"Decompose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... shells of pteropods and other surface Mollusca which are constantly falling on the bottom, are absent, or, if a few remain, they are brittle and yellow, and evidently decaying rapidly. These shells of Mollusca decompose more easily and disappear sooner than the smaller, and apparently more delicate, shells of rhizopods. The smaller Foraminifera now give way, and are found in lessening proportion to the larger; the coccoliths ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... itself; but on a closer inspection the grass turns out to be coarse and dry, and many of the trees look scrubby and half dead. Except in the 'gulches' and the deep holes between the hills, the island is covered with lava, in many places of so recent a deposit that it has not yet had time to decompose, and there is consequently only a thin layer of soil on its surface. This soil being, however, very rich, vegetation flourishes luxuriantly for a time; but as soon as the roots have penetrated a certain depth, and have come into contact with ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... have been insensible in quantity, for no trace of hydrogen appeared upon the surface of the platina during these three seconds. It would appear that 800,000 such charges of the Leyden battery would be necessary to decompose a single grain of water; or, if I am right, to equal the quantity of electricity which is naturally associated with the elements of that grain of water, endowing them with ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... previously crushed, is placed in the boiler, A, and the quantity of acid necessary to decompose it is added. The mass is afterward mixed with care by means of the stirrer, and the distillation may then proceed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... taken of this—neither banker nor croupier even turning their eyes in the direction, of the bet. Such a sum as five dollars would not decompose the well-practised nerves of these gentlemen—where sums of ten, twenty, or even fifty times the amount, were constantly passing to and from ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... would joke about death? No, when you die, I'll follow your funeral and proclaim to all: "Behold, here is a man who has come to know the truth." Oh no, I'll rather hang you up as a banner of truth. And, the more your skin and flesh decompose and crumble, the more will the truth come out. It will be a most instructive object lesson, highly educative. Tony, why are you ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... the cotyledons, as we shall presently see, were lifted up still enclosed in their seed-coats. They were, however, cast off in the course of two or three days by the swelling of the cotyledons. Until this occurs light is excluded, and the cotyledons cannot decompose carbonic acid; but no one probably would have thought that the advantage thus gained by ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... of this kind will run a small motor, operate a telegraph sounder, make a simple electro-magnet, or ring an electric bell; two cells will decompose water: three will heat a piece ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... produced from the recrements of animal and vegetable bodies, such as phosphoric, ammoniacal, marine salt, and others; these are washed from the earth by rains, and carried down our rivers into the sea; they seem all here to decompose each other except the marine salt, which has therefore from the beginning of the habitable world been ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... tickling), without any idea of solidity or of figure: an excess of heat produces smarting, of cold another kind of pain; it is probable by this sense of heat the pain produced by caustic bodies is perceived, and of electricity, as all these are fluids, that permeate, distend, or decompose the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... from Johnny's Selected Seeds (see Chapter 5 for their address). Poppy seed used for cooking will often sprout. Sown densely in October, it forms a thick carpet of frilly spring greens underlaid with countless massive taproots that decompose very rapidly if the plants are tilled in in April before flower stalks begin to appear. Beware if using poppies as a green manure crop: be sure to till them in early to avoid trouble with the DEA or ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... 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. It has been truly said that the work of a good ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... 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 into ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... know and reflect that the body cannot remain any long time in the grave which it is placed in; I am sadly afraid that they will think twice before they will spend from thirty to several hundred pounds in merely putting a corpse into the ground to decompose. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... par-dessus; on entend mugir la 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 ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... or young barristers, 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 was innocent of shoes and stockings; who blushed in his attempts to speak the ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... penetrative power, the depths of the heavens were sounded to the 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
... simile which might almost make us suppose that Shakespeare knew something of the details of the pearl fisheries, when the oysters are piled up on shore and allowed to decompose, so as to render it easier to get at the pearls, for he makes one of his characters say, speaking of an honest man in a poor dwelling, that he was like a "pearl in your foul oyster". (As You Like It, Act ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... think this a truth also, and a more normal and a profounder truth than the other. But is it a law? Is it a scientific discovery that can lead us to definite inferences about what will happen or help us to decompose a single event, accurately and without ambiguity, into its component forces? Not only is such a thing impossible, but the Scotch philosopher's amiable generalities, perhaps largely applicable to himself and to his friends of the eighteenth century, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis, Our happy union should that compound form, Nitrate of Potash—otherwise Saltpetre. 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 ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Gold (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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... here said that the wonderful explosive did not do what was expected of it, either in England or Holland, for it was found to decompose on keeping. It did everything else that was boasted of it, but no one succeeded in keeping it more than fifteen months, an irremediate defect in an explosive for military purposes. This, of course, was not discovered at first, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... been endeavouring to decompose carbonic acid gas by light. A faint bluish cloud, due it may be, or it may not be, to the residue of some vapour previously employed, was formed in the experimental tube. On looking across this cloud through a Nicol's prism, the line of vision being horizontal, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... 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 ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... in growing, decompose CO2, and thereby store up energy, the energy derived from the light and heat of the sun. When they decay, or are burned, or are eaten by animals, exactly the same amount of energy is liberated, or changed from potential to kinetic, and the ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... most frequent 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 ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... a source of such currents, we may pass an inappreciable current over the line, and on any point of the same we are able to obtain a heavy current, capable of fusing a thick copper wire. Or we may, by the help of some artifice, decompose a solution in any electrolytic cell by connecting only one pole of the cell to the line or source of energy. Or we may, by attaching to the line, or only bringing into its vicinity, light up an incandescent lamp, an exhausted tube, or a ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... Fanshaw's fable of an old piratical Admiral; though the details seemed afterwards to decompose into accidents. For instance, he wore a broad-brimmed hat as protection against the sun; but the front flap of it was turned up straight to the sky, and the two corners pulled down lower than the ears, so that it stood across his forehead in a crescent like the old cocked hat worn by ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... its equivalent in metal. The substances which we at present term anhydrous acids (acid oxides) only become, for the most part, capable of forming salts with metallic oxides after the addition of water, or they are compounds which decompose these oxides at somewhat high ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... always be fresh, although different forms of the drug are used. It tends quickly to decompose—forming a toxic by-product—and, according to some authorities, this decomposed scopolamin is responsible for many undesirable results which have attended some cases of "twilight sleep." Various forms of morphin are also used, as also ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... produced in winter as well as in summer in one or two hours, and the quantity of free acid required for its formation is reduced to the lowest amount. I proceed as follows: After having dissolved in hot water the requisite quantity of cupric sulphate, I decompose one-fourth of this salt by adding just sufficient of a solution of carbonate of soda to precipitate the copper, in that quantity of the sulphate, as carbonate. I then add just sufficient acetic acid to convert the carbonate into acetate. I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... with him an alcohol lamp and some asbestos into the pulpit and told his audience that God would turn their souls into a substance resembling asbestos. He showed them that though the asbestos were heated red hot it did not decompose into ashes. Fortunately the day of the hell preacher has gone by, and if we believe the Bible which says that "in God we live and move and have our being," we can readily understand that a lost soul would be ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... substances confined too long in receptacles decompose and generate pathogenic poisons, that is, poisons productive of disease; and that the intestinal reservoirs are no exception to this law of putrefactive changes. How could we avoid drawing the inference, ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... air and replacing it with carbon dioxide, tends to make the whole atmosphere deficient in the one and to have an excess of the other. This tendency is counteracted through the agency of vegetation. Green plants absorb the carbon dioxide from the air, decompose it, build the carbon into compounds (starch, etc.) that become a part of the plant, and return the free oxygen to the air (Fig. 57). In doing this, they not only preserve the necessary proportion of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... is another side to the question. To decompose any substance, it must be placed between the poles of the battery. Now theology is but one pole; philosophy is the other. No one can make out the combinations of our day unless he read the writings both of the priest and the philosopher: and if any one should hold the first word offensive, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Europe, as the plants become so decayed as to leave no traces of organisation. Frequently the trees are overthrown, and numbers are found lying beneath the surface of the soil, where, covered with water, they never decompose. So completely preserved are they, that they are frequently sawn up into planks. In one part of the Dismal Swamp there is a lake seven miles in length, and more than five wide, with a forest growing on its banks. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... that she believed in a God, and that she hoped for compensation from him for the miseries she had endured. She had now begun to decompose, and to become, in turn, a plant. She who had blossomed in the sun was now to be eaten up by the cattle, carried away in herbs, and in the flesh of beasts, again to become human flesh. But that which is called the soul had been extinguished at the bottom of the dark well. She suffered ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... envelope, and turned it over slowly in his hands. Betton's eyes, fixed on him, saw his face decompose like a substance touched by some powerful acid. He clung to the envelope as ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 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 it among the mannikins he had absorbed. And their work ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... are perfect near the beach become, in ascending, gradually less and less perfect, until scarcely a trace of their original structure can be discovered. It is known that carbonate of lime and common salt left in a mass together, and slightly moistened, partially decompose each other (I am informed by Dr. Kane, through Mr. Reeks, that a manufactory was established on this principle in France, but failed from the small quantity of carbonate of soda produced. Sprengel "Gardeners' Chronicle" 1845 page 157, states, that salt and carbonate of lime are liable to mutual ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... the means of preserving his whole family in health, while many died in the neighbouring houses. It was impossible to bury all the dead, and the bodies were left to decompose where they died. After the plague had ceased, the Arabs of the desert made their appearance for the purpose of robbing and plundering. They found an easy spoil, for they penetrated without resistance into the empty houses, or without difficulty ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... awful assault. Seeing that I was suffering in this manner, my mother approached with an oar, when she—her" (indicating Nannie by pointing fixedly and by a stony glare) "rushed upon her fiercely and caused her dog also to charge upon her, which he did so savagely as to decompose her raiment. In some way the oar flew out of her hand, and she was most disrespectfully whirled around and around, so that she is ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... with lime, all parts of the 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, and 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 waving wreath of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... 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 be charged ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... not descend the hill, and are the remains of an extensive formation which we could only find in situ at one spot on the road to Myrung (see earlier), but which must have been of immense thickness.* [The tendency of many volcanic rocks to decompose in spheres is very well known: it is conspicuous in the black basalts north of Edinburgh, but I do not know any instance equal to this of Nunklow, for the extent of decomposition and dimensions of the resulting spheres.] One ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... 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
... 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 foreskin in boys. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... from galvanism. By means of the Voltaic battery we set free a certain amount of force, and we can employ it at pleasure to produce an intense light in the electric lamp, or to melt metals which resist the greatest heat of our furnaces; it will convert a bar of iron into a magnet, or decompose water into its constituents, oxygen and hydrogen, or separate a metal from its combination with oxygen. But in all these processes no new force is produced—the force set free is unchangeable in itself, and we cannot increase its amount. Owing to the imperfection of our instruments and our ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... is a weak oxidiser, and therefore, although (p. 035) strong enough to destroy the colouring matter of the fibre is not strong enough to decompose the fibre itself. Hydrogen peroxide is sold as a water-white liquid, without any odour or taste. Its strength is measured by the quantity of oxygen which is evolved when one volume of the liquid is treated ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... of such application of guano and plaster would be, to prevent the waste of the ammonia of the former, as every rain would decompose more or less of the plaster, separate the sulphuric acid from the lime, and the sulphuric acid when liberated, would unite with the ammonia, form a sulphate of ammonia, and hold the latter in reserve to be taken up by the roots of ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... in rain, to turn mills, or which causes winds to blow by the unequal rarefaction of the atmosphere. It is from the sun too that the power comes which is liberated in a steam engine. The solar rays enable plants to decompose carbonic acid gas, the product of combustion, and the vegetation thus rendered possible is the source of coal and other combustible bodies. The combustion of coal under a steam boiler therefore merely liberates ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... in the ground, the loveliest fern-fronds of pure rime may be found in myriads on the meadows. They are fashioned like perfect vegetable structures, opening fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the fishes swimming in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... irrigate or not. In the East, where people are supposed to be very industrious, we have adopted the lazier way of letting the trees grow in sod; but that is not so bad if we follow the principle brought forward by Stringfellow of letting the leaves all decompose, and adding more fertilizer and more leaves and taking away nothing. In France and Germany and England, where the trees are cultivated, particularly in France, where they are best cultivated, we find two methods; first, keeping ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the ground, at the extremities of the fibrous roots, both of the common and of the evergreen oak. The season for gathering them is from November to the end of March, after which those which remain become soft and decompose. They are at their best in January, when the rind is black, hard, and rough, and the inside mottled black and white. In size and shape the best resemble small round potatoes, of which the largest may weigh lb., although few are of that size. They are sought by means of dogs and swine, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... general 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 ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... filled with the softer parts of the animal, and to fit the sponge for use this softer organic material must be got rid of. It is easily accomplished by rotting. The fresh sponges are allowed to stand in the warm sun and very rapidly decay. Bacteria make their way into the sponge and thoroughly decompose the soft tissues. After a short putrefaction of this sort the softened organic matter can be easily washed out of the skeleton and leave the clean ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... bone, 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
... the frozen corpse, which was covered with the mantle, had thawed. It may be from the heat of the burning candles, it had begun to decompose with extraordinary rapidity, and the face of the young count looked indeed terrible. The enormously swollen, and livid mouth looked something monstrous, the blue and swollen curled lips had the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... called the "soft-ware" and the "hard-ware," are very important. The former includes all vegetable and animal matters—everything that will decompose. These are selected and bagged at once, and carried off as soon as possible, to be sold as manure for plowed land, wheat, barley, &c. Under this head, also, the dead cats are comprised. They are generally the perquisites of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... a fat or oil is saponified with soda or potash, the resulting soap dissolved in hot water, and sufficient dilute sulphuric acid added to decompose the soap, an oily layer gradually rises to the surface of the liquid, which, after clarifying by warming and washing free from mineral acid, is soluble in alcohol and reddens blue litmus paper. This oily layer consists of the "fatty acids" or rather ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... long streamers floating perhaps twenty or thirty feet behind it as it swims,—or the Ctenophore, with its more delicate, transparent structure, and almost invisible fringes in parallel rows upon the body, which decompose the rays of light as the creature moves through the water, so that hues of ruby-red and emerald-green, blue, purple, yellow, all the colors of the rainbow, ripple constantly over its surface when it is in motion,—or the Hydroid, with its little shrub-like communities living ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... harmed the horny flipper of the termite worker that had flicked it onto the garden slug. Did that mean that the flipper was immunized to the stuff, like the lining of the stomach, which is unharmed by acids powerful enough to decompose other organic master? Or did it mean that all horn was untouched ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... fluttering pulse. Death seldom ensues, in consequence of the emetic effect. Treatment: The vomiting may be relieved by copious draughts of warm water. Carbonate of soda, administered in solution, will decompose the sulphate of zinc. Milk and albumen will also act as antidotes. General principles to be observed in ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... 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 of each is the product of thousands ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... surgeon usually has recourse—a liquid one. Certainly not one that speedily deliquesces; for they are both unmanageable, and, what is a more important consideration, they may hold in solution, and not decompose the poison, and thus inoculate the whole of the wound. The application which promises to be successful, is that of the 'lunar caustic'. It is perfectly manageable, and, being sharpened to a point, may be applied with certainty to every recess and ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... water is not the only thing that we shall describe pertaining to this subject. We go a step further, and find that we can decompose metals as well as liquids, and that we can make a pure metal out of an impure one, as well as make the foulest water pure. But we shall also, in the course of our experiments, find that a cheap metal can be coated ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... 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 that their vendors promise, causing the teeth, for a little while, to become very white ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... 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 "contradictory") narratives to deal ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... close of the Tertiary period suddenly overwhelmed with floods the dense growth of tropical vegetation and multitudinous animal life in the Northwest, the waters necessarily became heavily charged with the naturally resulting carbonic acid gas, and this, acting on the limestone rocks, would decompose them, leaving a residual clay and taking the chief portions of the mineral components in solution, to be afterwards deposited according to circumstances and conditions; and these are indicated by the various results found in Wind Cave, Crystal Cave, the Onyx Caves and the Bad ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... also used in titrating arsenic assays with "iodine" when a feeble acid is required to prevent the absorption of iodine by the alkaline carbonate. It is prepared when wanted in solution, by adding a gram or so of bicarbonate of soda and then as much acid as will decompose the bicarbonate mentioned. When a quantity of the gas is wanted, it is prepared, in an apparatus like that used for sulphuretted hydrogen, by acting on fragments of marble or limestone ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... device to catch the sunlight which is needed in the process of digesting the food of the tree. The leaves are arranged on the twigs in such a way as to catch the most sunlight. The leaves take up the carbonic acid gas from the air, decompose it under the influence of light and combine it with the minerals and water brought up by the roots from the soil. The resulting chemical combinations are the sugars and starches used by the cambium layer in building up the body ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... number our Milton had meted to him! Oh! these four verses! they are as fatal in their number as the date of Peele's letter proved to George Steevens! Something still escapes in the most ingenious fabrication which serves to decompose the materials. It is well our veracious historian dropped all mention of Guarini—else that would have given that coup de grace—a fatal anachronism! However, his invention supplied him with more ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... amount by which it will exceed. There is qualitative prevision only. On the other hand, the prediction that at a stated time two particular planets will be in conjunction; that by means of a lever having arms in a given ratio, a known force will raise just so many pounds; that to decompose a specified quantity of sulphate of iron by carbonate of soda will require so many grains—these predictions exhibit foreknowledge, not only of the nature of the effects to be produced, but of the magnitude, either of the effects themselves, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Strawberries, that if laid in a heap and left by themselves to decompose, they will decay without undergoing any acetous fermentation; nor can their kindly temperature be soured even by exposure to the acids of the stomach. They are constituted entirely of soluble matter, and leave no residuum to [539] hinder digestion. It is probably for this reason, and because the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... call out their demands, in a loud voice, a long way off. If there is a movement or an answer they go nearer and throw up some food but if there is no sign of life they hasten back and leave the corpse to decompose in the bower that now ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... share their apprehension. We do not worry about lead, or iron, or any other element. And human nature is elemental. You can flatten it, as in Russia; you can bend, and twist, and pound it into various forms, but you cannot decompose it. And so the "new order," while perhaps an improvement on the old, will not be so very different. Britannia will go on ruling the waves, and Columbia, not Utopia, will be the gem of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... of the onions was forbidden. Mr. Wolff came to the conclusion that onions should never be eaten during an epidemic; he remarks, "After many years experience, I have found that onions placed in a room where there is small-pox, will blister and decompose with great rapidity,—not only so, but will prevent the spread of disease;" and he thinks that, as a disinfectant, they have no equal, only keep them ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... requirements is made as follows: cut from an old ditch or fence-side, thick sods, and stack them with the grass sides together to rot. This heap should be forked over several times, when it has begun to decompose. In dry weather, if within reach of the hose, a good soaking occasionally will help the process along. The sods should be cut during spring or summer. To this pile of sod, when well rotted (or at time of using), add one-third in bulk of thoroughly ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... does not weaken wood under static loading, although the indications are that the wood becomes brittle under impact. If the solution is too strong it will decompose ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... 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 have the poem again, you cannot ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... deplorable fact that in a great many cases the only existing copy of a film has been deliberately destroyed, those that remain are in immediate danger of disintegration; they were printed on film stock with a nitrate base that will inevitably decompose in time. The efforts of the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute, and other organizations to rescue and preserve this irreplaceable contribution to our cultural life are to be applauded, and the making of duplicate copies for purposes of archival ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... visionary speculated on the possibility of black as well as white diamonds. Draper, by his most ingenious galvanic battery, of two metals and two liquids, with one set of elements, in a glass tube not the size of the little finger, was able to decompose water. Faraday, of England, discovered the principle, that when a current of electricity is set in motion, or stopped in a conductor, a neighboring conductor has a current produced in the opposite direction. Henry proved ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... chiefly objectionable because of the amount of inert material. The shavings are exceedingly slow to decompose, and in light soil in considerable quantities would cause a serious loss of moisture. If applied, on the other hand, to a heavy soil and accompanied by sufficient irrigation water, the effect of making the soil more ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... 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 carbide decomposed and of the ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... fat smokes in frying, it "breaks down," that is, its chemical composition is changed; part of its altered composition becomes a non-digestible and irritating substance. The best fat for digestion is one which does not decompose or break down at frying temperature. Crisco does not break down until a degree of heat is reached above the frying point. In other words, Crisco does not break down at all in normal frying, because ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... pit into which the thralls were casting the dead. Many of the bodies presented, as we have already seen, a most ghastly spectacle; and nearly all had begun to decompose. Mentally he thanked God that Elfric, at least, was not there; and he turned aside his head in ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... to a struggle with Nature. Besides, in our science results are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their selfish interests. We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we shall make diamonds, we shall make gold! We shall impel vessels (as they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water! We test the wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the face of empires with new industries! But we shall ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... dissolved according to the tension of the carbonic acid; that is, by an increased quantity its tension increases, and more would pass in solution in the form of bicarbonates. On the other hand, by diminishing the quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, some of the bicarbonates would decompose and carbonic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... Balthazar. "You alone could I forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose nitrogen. Go back ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... preventing rust was incidentally touched upon. I also saw Liebig's letters explaining the action of quicklime in liberating potash from the clay; and then I considered it very important to ascertain the proper quantity to be applied. The quantity required to decompose the phosphate of iron was not great, and assuming Liebig's theory of its action in liberating the potash to be true, it seemed to me that an excess of lime would permanently impoverish the land; for, supposing that the crop required 100 lbs. of potash, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... white flame-arc excels other artificial light-sources in hastening the chlorination of natural gas in the production of chloroform. One advantage of the radiation from this light-source is that it does not extend far into the ultra-violet, for the ultra-violet rays of short wave-lengths decompose some compounds. In other words, it is necessary to choose radiation which is effective but which does not have rays associated with it that destroy the desired products of the reaction. By the use ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the night he paced the deck discussing the matter with Dr. Jackson, and 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 ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... jars are kept in a damp cellar where the rubbers may decompose, mold may enter through ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... 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 Shakespeare 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... You appear to me always to wish to submit your faith to a process which invariably breaks your apparatus and leaves you very much dissatisfied, with your faith still a simple element in you, in spite of your endeavors to analyze or decompose it. Are not, after all, our convictions our only steadfastly grounded faith? I do not mean conviction wrought out in the loom of logical argument, where one's understanding must have shuttled backward and forward through every thread a thousand ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... consequent introduction into fiction of a vast amount of new material. Fielding tells us as much as he thought necessary to account for the actions of his creatures; he thought that each of these actions could be decomposed on the spot into a few simple personal elements, as we decompose a force in a question of abstract dynamics. The larger motives are all unknown to him; he had not understood that the nature of the landscape or the spirit of the times could be for anything in a story; and so, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 receding, so that the teeth do ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... this subject is also the question how far it is possible by merely internal evidence to decompose an ancient document, resolving it into its separate elements, distinguishing its different dates and its different degrees of credibility. The reader is no doubt aware with what a rare skill this method of inquiry has been pursued in ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... 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 ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... to the nervous system, and solicited the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided ministering to congestion of the viscera, and introducing food which, as it could not be properly digested, would decompose and irritate the stomach and bowels.' Here the do-nothing doctor actually assisted nature; he took care that she should not be thwarted in her operations, and he stood by watching the case, like an attorney at the examination ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various |
