"Decomposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... growth and decomposition of the vegetation during long ages must have produced beds like the peat-deposits of America and Great Britain. In the Dismal Swamp of Virginia there is said to be a mass of vegetable matter 40 feet in thickness, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... weighed about 2 cwt. each, were easily procurable, but had to be eaten immediately, as in less than a hour decomposition took place. Lastly, the fish caught upon this shore was so unwholesome, that even those who ate it in moderation became dangerously ill, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... 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 food, the larger ones less chance. That one which gave off several small portions to form each a new organism would have a better chance of leaving descendants like itself than one which divided ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... could only guess from the matted crop of short red hair that fell in a disordered entanglement over the upper part of the forehead and ears. All else was lost in a loathsome, disgusting mass of detestable decomposition, too utterly vile and foul to describe. On the abnormal thing beginning to move forward, the spell that bound Mrs. Murphy to the floor was broken, and, with a cry of horror, she fled to the bed and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... we passed near the mangrove trees, which were growing not only near the water but in it, and like to spread their roots among the thick black slime which accumulates so fast in this country of rapid vegetable growth, and as rapid decomposition. In Cuba, the mangoe is the abomination of the planters, for they supply the runaway slaves with food, upon which they have been known to subsist for months, whilst the mangroves give them shelter. A little further inland we ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... mellow, deep, and of a rich vegetable texture. "If in moderate condition by the manuring of the previous crop, it will be better than applying manure at sowing. Should it be necessary to do so, let the manure be in the most thorough state of decomposition; or, if otherwise, incorporate it with the soil, as far from the surface as possible. The Parsnip will grow in a stronger soil than the Carrot; and succeeds comparatively well when grown in sand, or even in peat, if ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... as the air of heaven is to the flocks on the hills; but man's breath—the word which HE calls spiritual,—is disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it; they are puffed up by it, as a dead body by the vapours of its own decomposition. This is literally true of all false religious teaching; the first and last, and fatalest sign of it, is that "puffing up." Your converted children, who teach their parents; your converted convicts, who teach honest men; your converted dunces, who, having lived in cretinous ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... most of the Klemantan tribes are different. Their usual practice is to keep the coffin containing the corpse in the gallery of the house until the period of mourning is terminated. A bamboo tube carried down through the floor to the ground permits the escape of fluids resulting from decomposition. The coffin itself is sealed closely with wax, and elaborately decorated with carved and painted wood-work. After several months or even years have elapsed a feast is made (the feast of the bones); the coffin is opened and the bones taken out and cleaned. They are then ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... soil would be one containing the same elements in similar proportions. This simple theory ignored the characteristic powers of assimilation of the tree in question and the "digestibility" of the soil constituents. However, it is agreed that soils rich in potash and lime (e.g., those obtained by the decomposition of certain volcanic rocks) are good for cacao. An open sandy or loamy alluvial soil is considered ideal. The physical condition of the soil is equally important: heavy clays or water-logged soils are bad. The depth of soil required depends on its nature. A stiff soil discourages ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... opinions on any subject, and when Max Stirner was convincing the young Hegelians that ideas were mere smoke and dust, seeing that the only reality in existence was the individual Ego. These teachings, eagerly received by the Russian youth, were destined to produce a state of moral decomposition, the earliest symptoms of which were admirably analysed ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... same fashion, sustained by a natural sense of formal harmony; but all that follows is decadent,—an admixture of romance and realism, the exaggerations of Hugo and the homeliness of Trollope; a litter of ancient elements in a state of decomposition. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... If we consider that, with sick as with well, every thought decomposes some nervous matter,—that decomposition as well as re-composition of nervous matter is always going on, and more quickly with the sick than with the well,—that, to obtrude abruptly another thought upon the brain while it is in the act of destroying ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... brood." Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanzas v., vi. Dallas (Recollections of Lord Byron, 1824, p. 124) once ventured to remind his noble connection "that although our senses make us acquainted with the chemical decomposition of our bodies," there were other and more hopeful considerations to be entertained. But Byron was obdurate, "and the worms crept in and the worms crept out" as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... discontinued and the product taken out. This consisted of a dross, or, rather, of the collected pieces of ore themselves, which, on account of the flinty contents of the stones composing the funnel, were transformed by the decomposition of the sulphurous metal into a porous mass, and which could not be converted into dross nor form combinations with silicious acid, being deficient in the base as well as in the requisite heat; and also of a very impure "stone," of from ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... any time ammonia is introduced into urine containing the phosphate of magnesia there is instantly formed the ammonio-magnesium phosphate, which is as promptly deposited in the solid form. The common source of ammonia in such cases is from decomposition of the urea in fermenting urine. In order to produce this a ferment is necessary, however, and therefore, as an additional prerequisite, the presence of bacteria, or fungi, in the urine is essential. These ferments may ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... brought about by impregnating the wood with some substance which either enters into combination with the constitutents of the sap or so alters their properties as to prevent the setting up of decomposition." ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... may be effected in three ways, all of which are worthy of attention: Here, in the first instance, we have a rich spectrum produced by the decomposition of the beam (from L, fig. 9). One face of the prism (P) is protected by a diaphragm (not shown in the figure), with a longitudinal slit, through which the beam passes into the prism. It emerges decomposed at the other side. I permit the colours ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Before decomposition sets in, the coffin is borne away by men amidst great grief and loud shouts. A high piece of ground is selected in a remote part of the forest for the last resting place of the deceased. A shallow grave is dug, a roof of thatch is erected, a potful ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... meal, and the rest of the day was spent in preparing the deer meat to keep in store; the effect of the hot sun being wonderful, the heat drying up the juices and checking the decomposition that might have been expected to succeed its exposure. But it in no case improved the appearance of ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... of extinction refers only to the extinction of Illusions; and those sensations and feelings and thoughts, which belong to this life of the flesh alone, are the illusions which make the complex illusive self. By the total decomposition of this false self,—as by a tearing away of veils, the Infinite Vision comes. There is no "soul": the Infinite All-Soul is the only eternal principle in any being;—all ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... have been the first that were formed as the Earth cooled, are those of the simplest constitutions. The protoxides—including under that head the alkalies, earths, &c.—are, as a class, the most stable compounds we know: most of them resisting decomposition by any heat we can generate. These are combinations of the simplest order—are but one degree less homogeneous than the elements themselves. More heterogeneous, less stable, and therefore later in the Earth's history, are the deutoxides, tritoxides, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... evening. Meteoric phenomena of a luminous character were universally referred to electricity, after Franklin's day. Chemistry has since put forth reasons why several of these phenomena should be attributed to phosphorus or hydrogen liberated by decomposition. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of the walls from peristaltic onrushes as described above, and the infection that this part of the alimentary canal is subjected to because of the decomposition of food that is going on to a greater or less extent in all victims of constipation, are the causes of inflammation in the cecum. If the inflammation involves the appendix or the cecal location of the appendix, it may be called appendicitis, but the appendix is involved the same ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... at the crossings, these are filled up. To carry truthfulness still further, however, I must state that more than once I have known them bridged over with the putrefying remains of a horse in the last stages of decomposition. I have seen delicate ladies, attired in Parisian furbelows, lift their dainty skirts, attempt the crossing—and sink in a mass of ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... remained unanswered for several days. The next morning Henderson reported that a section of the abutments showed signs of decomposition. At the first suggestion of a technical problem with which to wrestle, Jim thrust the Secretary's elusive one aside. He started for the dam site eagerly, and refused to think again that day of the shadow that haunted ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the calcareous matter, which is everywhere deposited in consequence of the escape of carbonic acid, likewise proceed, giving a constant milkiness to what, from its tint, would otherwise be a blue fluid. So rapid is the vegetation, owing to the decomposition of the carbonic acid, that, even in winter, masses of confervae and lichens, mixed with deposited travertine, are constantly detached by the currents of water from the bank and float down the stream, which being a considerable river ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... of science, men of letters, and men of trade—but women of fashion and blue-stockings, old and young, pressed into the theatre of the Institution to cover him with applause. His greatest labors were his discovery of the decomposition of the fixed alkalies, and the re-establishment of the simple nature of chlorine; his other researches were the investigation of astringent vegetables in connection with the art of tanning; the analysis of rocks and minerals in connection with geology; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... best standard is sodium carbonate prepared from sodium bicarbonate by heating the latter at temperature between 270 deg. and 300 deg.C. The bicarbonate is easily prepared in a pure state, and at the temperatures named the decomposition takes place ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... the tints, and therewithal the clearness and precision of all boundary lines. In all fine flat colouring there are regular systems of dividing colour from colour. Above all, don't attempt iridescent blendings of colour, which look like decomposition. They are about as much as possible the reverse ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... is the telltale of conditions. If a man's tongue is coated with detritus—which, anglicized, is nothing more than the products of decomposition, a coating formed by over-stimulation of the glands lying at the base of the tongue—and this has been previously superinduced by a disordered stomach, we know that the cause is indigestion. If the follicles in the back part ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... himself as the poet of a decadent epoch, an epoch in which art had arrived at the over-ripened maturity of an aging civilization; a glowing, savorous, fragrant over-ripeness, that is already softening into decomposition. And to be the fitting poet of such an epoch, he modeled his style on that of the poets of the Latin decadence; for, as he expressed it for himself and for the modern school of "decadents" in French ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and of course, when time and circumstances permit, it is the ideal method of treatment. The cause of death in the case of intestinal obstruction is usually due to the blood being poisoned by the absorption of the products of decomposition of the fluid contents of the bowel above the obstruction. It is now the custom, therefore, for the surgeon to complete his operation for the relief of obstruction by drawing out a loop of the distended bowel, incising and evacuating it, and then carefully suturing and returning it. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and sloppy, but untidy too, on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking out for ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Moreover, illness is my very antipodes,—its nearness is invasion,—we are utterly antipathetic,—it disgusts and repels me. What sympathy can there be between my florid health, my rank, redundant life, and any wasting disease of death? What more hostile than focal concentration and obscure decomposition? You see, we cannot breathe the same atmosphere. I banish the thought of such a thing from my feeling, from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... then the plates are eased off with a knife. But that method is not generally approved. Professional tortoiseshell-getters either trust to the heat of the sun or bury the shell in clean sand, and when decomposition sets in, the valuable plates are detached freely. Exposure to fire deteriorates the quality of the product unless great care ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... easily accounted for. Bodies decomposing from putridity, generate a quantity of gas, which swells them up to an enormous size, and renders them buoyant. The body of this man was thrown overboard just as decomposition was in progress: the shot made fast to the feet were sufficient to sink it at the time; but in a few hours after were not competent to keep it at the bottom, and it came up to the surface in that perpendicular position which I have described. The current in the bay being at the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... represents an attack against it from without, from the standpoint of a doctrine which professes to be even more radical and more revolutionary than that of Marx and Engels. The attitude of Syndicalists to Marx may be seen in Sorel's little book, "La Decomposition du Marxisme,'' and in his larger work, "Reflections on Violence,'' authorized translation by T. E. Hulme (Allen & Unwin, 1915). After quoting Bernstein, with approval in so far as he criticises Marx, Sorel proceeds to other criticisms ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... houses, which had been originally built of wood, had severally disappeared. Some had been taken to pieces and removed to Halifax or St John; others had been converted into fuel, and the rest had fallen a prey to neglect and decomposition. The chimneys stood up erect, and marked the spot around which the social circle had assembled; and the blackened fireplaces, ranged one above another, bespoke the size of the tenement and the means ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... of a frightful kind. The preacher described, with ghastly minuteness, the last feeble fainting moments of human life, and then the gradual progress of decay after death, which he followed through every process up to the loathsome stage of decomposition. Suddenly changing his tone, which had been that of sober, accurate description, into the shrill voice of horror, he bent forward his head, as if to gaze on some object beneath the pulpit, and made known to us what he saw in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... become so black, so deformed and swollen, that it was horrible to behold; from its nose a bloody matter escaped, the mouth gaped hideously, and the tongue was so monstrously enlarged that it filled the whole cavity; to this frightful appearance was added a decomposition so great that, although at the pope's funeral it is customary to kiss the hand which bore the Fisherman's ring, not one approached to offer this mark of respect and religious reverence to the representative of God ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... enough to give you the horrors. I had never seen so many before and never saw so many afterwards in one place. They were all over the place, both Germans and our own men. And in all states of mutilation and decomposition. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... porridge with disgusting fragments in it from uncleanly cooking vessels; of rice boiled in water from the rain-cask, flavoured with dead leaves, and the dust of the roof; of beef salted when already tainted by decomposition; of horrible resurrection-pies made of unappetising scraps and rancid fat. The meat, flour, milk and rice were doubtless good enough when Mr. Wilson saw them, but the starved little school-girls with their ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... of Buda-Pest had been less flagrant one would write of Hungary's decomposition with a certain sympathy. It is conceivable that in the British Empire there are anti-British elements whose aims would commonly be classed by the authorities as "mad ambitions," which is what Count Apponyi called the separatist tendencies ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... he said. "The peace of Europe, and the ascendency of England in the councils of Europe" depended upon the verdict the country was now called upon to give. The policy of the party opposed to his own was declared to be a "policy of decomposition." But the concession of self-government in the form demanded by the Irish Parliamentary party, whatever might be the political necessity pleaded in justification of it, would be certain to be interpreted in England, in the colonies and dependencies of the British empire, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... There are some plants which seem not to be left to the chances of securing their nourishment from the carbonate of ammonia that the air and the soil contain, but are contrived so as to entrap living animals and hold them fast while they undergo decomposition, so that all their gases may be absorbed by them alone. Thus, "the little Sundew exudes a gluey secretion from the surface of its leaves, which serves to attract and retain insects, the decay of whose bodies seems to contribute to its existence." And the Dionaea, or Venus's Fly-trap ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... a state which was to be built on the ruins of a hundred living polities, and to be endowed with a somewhat abstract and, from the outset, weakened nationality. In the ancient world also Judaism was an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism and of national decomposition." ********************************************* ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... insulated and anomalous affection of certain salts of silver or gold, but one which, doubtless, in a greater or less degree, pervades all nature, and connects itself intimately with the mechanism by which chemical combination and decomposition is operated. The general instability of organic combinations might lead us to expect the occurrence of numerous and remarkable cases of this affection among bodies of that class, but among metallic and other elements inorganically arranged, instances enough have already ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... carried on at this time on a very small scale, the power at disposal being very limited in amount. Yet the elements of success appeared to be so great, and the decomposition of the raw material was so complete, that the process was very soon ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... meal is over, so as always to have a portion of fresh meat. With its mouth assiduously applied to the unhappy creature's skin, the lethal grub fills itself and waxes fat, while the fostering larva collapses and shrivels, retaining just enough life, however, to resist decomposition. All that remains of the decanted corpse is the skin, which, when softened in water and blown out, swells into a balloon without the least escape of gas, thus proving the continuity of the integument. All the same, the apparently unpunctured bladder has lost its contents. It is a repetition ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... should never be below the level of the ground. If a deep pit is dug in the ground, into which the refuse is thrown in the intervals between times of removal, rain and surface water will mix with the refuse and hasten its decomposition, and generally the lowest part of the filth will not be removed, but will be left to fester and produce malaria. In all places where the occupation is permanent the following conditions should ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... island, and when the corpse of Krisstyan was discovered, in an advanced stage of decomposition, Timea declared she ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... majestic tree. The selection of a site for the little cemetery is most judicious, several little streams from the heights in the rear filter through the ground, producing a moisture calculated to prevent decomposition and explanatory of the singular appearance of the bodies disinterred there in 1855. Every visitor will be struck with the beauty, healthiness and shelter which this sequestered nook at Sillery presents for a settlement, and with its adaptability ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... up to our advanced dressing station at the Zigzag, and found some unknown persons had dumped there, during the night, a body in an advanced state of decomposition. I managed to unearth his recent history. He had been killed on the 7th, being wounded by the Turks, and when crawling back to our lines, along with some others in the same condition, he shouted in the dark, "Don't fire, we are English". Thinking this was a ruse ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... most cases the foetus is dead. When born alive, it is weak and puny, and usually dies or is destroyed within a few days. When the attendant fails to give the animal the necessary attention, or is careless in his manipulation of the parts, inflammation of the womb, caused by the decomposition of the retained membranes, or the introduction of irritating germs on the ropes, instruments and hands, may occur. Death commonly ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... which is in part decomposed during the fermentation, and the rest becomes gradually precipitated; whilst the malic acid exists in the currant and gooseberry juice in the form of malate of potash; which salt does not appear to suffer a decomposition during the fermentation of the wine; and, by its greater solubility, is retained in the wine. Hence Dr. Macculloch recommends the addition of super-tartrate of potash, in the manufacture of British wines. They also contain a much larger proportion of ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... force raises them in the middle, and hurls them up some feet in the air. Their fury is resistless, and the bodies of those who are carried over the falls are whirled round here in a horrible dance, frequently till decomposition takes place. There is nothing to excite admiration about the whirlpool; the impression which it leaves on the mind is ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... native huts the light of the sun can never penetrate, and compared to them underground dungeons would be desirable residences. Our local guide told us there were over two thousand public temples and shrines in Benares, and he might have added in every stage of dirt, decomposition, and ruin. The sights to be witnessed in them were most repulsive, and yet there were some sincere votaries there. There were rogues also, a fact proven by the circumstance that the guide, native and resident here, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... undiscovered (which is a moot question), we can conceive them as analogous to such forces as heat, electricity, or chemical affinity, with which we are already acquainted. We can thus clearly conceive of the transition from dead matter to living matter. A complex mass which suffers decomposition or decay is dead, but if this mass has the power of attracting to itself, from the surrounding medium, matter like that of which it is composed, we have the first rudiment of vegetative life. If the mass can do this for a considerable ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sea-weed, and the water was almost poisoned by them. Every vegetable substance was devoured—the leaves and even bark of trees were eaten up, the grain vanished as fast as it appeared above ground, everything was stripped to the bare stalk, and ultimately, when they died in myriads, the decomposition of their dead bodies was more ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... still higher explosives for use in war, the neglect of the mechanical application of this class of substance being largely due to the fact, that chemists are not as a rule engineers, nor engineers chemists. But an easily portable substance, the decomposition of which would evolve energy, or—what is, from the practical point of view, much the same thing—an easily portable substance, which could be decomposed electrically by wind or water power, and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... decomposition which takes place in them, all those river terraces where much vegetable matter is mingled with the mineral substances, become laboratories in which substances are brought into solution and committed to ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... I made an opportunity to scramble to the bottom of one of these craters, taking with me some of the natives with their wooden tools. Here I found a good deal of soil either washed down from the surface or resulting from the decomposition of the rock, though oddly enough in it nothing grew. I directed them to dig. After a while to my astonishment there appeared a corner of a great worked stone quite unlike that of the crater, indeed it seemed to me to be a marble. Further examination ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Cornwall, of Princeton College, called as an expert in another case, testified that, having put to a test the specifications in all the patents involved, he had found it necessary in no case to inject live steam into the mixtures of acid and rubber scrap in order to effect the decomposition and removal of either woolen or cotton fiber. The use of the acids specified was sufficient for this, and the various high temperatures called for were not essential for the destruction of the fibers. He neglected to mention, however, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... in connection with the gas for inflation. Coal gas was not always readily available, so that hydrogen had to be depended upon for the most part. But then another difficulty arose. This was the manufacture of the requisite gas. Various methods were tested, such as the electrolytic decomposition of water, the decomposition of sulphuric acid by means of iron, the reaction between slaked lime ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... St. Germain has any lasting work been done. The germs of decomposition and death lie in this peace. The paroxysms that shattered Europe are not yet over; as, after a terrible earthquake, the subterraneous rumblings may still be heard. Again and again we shall see the earth open, now here, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... undergoing the modifications caused by the decomposition of internal matter, the agitation consequent on the flowing of extensive liquid currents, the excessive action of magnetism which tends to shake it incessantly, at a time when even the multitudinous beings on its surface do not suspect the seething ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... though when charged with essential oil, as it exudes from nature's laboratory, it imparts a pungent and unpleasant taste. A considerable quantity of gas bubbles up through these bituminous springs, showing that decomposition is still active amongst the materials whence it exudes. Some of the recent bitumen has an odour resembling vegetable gum. Mr. Johnson, the very obliging proprietor of a neighbouring estate, had the goodness to cause some of his labourers and a cart to bring samples to the beach. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... so-called diseases are crises of toxemia." John H. Tilden, M.D., Toxemia Explained. [2] Toxins are divided into two groups; namely exogenous, those formed in the alimentary canal from fermentation and decomposition following imperfect or faulty digestion. If the fermentation is of vegetables or fruit, the toxins are irritating, stimulating and enervating, but not so dangerous or destructive to organic life as putrefaction, which is a fermentation set up in nitrogenous matter—protein-bearing ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... in all such appendages. The earth must be thoroughly underdrained to prevent the vapors of stagnant water, and have a large admixture of broken charcoal to obviate the consequences of vegetable decomposition. Great care must be taken that there be no leaves left to fall and decay on the ground, since vegetable exhalations poison the air. With these precautions such a plot will soften and purify the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... laboratory pot cultures and in the field, has shown that these can account for only a relatively temporary effect on growth. It is suggested that the composts act mainly by modifying the course of humus decomposition, thus bringing about drastic changes in the biological activities of the organic substrate ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the possible rest, to the blowing of the wind on our faces? What is the analysis of water to the babble of a running stream? What is any knowledge of things to the heart, beside its child-play with the Eternal! And by an infinite decomposition we should know nothing more of what a thing really is, for, the moment we decompose it, it ceases to be, and all its meaning is vanished. Infinitely more than astronomy even, which destroys nothing, can do for us, is done by the mere ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... biltong, that popular South African delicacy, formed by cutting fresh meat into long strips, and drying them in the sun before the flesh has time to go bad—a capital plan in a torrid country, where decomposition is rapid and salt none too plentiful; but it has its drawbacks, and is best suited to the taste of those who appreciate the chewing of leather with a superlatively high flavour ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... forces wherewith the calcarious earth and magnesia attract fixed air, than between those which dispose them to unite with the acid. The repulsions however hinted in the second are perhaps more doubtful, tho' they are suggested in many other instances of decomposition; but the bounds of my present purpose will not allow me to enter upon this subject, which is one of ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... rub off the finest films of disintegrated matter as soon as they are formed. Through these several means, minute fragments of rocks of many kinds and mere particles in the soil will be continually exposed to chemical decomposition; and thus the amount of soil ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... include certain very delicate and extremely beautiful fungus-like organisms common in all the moist and wooded regions of the earth. Deriving sustenance, as they for the most part do, in connection with the decomposition of organic matter, they are usually to be found upon or near decaying logs, sticks, leaves, and other masses of vegetable detritus, wherever the quantity of such material is sufficient to insure continuous moisture. In fruit, however, as will appear hereafter, slime-moulds may occur on ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... mounds of rotten honeycomb, or dirty sponge. Tom Tiddler's ground could even show its ruined water; for, there was a slimy pond into which a tree or two had fallen—one soppy trunk and branches lay across it then—which in its accumulation of stagnant weed, and in its black decomposition, and in all its foulness and filth, was almost comforting, regarded as the only water that could have reflected the shameful place without seeming polluted ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... preservatives of meats are borax and boric acid. These chemicals not only arrest decay, but partially restore to old and bad meat the appearance of freshness; in this way unscrupulous dealers are able to sell to the public in one form or other meats which may have undergone partial decomposition; sausage frequently contains partially decomposed meat, restored ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... county are largely sedimentary, having been washed down from the mountains for ages, assisted by the decomposition of vegetable matter accumulated through centuries. In the valleys, where most of the farming is being done, these soils produce remarkable crops under the influence of the ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... of indignation; but I believe few impartial and judicious men now look upon that league as any other than one in the formation of which consummate statesmanship was exhibited. In fact, it prevented the subjugation of Germany to France, and by flattering the pride of Napoleon saved the decomposition of our Empire. But how this might be it is not at present necessary for us to enquire. Certain it was, that the pupil of Beckendorff was amply repaid for the advice and exertions of his master ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... so frequently seen that they have been captured within sight of Colombo, and more than once their carcases, after having been flinched by the whalers, have floated on shore near the lighthouse, tainting the atmosphere within the fort by their rapid decomposition. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... of the workers who are clearing the wreck near to the bridge and the latter will be unable to reach the corpses until a considerable amount of blasting with dynamite has been done. There was a faint odor of decomposition and another day will cause the vicinity of the viaduct to suggest a charnel house to the olfactory senses. There are many other bodies, no doubt, beneath the debris and prevented from floating down the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... unredeemed, death with no very positive suggestion, with no hint of heroism, none of heroic action, little even of heroic passion; just death, helpless, hopeless, pointing to nothing but decomposition, decay, disappearance, aneantissement, reduction of the fair frame of life to nothingness. That is the peculiar horror of this war. Were the picture, as it well might be, even more hideous, and did it suggest ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... very remarkable object. It presents a combination of properties that makes it singularly difficult to conceal permanently. It is bulky and of an awkward shape, it is heavy, it is completely incombustible, it is chemically unstable, and its decomposition yields great volumes of highly odorous gases, and it nevertheless contains identifiable structures of the highest degree of permanence. It is extremely difficult to preserve unchanged, and it is still more difficult completely to destroy. The essential permanence of the human body ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Volta's great invention of the pile in 1800 furnished a new source of electricity, better adapted for the telegraph, and Salva was apparently the first to recognise this, for, in the same year, he proposed to use it and interpret the signals by the twitching of a frog's limb, or the decomposition ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... in, and that tapping now produced no effect on the dropsy. As the visitor ascended the splendid, red-carpeted staircase, cumbered with statues, vases, and paintings, he was incommoded by a pestilential odour that assailed his nostrils. Death had begun the decomposition of the sick man's body even before it was a corpse. At the door of the chamber Hugo caught the sound of hoarse, stertorous breathing. He entered, and saw on the mahogany bed an almost unrecognizable form bolstered up on a mass of cushions. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... life to malarial influences, the effect of which remained with them all their days. Hewing out their plantations in the primeval woods amid the undisturbed shadow of centuries, breaking a soil thick with ages of vegetable decomposition, sleeping in half- faced camps, where the heavy air of the rank woods was in their lungs all night, or in the fouler atmosphere of overcrowded cabins, they were especially subject to miasmatic fevers. Many died, and of those who survived, a great number, after they had outgrown ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... planet, and the strata which now compose our continents have been once beneath the sea, and were formed out of the waste of preexisting continents. The same forces are still destroying, by chemical decomposition or mechanical violence, even the hardest rocks, and transporting the materials to the sea, where they are spread out and form strata analogous to those of more ancient date. Although loosely deposited along the bottom of the ocean, they became afterwards altered and consolidated by ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... consist? Do the silex, the alumine, and the other earths, with their compounds, emit any odor? Rarely, I believe, unless when mixed with vegetable matter. But no gases necessary to health are evolved during the decomposition of vegetable matter; on the contrary, it is well known that many of them tend ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... circumstances it is usual to secure shot to the foot of the corpse in order to sink it rapidly to the bottom. In some instances shot of insufficient weight were used; for though the body at first sank, yet when decomposition set in and gases were generated, it again rose to the surface; and those on board the ships, as they looked over the side, were horrified at seeing the bodies of their late comrades floating about, bowing to them as if in mockery, moved by the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... how it has built up its form. But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has become blunt rather than keen. I tell you that the beginning of things is not more attractive to contemplate than their death and decomposition." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... construction of its parents, works and undergoes a constant waste, and that waste is made good by nutriment derived from the inorganic world; the waste given off in this way being directly added to the inorganic world; and eventually the animal itself dies, and, by the process of decomposition, its whole body is returned to those conditions of inorganic matter in ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... has an orifice twice the size of the other, communicate between these receptacles and a fourth one, which is called the mixture reservoir, since in it the two gases obtained by the decomposition of the water do really commingle. The capacity of this fourth tank is about forty-one ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... watched by night, and the appearance of the first falling-star is hailed with loud shouts and waving of fire-brands, to drive off the yumburbar, an evil spirit which is the cause of all deaths and other calamities, and feeds on the entrails of the newly dead. When decomposition has gone on sufficiently far, the bones are carefully removed, painted red, wrapped up in bark, and carried about with the tribe for some time; after which they are finally deposited, either in a hollow tree or a shallow grave, over which ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... state, was then poured into it, until it was thoroughly permeated, every interstice from center to circumference being filled, until it became a solid mass, perfectly impervious to the air, and as well preserved against decomposition as if it had been enclosed in an hermetically sealed glass jar. Here you had a most nutritious preparation of animal food, all ready for use for both man and dog. An analysis of this compound proved it to possess more nutriment to the pound weight than any ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Construction and Application of Weaves, and the Decomposition and Calculation of Broad and Narrow, Plain, Novelty ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... heated in an open glass tube, is resolved into cyanogen gas and metallic mercury; if this substance is heated in a tube hermetically sealed, the decomposition occurs as before, but the gas, unable to escape, and shut up in a space several hundred times smaller than it would occupy as gas under the ordinary atmospheric pressure, becomes a fluid in that part of the tube ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... of unity and coalescence in the various constituent portions of my animal republic; and that the hemlock, if gathered by mistake for parsley, chopped up small with butter, and eaten with a boiled chicken, would necessitate a great derangement, and perhaps a total decomposition, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... of men for relief, extending over three days. The officer on guard at the former gate visited detachments and sentries at the "Delhi" and "Turkoman" Gates, a distance of a mile and a half through streets in which dead bodies in the last stage of decomposition were still lying. While one day engaged on this duty, I passed a carcass on which some pariah dogs were making a meal. Disgusted at the sight, and weak in stomach from the putrid air, I returned to my tent at ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... deposition of a stratified rock, and are not features assumed in the petrifaction of any organic body. Further peculiarities of the Onondaga gypsum are very noticeable in the block, and among them is the peculiar style of decomposition by which the whole lower part of the figure is affected, as also one side of its head. Here the soluble earths, with any portions of carbonate of lime, have been dissolved away, and the pure granular sulphate (snowy gypsum) remains, standing up with ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... little less abrupt, but none the less discouraging to the advocate of the development hypothesis. We can tell how the elements of high atomic weight, such as uranium and thorium, are constantly giving off particles and are thus by loss or decomposition being changed over into other elements, such as radium, niton, polonium and lead. But our new knowledge compels us ultimately to give the same answer as before, namely, that we still do not know how matter ever could have originated, except that "in the beginning" it was ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... up in an apartment, and visit it from day to day. If we had perseverance enough, and could so far conquer the repugnance and humiliating feeling with which the experiment would be attended, we might follow step by step the process of decomposition and putrefaction, and observe by what degrees the "dust returned unto earth as it was." But, in spite of this demonstration of the senses, man still believes that there is something in him that lives after death. The mind is so infinitely superior in character to this case of flesh that ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... pours forth so profusely. The lake is evidently the crater of an old volcano: it lies in a perfect bowl of hills, and the perpetual escape of gas, bubbling up through the water, shows that the process of chemical decomposition in the earth below has not yet ceased. Close by, in the side of the circular hill that surrounds the lake, stands the famous Grotto del Cane, closed with a door to enable the keeper to get a little money from the foreigners who come to ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... dangerous if it overrules the synthetic faculty; reflection is to be feared if it destroys our power of intuition, and inquiry is fatal if it supplants faith. Decomposition becomes deadly when it surpasses in strength the combining and constructive energies of life, and the separate action of the powers of the soul tends to mere disintegration and destruction as soon as it becomes impossible to bring them ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... strikingly illustrated by the exhausted feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which, however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled brains. The brain gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses with more of decomposition than of digestion. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... the diagnosis seemed ominous to the morbid patient; the whole process was a revelation to him of organs and functions and laws of eating and drinking unheard in his years of study. "Chronic intestinal indigestion with food decomposition and auto-intoxication, augmented by nicotine," the doctor said. There had been a distinct lessening of efficiency in his law-school work. Study for the first time in his life required wearying effort. He did not feel ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... the energy which living matter gives off is counterbalanced by the energy which it receives. It undergoes constant change, and there is constant interchange with the environment. The molecules which compose it are constantly undergoing change in their number, kind and arrangement. Atom groups as decomposition products are constantly given off from it, and in return it receives from without other atom groups with which it regenerates its substance or increases in amount. All definitions of life convey this ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... enters, about ten miles above Vicksburg. This river is more deeply impregnated with a certain kind of impurities than any other tributary of the Mississippi. The waters are green and slimy, and almost sticky with vegetable and animal decomposition. During the hot season the water is certain disease, if taken into the stomach. The name is of Indian origin, and signifies 'River of Death.' The Yazoo receives its supply from bayous and swamps, though ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... an acoustic apparatus for the purpose of decomposing any proposed note, and finding not only the main undulation itself, but the several superposed harmonics which give to the note its timbre. So also we can analyze the undulation of the tide, and show the component parts. The decomposition is effected by the process known as harmonic analysis. The principle of the method may be very simply described. Let us fix our attention on any particular "tide," for so the various elements are denoted. We can always determine beforehand, with ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... from the ashes of marine plants, and by the decomposition of common salt; its great depository is the ocean, soda being the basis of salt. The marine plants from which the soda is obtained, are endowed with the property of decomposing the sea-salt which they imbibe, and of absorbing the soda which it contains. It is found native in Egypt, and is there ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... chamber of death, closed the windows, and renewed the candles. On entering now he was quite composed, evidently accustomed already to regard the corpse as though it had been there for a month. He even went the length of declaring that, as yet, there was not any signs of decomposition, making this remark just at the moment when he and his wife were about to sit down at table. "Pshaw!" she responded, "she is now in wood; she will ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the soul. It is logically clear, then, despite the fallacious influences of habit to the contrary, that no progress of the physical sciences, no conceivable amount of induction and generalization as to the composition or decomposition of material bodies, can throw any new light or darkness on the nature and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sculptor, had opened a discussion on primitive society and autochthonous races. "The vigor of a nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in remote ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both sword and censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king. To-day our society, the latest word ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Curve showing relation between Pressures of Cordite and Black Powder, by Professor Vivian Lewes 40. Marshall's Apparatus for Moisture in Cordite 41. Lunge's Nitrometer 42. Modified do. 43. Horn's Nitrometer 44. Schultze-Tieman Apparatus for Determination of Nitrogen in Gun-Cotton 45. Decomposition Flask for Schultze-Tieman Method 46. Abel's Heat Test Apparatus 47. Apparatus for Separation of Nitro-Glycerine from Dynamite 48. Test Tube arranged for Heat Test 49. Page's Regulator 50. Do. showing Bye-Pass and Cut-off Arrangement 51. Will's Apparatus 52 & ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... which make it up. We must first mentally analyse the facts, not making this analysis minuter than is needed for our object at the time, but at the same time not regarding (as did the Greeks their verbal classifications) a mental decomposition of facts as ultimate. When we have thus succeeded in looking at any two successive chaotic masses (for such nature keeps at each instant presenting to us) as so many distinct antecedents and consequents, we must analyse the facts themselves, and try, by varying the circumstances, ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... plants its eggs about eighteen inches deep, and from nine to twelve inches apart. The eggs are always placed with the large ends upwards, being carefully covered, and are then left to hatch by the heat engendered by the decomposition of the surrounding matter. The heaps are formed by the labours of several pairs of birds. The eggs are white, about three inches and three quarters long by two and a half in diameter, and ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Do our five material senses testify anything regarding this unreality or dead body? Yes, all five of them, for we can see this unreality with the eye. If we move this unreality, we hear it move with the ear. If we reach forth our hand we can touch it. After decomposition sets in, we can smell it; and if we would put a piece of it into our mouth, as we do of the dead cow or bird, we could even taste this unreality. This ought to convince us of the unreliability of the knowledge transmitted to us by the five ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... a kind of ETHEREAL OIL, produced by the Decomposition of the Vinous Spirit by Means of the Vitriolic Acid, and differs essentially both from Vinous Spirits and Essential Oils in several Respects, tho' it agrees with them in some, as will appear hereafter: But as the Vinous Spirit may be ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner
... it was it did actually serve the purpose of a safety valve, the owner being, in consequence of gross overfeeding and lack of natural exercise, afflicted with chronic flatulence, which manifested itself in frequent belchings forth through the mouth of the foul gases generated in the stomach by the decomposition of the foods with which it was generally loaded. But as the Rev. Mr Belcher had never been seen with his coat off, no one ever noticed the resemblance. It was not necessary for him to take his coat off: his part in life was not to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Nothing requires more care and attention. To begin with, the aspect of the vine garden influences the quality of the wine immensely. Then there is the soil. The best is the plastic clay (nyirok), which appears to be the product of the direct chemical decomposition of volcanic rock. This clay absorbs water but very slowly, and is, in short, the most favourable to the growth of the vine. As the vines are mostly on the steep hillsides, low walls are built to prevent the earth from being washed away. In the early spring one of ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... will neither putrify nor decompose when confined to its unchanging action. Heat and moisture are both absent from the Cave, and it is these two agents, acting together, which produce both animal and vegetable decomposition and putrefaction. ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... prove that a tree which was cut off below the branches expired a large quantity of carbonic acid. It may be asked how I know this was not precipitated by the rain. I don't know; but if the plant would assimilate this, why should it not assimilate that which arises from the decomposition of the carbonaceous matter in the soil? My idea is that it does both, and that carbon in the soil does good if it offers an abundant supply of carbonic acid to the plant when it is in a condition to appropriate it. ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... decayed branches. The trees may be growing so far apart that their trunks will be covered with suckers as far down as the ground, or there may be large, open gaps with no trees at all. Here the sun, striking with full force, may be drying up the soil and preventing the decomposition of the leaves. Grass soon starts to grow in these open spaces and the whole character of the woodland changes as shown in Figs. 140 ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... few words he then informed me that he had made the discovery that the art was extremely simple, and the expense attending the decomposition so slight ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... area of roots, and by bringing about the more free admission of air warms and dries the soil, thus reducing extremes of temperature and moisture. Chemical activities are augmented by tillage in setting free plant food, promoting nutrification, hastening the decomposition of organic matter, and the extending of these agencies to greater depth. Tillage conserves moisture by increasing the water holding capacity of the soil ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... learned, by experience and experiment, of the changes that inevitably occur in such perishable nutritive substances as water, milk, meats, vegetables, fruits, etc., if they be left uncared for; and he has been led thus to the inference of the law of decomposition—or putrefactive and fermentative changes. Idle substances, like idle minds, have decomposition and the devil for companions. Substances confined in containers open to the air—ponds, cesspools, etc.—are every-day object lessons to man of the fact that the chemical changes they undergo ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... moist for a long time after similar land by its side, but which has not been manured, is dried up. Hard coarse soils dry up very quickly, while soft, mellow, and friable ones will endure a long drought. The gases and moisture generated by the decomposition of manures produce this mellow state. Hence the necessity of having that decomposition take place under the soil, or ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... known, the Oriental plague, the bubonic plague, or in England, simply the plague, and in Italy, "la Mortalega" (the great mortality) derived its name from the Orient; its inflammatory boils, tumors of the glands, and black spots, indicative of putrid decomposition, were such as have been seen in no other febrile disease. All the symptoms were not found in every case, and in many cases one symptom alone preceded death. Although afflicted with all the manifestations of the plague, some patients recovered. According ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... uncovered. It was the missing man. His face was not recognizable, as decomposition had begun, and the nose was broken and laid flat by a blow. But all the garments, even to the shirt with his name woven into it, were known to those who stood there. In one ear was a leaden ring, which, as we all knew, Niels Bruus had ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... dangerous form of Colic is a distension of the bowels with gas, resulting generally from the decomposition of undigested food in the bowels. It sometimes follows Spasmodic Colic, in which there is first spasms due to the irritations set up by the presence of undigested matter, and subsequently this food decomposes and forms gas. I may conclude that Flatulent or Wind Colic is usually caused by errors ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... Kafir workmen, cleaving the "hard blue" with pickaxes, piling it up on barrows, and carrying it off to the wide fields; where it is left exposed to the sun, and, during three months, to the rain. Having been thus subjected to a natural decomposition, it is the more readily brought by the pickaxe into smaller fragments before being sent to the mills, where it is crushed, pulverized, and finally washed to get at the stones. Nowhere in the world does the hidden wealth ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... jealous of spectators, and took offence if they approached their dead. Bodies not consumed, were placed in hollow trees, and closed in by underwood: decomposition being completed in these natural tombs, the survivors carried away the bones. Backhouse saw a striking funeral: a woman died; they built a pile of logs; laid the body thereon, and watched all night. At daybreak they applied the brand; then covering their faces with the ashes, which ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... The undigested portions of all the food- stuffs collect in the lowermost portion of the intestine and form a part of the feces. Here also are gathered the indigestible material we have eaten, the products of bacterial decomposition in the intestine, and other waste substances that the body ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... century was the first to notice that the sun's rays tanned the skin, and this unknown individual made the initial discovery in what is now an extensive branch of science known as photo-chemistry. The fading of dyes, the bleaching of textiles, the darkening of silver salts, the synthesis and decomposition of compounds are common examples of chemical reactions induced by light. There are thousands of other examples of the chemical effects of light some of which have been utilized by mankind. Others await the development of more efficient light-sources emitting ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... it greatly reduces the difficulty arising from the feeble light of the star. Until very lately, the spectra in the original negatives were made very narrow, since otherwise the intensity of the starlight would have been insufficient to produce the proper decomposition of the silver particles. The enlargement being made by daylight, the vast amount of energy then available is controlled by the original negative, the action of which may be compared to that of a telegraphic relay. The copies therefore represent many hundred times the original energy received from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... consequence except the deterioration of the ketchup.[V] There is an extensive manufacture of ketchup conducted at Lubbenham, near Market Harborough, but the great difficulty appears to be the prevention of decomposition. Messrs. Perkins receive tons of mushrooms from every part of the kingdom, and they find, even in the same species, an immense difference in the quality and quantity of the produce. The price of mushrooms varies greatly with the season, ranging ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... transitional stage through which it has for some years been passing underwent an unprecedented change the extent and intensity of which are as yet but imperfectly realized. Its more striking characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition of empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their gods, the drying up of their sources of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect for authority ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... sandpipers, of which many were shot. The water was found to be perfectly salt and from the circumstance of its rising and falling with the tide it must have some communication with the sea. The rocks of the island are principally calcareous and in a very advanced state of decomposition. The beaches were covered with dead shells of the genera buccinum, bulla, murex, trochus, and haliotis; but we found none with the living animal in them. Of the feathered tribe a hawk and a pigeon were the only land-birds seen; but boobies, terns, and sandpipers ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... sulphuric acid on metallic zinc affords an instance of what was once called disposing affinity. Zinc decomposes pure water at common temperatures with extreme slowness; but as soon as sulphuric acid is added, decomposition of the water takes place rapidly, though the acid merely unites with oxide of zinc. The former explanation was, that the affinity of the acid for oxide of zinc disposed the metal to unite with oxygen, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... cell emerged, embodying the application of flame to the junction of two different metals. Davy, of the safety-lamp, threw a volume of current across the gap between two sticks of charcoal, and the voltaic arc, forerunner of electric lighting, shed its bright beams upon a dazzled world. The decomposition of water by electrolytic action was recognized and made the basis of communicating at a distance even before the days of the electromagnet. The ties that bind electricity and magnetism in twinship of relation and interaction were detected, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... during the existence of which the deposits formed the surface of the present plains. Loose red sand also constantly forms low hills on the borders of these plains; and it seems to have been derived from the decomposition of the sandstone, and may be a diluvial or lacustrine deposit. Blue clay appears in the lowest parts of the basin, and forms the level parts of the plain, with concretions of marl in thin layers. This has every appearance of ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... at the Vicar of Bray tap, Palace Yard; and the jury, considering the neighbourhood, was tolerably respectable. The remains of the deceased were in a dreadful state of decomposition; and although chloride of lime and other antiseptic fluids were plentifully scattered in the room, it was felt to be a service of danger to approach too closely to the defunct. Many members of Parliament were in attendance, and all of them, to a man, appeared very visibly shocked by the appearance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... unnatural blue or pallid appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes putrid. When an animal has died otherwise than by slaughtering, its flesh is flaccid and clammy, emits a peculiar faint and disagreeable smell, and, it need scarcely be added, spontaneous decomposition proceeds very rapidly. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... most, remained near the body. La Villiere, to his praise be it said, was the only courtier who, not having abandoned Monseigneur during life, did not abandon him after his death. He had some difficulty to find somebody to go in search of Capuchins to pray over the corpse. The decomposition became so rapid and so great, that the opening of the windows was not enough; the Capuchins, La Vrilliere, and the valets, were compelled ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... as had been averred then, and even until 1539, the incorruptible body, but the entire skeleton of the Saint; the bottom of the grave being perfectly dry, free from offensive smell, and without the slightest symptom that a human body had ever undergone decomposition within its walls. The skeleton was found swathed in five silk robes of emblematical embroidery, the ornamental parts laid with gold leaf, and these again covered with a robe of linen. Beside the skeleton were also deposited several gold and silver insignia, and ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... our salmon-wears. The greater number of these shoals I have ordinarily found dead, and tinged with various shades of green, blue, and yellow—for it is one of the characteristics of the creature to assume, when passing into a state of decomposition, a succession of brilliant colours; but I have seen from six to eight individuals of their number still alive in a little pool beside the nets, and still retaining their original pink tint, freckled with red. And these I have observed, as my shadow fell across their little patch of water, darting ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... person, and from without its folds a few withered flowers had fallen. A strong aromatic odor, of a pungent nature, was diffused around; giving evidence that the art by which the ancient Egyptians endeavored to rescue their kindred from decomposition had been resorted to, to preserve the fleeting charms of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth |
