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More "Decomposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pieces. About 2 ft. from the end of the coffin is a square hole through the bottom, with channels worked in the stone leading to it. This was probably a provision to carry off the fluids, which would be caused by the decomposition of the body. On the sides of the coffin could be traced the marks of the corpse when it was first deposited, from which it would appear that the deceased had been stout as well as short of stature. It is to be regretted that the inscription ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... surprise me to learn that your ideas and practices are quite different from those of my day. Indeed, religious ideas and ecclesiastical institutions were already at that time undergoing such rapid and radical decomposition that it was safe to predict if religion were to survive another century it would be under very different forms from any the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... also remarks that Johnson, as a critic, "was certainly deficient in sensibility to the more delicate, the minor beauties of poetic sentiment. He analyzes verse in the cold-blooded spirit of a chemist, until all the aroma which constituted its principal charm escapes in the decomposition. By this kind of process, some of the finest fancies of the Muse, the lofty dithyrambics of Gray, the ethereal effusions of Collins, and of Milton too, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... enemies. Of such times we know nothing, save the broad results as they are measured from century to century, with here and there some indestructible pebble, some law, some fragment of remarkable poetry which has resisted decomposition. These periods are the proper subject of the philosophic historian, and to him we leave them. But there are others, a few, at which intellectual activity was as great as it is now, with its written records surviving, in which the passions, the opinions, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... very little rain on this portion of the creek since we passed down; there was, however, no water at all then at the pans. At the Tea-tree spring, a short distance up the creek, we found plenty of water in the sand, but it had a disagreeable taste, from the decomposition of leaves and the presence of mineral matter, probably iron. There seems to have been a fair share of rain along here, everything is so very fresh and green, and there is water in many of the channels we ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... be imagined now. Not only men of the highest rank—men 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... man, she 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 ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... parlour-maid and two good housemaids, a manservant who was devoted to the "professor" and a taxidermist who assisted him in his experiments did the rest in keeping the big house tolerably tidy and presentable. Rossiter himself was too intent on the stars, the gases of decomposition, the hidden processes of life, miscegenation in star-fish, microbic diseases in man, beasts, birds and bees, the glands of the throat, the suprarenal capsules and the chemical origin of life to care much for aesthetics, for furniture ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... first place, whence arises the caustic condition of his solution, unless it be through the decomposition of the cyanide of potassium which is sometimes added? and if such caustic condition exists, does it not cause a deposition of oxide of silver together with the iodide, thereby embrowning ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... treated with glucose is not so likely to be covered with a closely adherent skin of spent lime when decomposed by the addition of water to it. In the other process, the carbide is coated with or immersed in some oil or grease to protect it from premature decomposition. The latter idea, at least, fulfils its promises, and does keep the carbide to a large extent unchanged if the lumps are exposed to damp air, while solving certain troubles otherwise met with in ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... rapidity. As they certainly have children, it seems reasonable to suppose, according to the analogy of all the higher animated tribes, that they also had parents. The ancients supposed, that the worms and insects which appear in decaying organic matter were generated there by the decomposition of the substance, without the previous agency of individuals of the same stock. Every schoolboy is acquainted with Virgil's mode of obtaining a new swarm of bees from the decaying carcass of a heifer. Subsequent researches, made with ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... this may be right or wrong physically, as the nerves become more delicate and sensitive, which may affect the brain more or less directly. There can be no doubt that it affects the stomach. Certain civilised persons prefer game in a state approaching to decomposition; I have seen savages who enjoy flesh when actually putrid, and above all horrors, fish when stinking! Such food would disgust the civilised man who prefers his game "high," and would perhaps kill other civilised people whose palates and stomachs have been educated ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... before, but could not obtain the slightest appearance of action upon the light. Hence I conclude, that notwithstanding the new and extraordinary state which must be assumed by an electrolyte, either during decomposition (when a most enormous quantity of electricity must be traversing it), or in the state of tension which is assumed as preceding decomposition, and which might be supposed to be retained in the solid form ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... its infallible index finger pointing to tell a tale. You can scarcely thread your way through it for vehicles of all sorts congregated there to undergo slow decomposition at the hands of wind and weather. This farmer is a tradesman by nature, and though, for thrift's sake, his fields must be tilled, he is yet inwardly constrained to keep on buying and selling, albeit to no purpose. He is everlastingly ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... is really indestructible. You destroy the protoplasm by burning it, by treating it with sulphuric acid, or any other decomposing agent—the odoriferous substances, far from being destroyed, become only so much the more manifest; they escape the moment protoplasmic destruction or decomposition begins, carrying along with them the vital principle, or what has been acting as such in the protoplasm. And as they are volatile, they must soon meet with other protoplasms congenial to their nature, and set up there the same kind of vital activity as they have done ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... sunshine, may be noticed indeed in many another painter of that day, in Lanini, for instance, at the National Gallery. In his "Nativity" at the Brera, Procaccini of Verona almost anticipates Correggio's Heilige Nacht. It is, in truth, the first step in the decomposition of light, a touch of decadence, of sunset, along the whole horizon of North-Italian art. It is, however, as the painter of the white-stoled Ursula and her companions that the great master of Brescia is most likely to remain in the memory of the visitor; ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... belong the great forces of magnetism and electricity, radium-energy, and so on. The sun is not, in any sense, a material body. It is an invariable intense pole of cosmic energy, and what we see are the particles of our terrestrial decomposition flying thither and returning, as fine grains of iron would fly to an intense magnet, or better, as the draught in a room veers towards the fire, attracted infallibly, as a moth towards a candle. The moth is drawn to the candle as the draught is drawn to the fire, in the absolute spell of the material ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... their activity magnetic or any other, could of course pass the absolute cold and void of space without being affected, no mortal body could; and that in the same manner Elijah's body dissolved into air without the usual intervention of decomposition; for we know that, though matter can easily change its form, it ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... starvation. As Champlain could only furnish them, from his limited stores, temporary and partial relief, it was the more painful to see them slowly dragging their feeble frames about in the snow, gathering up and devouring with avidity discarded meat in which the process of decomposition was far advanced, and which was already too potent with the stench of decay to ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... fever, or had been drowned; but the Arab crew had been so occupied in pumping, and in trying in other ways to keep their vessel afloat, that they had been unable to spare time even to throw the dead overboard, and there lay their festering remains—decomposition having already commenced— still chained to the living. The Star was hove to; and Mr Henley, who could speak a little Arabic, went in the boats to assist in rescuing the crew and their wretched cargo. He had to tell the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... matter how carefully performed, some small portion is liable to drop into the abdominal cavity; and this, in consequence of its indigested condition, resists absorption or expulsion, undergoes an irritating decomposition, and may very probably originate some serious inflammatory disorder. Any animal which has suffered a very bad case of impaction of the paunch, ought, immediately after complete restoration to health, to be sent to the shambles; for, independently ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... 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. Eventually the animal itself dies, and, by the process of decomposition, its whole body is returned to those conditions of inorganic matter in ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Indiana, where their beds of marl—sometimes as much as forty feet thick—are utilized in the manufacture of Portland cement. The deposit results from the decay of certain aquatic plants which secrete lime carbonate from the water, from the decomposition of the calcareous shells of tiny mollusks which live in countless numbers on the lake floor, and in some ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... that grease to the expired light, so was the thing that sat there in human form to the Noah Skinner they had come to seek. Dead this many a day of charcoal fumes, but preserved from decomposition by those very fumes, sat Noah Skinner, dried into bones and leather waiting for them with his own Hard Cash, and with theirs; for, creeping awestruck round that mummified figure seated dead on his pool of sovereigns, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... remarking on these facts, when there suddenly glided across their vision, forms—of every conceivable shape, i.e., those resembling corpses of human beings and animals, with bloodless faces, glassy eyes and stiff limbs—some apparently just dead and others in an advanced state of decomposition, all possessed and propelled by Impersonating Elementals; phantoms of actual earthbound people—misers, murderers, etc., several of whom approached the trio and tried to ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the condition of the egg at the time of preserving. Different methods of preserving all aim at the same thing, namely, at coating the porous shell with some substance which will prevent the air entering and setting up decomposition. See page 30. ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... to distinguish, while we generalize, the powers acting in nature, as into intellectual, vital, chemical, mechanical; but it holds equally true of the degrees, or species of each of these genera relatively to each other: as in the decomposition of the alkalies by heat, or the galvanic spark. Like the combining power of Life, the copula here resists for awhile the attempts to dissolve it, and then yields, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a very bright surface for fine lithographic work. For the best coated papers, instead of clay, sulphate of lime and sometimes sulphate of barium is used, with glue or casein. Formaldehyde, a chemical compound, is used to prevent decomposition in the coating materials; and soda or borax is used to "cut" or dissolve the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... Inscriptions show that some of these freedmen were physicians, and others musicians and silversmiths. The shops of the perfumers stood in a part of the Forum on the Via Sacra. Perfumes were much used at incinerations to disguise the smell of decomposition before the fires were kindled. The Christians opposed cremation and favoured earth burial, and in time the business of the perfume-sellers failed, and Constantine bought ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... have given similar results. These results also agree with observations made by various other German and American bacteriologists. Decomposition of animal flesh begins immediately after the animal dies. Within twenty-four hours after killing, even though the carcass is kept in an ice box or refrigerater, the whole mass is permeated with putrefactive bacteria. Refrigeration even to a point close ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... 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 called ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... scrub of flat-topped trees enveloped its base, on the outside of which the light and graceful Acacia pendula also grew on the grassy plain. I found the red rock to be the common one of the country, in a state of decomposition. It was hollowed out by some burrowing animal, whose tracks had opened ways through the thick thorny scrub, enabling us to lead our horses to near the top. From the apex, I obtained an extensive view of the country then before us, in many parts clear of wood to the verge of the ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... of others. There is a point at which the most energetic policeman or doctor, when called upon to deal with an apparently drowned person, gives up artificial respiration, although it is never possible to declare with certainty, at any point short of decomposition, that another five minutes of the exercise would not effect resuscitation. The theory that every individual alive is of infinite value is legislatively impracticable. No doubt the higher the life we secure to the individual by wise ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... madness to cause it to gain the suffrages of a large number of people. It was affirmed that those who had examined into the matter had found that the bodies of suicides were mysteriously preserved from decomposition until the day arrived on which they would naturally—that is, according to God's decree—have died. About the year 1834, I was taking a walk along the banks of the canal north of Glasgow, and sat ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... There was no opportunity of getting rid of the vast number of dead animals; burial was impossible, and the low state of the river prevented them from sending them down stream for several days; all they could do was to drag them to leeward of their camp. Meanwhile decomposition set in, and the absolute need of clean air caused a serious rebellion in the camp, most of the 4,000 men demanding that surrender should be made at once. When on Sunday, the 25th, the flood brought down past our lines an unending series ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... centuries the movement is spontaneous and unconscious; from the sixteenth till to-day it has proceeded under the direction of a philosophical spirit which is negative and not constructive. This critical philosophy has only accelerated a decomposition which began spontaneously. For as theology progresses it becomes less consistent and less durable, and as its conceptions become less irrational, the intensity of the emotions which they excite decreases. Fetishism had deeper roots than polytheism and lasted longer; and polytheism surpassed ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... persuasion, or hostile compulsion, or other mode of absorbing disunions, would be indifferent; if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God. Perpetuity of discord is a thing impossible; every thing short of unity tends to decomposition. Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in, a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an a priori probability. That all other assumptions than that of His true and eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the forenoon. Gentle fires to be applied in the daytime, with a sufficiency of air to allow the vapour to pass off. All decaying leaves, flower-stalks, &c., to be carefully picked off. All weeds, moss on the surface of pots, or anything else that would tend to cause dampness, mildew, or decomposition, to be cleared away. Pinch off the tops of any of the half-hardy plants that are growing ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... into nitrate in place of nitrate of baryta in Dr. Diamond's formula, or nitrate of lead as recommended by Mr. Sisson; the advantage being that no filtering is required, as the sulphate of potash (produced by the double decomposition) is soluble in water, and does not interfere with the developing qualities of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... yellowish fog had come down, the dreaded igniis fatui. Unless one kept moving, decomposition of the blood set in, essential salts within the body were dissolved and cellular activity ceased. Latham grinned wryly. He doubted if it could touch him! There was too much tsith within his alchemy. Nevertheless he ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... demise. The Scoliae of my experiments are not novices, far from it: they are the descendants of carvers that have practised their art since Scoliae first came into the world; nevertheless they all perish from the decomposition of the rations supplied, when I try to feed them on Ephippigers paralysed by the Sphex. Very expert in the method of attacking the Cetonia, they do not know how to set about the business of discreetly consuming a species of game new to them. All that escapes them is a few details, for the trade ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... too small to be seen by the highest powers, which, being lodged in all vegetable and animal substances, spring into life and develop very rapidly under favorable circumstances. They develop most rapidly when decomposition commences, and seem to indicate the degree or activity of that decomposition, also hastening the same. They are found most numerous in the feces, and usually fully developed in the fresh evacuations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... on into the captured laager. It was an extraordinary, interesting, and loathsome sight. Dead bodies of horses and men lay in all directions in various stages of decomposition, and the reeking smell was something quite indescribable. I fancied, even after leaving the place, that I carried the smell about with me, and that it had got into my clothes. The steep river banks were ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... both kings, having been originally peopled by settlers from each of their towns. At the ebb of the tide, the basin is left perfectly dry, with the exception of small gutters, and presents a smooth and almost unvaried surface of black mud, which emits an intolerable odour, owing to the decomposition of vegetable substances, and the quantity of filth and nastiness which is thrown into the basin by the inhabitants of both towns. Notwithstanding this nuisance, both children and grown-up persons may be seen sporting in the mud, whenever the tide goes out, all naked, and amusing themselves in the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... de grave; but as my limbs did not stiffen, Mada Malachi sent for a doctor who placed a glass before my face, an' moisture gathered on it. He tole 'em it was not entirely cole over de heart, an' da mus'n't bury me until decomposition took place, cuze it might be a trance. An' da kep' me in de kitchen wid Aunt Milla, de cook, to watch me. It 'peared like I's goin' down into a horrible place of awful soun's an' rattlin' of chains; an' I prayed mightily for help, an' Jesus reached down an' took my han' an' lifted me ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... before because they were now separated from these noises, no longer a part of them. All was blackness, shot through with fire. Haig was no more tortured in his body, except for the sense of being suffocated. He seemed to inhale raw ozone; the air fairly stank with the odors of decomposition; the saliva in his mouth had a peculiar pungent and disagreeable taste. He gasped and fought ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... This Guapo soon prepared from the large leaves of a tree called the "kiracaguero," and poured it into the infusion; and then the curare turned from its yellow colour to black, and was ready for use. The change of colour was produced by the decomposition of a hydruret of carbon; the hydrogen was burned, and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of God's cleansing Spirit, in its most general form, that is set forth, including all the manifold ways by which God deals with us to purge us from our iniquity, to free us from the death which treads close on the heels of wrongdoing, the decomposition and dissolution ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... larger, or by changes in the constitution and condensation of the mixed gases with which they have been originally filled. Those gases themselves may be supplied in all variation of volume and power from below; or, slowly, by the decomposition of the rocks themselves; and, at changing temperatures, must exert relatively changing forces of decomposition and combination on the walls of the veins they fill; while water, at every degree of heat and pressure (from beds of everlasting ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... antelope, Joe," said Dyke, as he ground away at the 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 ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... rot and stink with the times. In the economic and social world, as such, there is no activity except that sort of automatic activity that is called decay; the withering of the high Powers of freedom and their decomposition into the aboriginal soil of slavery. In that way the world stands much at the same stage as it did at the beginning of the Dark Ages. And the Church has the same task as it had at the beginning of the Dark Ages; to save all the light and liberty that can be saved, to resist the downward ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... 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 which would then recombine and supply force, either in intermittent ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... decomposition and determination of insoluble substances, particularly the silicates, carbonate of soda is indispensable. But for the latter purpose, we use with advantage a mixture of ten parts of soda and thirteen parts of dry carbonate of potash, which mixture fuses more easily than the ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... drapery of civilisation, and has nothing to do with the primitive reality of nature. The realistic drama begins with Euripides; and Euripides, the casuist, the friend of Socrates (whom Nietzsche qualifies as the true decadent, an "instrument of decomposition," the slayer of art, the father of modern science), brings tragedy to an end, as he substitutes pathos for action, thought for contemplation, and passionate sentiments for the primitive ecstasy. "Armed with the scourge of its syllogisms, an optimist dialectic drives the music out ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... very tenacious, and near the surface is generally of a brown colour, probably owing to the decomposition of the iron pyrites which it contains. It abounds in selenite or sulphate of lime, and in nodules which often contain organic remains. Fossil wood with Teredo antenautae is also met with, and ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... has a tendency to raise the Ac range (decalescent points) and lower the Ar range (recalescent points). Chromium steels are therefore capable of great hardness, due to the rapid cooling being able to retard the decomposition ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... many of her apparently innocent fruits and plants that are susceptible, by the unlawful processes of fermentation and effervescence, of transformation into alcoholic liquid. Science tells us that this abominable form of activity to which Nature is privy is in reality a form of decomposition or putrefaction; but willful men will hardly be restrained by science in ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... had grown almost up to the fort walls, and had to be cut down. While this was being done, skeletons and corpses in all states of decomposition were met with. Almost all had died of starvation. At first the bodies of those who died had been buried, but latterly their friends had become too weak to perform this office; and the poor wretches had crawled a few yards into the jungle, to die quietly. Such numbers of bodies were found that ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... longer an 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, ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... fowl is drawn, the unprotected flesh is exposed to bacterial contamination, which results in decomposition more rapidly than through the intestinal walls. The opening of the carcass also allows a greater drying out ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... volatilization of the indigo is aided by the vapour of water disengaged from the gypsum, and the surface of the mass becomes covered with beautiful crystals of pure indigo, which may be readily removed by a thin spatula. At a higher temperature, charring and decomposition ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... four cart-loads, with which it forms a pyramidal heap; in this heap it 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 have an ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... shell,) it was now ascertained that the rattling proceeded, and as upon inspection, a hole was observed to have been drilled in the wood, as if by the teeth of some animal, it was judged expedient to open and examine it further. The remains of the marquess were discovered in a state of dry decomposition, with his head as completely severed from his body as if by the stroke of the axe; but, horror of horrors! that head, that skeleton skull, moved, as those who opened the coffin stood to gaze on its revolting contents, and rolled to and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... some vitriolated tartar. The 11th paragraph likewise shews this. But since sulphur alone, and also the volatile spirit of sulphur, have no effect upon the air (Sec. 11. c.), it is clear that the decomposition of liver of sulphur takes place according to the laws of double affinity,—that is to say, that the alkalies and lime attract the vitriolic acid, and the air ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... during Germination ... Changes during the After-Growth of the Plant ... Decomposition of Carbonic Acid ... Decomposition of Water ... Decomposition of Ammonia ... Decomposition of ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... creatures in which matter has completely overcome its rival, mind. So soon as the will is entirely extinct, the being ceases to live; or it is no longer an animal. It falls and reverts altogether to the element of matter. The processes of decomposition and incorporation are longer, or shorter, according to circumstances; and these fossil remains of which your writers say so much, are merely cases that have met with accidental obstacles to their ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fresh, are more or less liable to disease. I might even say more. When not fresh, they are diseased. On this point we have the testimony of Drs. Willich and Dunglison. The truth is, that the yolk of the egg has a strong tendency to decomposition, and this decomposing or putrefying process begins long before it is perceived, or even suspected, by most people. There is much reason for believing that a large proportion of the eggs eaten in civic ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated with copper wire like the skeleton of an anatomical cabinet: that would be too ornamental for the vulgar crowd. He appears as a dead body in a more or less advanced state of decomposition, with all the horrid secrets of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... them a vague and fantastic aspect; a mephitic humidity exhales from all parts; an odor of death prevails; and a calm which is not silence (for the ear fancies it can hear the great movement of composition and of decomposition perpetually going on) tends to inspire you with that old mysterious horror which the ancients felt in the primitive forests ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... for a determinant of the n-th order, taking the decomposition to be 1 (n - 1), we fall back upon the equations given at the commencement, in order to show the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... of the hour. Decomposition and transformation is going on all around us, but far too slowly. Some opinions, bold and erect as they may still stand, are in reality but empty shells. One shove would be fatal. Why is ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... natural as it otherwise would have been. Last evening the body was placed in an erect position, in order to allow the injected fluid to settle in the veins and arteries, so as to give to the face a more natural appearance. The swelling has entirely disappeared from the neck and face, and the decomposition which had set in had been checked. The remains will not be enshrouded until this morning, when they will be placed in the coffin, enclosed in a white merino robe with a satin collar, satin cord about the waist, and a black neckerchief ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of the leaves strewing the earth, in the wet of the herbs long and bent, there was a sadness of death, a dumb resignation to fecund decomposition. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... greatest movement of all history, of which their literature takes so little notice. That the greatest religious change in the history of mankind should have taken place under the eyes of a brilliant galaxy of philosophers and historians who were profoundly conscious of decomposition around them; that all these writers should have utterly failed to predict the issue of the movement they were then observing; and that during the space of three centuries they should have treated as simply contemptible an agency which all men must now admit to ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... 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 by ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... the actual cause. A daily movement of the bowel does not necessarily mean that the bowels are emptying themselves satisfactorily. Despite the daily movement, there may be considerable fecal matter left in the bowel which undergoes decomposition. This results in the evolution of large quantities of gas and severe attacks of colic. Indigestion is very often caused by conditions which effect the stability of the child's nervous organism; such conditions are ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... found to contain, not indeed, 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 ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... literally transferred, by a kind of transpiration, to the body of the nurseling, and the victim, slowly exhausted, drained to the last drop, while retaining to the end just enough life to prove refractory to decomposition, is reduced to the mere skin, which, being insufflated, puffs itself out and resumes the precise form of the larva, there being nowhere a point of escape ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... is obtained 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 ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... quantity of snow from a piece of ice that had been washed by the sea, and was greatly discoloured by the decomposition of some peculiar substance upon it. A little of this snow dissolved in a wine-glass appeared perfectly nebulous—the water being found to contain a great number of semi-transparent spherical substances, with others resembling small portions ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... common mushroom, and it should seem without any bad 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 between one penny and sixpence per ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... necessary 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 Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... during the period mentioned, not only disturb the passing spirit mentally, but are productive of a certain amount of pain, for there is still a slight connection with the discarded vehicle. If sanitary laws require us to prevent decomposition while thus keeping the body for cremation, it may be packed in ice till the three and one-half days have passed. After that time the spirit will not suffer, no matter what happens to ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... are the result of the denudation and decomposition of felspathic and siliceous rocks, and consist of the fine insoluble particles which have been carried in suspension in water and deposited in geologic basins according to their specific gravity and degree of fineness (see CLAY). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... their philosophies, but in their symbols, by which they endeavored to express the great ideas that vainly struggled for utterance in words, as they viewed the great circle of phenomena,—Birth, Life, Death, or Decomposition, and New Life out of Death and Rottenness,—to them the greatest of mysteries. Remember, while you study their symbols, that they had a profounder sense of these wonders than we have. To them the transformations of the worm were a greater wonder than the stars; and hence the poor ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a state of decomposition. Institutions, long held as of all time and for all time, are crumbling. No wonder those bodies of society that come floating down to us with the prerogatives of "teacher" are seen to-day rushing to opposite ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... 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 ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... igloo; she followed. He crawled like a bear through the thirty feet or more of narrow tunnel which led into the hut proper. She did likewise. In the igloo he threw himself down on the ice floor among the squalor and quantities of bear meat in various stages of decomposition. The smell from the whale-oil lamp almost choked him. The girl sat down and ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... have frequently sunk up to my knees in a bed of leaves when walking through its woods; and, often when I placed my foot on what appeared externally to be the solid trunk of a tree, I have found it yield to the pressure, in consequence of its decomposition into absolute rottenness. But such is not the case in New South Wales. There, no such accumulations of vegetable matter are to be met with; but where the loftiest tree of the forest falls to the ground, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the promise of rendering the teeth beautifully white, perform, for a time, all that is promised, at the expense of permanent and irremediable injury to the teeth; for they often contain a quantity of tartaric or other acid, which effects a gradual decomposition of the enamel."[FN25] Prepared chalk is one of the simplest ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... impinge upon the periphery of the drum. The iron pin and the drum were respectively connected so as to be in circuit with the transmission line and batteries. As the principle involved in the receiving operation was electrochemical decomposition, the paper tape upon which the incoming message was to be received was moistened with a chemical solution readily decomposable by the electric current. This paper, while still in a damp condition, was passed between the drum and stylus in continuous, progressive motion. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... that a change was wrought through the mass of the goods acted upon by the acid gas, and that the whole body of the article was made better than the native gum. The surface of the goods really was so, but owing to the eventual decomposition of the goods beneath the surface, the process was pronounced by the public a complete failure. Thus instead of realizing the large fortune which by all acquainted with his prospects was considered certain, his whole invention would not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... of Utrecht on the one hand, and the fast approaching reconciliation of the Walloon provinces on the other, the work of decomposition and of construction went Land ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 of boiled rice is placed over ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... other than sulphuric acid, compounds formed from such acids, or substances which will readily form acids by chemical action in the cell. Nitric acid, hydrochloric or muriatic acid, and acetic acid belong in this class of impurities. Organic matter in a state of decomposition attacks ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... 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 ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... the imagination, Aristotle to reason. The former descended from the decomposition of a primitive idea into particulars, the latter united particulars into a general conception. Hence the method of Plato was capable of quickly producing what seemed to be splendid, though in reality unsubstantial results; that of Aristotle was more tardy in its ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... in general, are extremely prone to decomposition; their decomposition often involving a sudden and great evolution of force. We see that substances classed as ferments ... are all nitrogenous ... and we see that even in organisms and parts of organisms where the activities are least, such changes as do take place are initiated ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... expensive to keep. My means will not allow me to keep a private elephant. I go into mystery instead, as cheaper and more lasting—a sort of gas which is likely to be continually supplied by the decomposition of the elephants. And if I like the look of an opinion, I treat it civilly, without suspicious inquiries. I have quite a friendly feeling toward Mordecai's notion that a whole Christian is three-fourths a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... scarce; that is, good loam is scarce. To help make up the deficiency, every one should form a compost heap, and into it pile leaves, lawn rakings, pieces of sod, and all such matter, all of which will be reduced in time by decomposition to the much-desired humus. A small quantity of this humus, mixed with fairly good loam, will make good loam of it all, and suitable for sustaining ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... 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 the unfortunate ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Hugo that gangrene had set 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's unshaven ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Solar Spectrum.—When a ray or beam of solar light is passed through a prism, it is broken up or decomposed into its constituent parts. This is called dispersion, and conclusively proves that the light from the sun is not a simple, but a compound colour. We have illustrations of this decomposition of pure white light in the rainbow, where the colours of the sunlight are revealed against the sky with clearness and precision. A simple experiment to prove that the solar light is a compound one may be made by boring a small hole in a shutter, and then allowing the sunlight that passes ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... down the sides of the body. Along these vertical tubes run the rows of little locomotive oars, or combs, as they have been called, from which these animals derive their name of Ctenophorae. The rapid motion of these flappers causes the decomposition of the rays of light along the surface of the body, producing the most striking prismatic effect; and it is no exaggeration to say that no jewel is brighter than these Ctenophorae as they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... diminution in size of the organ, the prepuce resumes the proportionate bulky dimensions of childhood, and as the organ recedes and becomes more and more diminutive, the prepuce again, like in childhood, begins to tend to phimosis; the urine of the aged is also more irritating and prone to decomposition or putrefaction, and the constant state of moisture that the preputial canal of the aged is necessarily kept in, either by frequent urination or the incomplete emptying of the urethra that is peculiar to old age, and which results ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... little squire happen upon a treasure worthy in his sight to be bestowed. At this juncture, however, a particularly unsavoury smell attracted his straining nostrils.... A moment later what was, despite the ravages of decomposition, still recognizable as the corpse of a large black bird was deposited with every circumstance of cheerful devotion immediately ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... an effect analogous to that of the wind. Dr. Gisler adds, that he has frequently heard the noise of the aurora, and that it resembles that of a strong wind, or the hissing that certain chemical substances produce in the act of decomposition. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... me that a few wreaths of smoke were visible in summer, caused probably by the decomposition of several coal seams on the upper side ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... stages of development are well known to the ordinary observer. Here the first step is absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened into ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... present in sufficient quantity to account perfectly for the deleterious effects of gas burners in ill-ventilated rooms. The analyses also bring out very clearly the fact that, although the dilution of coal gas by air in atmospheric burners is sufficient to prevent the decomposition of the heavy hydrocarbons with liberation of carbon, and so destroy luminosity, yet the presence of the extra supply of oxygen does make the combustion far more perfect, so that the products of incomplete combustion are hardly to be found in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... complex than the extraneous heat that first caused it. But accompanying this process of combination there is a production of heat; there is a production of light; there is an ascending column of hot gases generated; there are currents established in the surrounding air. Moreover the decomposition of one force into many forces does not end here: each of the several changes produced becomes the parent of further changes. The carbonic acid given off will by and by combine with some base; or under the influence ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... composed of oxygen and nitrogen. Their proportions are, one part of oxygen to four parts of nitrogen. Oxygen is the active agent in the combustion, decay, and decomposition of organized bodies (those which have possessed animal or vegetable life, that is, organic matter), and others also, in the breathing of animals. Experiments have proved that if the atmosphere consisted of pure oxygen every thing would be speedily destroyed, as the processes of combustion and decay ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... Geyer found a trap-door leading down into a small cellar. In one corner of the cellar he saw that the earth had been recently dug up. With the help of the spade the loose earth was removed, and at a depth of some three feet, in a state of advanced decomposition, lay the remains of what appeared to be two children. A little toy wooden egg with a snake inside it, belonging to the Pitezel children, had been found by the tenant who had taken the house after Holmes; a later tenant had found stuffed into the chimney, but not burnt, some clothing that answered ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... breaks up, and in the course of a few minutes the silk is wholly dissolved. Were ramie, cotton, flax, or hemp present, they would be observed, as all their fibers remain unchanged under this treatment. If wool be present, rapid decomposition will follow, giving off copious fumes of nitrous acid, allowing, however, sufficient time to observe the separation of the scales of the fibers and to demonstrate by observation under the microscope that the fibers are those ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no idea of the virtues of quicksilver,—a mineral not rare in Peru, as an amalgam to effect this decomposition.22 Their method of smelting the ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated and exposed situations, where they might be fanned by the strong breezes of the mountains. The subjects of the Incas, in short, with all their patient perseverance, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of the individual into Jew and citizen, into Protestant and citizen, into a religious person and citizen, this decomposition does not belie citizenship; it is not a circumvention of political emancipation; it is political emancipation itself, it is the political manner of becoming emancipated from religion. Moreover, in times when the political State as a political State is forcibly born of bourgeois society, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... principal high ways, were, at the early day of our tale, but little better than wood-paths. The high trees that were growing on the very verge of the wheel-tracks excluded the suns rays, unless at meridian; and the slowness of the evaporation, united with the rich mould of vegetable decomposition that covered the whole country to the depth of several inches, occasioned but an indifferent foundation for the footing of travellers. Added to these were the inequalities of a natural surface, and the constant recurrence of enormous and slippery ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... for its object to discover the constituent properties of bodies, the result of the various combinations, and the laws by which those combinations are effected. Its operations being either analytical or synthetical, consist of composition, or decomposition. The laws which govern chemical changes have been resolved into those of attraction or affinity. Affinity of composition of chemical affinity differs from that of aggregation or cohesion or corpuscular attraction, by acting upon matter of a different kind; or by ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... volume 10 page 496.) Carbonate of lime can be heated to almost any degree, according to Faraday, in an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas, without being decomposed; and Gay-Lussac found that fragments of limestone, placed in a tube and heated to a degree, not sufficient by itself to cause their decomposition, yet immediately evolved their carbonic acid, when a stream of common air or steam was passed over them: Gay-Lussac attributes this to the mechanical displacement of the nascent carbonic acid gas. The calcareous matter beneath the lava, and especially that ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... 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
... as absolute becoming—are alike absurd. We can escape these contradictions only by the bold decision to conceive the quality of the existent as unchangeable. For the truly existent there is no change whatever. It remains, however, to explain the appearance of change, in which the wand of decomposition and the "together" again proves its magic power. Supported by the motley manifoldness of phenomena, we posit real beings as qualitatively different, and view this diversity as partial contraposition; we resolve, e.g., the simple quality a ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... of decomposition and destruction that we see there may all be attributed to the same cause,—lack of solidity and cohesion. It will never be possible to say how contrary to social good are the trifling interests of caste, of coterie, of church, the bitter strife for personal ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... is this: the hydrogen atom has been split, resolved into components, not of electrons and the proton centers, but held at some halfway point of decomposition. Matter composed only of neutrons would be heavy beyond belief. This fits the theory in that respect. But the point is this: When these solids are formed—they are dense—they represent in a cubic centimeter ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... was fatal to us. A great number of soldiers and generals, whom the tension of the atmosphere had hitherto supported by a continued irritation, sunk and fell into decomposition. Lariboissiere, general-in-chief of the artillery, fell a sacrifice; Eble, the pride of the army, followed him. Every day and every hour, our consternation was ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... 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
... may be briefly defined as the study of the laws of the phenomena of composition and decomposition, which result from the molecular and specific mutual action of different substances, natural or artificial. In the observations of chemistry the senses are still more employed, and experiment is of still more utility. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... two groups were obviously in conflict. But after 1912 there had been big changes. The gentry were largely in a process of decomposition. They still possessed the basis of their existence, their land, but the land was falling in value, as there were now other opportunities of capital investment, such as export-import, shareholding in foreign enterprises, or industrial undertakings. ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... 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 showed that this block was most beautifully ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... gave symptoms of a gradual superiority in the conflict. In the course of about half an hour, the Orange party began to give way in the northern end of the town; and as their opponents pressed them warmly and with unsparing hand, the heavy mass formed by their numbers began to break, and this decomposition ran up their line until in a short time they were thrown into utter confusion. They now fought in detached parties; but these subordinate conflicts, though shorter in duration than the shock of the general battle, were much more inhuman and destructive; ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... of the previous night, coming after a long period of drought, was probably the cause of these already-loosened stones starting upon their downward career. All these calcareous rocks are breaking up. The process of disintegration and decomposition is slow, but it is sure. Every frost does something to split them, and every shower of rain entering the crevices does something to rot them; so that even they cannot last. The Tarn is carrying them back to the sea, to be deposited ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... shew a greater difference between the 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 the most ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... advanced. Few natives appeared to greet them on the banks of the river as they went along, and these few resembled living skeletons. In many places they found dead bodies lying on the ground in various stages of decomposition, and everywhere they beheld an aspect of settled unutterable despair on the faces of the scattered remnant of the bereaved and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... ever denser and denser, swooped down upon Paris. Most certainly it came thither to enjoy it, as to a city of adventure and delight, and it helped to rot it a little more. Was it then a necessary thing, that decomposition of the great cities which have governed the world, that affluxion of every passion, every desire, every gratification, that accumulation of reeking soil from all parts of the world, there where, in beauty and intelligence, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... these men were under the direct command of Prussian officers, who, with nothing more formidable than a light walking-stick in their hands, stood by, stiff and silent, and superintended the work. They had requisitioned the inhabitants of all the villages of the vicinity in this manner, fearing that decomposition might be hastened, owing to the rainy weather. Two cart-loads of dead bodies were standing near, and a gang of men was unloading them, laying the corpses side by side in close contiguity to one another, not searching them, not even looking ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... The daily irrigation, in itself, would be sufficient to frighten all Italians away; for they have a deadly fear of all effluvia arising from decomposing vegetable substances, and suppose, with a good deal of truth, that, wherever there is water on the earth, there is decomposition. But this is not the only reason; for the same prejudice exists in regard to all kinds of gardens, whether irrigated or not,—and even to groves of trees and clusters of bushes, or vegetation of any kind, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... mixture of blue and yellow. Newton, however, found that the green of the spectrum was not the same thing as the mixture of two colours of the spectrum, for such a mixture could be separated by the prism, while the green of the spectrum resisted further decomposition. But still it was believed that yellow and blue would make a green, though not that of the spectrum. As far as I am aware, the first experiment on the subject is that of M. Plateau, who, before 1819, made a disc with alternate sectors of prussian ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... perpetually 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 ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... agreeable to live surrounded by herds of these unsavoury animals, it is well they are so numerous, and so active in their capacity of scavengers, for without them the streets would soon be choked up with all sorts of substances in every stage of decomposition. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... assumption of extraordinary lightness in the water. The true reason why the bodies of the drowned do not rise to the surface is evidently owing to the fact that when they sink into water which is only 4 deg. Cent. (7.2 deg. Fah.) above the freezing temperature, the gases usually generated by decomposition are not produced in the intestines; in other words, at this low temperature the bodies do not become inflated, and therefore do not rise to the surface. The same phenomenon would doubtless occur in any other body of fresh ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... inevitable terror. But death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated with copper wire like the skeleton of an anatomical cabinet: that would be too ornamental for the vulgar crowd. He appears as a dead body in a more or less advanced state of decomposition, with all the horrid secrets of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... is such as generation is, a mystery of nature; composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same; and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to [the nature of] a reasonable animal, and not contrary to the ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... in the field as a rival of COAL gas. In 1815, Mr. John Taylor had obtained a patent for an apparatus for the decomposition of oil and other animal substances; but the circumstance which more particularly attracted the public attention to be directed to oil gas was the erection of the patent apparatus at Apothecary's Hall, by Messrs. Taylors and Martineau; and the way was prepared for an application ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... that even the badness of food, whether staleness, decomposition, or any other bad quality, when confined to the actual food, is not supposed to destroy the body; although, if the badness of food communicates corruption to the body, then we should say that the body ...
— The Republic • Plato
... honest for intrigue and too proud to sue for favours, and there was much opposition on the part of many members, who declared that their purposes were at war, as they had assumed the task of composing the language, while he seemed to aim at its decomposition; but Mme. de Tencin had set her mind upon making of him an academician, and spared no pains to accomplish her purpose. The influence of this brilliant, scheming, unprincipled, and headstrong woman, aided by Bouhier, president of the parliament of Dijon, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... extensive decomposition of the underlying rock, penetrating sometimes to a considerable depth, makes it often difficult to distinguish between it and the drift; and the problem is made still more puzzling by the fact ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... cellar. In one corner of the cellar he saw that the earth had been recently dug up. With the help of the spade the loose earth was removed, and at a depth of some three feet, in a state of advanced decomposition, lay the remains of what appeared to be two children. A little toy wooden egg with a snake inside it, belonging to the Pitezel children, had been found by the tenant who had taken the house after Holmes; ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... likely to be covered with a closely adherent skin of spent lime when decomposed by the addition of water to it. In the other process, the carbide is coated with or immersed in some oil or grease to protect it from premature decomposition. The latter idea, at least, fulfils its promises, and does keep the carbide to a large extent unchanged if the lumps are exposed to damp air, while solving certain troubles otherwise met with in some generators ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... they would hasten to dissolution, and the man would thus die a second time; that is to say, he would be annihilated. The piety of the survivors found means, however, to avert this catastrophe. By the process of embalmment, they could for ages suspend the decomposition of the body; while by means of prayer and offerings, they saved the Double, the Soul, and the "Luminous" from the second death, and secured to them all that was necessary for the prolongation of their existence. The Double ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... triodia-set. To-day we came upon three Lowans' or native pheasants' nests. These birds, which somewhat resemble guinea-fowl in appearance, build extraordinarily large nests of sand, in which they deposit small sticks and leaves; here the female lays about a dozen eggs, the decomposition of the vegetable matter providing the warmth necessary to hatch them. These nests are found only in thick scrubs. I have known them five to six feet high, of a circular conical shape, and a hundred feet round the base. The ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... foods may be rendered unfit for use by improper handling of the product before packing and that decomposition may occur after canning, owing to insufficient processing, improper sealing or the use of leaky containers. This condition, however, is no more likely to be encountered in foods put up in tin than in products canned in other types of containers. ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... indeed in many another painter of that day, in Lanini, for instance, at the National Gallery. In his "Nativity" at the Brera, Procaccini of Verona almost anticipates Correggio's Heilige Nacht. It is, in truth, the first step in the decomposition of light, a touch of decadence, of sunset, along the whole horizon of North-Italian art. It is, however, as the painter of the white-stoled Ursula and her companions that the great master of Brescia is most likely to remain in the memory of the visitor; with this fact, above all, clearly impressed ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... do you prefer, Captain Lawton?" said the surgeon, as they separated from the little procession. "In some countries the body is exposed to be devoured by wild beasts; in others it is suspended in the air to exhale its substance in the manner of decomposition; in other regions it is consumed on the funeral pile, and, again, it is inhumed in the bowels of the earth; every people have their own particular fashion, and to which do ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Serbia and Montenegro. Down to 1912 Turkey ruled over a large number of Serbs.] How did it come about that this evolution of twelve centuries, beginning with primeval unity and passing through a political, economic, and social decomposition of a most bewildering character, has once more arrived at national unity and is even now demanding the last step—political amalgamation? Is it a doctrine or a dream ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... destruction follows; the glue or paste which fastens the cover softens, the leather loses its tenacity, and the leaves slowly rot, until the worthless volumes smell to heaven. Books thus injured may be partially recovered, before the advanced stage of decomposition, by removal to a dry atmosphere, and by taking the volumes apart, drying the sheets, and rebinding—a very expensive, but necessary remedy, provided the books are deemed ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... powers of material or moral constraint. This is the stage of tradition and authority; very often it is the last stage, and continues till the society is destroyed. The usage is relaxed, the rules are violated, the persons in authority cease to be obeyed; this is the stage of revolt and decomposition. Finally, in certain civilised societies, the rule is criticised, the persons in authority are censured, by the action of a part of the subjects a rational change is effected in the composition of the governing ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... overnight, as if cooked too soon after-killing, it is hard and does not taste well. It is not the custom in America, as in some parts of Europe, to keep game, or indeed any sort of eatable, till it begins to taint; all food when inclining to decomposition being ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... results with which spectrum analysis had enriched our knowledge. Terrestrial analysis had failed to furnish favorable evidence; and, turning to the chemistry of the stars, the spectra of the white, which were presumably the hottest stars, furnished no direct evidence that a decomposition of any terrestrial atom had taken place; indeed, we learned that the hydrogen atom, as we know it here, can endure unscathed the inconceivably fierce temperature of stars presumably many times more fervent than our sun, as Sirius and Vega. It was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... their tracks disease-producing germs which have adhered to their sticky feet where they have previously dined." Declare war upon the "fly who won't wipe his feet" by keeping the garbage in a covered galvanized-iron pail and dispose of it before decomposition takes place. Wash and dry the pail after emptying. If the camp is located near a farm, give the garbage to the farmer. It is the natural food of swine or poultry. Where this is not possible, the garbage ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... reviving after they were supposed to be dead, and this led to the conclusion that the spirit sometimes returned to animate the body after it had once fled. If there was no signs of life for ten days, the fire was extinguished and the body left unmolested until decomposition had begun to take place, when the remains were buried, or, as was often the case, kept in the lodge for many years. If they were obliged to desert the settlement where they had long resided, these skeletons were collected from all the families and buried in one common grave, ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... They exist in great numbers in the skin and mucous membranes, particularly those of the lungs. Though no lymphatics have been traced to the brain, it is presumed that they exist there, as this part of the body is not exempt from the composition and decomposition, which are perpetual in the body. These vessels are extremely minute at their origin, so that in many parts of the system they cannot be detected without the aid ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... iron, or green vitriol,) a bright green mineral substance, formed by the decomposition of a peculiar ore of iron, called pyrites, which is a sulphuret of iron. It is first in the form of a greenish-white powder, or crust, which is dissolved in water, and beautiful green crystals of copperas are obtained by evaporation. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... coffee, cinchona and tea; and some Ceylon coffee planters are expecting an era of success in Selangor. At present, however, the necessary labor is not available. The soil in the interior on the mountain slopes consists of a light red and yellow clay, the product of a comparatively recent rock decomposition, covered with vegetable mould from eight to twelve inches thick. There are no droughts, and the rainfall, distributed pretty fairly over the year, averages about one hundred and thirty inches annually. The climate is remarkably healthy, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... swarm of active 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 of the soil and the element of chance in its discovery ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... many men who are morally in a state of decomposition should be, or at least can be, sweet and charming in manner. During these three days Coronado was delightful; and not merely in this, that he watched over Clara's comfort, rode a great deal by her side, gathered ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... now, gentlemen," he announced. "I need not remind you, of course, that the body you are about to see, that of the woman found in the Cite Frochot, has already undergone certain changes due to decomposition, which ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... which one 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 ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... thousand miles an hour, and rushes noiselessly on its orbit a million and a half miles a day. Two storm-clouds encamped upon opposite hills on a sultry summer's evening, at the expense of no more electricity, according to Mr. Faraday, than is evolved in the decomposition of a single drop of water, will shake the surrounding atmosphere with their thunders, which, loudly as they rattle on the spot, will yet not be heard at the distance of twenty miles; while those tremendous and unutterable forces which ever issue from the throne of God, and drag the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... little on that subject," I answered, "but it will not surprise me to learn that your ideas and practices are quite different from those of my day. Indeed, religious ideas and ecclesiastical institutions were already at that time undergoing such rapid and radical decomposition that it was safe to predict if religion were to survive another century it would be under very different forms from any the past ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and the door being walled up they are obliged to remain there with the rotting body until all the flesh has mouldered away. Food is passed in to them through a hole in the wall, and under no pretext are they allowed to leave the hut before the decomposition of the corpse is complete. When nothing of the late chief remains but a skeleton, the hut is opened and the solemn funeral takes place. The bones of the dead are buried, but his skull is hung up in the taboo house in order, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... of both kings, having been originally peopled by settlers from each of their towns. At the ebb of the tide, the basin is left perfectly dry, with the exception of small gutters, and presents a smooth and almost unvaried surface of black mud, which emits an intolerable odour, owing to the decomposition of vegetable substances, and the quantity of filth and nastiness which is thrown into the basin by the inhabitants of both towns. Notwithstanding this nuisance, both children and grown-up persons may be seen sporting in the mud, whenever the tide goes out, all naked, and amusing themselves in the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... deposits which form the valley of the Trois Pistoles. To render the analogy more complete, in the valley of the outlet of the Little Lake (Temiscouata) was found a vein of metalliferous quartz charged with peroxide of iron, evidently arising from the decomposition of pyrites, being in fact the same as the matrix of the gold which has been traced in the talcose slate formation from Georgia to Vermont; and on the western shore of the Temiscouata Lake, about a mile to the south of Fort Ingall, lie great masses of granular carbonate ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... could fling diamonds at their feet. In a combination of carbon and sulphur," he went on, speaking to himself, "carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of decomposition, the carbon would ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... 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 which would ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 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
... contained in wool, fur, and hair, and not in silk nor in vegetable fibres. First, I will heat strongly some cotton with a little soda-lime in a tube, and hold a piece of moistened red litmus paper over the mouth of the tube. If nitrogen is present it will take up hydrogen in the decomposition ensuing, and escape as ammonia, which will turn the red litmus paper blue. With the cotton, however, no ammonia escapes, no turning of the piece of red litmus paper blue is observed, and so no nitrogen can be present ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... master who was notorious for his barbarity, enfrancished late in life, but soon driven into exile by Domitian, who, while sounding the very abyss of human misery, and looking forward to death as to simple decomposition, was yet so filled with the sense of the Divine presence, that his life was one continued hymn to Providence, and his writings and his example, which appeared to his contemporaries almost the ideal of human goodness, have not lost their consoling power through all the ages and the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and two thousand men, aided by several hundred teams, had partially reduced the mountain of wreckage, cremation fires yet burned continuously—fed not only by human bodies, but by thousands of carcasses of domestic animals. By that time, in the hot, moist atmosphere of the latitude, decomposition had so far advanced that the corpses—which at first were decently carried in carts or on stretchers, then shoveled upon boards or blankets—had finally to be scooped up with pitchforks, in the hands of negroes, kept at their awful task by the soldiers' ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... of substances of ever-increasing minuteness, are capable of dissolution, until the highest cause (Brahman) is reached. Earth—which is, in comparison with a binary compound, the grossest thing of all—undergoes decomposition; so do the substances following next which belong to the same class as earth; so does the binary compound; and so does, finally, the atom which (although the minutest thing of all) still belongs to the same general class ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... their methods are highly ingenious. One story is worth repeating. A coffin was presented for railway transport. The relatives of the deceased accompanied it. The dead man, they said, had desired to be buried across the frontier. The smell proclaimed the corpse to be in an advanced state of decomposition. The railway officials afforded every facility for the passage of so unpleasant an object. No one checked its progress. It was unapproachable. It was only when coffin and mourners were safe across the frontier that the police were informed that a dozen rifles had been concealed in the coffin, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... prepared a 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
... For the decomposition and determination of insoluble substances, particularly the silicates, carbonate of soda is indispensable. But for the latter purpose, we use with advantage a mixture of ten parts of soda and thirteen parts of dry carbonate of potash, ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... a leaden hue of face, something ghastly, as if the deadly heat had begun a work of decomposition. Andrew looked at him, and his hatred against the rich man who had built himself a stately mansion, and kept his fellow-creatures at work for him in an unhealthy factory in tropical heat, and had condemned him for being too old, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... plants consist of very simple vegetable cells, enclosed in indestructible silex (as other Algae are in carbonate of lime), it is obvious that the death and decomposition of such multitudes must form sedimentary deposits, proportionate in their extent to the length and exposure of the coast against which they are washed, in thickness to the power of such agents as the winds, currents, and ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... we call life. We can shut it 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. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... employ a method, not quite so learned, to convey an idea of the generation of colors, and the decomposition of the solar ray. Instead of examining them in a prism of glass, we shall consider them in the heavens, and there we shall behold the five primordial colours unfold themselves in the order which we ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... everything; climbed the columns and were lost in the shadows above the multitude of lights. The big sponge-like blossoms expanded and contracted rhythmically. Breathing, they were, like living things. Specially cultivated plant life to assist in maintaining the oxygen supply balance by decomposition of carbon dioxide. A marvelous ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... appointed to deliver, before the Royal Society, the Bakerian lecture, in which he displayed some very interesting new agencies of electricity, by means of the celebrated galvanic apparatus.[1] Soon afterwards, he made one of the most brilliant discoveries of modern times, in the decomposition of two fixed alkalies, which, in direct refutation of the hypothesis previously adopted, were found to consist of a peculiar metallic base united with a large quantity of oxygen. These alkalies were potash and soda, and the metals thus discovered were called potassium and sodium, Mr. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various
... 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 offensive ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... encountered was 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 and zinc, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... 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 ...
— 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
... rain on this portion of the creek since we passed down; there was, however, no water at all then at the pans. At the Tea-tree spring, a short distance up the creek, we found plenty of water in the sand, but it had a disagreeable taste, from the decomposition of leaves and the presence of mineral matter, probably iron. There seems to have been a fair share of rain along here, everything is so very fresh and green, and there is water in many of ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... closed the windows and renewed the candles. He was now quite composed on entering the room, accustomed already to regard the corpse as though it had been there for months. He even went the length of declaring that, as yet, there were no 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 stark and stiff; she will ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the operation of the tan, from its affinity for metallic salts, we may conjecture, that, in the first instance, it forms a triple compound with the gallic acid and the iron; and that, in consequence of the decomposition of the tan, this compound is afterwards destroyed. Owing to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of entirely depriving the infusion of galls of any one of its ingredients, without, in some degree, affecting the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... elements, 14 1/2 times as light asair. It occurs uncombined in coal-mines, and some other places, but the readiness with which it unites with other elements, particularly O, prevents its accumulation in large quantities. It constitutes two-thirds of the volume of the gases resulting from the decomposition of water, and one-ninth of the weight. Compute the latter from its symbol. It is a constituent of plants and animals, and some rocks. Considering the volume of the ocean, the total amount of H is large. It can be separated from H2O by electrolysis, or by C, ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... From the limestone? But the limestone contains very little silica, and is apparently of normal composition quite up to the vein. From the trap? This is compact, sonorous basalt, apparently unchanged; and that could not have supplied the silica without complete decomposition. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... Dyke, as he ground away at the 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 ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... 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, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... consequence of some epidemic, probably influenza, which had carried off several persons. On entering the huts, a most distressing sight presented itself. A heap of dead bodies, about seven, in a state of decomposition, lay, one over the other, clad in their skin-clothing, as if suddenly cut off by the hand of death. The survivors, from fear of infection, had left the remains of their relatives unburied. It was an affecting scene in such a remote and desolate region, separated from all communication with the human ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... into the road: which not only made it rank 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 ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the earth, as far as it has been exposed to our view in mines or mountains, countenances this opinion; since these have evidently for the most part had their origin from the shells of fishes, the decomposition of vegetables, and the recrements of other animal materials, and must therefore have been formed progressively from small beginnings. There are likewise some apparently useless or incomplete appendages to plants and animals, which seem ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... reservoir until it is ready for the action of the other stomachs. While it is kept there it is in a state of maceration; it is exposed to the united influence of moisture and warmth, and the consequence of this is, that a species of decomposition sometimes commences, and a vast deal ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... involve its own demise. The Scoliae of my experiments are not novices, far from it: they are the descendants of carvers that have practised their art since Scoliae first came into the world; nevertheless they all perish from the decomposition of the rations supplied, when I try to feed them on Ephippigers paralysed by the Sphex. Very expert in the method of attacking the Cetonia, they do not know how to set about the business of discreetly consuming a species of game new to them. All ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... and joy reigned at Naples, there were gruesome scenes within the volcanic zone. At Bosco Trecase soldiers carried on the work of exhumation, being able to work only an hour at a time on account of the advanced stage of decomposition of the bodies. Many of these were shapeless, unrecognizable masses of flesh and bones, while others were little disfigured. To lessen the danger of an epidemic the bodies were buried as quickly ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... seamed, and beamed, gave a lowering aspect to the chamber; and roof, and walls, and floor, alike abounding in old smears of flour, red-lead (or some such stain which it had probably acquired in warehousing), and damp, alike had a look of decomposition. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... although as vulgar as Verdi's is, in much the 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
... its most general form, that is set forth, including all the manifold ways by which God deals with us to purge us from our iniquity, to free us from the death which treads close on the heels of wrongdoing, the decomposition and dissolution ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... studies on fermentation, Lister saw an analogy between this process and the putrefaction of wounds, a condition which he was eager to prevent. He had reason to believe that carbolic acid would check decomposition, and he employed a weak solution of it in the treatment of wounds; later he devised a "carbolic spray," by means of which when his operations were performed the atmosphere round about ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... determinant of the n-th order, taking the decomposition to be 1 (n - 1), we fall back upon the equations given at the commencement, in order to show the genesis of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of Alcohol. The ceaseless action of minute forms of plant life, in bringing about the decomposition of the elaborated products of organized plant or animal structures, will be described in more ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... scientific publications and made objects of general and crowning interest. It was Pasteur who first successfully combated the chemical theory of fermentation by showing that albuminous matter had no inherent tendency to decomposition. It was Pasteur who first clearly demonstrated that these little bodies, like all larger animals and plants, come into existence only by ordinary methods of reproduction, and not by any spontaneous generation, as had been earlier claimed. It was Pasteur who first proved that such a ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... apparent as well as partly real; they partly arise from the actual motion of each star and partly from the motion of the sun, in which we partake, and which produces an apparent motion of the star. How are these to be discriminated? Our telescopes and our observations can never effect this decomposition directly. To accomplish the analysis, Herschel resorted to certain geometrical methods. His materials at that time were but scanty, but in his hands they proved adequate, and he boldly announced his discovery of the movement ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... exposed to the rays of the sun, they immediately enter into combination, and produce hydrochloric acid. On the other hand, if colorless nitric acid be exposed to the sun, it becomes yellow, then changes to red, and oxygen is liberated by the partial decomposition effected by the ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... 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 ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... certainly have children, it seems reasonable to suppose, according to the analogy of all the higher animated tribes, that they also had parents. The ancients supposed, that the worms and insects which appear in decaying organic matter were generated there by the decomposition of the substance, without the previous agency of individuals of the same stock. Every schoolboy is acquainted with Virgil's mode of obtaining a new swarm of bees from the decaying carcass of a heifer. Subsequent researches, ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... deposited here, there are, no doubt, some traces of it remaining. It must have been embalmed, according to the Egyptian custom, and placed in a coffin of the Indian sycamore, the wood of which is so nearly incorruptible, that thirty-five centuries would not suffice for its decomposition. The singular interest of such a discovery would certainly justify the experiment. Not far from the tomb is Jacob's Well, where Christ met the Woman of Samaria. This place is also considered as authentic, for the same reasons. If not wholly convincing to all, there is, at least, so much probability ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... be needful to make it clear that no society in which the elements of decomposition are thus swiftly and surely accumulating can hope to win in ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... customs were peculiar, although similar customs are reported at this day amongst some African tribes. The bodies remained in their wigwams until decomposition rendered them insupportable, when they were put outside on a scaffold. Soon afterward, the bones were removed and arranged within their houses on both sides in sight of the inmates, where they remained until the ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... rock crumbling with the greatest freedom. Roadways have been extensively carved along the sides of the hills with the aid of only pick and shovel. Close examination of the rock shows that layers of sediment exist between the crystal faces, either washed down by percolating rain or formed through decomposition of the crystals in place. The next illustration, Fig. 119, shows how large the growth on such soils may be, and in Fig. 120 the vegetation and forest growth are seen coming back, closely covering just such ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... mention the fact that sometimes, especially 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 corruption, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... 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 ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... result of the denudation and decomposition of felspathic and siliceous rocks, and consist of the fine insoluble particles which have been carried in suspension in water and deposited in geologic basins according to their specific gravity and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... older world," he said, "are visible in the present structure of our 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 ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... for many centuries lays waste the superincumbent land, yet, after a certain, but very long period, it is brought by human industry into such a state as to become the richest soil for cultivation: but when we reflect on the necessity of some ages to effect this wished-for state of decomposition, we bewilder the mind without arriving at any certain conclusion. When this process is duly effected, the cactus opuntia, or prickly pear, is planted, which hastens the desired event, and has the power to break up the lava, and render it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... the malaria and noxious gases that have not been absorbed by the forests, which cover the main portion of the land; and to the great abundance of oxygen exuded by the plants in return. This excessive moisture and the decomposition of dead vegetable matter is the cause of the intermittent fevers that prevail in all parts of the peninsula, where the yellow fever, under a mild form generally, is also endemic. When it appears, as this year, ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... in such quantities, in the gneiss rocks that upon their decomposition it is seen in bright ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... geologists would call "poecilitic." There are occasionally to be found solid boulders of this material, which has been used for building. But it is to be remarked that the granite found in that state is generally detached from the larger masses, which appear to be in a state of decomposition, the particles from which, washed down by the heavy summer rains, are said to add greatly to the fatality occasioned by the decimating properties ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... as the want of it on the Australian Continent. I have frequently sunk up to my knees in a bed of leaves when walking through its woods; and, often when I placed my foot on what appeared externally to be the solid trunk of a tree, I have found it yield to the pressure, in consequence of its decomposition into absolute rottenness. But such is not the case in New South Wales. There, no such accumulations of vegetable matter are to be met with; but where the loftiest tree of the forest falls to the ground, its figure and length are marked out by the total want of vegetation ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Prof. Henry B. 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, that the steam served an equally important purpose in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... absence of flames and of exhalations of hydrogen (and sulphureted hydrogen gas seems more characteristic of solfataras than of active volcanoes) is not directly at variance p 245 with the hypothesis of the decomposition ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... The film is after increased by the usual means. Knight's expeditious process consists in dusting fine iron filings on the wet graphite surface of the wax mould, and then pouring upon it a solution of sulphate of copper. Stirring with a brush expedites the contact, and a decomposition takes place; the acid leaves the copper and forms with the iron sulphate a solution which floats off, while the copper is freed and deposited in a pure metallic form upon the graphite. The black surface takes on a muddy tinge with marvelous rapidity. The electric-connection gripper is designed to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... breeds creatures for its own devouring. At one end of this row of viands was a large game pie with a triangular gap in the pastry; at the other, on two oval dishes, lay four cold partridges in various stages of decomposition. Behind them a silver basket of openwork design was occupied by three bunches of black, one bunch of white grapes, and a silver grape-cutter, which performed no function (it was so blunt), but had once belonged to a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... named M. Denet, who was a guest in the house, were seized and led away. The next day, at the end of the village, Mme. Roger found the body of her husband, pierced by two bullets. Denet had also been shot, and his body was discovered some little time afterward in such a state of decomposition as to make it impossible to ascertain the nature of the wounds which the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... is necessary 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 air ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was disposed like night-gear about her 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 ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... deterioration of its beauty, lustre, or substance, and it must be of sufficient hardness to retain its form, purity and lustre under the actions of warmth, reasonable wear, and the dust which falls upon it during use; it must not be subject to chemical change, decomposition, disintegration, or other alteration of its substance under exposure to atmospheric air; otherwise it is useless for all practical purposes of adornment ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... it. But accompanying this process of combination there is a production of heat; there is a production of light; there is an ascending column of hot gases generated; there are currents established in the surrounding air. Moreover the decomposition of one force into many forces does not end here: each of the several changes produced becomes the parent of further changes. The carbonic acid given off will by and by combine with some base; or under the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... log in her path, the water scarcely covering it. She prevailed upon two or three to assist her in dragging it upward partially to the dim light—when lo! within a saturated, slimy bed-comforter was a human form! It was brought across to Windsor, officials summoned, and, despite decomposition and fearful change, recognized to be the remains of Thornton Rush! There was great sensation, and a faint revival of whispers about his having been spirited away to his death by Popish emissaries; but these soon died, for want of breath, as ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... charcoal, and the gaseous products from heated air, result from a little water and nitric acid being retained persistently by the charcoal, notwithstanding the repeated washing, but which re-acting on the charcoal at a high temperature, coming off in a state of decomposition. In regard to another analysis of a lung, he says, "The carbonaceous matter of the lung cannot therefore be supposed to be coal, altered by the different chemical processes to which it has been submitted in separating it from the animal matter. The carbonaceous matter ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... old woman told Hugo that gangrene had set 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's unshaven face was of ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... bear through the thirty feet or more of narrow tunnel which led into the hut proper. She did likewise. In the igloo he threw himself down on the ice floor among the squalor and quantities of bear meat in various stages of decomposition. The smell from the whale-oil lamp almost choked him. The girl sat down and continued ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... 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 of plowing in ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... term elements, or principles of bodies, to express our idea of the last point which analysis is capable of reaching, we must admit, as elements, all the substances into which we are capable, by any means, to reduce bodies by decomposition. Not that we are entitled to affirm, that these substances we consider as simple may not be compounded of two, or even of a greater number of principles; but, since these principles cannot be separated, or rather since we have not hitherto discovered the means ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... moment of his death, the body began rapidly to swell, and become discoloured; the face and neck, especially, were nearly as black as ink within half an hour of it, when blood began to flow from the mouth, and other symptoms of rapid decomposition succeeded each other so fast, that by nine in the morning we had to sew him up in a boat sail, with a large stone, and launch the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... little notice. That the greatest religious change in the history of mankind should have taken place under the eyes of a brilliant galaxy of philosophers and historians who were profoundly conscious of decomposition around them; that all these writers should have utterly failed to predict the issue of the movement they were then observing; and that during the space of three centuries they should have treated as simply contemptible ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... possessing the specific virus) which has suffered a decomposition, either from putrefaction or from any other cause less obvious to ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... country. It is usually sown in March, and is fit to harvest in October. It is then pulled up and immersed in water; when the woody parts of the stalks separating from the bark, which sloughs off and undergoes a decomposition by which the fibres are divided, it is then combed (hackled), dried, and reduced to different fineness of texture, and spun for various purposes. It requires good land, and the seed is usually two bushels ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... steam is put on while running through the calenders. This gives a very bright surface for fine lithographic work. For the best coated papers, instead of clay, sulphate of lime and sometimes sulphate of barium is used, with glue or casein. Formaldehyde, a chemical compound, is used to prevent decomposition in the coating materials; and soda or borax is used to "cut" or ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... conscious identity in health, typically unchanged and unchanging—causative, designed, scientific—yea verily! and purposive, human, intelligent, spiritual, divine, but a dead corpse, given over to decomposition the moment it is bereft of that something we feel, and know, and name—the Individual Intelligence—the Master Musician; or the staggering, drunk, crazy fiddler, with this Harp of a thousand strings, twanging ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... the tree, and the nest fell, making quite a heap upon the ground. Among the debris were sticks of various sizes, dried reeds, two bits of bamboo fishing rod, seaweeds, some old blue mosquito netting, and some rags of fish net, also about half a bushel of salt hay in various stages of decomposition, and malodorous dirt galore." ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... unfortunates groan and writhe in cruel sufferings and die in agony in Japanese and Russian field hospitals, asking themselves in bewilderment why this fearful thing was done with them, while other thousands are already rotting in the earth or on the earth, or floating in the sea, in swollen decomposition. And scores of thousands of wives, fathers, mothers, children, are bemoaning their bread-winners; uselessly destroyed. Yet all this is still too little; new and newer victims are being prepared. The chief concern of the Russian organizers of slaughter is that ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... of the subject conclude that the function of the thyroid gland is to destroy poisonous products formed by the decomposition of proteid food substances. It is believed by others that it also has a defensive action against other poisons in the body, including alcohol and poisonous drugs. In other words, it is thought to have an "antitoxic" action. It has also been held that this organ has much to do with the supply ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... 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
... given by the English newspapers do not quite agree with the symptoms observed somewhat later in Ireland. "Whatever may have been the cause," says one account, "it is certain that, externally, the disease indicates itself by a fungus or moss producing decomposition of the farinaceous interior."[57] "The disease is very general in this locality," says another, "beginning with a damp spot on some part of the potato."[58] A third observer writes: "The commencement of the attack is generally dated here from Tuesday, the 19th ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... soon as death has occurred; so that, usually, the funeral services are over within twelve or eighteen hours after death. This is desirable, because of the Hindu custom of fasting so long as a corpse remains in the house; and is also necessary because of the speedy decomposition of the body in the tropics. It is also made possible by the fact that ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... bread. It is, however, difficult for the observer to admit that a small quantity of the thin yellow envelope can, by a simple mingling with the crumb of the loaf, color it brown, and it is still more difficult to admit that the actual presence of these envelopes can without decomposition render bread doughy, badly raised, sticky, and incapable of swelling in water. On the other hand, although some distinguished chemists deny or exalt the nutritive properties of bran, agriculturists, taking practical observation as proof, attribute to that portion of the grain a physiological ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... tree of 25 feet in height. If a few succeed in eluding the gatherer, they do so only to become a prey of as voracious animals, for the wild hogs, or quencos, of the forest relish much the soft substance of the palmiste when in a state of decomposition. It never happens, therefore, that much time passes before they discover any palmiste-tree that has been felled; and as soon as night sets in, they flock in numbers to the spot and devour the whole substance. A gathering of worms, therefore, brings a hunt of quencos; and the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... is old, thoroughly rotted cow-manure. On no account should fresh manure be used. Make use, if possible, of that which is black from decomposition, and will crumble readily under the application of the hoe, or iron rake. One-third in bulk of this material is not too much. Bulbs are great eaters, and unless they are well fed you cannot expect large crops of fine flowers from them. And they must be well supplied with nutritious food each year, ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... a kind of parallelogrammatic cleavage, water introduces itself into the fissures, and the result, in a sharp frost, will be a disintegration of the rocks en masse; and, if the felspar be predominant in the composition of the granite, it will be subject to a rapid decomposition. The morvine of some of the Chamouni and Allee Blanche glaciers is composed of a white granite, being chiefly composed of quartz and felspar, with a little chlorite. The sand and gravel at the edge of these glaciers appears far more the result of decomposition than attrition. All finely ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to this the shrieking of the tempest, and the frenzied moanings of the wounded beasts, and the reader will have some faint idea of the fearful scenes of danger and carnage ... the dead beasts, advanced, perhaps, in decomposition before death ended their sufferings, are often removed literally ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... 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. Your ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... no doubt that the symptoms of the Northern Party were those of early scurvy. Conditions of temperature in the igloo allowed of decomposition occurring in seal meat. Fresh seal meat brought in from outside reduced ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Bruhier corroborates the assertion that the Parthians, Medes, Iberians, Caspians, and a few others had such a horror and aversion of the corruption and decomposition of the dead and of their being eaten by worms that they threw out the bodies into the open fields to be devoured by wild beasts, a part of their belief being that persons so devoured would not be entirely extinct, but enjoy at least a partial sort of life in their living sepulchres. ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... yet, as usual, the conclusion was wrong. The years of Palmerston's last Cabinet, 1859 to 1865, were avowedly years of truce — of arrested development. The British system like the French, was in its last stage of decomposition. Never had the British mind shown itself so decousu — so unravelled, at sea, floundering in every sort of historical shipwreck. Eccentricities had a free field. Contradictions swarmed in State and Church. England ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... dressed me for de grave; but as my limbs did not stiffen, Mada Malachi sent for a doctor who placed a glass before my face, an' moisture gathered on it. He tole 'em it was not entirely cole over de heart, an' da mus'n't bury me until decomposition took place, cuze it might be a trance. An' da kep' me in de kitchen wid Aunt Milla, de cook, to watch me. It 'peared like I's goin' down into a horrible place of awful soun's an' rattlin' of chains; an' I prayed ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the sergeant of a band of soldiers passing that way with a deserter. For the offence he was followed and reported, tried by court-martial, and reduced to the ranks. This disturbance of the body caused its rapid decomposition, and the odour blown over the ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... practices 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 of the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... gunpowder or the fulminates of mercury, silver or gun-cotton be ignited in a vacuum by a galvanic battery, none of them will explode; if any gas be introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then a rapid evolution of gases will result; the results of decomposition in a vacuum differ from those under atmospheric pressure or when they are burnt in a pistol, musket, a cannon, or in a mine; where ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... social molecule. And the great problem of that social chemistry we call politics, is to discover what desires of mankind may be gratified, and what must be suppressed, if the highly complex compound, society, is to avoid decomposition. That the gratification of some of men's desires shall be renounced is essential to order; that the satisfaction of others shall be permitted is no less essential to progress; and the business of the sovereign authority—which is, or ought-to ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... connection with a material body. Viewed from this standpoint of terrestrial experience, there is no more reason for supposing that consciousness survives the dissolution of the brain than for supposing that the pungent flavour of table-salt survives its decomposition into metallic sodium and ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only,—but that one thing is worth a thousand;—they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind. If we meet this dreadful and portentous energy, restrained by no consideration of God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... considered the new methods of fixing the free nitrogen from the air. But the fixation of nitrogen is a new business in this country and our chief reliance so far has been the coke ovens. When coal is heated in retorts or ovens for making coke or gas a lot of ammonia comes off with the other products of decomposition and is caught in the sulfuric acid used to wash the gas as ammonium sulfate. Our American coke-makers have been in the habit of letting this escape into the air and consequently we have been losing some 700,000 tons of ammonium salts every ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
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