would be repelled by many of the substances that decompose into humus. But, fastidious as we tend to be, most would not be offended to barehandedly cradle a scoop of humus, raise it to the nose, and take an enjoyable sniff. There seems to be something built into the most primary nature of humans that ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... and useless gas in an arrangement like this is the nitrogen of the air, which being in large quantities does act as a serious diluent. To diminish the proportion of nitrogen, steam is often injected as well as air. The glowing coke can decompose the steam, forming carbonic oxide and hydrogen, both combustible. But of course no extra energy can be gained by the use of steam in this way; all the energy must come from the coke, the steam being already a perfectly burned product; the use of steam is merely to serve as a vehicle for converting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... redoubtable, was the next morning 'poor M. Noirtier,' the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of the weakest creature in the household, that is, his grandchild, Valentine; a dumb and frozen carcass, in fact, living painlessly on, that time may be given for his frame to decompose without his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... poet observed that they completed the whole text of Scripture, which says, Diligite justitiam, qui judicatis terram—(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth). The last letter, M, they did not decompose like the rest, but kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... no blood, no nerves, no circulation and apparently no life in a full grown feather, yet it does not decompose; indeed, it is one of the hardest things in the world to destroy by any process of decomposition. It retains its resiliency and all its flexibility for years—all that is necessary is to keep it dry. It is finished all along the rib (or quill) with a hard, glossy enamel on the ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... priest as well. All that eclipsed it having been taken away, you will see the light of day direct. Orisons, rites, bibles, formulas, refract and decompose the sacred light. A dogma is a dark chamber. Through a religion you see the solar spectre of God, but not God. Desuetude and crumbling enhance the grandeur of a temple. As human religion retires from ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... information that we were in the execution grounds. He pointed out spots still damp with the blood of criminals, several jars containing the heads of victims, the protruding hair matted with the lime used to decompose the flesh more rapidly, and a rude cross still remaining upon which a woman had recently been crucified and cut to pieces while alive. Her crime was the gravest known to Chinese law: she had murdered her husband. Poor ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... in green coffee there is no definite compound "caffetannic acid," and there is even less likelihood of its being present in roasted coffee. The conditions, high heat and oxidation, to which coffee is subjected in roasting would suffice to decompose this hypothetical acid ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... vessels, Florence flasks, answer well: a bent tube being connected at one end to its month, the other passing into the second vessel; heat should be cautiously applied by means of an Argand lamp, a little vessel of sand being placed under the flask, which helps the acid to decompose the salt. Prussic acid is then generated and passes through the tube to the recipient vessel, which is to ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... bottom before the mouth opens. In other species, the orifice is so completely overarched as essentially to prevent the access of water from without. In these tubes, mainly in the water, flies and other insects accumulate, perish, and decompose. Flies thrown into the open-mouthed tube of the yellow Sarracenia, even when free from water, are unable to get out—one hardly sees why, except that they cannot fly directly upward; and microscopic chevaux-de-frise of fine, sharp-pointed bristles which line most of the interior, pointing ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... causes of decay of the teeth is the retention of fragments of food between and around them. The warmth and moisture of the mouth make these matters decompose quickly. The acid thus generated attacks the enamel of the teeth, causing decay of the dentine. Decayed teeth are often the cause of an offensive breath and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... positively the case, though it will not retain those disposed to move, because it wants the property the acetate of lead possesses, of gelatinizing the mixture of oil and varnish. These two dryers should not be employed together, since they counteract and decompose each other, forming two new substances—acetate of zinc, which is a bad siccative, and sulphate of lead, which is insoluble and opaque. The inexperienced ought here to be guarded against the highly ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... much. You assume that the animals become nothing; but, truly, nothing dies. The very crystals into which all the so-called primitive substances are formed, and which are the first forms of organization, have a spirit in them; for they obey something which inhabits and organizes them. If you could decompose the crystal, would you annihilate the soul which organized it? The plant absorbs the crystal, and it becomes a part of a higher organization, which could no more exist without its soul; and if the plant is cut down and cast into the oven, is the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... purer than spring-water; as the neutral salts washed down from the earth decompose each other, except perhaps the marine salt; and the earths, with which spring-water frequently abounds, is precipitated; yet it is not improbable, that the calcareous earth dissolved in the water of many springs ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... formed an insulating coating over the active material, causing the charging voltage to be high, and the charge will proceed slowly. When most of the lead sulphate has been reduced to spongy lead, the charging current will be greater than is needed to carry on the chemical actions, and will simply decompose the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the cell "gasses." Spongy lead is rather tough and coherent, it, and the bubbles of gas which form in the pores of the negative plate near the end of the charge force their way to the surface ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... pondering it in solitude. Ways of rendering the electricity sensible at the far end of the line were considered. The spark might pierce a band of travelling paper, as Professor Day had mentioned years before; it might decompose a chemical solution, and leave a stain to mark its passage, as tried by Mr. Dyar in 1827; Or it could excite an electro-magnet, which, by attracting a piece of soft iron, would inscribe the passage with a pen or pencil. The signals could be made by very short currents or jets ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... think you will perceive the whole history of water with reference to oxygen and the air, from what we have before said. Why does a piece of potassium decompose water? Because it finds oxygen in the water. What is set free when I put it in the water, as I am about to do again? It sets free hydrogen, and the hydrogen burns; but the potassium itself combines with oxygen; and this piece of potassium, in taking ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... combustible substances known. These two gases are nearly two thousand times more voluminous than their equivalent of water, and, when ignited, they combine with explosive energy. If, then, the Creator were to decompose the atmosphere that surrounds the earth to the height of forty-five miles, and the water that rests upon its surface, either or both of them, the oxygen, being specifically heavier than the nitrogen ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... floors of all these buildings should be washed every day before the work-people leave. In case any nitro-glycerine is spilt upon the floors, after sponging it up as far as possible, the floor should be washed with an alcoholic solution of soda or potash to decompose the nitro-glycerine, which it does ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... glycerine; then from this new combination, he easily separated the olein, the margarin, and the stearin, by employing boiling water. But to simplify the operation, he preferred to saponify the fat by means of lime. By this he obtained a calcareous soap, easy to decompose by sulphuric acid, which precipitated the lime into the state of sulphate, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... said (p. 237) to "produce a taste resulting from the galvanic concussion, and not from any actual flavour." This is incorrect; zinc and silver produce a taste when in voltaic communication, because they decompose the saliva, and eliminate acid and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... water. Such determination, however, cannot be carried out by the ordinary consumer for himself. A generator which is perfectly satisfactory in general behaviour, and which evolves a sufficient proportion of the possible total make of gas to be economical, does not of necessity decompose the carbide quantitatively; nor is it constructed in a fashion to render an exact measurement of the gas liberated at standard temperature and pressure easy to obtain. For obvious reasons the careful consumer of acetylene will keep a record of the ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... eminent English biologist, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace. He says: "If individuals did not die they would soon multiply inordinately and would interfere with each other's healthy existence. Food would become scarce, and hence the larger individuals would probably decompose or diminish in size. The deficiency of nourishment would lead to parts of the organism not being renewed; they would become fixed, and liable to more or less slow decomposition as dead parts within a living body. The smaller organisms would have a better chance of finding ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... they originate from primordial germs—the first elementary principles of life—whenever inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen—a vital process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... scarcely add that an examination of the external genitals should never be omitted in any case of dysuria during childhood. You will not infrequently discover a phimosis which interferes more or less with the discharge of urine and retains portions of the latter behind the foreskin, where it may decompose and give rise to an inflammatory condition of the prepuce, with painful dysuria.... This is also true of the occasional adhesion of the labia minora in little girls, like the similar adhesion of the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... earth. They will experiment the watering of the soil with cultures of micro-organisms—a rational idea, conceived but yesterday, which will permit us to give to the soil those little living beings, necessary to feed the rootlets, to decompose and assimilate the component parts ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... third-rate literary persons whom Dumas assimilated in such numbers as of greater interest and higher merit than Dumas. To them the jackals were far nobler than the lion, and they worked their hardest in the interest of the pack. It was their mission to decompose and disintegrate the magnificent entity which M. Blaze de Bury very happily nicknames 'Dumas-Legion,' and in the process not to render his own unto Caesar but to take from him all that was Caesar's, and divide ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... business and comfort of society. As far as we apprehend his claim, it is that he has established as a new principle of science that electricity possesses the qualities of weight, compressibility and gravitation; that he has proved water to be in reality a simple elemental substance, which he can decompose or transform into either hydrogen or oxygen gas according to its electrical condition, and according as positive or negative electricity is applied to it; and that he has invented the means whereby from water he can produce at will either of these gases without any other ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... flowers and fruits and roots and bark. From the grass and water that is taken by a cow are produced milk and butter, substances whose nature is different from that of the producing causes. Substances of different kinds when allowed to decompose in water for some time produce spirituous liquors whose nature is quite different from that of those substances that produce them. After the same manner, from the vital seed is produced the body and its attributes, with the understanding, consciousness, mind, and other possessions. Two ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown |
