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Capillary   Listen
adjective
Capillary  adj.  
1.
Resembling a hair; fine; minute; very slender; having minute tubes or interspaces; having very small bore; as, the capillary vessels of animals and plants.
2.
Pertaining to capillary tubes or vessels; as, capillary action.
Capillary attraction, Capillary repulsion, the apparent attraction or repulsion between a solid and liquid caused by capillarity. See Capillarity, and Attraction.
Capillarity tubes. See the Note under Capillarity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Capillary" Quotes from Famous Books



... appear as (in fig. 72), a, granite, forming on the one side (B) the Mont Blanc, on the other (C) the Mont Breven; b, mica slate resting on the base of Mont Blanc, and which contains amianthus and quartz, in which capillary crystals of titanium occur; c, calcareous rock; d, alluvium, forming the Valley of Chamonix. I should have mentioned that the granite appears to contain a small quantity of gold, as that metal is found among the granite debris and siliceous sand ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... 12 inches long. Branches are irregularly distantly alternate, solitary or rarely two, swollen at base, dividing into slender filiform spreading branchlets; the lower branches from 3 to 7 inches in length and getting shorter upwards. Branchlets are 1/2 to 3 inches, capillary, angular and ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... sitting on the ground in a row, picking out vermin from each other's heads. We thought the arrangement was a little unfair, for the first in the series had no lice to eat, and the animals were left to roam undisturbed in the capillary forest of the last. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... to stand it on its end. The burner consists of a rectangular tin box with a top cut out as illustrated. A piece of brass or copper gauze is placed in the top. Asbestos wool is used to fill the can, and the alcohol is drawn into the wool by capillary attraction, where it burns with a steady hot flame at the surface of the copper gauze. In the corner of the can near the feed-pipe another small piece of copper gauze is soldered as shown. This covers up the ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates

... investigations. When I was not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me, by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole, in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural state ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... patch on the back of his head, and he wonders whether it is the result of age or of disease, or whether it has always been there. And his wife tells him he must call at the chemist's and satisfy himself at once. Frightful nuisance! Age! The endless trouble of a capillary complaint! Calling at the chemist's will make him late at the office! etc. etc. But then his skilled, efficient brain intervenes: 'What peculiarly interesting material this mean and petty circumstance yields for the practice of philosophy and right living!' And ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett

... you descend, you seem to go out of the building, you seem to return, twisting about a cornice to follow the curves of a bell-tower, and walking through thick walls in tortuous passages that might be compared to the capillary tubes of madrepores, or to the roads made by insects in the barks of trees. After so many turnings and windings, your head swims, a vertigo seizes you, and you wonder if you are not a mollusk in an immense shell. I do not speak of the mysterious corners, of inexplicable coecums, low doors opening ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... the capillaries, which are all over the body, that this change takes place. The blood-vessels that convey the pure blood from the heart, divide into myriads of little branches that terminate in capillary vessels like those lining the air-cells of the lungs. The blood meanders through these minute capillaries, depositing the oxygen taken from the lungs and the food of the stomach, and receiving in return the decayed matter, which is ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... suppose you stood in front of a switchboard with each switch labeled with the name of the law it would shut off. Of course, there is no such switchboard, but we know pretty well what would happen if we could shut off various laws. One of the least dangerous-looking switches would be one labeled CAPILLARY ATTRACTION. And now, just for fun, suppose that you have turned that switch off in order to ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... BEETHAM'S CAPILLARY FLUID is acknowledged to be the most effectual article for Restoring the Hair in Baldness, strengthening when weak and fine, effectually preventing falling or turning grey, and for restoring its natural colour without ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various

... soil and is absorbed exists in the soil principally in two forms: Free water and capillary water. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... be taken of the trees themselves and of the soil around the trees, which must be kept clean and absolutely free from grass. The capillary roots of the trees extending horizontally near the surface of the soil are much affected by the presence of any other vegetation, and by the collection of insects which this produces and harbours. Frost, rain, and the heat of the sun naturally affect the trees more when the soil is dirty than ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the hides with the solution of tan in close vessels, and then exhausting the air. The consequence of this is to withdraw any air which might be contained in the pores of the hides, and to employ the pressure of the atmosphere to aid capillary attraction in forcing the tan into the interior of the skins. The effect of the additional force thus brought into action can be equal only to one atmosphere, but a further improvement has been made: the vessel containing the hides is, after exhaustion, filled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... almost immediately, leaving a gelatinous thread of the cellulose nitrate which is very tough and elastic, and possesses a brilliant lustre. Chardonnet dissolves the cellulose nitrate in a mixture of alcohol and ether, and the solution is forced through fine capillary tubes into hot water, when the solvents immediately evaporate, leaving the cellulose nitrate in the form of very fine fibre, which by suitable machinery is drawn away as fast as it is formed. Lehner's ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... one stands, the glass in which he looks, and he himself are all describing those complex curves which make cycles and epicycles seem like simplicity itself. The little box contained a reaping machine, which gathered the capillary harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the comb-like ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... a sort of stylus with two silk cords attached at right angles to each other near the point. On the other was a capillary glass tube at the junction of two aluminum arms, also at right angles to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... dealings with capillary forces that quicksilver is indeed very resistant to the waves which produce molecular action, and this developed a new theory of the depression of the mercury in capillary tubes. This would tend to confirm Maiorana's claim that a basin of mercury beneath ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... delicate little species, about 1-1/2 mm. high; the stipe half the total height. In general appearance the shorter forms of the species resemble slightly C. nigra, but are distinguished by a much shorter stipe and much more open capillitium. The sporangia of C. nigra mounted on long capillary stipes always droops more or less; the sporangia of the present species stand rigidly erect. The sporangia vary in form and in the branching of the columella. In the more globose phases, the columella almost always shows ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... dangling sword, and then Father Gonzales took the boy by the hand and led him away, and Mariano trotted along by his side, quite content, save for a stifled wish that the big yellow dog might go too. And it is a gross error to suppose that a yellow dog is necessarily nothing but a canine whose capillary covering is highly charged with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... not only the heart, but also the capillary system, as is shown in the complexion of the face and the color of the hands. In moderate drinkers the face is only flushed, but in drunkards it is purplish. The flush attending the early stages of drinking is, of course, not the flush of health, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... taken to prevent the surface of the land from becoming crusty or baked, for the hard surface establishes a capillary connection with the moist soil beneath, and is a means of passing off the water into the atmosphere. Loose and mellow soil also has more free plant-food, and provides the most congenial conditions for the growth of plants. The tools that one ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... teeth well-defined and keen. The backs of these saws play against the lance. When the mosquito alights, with its peculiar hum, it thrusts in its keen lance, and then enlarges the aperture with the two saws, which play beside the lance, until the forked bill, with its capillary arrangement for pumping blood, can be inserted. The sawing process is what grates upon the nerves of the victim, and causes him to strike wildly at the sawyer. The irritation of a mosquito's bite is undoubtedly owing ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... the surface of the mercury frequently leans against the side of the tube, and does not move freely. And, also, the mercury clings to the sides of the tube by capillary attraction; therefore, tapping on the face of the barometer sets the weight free, and overcomes the attraction which impedes the rise or ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... movements to which others are sensitive; blushing, smiling, frowning, clinching of fists, natural gestures of all kinds. In themselves, these are not expressive. They are organic parts of a person's attitude. One does not blush to show modesty or embarrassment to others, but because the capillary circulation alters in response to stimuli. But others use the blush, or a slightly perceptible tightening of the muscles of a person with whom they are associated, as a sign of the state in which that person finds himself, and as an indication of what course ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... burden; who, in planning the complex organism, not only made possible greatly increased size and strength whenever they should be needed, but even took thought also to provide for the return of the blood through capillary and vein from the artery which has been severed by the surgeon's knife, is not so forgetful of ends and means. If extra work is to be done by the organism of the woman, extra strength in exact proportion to the ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... of the bodies of other animals, and found nowhere else, is thought to support the same doctrine. The question is, How came they there? Being too large, either in their perfect form, or in the egg, to have passed through the capillary blood-vessels, how came they within the body of another animal,—itself but a few weeks or a few days old, or even in the embryo stage,—unless they were created there without parentage of ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... calcareous supperation would have ensued, the gum would have ossified, while the nerve of the tooth becoming apostrophized, the roots would have concatenated in their hiatuses, and the jaw-bone, no longer acting upon their fossil exoduses, would necessarily have led to the entire suspension of the capillary organs of your stomach and brain, and—death ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... simple, rounded, and a little lobed.[169] This is not all: when the seeds of the same plant fall into some ditch where there is only water or moisture sufficient to make them germinate, the plant develops all its leaves in the air, and then none of them is divided into capillary points, which gives rise to Ranunculus hederaceus, which botanists regard as ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... the length of the tube), that the ends will be thin, and that a long length of very fine tube will be produced. To heat a short length of tube and pull hard and suddenly is the proper way to make a very fine capillary tube, but, in general, this is what ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... to the north of the same mountain there was none at 19,000 feet. Before leaving Momay; I sealed two small glass flasks containing the air of this elevation, by closing with a spirit lamp a very fine capillary tube, which formed the opening to each; avoiding the possibility of heating the contents by the hand or otherwise. The result of its analysis by Mr. Muller (who sent me the prepared flasks), was that ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... may be slight or well-marked. Redness, capillary dilatation, and acne lesions seated on the nose and cheeks, and sometimes on chin and forehead also, constitute in most cases the ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... shows the left eye and fundus to be normal. The right disc is not atrophied, but the whole of the lower half of the fundus is coated with masses of black retinal pigment. There is atrophy in spots of the capillary layer of the choroid, and the larger vessels of the deeper layer are exposed between the interstices of the pigment masses. There is no definite choroidal rupture. The lesion encroaches upon and implicates the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... such torpor or exertion, are perhaps more material than the time of their duration. Besides this some muscles are less liable to accumulate sensorial power during their torpor, than others, as the locomotive muscles compared with the capillary arteries; on all which accounts a long cold fit may often be followed by a short ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... floating stuff is matter cast off from the Gulf Stream's edge into the bordering still water—as a river eddies into its pools twigs and dead leaves and such-like small flotsam—and there is compacted by capillary attraction and by the slow strong pressure ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... of man be in the heart? Yet it was even more the love of God than the fear, that his hearers perceived that night. Simple in word and tone and manner, it was the simplicity of a feeling so full and strong that it needed no capillary tubes of speech to carry it upward. The prayer ended, and the retreating steps on their way along the kitchen passage, Mrs. Derrick came up to Faith, and putting her arms round her kissed first one cheek and then the other—then turned and left the room. And Faith sat still, with ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... neighbours? Who has dwelt sufficiently upon explaining all the ramifications of despotism, regal, aristocratical, and ecclesiastical, pervading the whole mass of the people; reaching, like a circulating fluid, the most distant capillary tubes of poverty and wretchedness? In these cases the sufferers are too ignoble to be known; and the mass too indiscriminate to be pitied. But should a philosopher feel and reason thus? Should he mistake the cause for the effect? and, giving all his pity to ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... parasitic nature of which has been demonstrated; and as regards the two last named varieties, it can be positively denied that they are capable of producing a general infection, for the diameter of their spores and filaments is greater than that of the capillary ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... rains of the summer rarely are adequate to the needs of growing plants. Some water runs off the surface, some passes down through crevices beyond the effect of capillary attraction, and much quickly evaporates. The part that becomes available is only a supplement to the store of water made by the rains of the ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... clovers are usually so numerous that they literally fill the soil with vegetable matter. This matter, in process of decay, greatly increases the power of the soil to hold moisture, whether it falls from the clouds or ascends from the subsoil through capillary attraction. The moisture thus held is greatly beneficial to the plants that immediately follow, especially in a dry season and in open soils, and the influence thus exerted frequently goes on, though with decreasing potency, for two, three ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... maintain the normal pressure, or to damming up of blood in the venous system as the result of imperfect emptying of the heart cavities. In kidney trouble the dropsy depends more on the lack of proper nourishing processes in the capillary walls and upon changes in the blood and blood pressure. If the kidneys are diseased, they may not be able to eliminate the proper amount of liquids which accumulate and finally escape into the tissues. Liver troubles cause dropsy by producing pressure upon the large blood-vessels ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... 9th of June 1776, and died there on the 9th of July 1856. He was for many years professor of higher physics in Turin University. He published many physical memoirs on electricity, the dilatation of liquids by heat, specific heats, capillary attraction, atomic volumes &c. as well as a treatise in 4 volumes on Fisica di corpi ponderabili (1837-1841). But he is chiefly remembered for his "Essai d'une maniere de determiner les masses relatives des molecules elementaires des corps, et les proportions selon lesquelles elles entrent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... thick hide. The improved process consists in placing the hides with the solution of tan in close vessels, and then exhausting the air. The effect is to withdraw any air which may be contained in the pores of the hides, and to aid capillary attraction by the pressure of the atmosphere in forcing the tan into the interior of the skins. The effect of the additional force thus brought into action can be equal only to one atmosphere, but a further improvement has ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... it stimulates the peripheral nerves to some extent, though far inferior in this respect to the galvanic current; but that when employed of sufficient intensity it superadds to those mentioned a strictly mechanical action, which consists in forcing static blood from the capillary into the general circulation through the medium ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... fumes of ammonia are intensely irritating, and may give rise to laryngitis, bronchitis, and even pneumonia. Nitric acid fumes sometimes produce no serious symptoms for an hour or more, but there may then be coughing, difficulty of breathing, and tightness in the lower part of the throat, followed by capillary bronchitis (see ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... General, "then I dismiss this parade," and off he galloped on his war-horse to the nearest Barber, who shaved his head like the men's. On the way back, he saw the Prime Minister going to Court. "May I ask," said the Prime Minister suavely, "to what untoward circumstance is due the erasure of your capillary covering?" ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... take place uniformly throughout an entire piece of timber, the shrinkage as a whole cannot be uniform. The process of drying is from the outside inward, and if the loss of moisture at the surface is met by a steady capillary current of water from the inside, the shrinkage, so far as the degree of moisture affected it, would be uniform. In the best type of dry kilns this condition is approximated by first heating the wood thoroughly in a moist ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... escapes at the other end at a pressure and in a state of dryness depending on the working conditions of the apparatus. The ingenious and really original and novel idea in this invention is this flattened tube, which constitutes an actual capillary boiler inside of which the water squeezed in between its walls cannot assume its spheroidal state, and the formation of drops becomes absolutely impossible. There exists no longer a residue of hot water, nor are water gauges, safety valves, or any other of those numerous accessories ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... circulation, as at present known. The capillary vessels, which connect the arteries and veins, are omitted, on account of their small size. The shading of the "venous system" is given to all the vessels which contain venous blood; that of the "arterial system" to all the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... said Judson Tate, "but every man should know enough of anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health. A sudden cold may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary vesicles, which may result in a serious affection ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... sensibility to touch and pain. He had, however, inherited from neurotic and insane forebears secondary epileptic phenomena, which subsequently developed into convulsive epilepsy, and certain indications of degeneracy (facial and cranial asymmetry, abnormal capillary vortices and length of arm, scotoma in the field of vision and exaggerated tendinous reflex action). Up to the age of thirty he led an irreproachable life; in fact, he was scrupulous to excess, and this, coupled ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... being overflowed, appear, after dry weather, whiter than the ground after the thickest hoar-frost. After rain the salts disappear, and every puddle of water becomes highly saline; as the surface dries, the capillary action draws the moisture up pieces of broken earth, dead sticks, and tufts of grass, where the salt effloresces. The incrustation, where thickest, does not exceed a quarter of an inch. M. Parchappe has analysed it (M. d'Orbigny "Voyage" etc. Part. Hist. ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... broader near the apex of the flame. The action of the burning candle may be thus explained. The radiant heat from the flame melts the tallow or wax, which then passes up into the texture of the wick by capillary attraction until it reaches the glowing wick, where the heat decomposes the combustible matter into carbonated hydrogen (C^{4}H^{4}), and ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... true and perfect knowledge of which I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other members, and removing the very minutest particles of the flesh by which these veins are surrounded, without causing them to bleed, excepting the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins; and as one single body would not last so long, since it was necessary to proceed with several bodies by degrees, until I came to an end and had a complete knowledge; this I repeated twice, to learn ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... calumny, capillary, captious, cardinal, carnal, carnivorous, castigate, cataclysm, catastrophe, category, causality, cavernous, celebrity, celibacy, censorious, ceramics, cerebration, certitude, cessation, charlatan, chimerical, chronology, circuitous, circumlocution, citation, clandestine, clarify, clemency, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... rushing blindfold into the matter. I've studied it with the highest and the deepest authorities—and what do I learn? Native gold is found crystallised in the forms of the octahedron, the cube, and the dodecahedron, of which the cube is considered as the primary form. It also occurs in filiform, capillary, and arborescent shapes, as likewise in leaves or membranes, and rolled masses. It offers no indications of internal structure, but, on being separated by mechanical violence, exhibits a hackly fracture. Its ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various

... covered with short, crisp wool and with black and gray hairs. Professor Brandt, in 1846, extracted from the cavities in the molar teeth of this skeleton a small quantity of half-chewed pine leaves and coniferous wood. And the blood-vessels in the interior of the head appeared filled, even to the capillary vessels, with coagulated blood, which in many places still retained its ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... of the trapper was thrown back, his white teeth shone through his immense whiskers, the wrinkles gathered at the corner of his eyes, and his musical laugh rang out from the capillary depths. Burt was proud of his beard, as he well might be. Few people in those days wore such an ornament, and those who did so ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... hole or pore so small, into which Air could not at all enter, though water might with its whole force, for were there such, 'tis manifest, that the water might rise in it to some five or six and thirty English Foot high. I know not whether the capillary Pipes in the bodies of small Trees, which we call their Microscopical pores, may not be such; and whether the congruity of the sides of the Pore may not yet draw the juyce even higher then the Air was ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... comets; and the sixteenth, to the movements of the satellites. The author published a supplement to the third volume, containing the results of certain researches on the planetary theory, and a supplement to the tenth book, in which he investigates very fully the theory of capillary attraction. There was also published a posthumous supplement to the fifth volume, the manuscript of which was found among his ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... capillaries of the liver can the blood in the portal system find its way into the large vessels which convey it to the heart, and which at death are cut off from the general circulation at both ends by a capillary system. This leaves the blood-vessels belonging to the portal circulation distended with venous blood, which putrefies very quickly, forming a virulent poison. The contents of the intestines of all creatures ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... that this sort of blindness was an incurable extinction of vision by a transparent watery humor distilling on the optic nerve. It caused total blindness, but made no visible change in the eye. It is now known that this sort of blindness arises from obstruction in the capillary nerve-vessels, and in some cases at least is curable. Milton, speaking of his own blindness, expresses a doubt whether it arose from the Gutta Serena or the suffusion of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... softer, at the given temperature, than another, probably squeezing that softer substance out into the veins. Then the veins themselves, when the rock leaves them open by its contraction, act with various power of suction upon its substance;—by capillary attraction when they are fine,—by that of pure vacuity when they are 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, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... written: "I saw old Mitchell of Brighthelmstone affront him (Johnson) terribly once about fleas. Johnson, being tired of the subject, expressed his impatience of it with coarseness. 'Why, Sir,' said the old man, 'why should not Flea bite o'me be treated as Phlebotomy? It empties the capillary vessels.'" ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... get hold of the fuel? There is a beautiful point about that—capillary attraction[4]. "Capillary attraction!" you say,—"the attraction of hairs." Well, never mind the name: it was given in old times, before we had a good understanding of what the real power was. It is by what is called capillary attraction that the ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... abundantly in the drifting sands of Saratoga County, N. Y. It has no stem or root, excepting here and there a fine capillary fibre by which it clings to the ground. When dry, it contracts to a perfect sphere, is rolled by the wind across the sand, and (according to the account given by Dr. Asa Fitch, who has had a specimen in his possession for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... siphon does not touch the paper, although it is very close. It would impede the motion of the coil if it did. But the 'capillary attraction' of so fine a tube will not permit the ink to flow freely of itself, so the inventor, true to his instincts, again called in the aid of electricity, and electrified the ink. The siphon and reservoir are ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... making a halo artificially by compressing into a capillary glass tube a quantity of the emanation of radium. As the emanation decayed the various derived products came into existence and all the several alpha rays penetrated the glass, darkening the walls of the capillary out to the limit ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... street of the little village changed its character, first to a road and then a cart path through the fields, it grew deep with dust, and, although no air stirred, it seemed to rise, as water does by capillary attraction, until his clothing was saturated and his mouth and nose overlaid with a film of it. Overhead the sky burned, and from the brown fields, which stretched to the wooded base of the mountain, heat waves rose as though the dry earth were panting with visible breath. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... what the matter of frequent cultivation has to do with water. But let us stop a moment and look into it. Take a strip of blotting paper, dip one end in water, and watch the moisture run up hill, soak up through the blotter. The scientists have labeled that "capillary attraction"—the water crawls up little invisible tubes formed by the texture of the blotter. Now take a similar piece, cut it across, hold the two cut edges firmly together, and try it again. ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... lymph spaces, especially the angle of the anterior chamber; blood pressure, arterial, capillary and venous; affinity of tissues for fluids; alterations of the intra-ocular fluids; inflammations in the eye ball; and failure of a nerve apparatus to control fluid in the globe. Classification: various types of glaucoma constituting ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various

... off almost in a second. It is an anaesthetic of nearly unbelievable volatility. It comes in little hermetically sealed tubes, with a tiny capillary orifice, to prevent its too rapid vaporising, even when opened for use. Such a tube may be held in the palm of the hand and the end crushed off. The warmth of the hand alone is sufficient to start a veritable spray. It acts violently on the senses, too. But kelene anaesthesia ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... anaemia and debility. Colic resulting from circulatory disturbances is not common. The female of a certain species of strongulus deposits eggs in the mucous membrane. On hatching, the larvae may enter a blood capillary, drift along in the blood stream and finally come to rest in a large blood-vessel that supplies a certain portion of the intestines with blood. Here the parasite develops. The wall of the vessel becomes irritated ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... paralysis of such organs as are supplied with motive power from these sources; its physiological and toxicological realizations being more or less speedy accordingly as it is applied near or remote from these centers, or infused into the capillary or the venous circulation. Usually, too, an unfortunate experiences, perhaps instantaneously, an intense burning pain in the member lacerated, which is succeeded by vertigo, nausea, retching, fainting, coldness, and collapse; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... years or so ago it was generally believed that pneumonia was rare in young children. Now, however, that we make the diagnosis with a microscope, we discover that a large percentage of the cases of capillary bronchitis, broncho-pneumonia, and acute congestion of the lung in children are due to the presence of the pneumococcus. Similarly, at the other end of the line, deaths that were put down to bronchitis, asthma, heart failure, yes, even to old age, have now been shown on bacteriological ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... does it know of those depths, of what lies therein or where? Nothing. What does the root know of the earth's fruitfulness? Again nothing. Yet both make for the nourishing spot. Theories are put forward, most learned theories, introducing capillary action, osmosis and cellular imbibition, to explain why the caulicle ascends and the radical descends. Shall physical or chemical forces explain why the animalcule digs into the hard clay? I bow profoundly, without understanding ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... all Poets by locks hyacinthine Distinguished from Lawyers, Physicians, and Aldermen, By capillary cataracts, thick as are thin thine?— Bald, sooth to say, few undeniably balder men Can be found, for the comfort of heads without hair, Than that exquisite troubadour, BALDER ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various

... bound in the finest of tree calf! It is a dishonor to speak of him as a work. He was a doctor of philosophy! He should have been a college professor! Think how he could have used his own feet for a series of lectures on the laws of equilibrium, capillary attraction, or soils and moisture! Was there ever a head that knew as much as his about the action of light? Did any human being ever more grandly bear the burdens of life or better face the tempests of the world? What did he not know about birds? He had carried them in his arms and ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen

... saturate with paraffine wax. Paper may be paraffined by dipping in the wax, or by being sprinkled with fragments of wax, subsequently melted in with a hot iron or otherwise. The tops of battery carbons are often paraffined to prevent the acid from rising in the pores by capillary ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... and injurious water, but of converting the water falling on the surface into an agent for fertilizing; no drainage being deemed efficient that did not both remove the water falling on the surface, and 'keep down the subterranean water at a depth exceeding the power of capillary attraction to elevate ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... frame-work of history, not the drapery. They are like the cold, hard, dishevelled, damp, and uncomfortable body under the knife of the demonstrator, not the bright and bounding boy, clothed in graceful garments and filled to every tingling capillary with a soul. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... prosaic the other forces—gravity, cohesion, chemical affinity, and capillary attraction—seem when compared with this force of forces, electricity! How deep and prolonged it slumbers at one time, how terribly active and threatening at another, bellowing through the heavens like an infuriated god seeking whom ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... different; a thicker, partition-less filament rises up and divides itself, generally three-forked, at the length of one millimetre, into several series of branchlets. The forked branches of the last series bear under their points, which are mostly capillary, short erect little ramuli, and these, with which the ends of the principal branches articulate on their somewhat broad tops, several spores and conidia, near one another; about fifteen to twenty are formed at the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... is a capillary tube finer than any that our physics will ever know. It is rolled into a twist so as to possess an elasticity that allows it, without breaking, to yield to the tugs of the captured prey; it holds a supply ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... conqueror in the long run. The Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... back to Earth, and return to facts. My studies in physics led me to believe that all natural forces—gravity, centrifugal force, and even capillary attraction—are, like electricity and magnetism, both positive and negative in their action. If they do not normally alternate between a positive and negative current, as electricity does, they can be made to do so. Gravity and capillary attraction, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... candidate (his friend D——), and I opposing him with mine (the ex-minister). Of course there was nothing spoken in the speeches worth remembering, but it was Dickens's manner that carried off the whole thing. D—— necessarily now wears his hair so widely parted in the middle that only two little capillary scraps are left, just over his ears, to show what kind of thatch once covered his jolly cranium. Dickens pretended that his candidate was superior to the other, because he had no hair; and that mine, being profusely supplied with that commodity ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... a good idea to soak the top edge of porous cups for about 1/4 in. in paraffine to keep the solutions from crawling up by capillary attraction. If the solutions constantly evaporate from the soaked tops of the cups, they not only waste but they get the ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John

... vertex, or becoming cylindrical, 3 to 8.5 cm. in diameter: tubercles sharply quadrangular-conical, with densely woolly axils: radial spines 15 to 30, white, very slender (bristly) and radiant, sometimes coarse capillary, 4 to 7 mm. long, interwoven with those of neighboring tubercles and so covering the whole plant; central spines 2 to 4, robust and straight, erect or divergent, whitish or reddish, black-tipped, 5 to 6.5 mm. long: flowers reddish, 1 to 2 cm. broad: ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter

... that he was on a casual visit at a friend's house at luncheon (or it might have been dinner), when he suddenly became strangely excited, but not quite unconscious. . . . I believed at the time, and do so still, that there was some capillary apoplexy of the convolutions. The attack was attended with some hemiplegic weakness on the right side, and altered sensation, and ever after there was a want of freedom and ease both in the gait and in the use of the arm of that side. To my ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of joints and many other fractures, small spaces between the grains of rocks (pore space), and amygdaloidal and other openings characteristic of surface volcanic rocks. Many of these openings are capillary and sub-capillary in size. Most rocks, even dense igneous rocks, are porous in some degree, and certain rocks are porous in a very high degree. The voids in some surface materials may amount to 84 per cent of the total volume. In general the largest and most continuous openings are ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith



Words linked to "Capillary" :   capillary action, blood vessel, capillary bed, capillary vessel, glomerulus, capillary vein, capillary tubing, hairlike, thin



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