"Decomposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smell of decomposition began to come from the coffin, growing gradually more marked, and by three o'clock it was quite unmistakable. In all the past history of our monastery, no such scandal could be recalled, and in no other circumstances could ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and hands. A remarkable effect of the Puna wind is its power of speedily drying animal bodies, and thereby preventing putridity. A dead mule is, in the course of a few days, converted into a mummy; not even the entrails presenting the least trace of decomposition. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... united in a certain substance, their strife must sooner or later bring about its decomposition, which is, of course, followed by putrefaction; in putrefaction, the impure is separated from the pure; and if the pure elements are then once more joined together by the action of natural heat, a much nobler and higher form of life is produced.... If the hidden central ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... 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 geology; the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... stratified rock, and are not features assumed in the petrifaction of any organic body. Further peculiarities of the Onondaga gypsum are very noticeable in the block, and among them is the peculiar style of decomposition by which the whole lower part of the figure is affected, as also one side of its head. Here the soluble earths, with any portions of carbonate of lime, have been dissolved away, and the pure granular sulphate (snowy ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... absolute monarch: whether by peaceful 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 are derogatory to the rational ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... wife Kali is the allegory of earth, fructified by the flames of the sun. Her educated worshippers say they allow themselves to believe their goddess is fond of human sacrifices, only on the strength of the fact that earth is fond of organical decomposition, which fertilizes her, and helps her to call forth new forces from the ashes of the dead. The Shivaites, when burning their dead, put an idol of Shiva at the head of the corpse; but when beginning to scatter the ashes in the elements, they invoke Bhavani, in order that the goddess may receive ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... on the Construction and Application of Weaves, and the Decomposition and Calculation of Broad and Narrow, Plain, Novelty and Jacquard ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... quantities, in the gneiss rocks that upon their decomposition it is seen in bright specks like ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... 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 ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... from within. Syndicalism represents an attack against it from without, from the standpoint of a doctrine which professes to be even more radical and more revolutionary than that of Marx and Engels. The attitude of Syndicalists to Marx may be seen in Sorel's little book, "La Decomposition du Marxisme,'' and in his larger work, "Reflections on Violence,'' authorized translation by T. E. Hulme (Allen & Unwin, 1915). After quoting Bernstein, with approval in so far as he criticises Marx, Sorel proceeds to other criticisms of a different order. He points out (what is true) ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no 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
... requires power to run it even to a tiringout degree. This is strikingly illustrated by the exhausted feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which, however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled brains. The brain gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses with more of decomposition than ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... was buried at sunrise, three hours after death; and so virulent is the poison of the picakholu that, ere the body was deposited in the grave, it was already in a state of decomposition! ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... potash is employed to convert the sulphate of iron 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
... reached, and much of the range they had crossed, was formed of basalt in various stages of decomposition; but in the country before them, for several miles in advance, huge masses of granite and fragments of quartz indicated a change in the nature of the prevailing rock. The position of these masses, as ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... the body was placed in them, and a flat lid to close this aperture, ornamented like the coffin, and fixed in its place by a fine lime cement. A second aperture at the lower extremity of the coffin allowed for the escape of the gases disengaged during decomposition. The ornamentation of the coffins varied, but consisted generally of small figures of men, about six or seven inches in length, the most usual figure being a warrior with his arms akimbo and his legs astride, wearing on his head a coiffure, like that which ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... of Colic is a distension of the bowels with gas, resulting generally from the decomposition of undigested food in the bowels. It sometimes follows Spasmodic Colic, in which there is first spasms due to the irritations set up by the presence of undigested matter, and subsequently this food decomposes and forms gas. I may conclude ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... few words he then informed me that he had made the discovery that the art was extremely simple, and the expense attending the decomposition so slight as ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... sound was to be heard but the falling of our own footsteps; not a living creature was to be seen. Dead bodies were strewn about in all directions, in every attitude that the death-struggle had caused them to assume, and in every stage of decomposition. We marched in silence, or involuntarily spoke in whispers, as though fearing to disturb those ghastly remains of humanity. The sights we encountered were horrible and sickening to the last degree. Here a dog gnawed at an uncovered ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... FERMENTATION.—Fermentation is a process of decomposition, and hence more or less destructive to the substances subjected to its influence. When animal and vegetable substances containing large amounts of nitrogenous elements are in a moist state and exposed to air, they very soon undergo a change, the result of which is decomposition ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... a yellow oil which boils at 150deg C. and is readily volatile in steam. Benzene-azo-ethane, C6H5.N2.C2H5, is a yellow oil which boils at about 180deg C. with more or less decomposition. On standing with 60% sulphuric acid for some time, it is converted into the isomeric acetaldehyde-phenylhydrazone, C6H5NH.N:CH.CH3 (Ber., ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... with roasted coffee prove that it is the most powerful means, not only of rendering animal and vegetable effluvia innocuous, but of actually destroying them. A room in which meat in an advanced degree of decomposition had been kept for some time, was instantly deprived of all smell on an open coffee-roaster being carried through it, containing a pound of coffee newly roasted. In another room, exposed to the effluvium occasioned by the clearing out of the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... 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, instances enough have already ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... swollen, that it was horrible to behold; from its nose a bloody matter escaped, the mouth gaped hideously, and the tongue was so monstrously enlarged that it filled the whole cavity; to this frightful appearance was added a decomposition so great that, although at the pope's funeral it is customary to kiss the hand which bore the Fisherman's ring, not one approached to offer this mark of respect and religious reverence to the representative ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... undigested portions of all the food- stuffs collect in the lowermost portion of the intestine and form a part of the feces. Here also are gathered the indigestible material we have eaten, the products of bacterial decomposition in the intestine, and other waste substances that the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... 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 to shew they ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... 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
... this is a most wonderful instance of instinct bordering upon reason. Only the Reptilia can exist for any length of time after injury to the brain; to any of the smaller mammalia such a process as that adopted by the Pole-cat, would have resulted in instant death and speedy decomposition. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Maxims preceded but a few paces in front. Vile beyond description was Omdurman, its dwellings, streets, lanes, and spaces. Beasts pay more regard to sanitation than dervishes. Pools of slush and stagnant water abounded. Dead animals in all stages of decomposition lay there in hundreds and thousands. There were besides littering the place camels, horses, donkeys, dead and wounded fresh from the battle-field. And there were many other ghastly sights. Dead and ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... consider my own trifles unworthy of such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other productions which might appear to have a more appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflections and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various
... the Vicar of Bray tap, Palace Yard; and the jury, considering the neighbourhood, was tolerably respectable. The remains of the deceased were in a dreadful state of decomposition; and although chloride of lime and other antiseptic fluids were plentifully scattered in the room, it was felt to be a service of danger to approach too closely to the defunct. Many members of Parliament were in attendance, and all of them, to a man, appeared very visibly shocked by the appearance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was guaranteed. Caesar, too, whatever may have been his motive, showed favor to the Jews throughout his Empire. Mommsen thinks that he saw in them an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism and national decomposition, and to that intent gave them special privileges; but this seems a perverse reason to assign for the grant of the right to maintain in all its thoroughness their national life, and for their exemption from all Imperial or municipal ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... were not in want of, 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 for the number ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau[FN424] declares that pederasty was reglementee and adds, Le gout des pederastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le regne desquel les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement[FN425] sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... remains, which 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 you give ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the Patagonians of South America. Their use necessarily involves that of a bow, yet we do not know of a single weapon such as that, or of one that could take its place, dating from Paleolithic times. Probably the rapid decomposition of the wood of which bows were made has led to their disappearance. De Mortillet[91] mentions a bow found in a pile-dwelling in a bog near Robenhausen, which he ascribes to the Neolithic period. Another is known which was found ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... me to have the remains placed in the coffin at once, as decomposition would begin very rapidly, and at 8.30 in the evening the men came to screw it down. An unsuccessful photograph of Oscar was taken by Maurice Gilbert at my request, the flashlight did not work properly. Henri Davray came just before they had put on the lid. He was very kind and nice. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... 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
... 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 of lime, identically ...
— 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
... or "automatic," mode of excitation, being roused into activity independently of an incoming nervous impulse. This automatic stimulation has been plausibly referred to the action of the products of decomposition accumulating in the cerebral blood-vessels.[77] It is possible that there is something in the nature of this stimulation to account for the force and vividness of its conscious results, that is ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... All the vats not filled with plants seemed to have corpses in them, in varying stages of decomposition. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... vice-presidents, and secretaries of societies, the number of which is greater than that of the social questions they seek to solve. Society on its grand scale has been demolished to make a million of little ones in the image of the defunct. These parasitic organizations reveal decomposition; are they not the swarming of maggots in the dead body? All these societies are the daughters of one mother, Vanity. It is not thus that Catholic charity or true beneficence proceeds; they study evils in wounds and cure them; they don't perorate in public meetings upon ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... 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 feast of the dead. Having these mournful objects before their eyes, the women ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... with no very positive suggestion, with no hint of heroism, none of heroic action, little even of heroic passion; just death, helpless, hopeless, pointing to nothing but decomposition, decay, disappearance, aneantissement, reduction of the fair frame of life to nothingness. That is the peculiar horror of this war. Were the picture, as it well might be, even more hideous, and did it suggest something more definite, a story of struggle, say, recorded ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... without killing it until the meal is over, so as always to have a portion of fresh meat. With its mouth assiduously applied to the unhappy creature's skin, the lethal grub fills itself and waxes fat, while the fostering larva collapses and shrivels, retaining just enough life, however, to resist decomposition. All that remains of the decanted corpse is the skin, which, when softened in water and blown out, swells into a balloon without the least escape of gas, thus proving the continuity of the integument. All the same, the apparently unpunctured bladder has lost its contents. It is a repetition ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 extensive ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... dead man does not move. Then the priest looks at this inert and deformed corpse. He notices the fetid odor that arises from it, the odor of the slow but sure decomposition, and he has a sort of sudden revelation. The scepticism which, for a long time, has been brooding in his heart suddenly is transformed into absolute negation, and addressing himself to Him in whom he had believed, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... as a critical, destructive, revolutionary age, useful only as it delivers mankind from the shackles of former beliefs, and prepares them for the adoption of a new and purely natural system of thought. During this era of decomposition there will commence the reconstruction of human opinion on new and more solid foundations; and the transition from Monotheism to Positive Science will be the greatest achievement of the race, greater far ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... THE SCEPTICS, who conduct the higher Analysis of Ethical Philosophy.—Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of Knowledge.—Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference, Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by Epicurus.—Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems in the later Academies.—Their Errors and Duplicities.—End of the Greek ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of ETHEREAL OIL, produced by the Decomposition of the Vinous Spirit by Means of the Vitriolic Acid, and differs essentially both from Vinous Spirits and Essential Oils in several Respects, tho' it agrees with them in some, as will appear hereafter: But as the Vinous Spirit may be decomposed ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner
... 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 ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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
... precipitate is formed. It was soon found, however, that other substances than amyl alcohol produce brown colored solutions with silver nitrate; and Bouvier[1] observed that on adding potassium iodide to alcohol containing fusel oil, the solution is colored yellow, from the decomposition of the iodide. Subsequently Boettger[2] proved that potassium iodide is not decomposed by pure amyl alcohol, and that the decomposition is due to the presence of acids contained in fusel oil. More accurate results are obtained by using a very dilute solution of potassium permanganate, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... shrubberies, permitted to run to wilderness. This was the summer residence of Madame Bonaparte and her family. Almost enclosed by the wild olive, the cactus, the clematis, and the almond-tree, is a very singular and isolated granite rock, called Napoleon's grotto, which seems to have resisted the decomposition which has taken place around. The remains of a small summer-house are visible beneath the rock, the entrance to which is nearly closed by a luxuriant fig-tree. This was Bonaparte's frequent retreat, when the vacations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... particles is in an impure state, and that the luminous appearance in all common cases is produced by the agitation of the fluid in contact with the atmosphere, I am inclined to consider that the phosphorescence is the result of the decomposition of the organic particles, by which process (one is tempted almost to call it a kind of respiration) the ocean ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... dungeons are located. They are in tiers to the depth of fifty or sixty feet, and are hewn out of the solid rock. They are reached through narrow openings in the stone floors of the fortresses, and when one of these horrible holes is opened the foul odor of filth and decomposition is utterly overpowering. Some of these dungeons contain as many as thirty or forty men. I was placed in a cell reserved for solitary confinement. I have never been a man who regarded life seriously, or ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... up and 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 move ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... parts of this 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
... tattered overcoats, baggy, buttonless trousers, cracked and laceless boots, and shapeless bowlers, too weak from want of food and rest even to think of work, almost incapable, indeed, of thought at all—breathing corpses, nothing more, with premature signs of decomposition in their filthy smell. And the women—the women were, if possible, ranker—feebly pulsating, feebly throbbing, foully stinking, rotten, living deaths. No amount of soap, food, or warmth could reclaim them now. Nature's implacable law—the survival of the fittest, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... is it a product of putrefaction. Indeed, in every region of the globe between the two Arctic circles there are swamps and marshes, steeping-tanks of hemp and flax, large deltas where salt and fresh waters mix, and yet there is no malaria there, although putrid decomposition is on every side. On the other hand, in the same parts of the globe there are places which are not and never were marshy, and in which there is not the least trace of putrefaction, but which, nevertheless, produce malaria in abundance. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... Comte has gone to have a horse put to. They're sending for Dr. Jouet, who will make the usual examination. In my opinion, death must have taken place a week ago, at least. The state of decomposition of the corpse—but you don't seem to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... steps to secure the wealth that lies spread so lavishly at our feet. Let us take these oysters and spread them—or at least a portion of them—in rows, so that the sun may get at them and speedily bring about that state of decomposition which I understand is necessary to enable the gems they contain to be secured uninjured. And I further propose that, whatever be the value of the wealth we may ultimately secure, it be equally divided between all four of us; for it would be manifestly unfair that Miss Hartley ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... 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, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... and a smart blow given with a hammer, a sharp detonation ensues; if 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 we have little or no pressure it is difficult to get these substances ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes putrid. When an animal has died otherwise than by slaughtering, its flesh is flaccid and clammy, emits a peculiar faint and disagreeable smell, and, it need scarcely be added, spontaneous decomposition proceeds ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... portion exhibits an evenly picked surface. The rock is a dark slaty looking tufa, the surface of which displays ring or rosette-like markings, reminding one of the polished surface of a section of fossil coral. These markings probably come from the decomposition of the ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... powerful nature, especially in their physiological effects, even when diffused through the atmosphere in very minute quantities: also, that owing to the immense number of organic beings on the earth, their daily death and decomposition, an enormous amount of gases is produced similar to those which can be obtained by artificial means; and besides these, a quantity of gaseous or volatile products, 'whose chemical nature,' as the author observes, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... however, be thought that they were without the lighter, and to us, more palatable, kinds of food. The seas and rivers provided them with fish, the flesh of which they ate, though often in such an advanced stage of decomposition as would be to us revolting. The different grains were largely cultivated, of which were made bread and cakes. They also had ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... is an equality between the heat disengaged or absorbed in the acts, respectively, of chemical combination or decomposition of the same elements, so that the heat evolved during the combination of two simple or com-pound substances is equal to the heat absorbed at the time of their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... appearances follow naturally from the situation of this place, which is a summit, and does not allow of such a collection of water as might travel or transport the loose gravel, although it has been sufficient for carrying away the sand. This decomposition of the sand stone we shall find also explained from what follows of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... 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 body ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... animal, not only to study its organism, but also to investigate 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
... the wet 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
... 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 ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... the recesses and the rest from fatigue, and especially the undisturbed sleep are essential conditions. The interferences with sufficient sleep are to a high degree responsible for the later disturbances of the mental life. It must not be forgotten that the decomposition of the brain molecules can never be restituted by anything but rest, and ultimately by sleep. Physical exercise is certainly not such restitution. In the best case it brings a certain rest to some brain centers by engaging other ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... was this, particularly in old, ill-equipped hospitals, that many surgeons feared to operate, and the general mortality in all surgical cases was very high. Believing that it was from outside that the germs came which caused the decomposition of wounds, just as from the atmosphere the sugar solution got the germs which caused the fermentation, a young surgeon in Glasgow, Joseph Lister, applied the principles of Pasteur's experiments to their treatment. From Lister's original paper(*) ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... perpetual lamps, so much celebrated among the learned of former times, said to have been found burning after many centuries, on opening tombs, are nothing more than fables, arising perhaps from phosphorescent appearances, caused by decomposition in confined places, which vanished as soon as fresh air was admitted. Such phenomena have frequently been observed in ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of this element. I might carry a fresh supply of oxygen, available at need, in some solid combination like chlorate of potash; but the electricity employed for the generation of the apergy might be also applied to the decomposition of carbonic acid and the restoration of its oxygen to ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... there was a horrible, clattering activity, a rattle like the falling of dry slag, cold and sterile. It was as if the sunshine that fell were unnatural light exposing the ash of the town, as if the lights at night were the sinister gleam of decomposition. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... 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 of sunshine give up its carbon to the leaf of a plant. The water will modify the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... certain inorganic compounds which are converted by the activity of the plant into a part of its own substance, becoming thus incorporated into a living organism. After the plant dies, however, it undergoes decomposition, and the elements are returned again to the earth and atmosphere ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... ammonia and magnesia is insoluble, and, accordingly, if at any time ammonia is introduced into urine containing the phosphate of magnesia there is instantly formed the ammonio-magnesium phosphate, which is as promptly deposited in the solid form. The common source of ammonia in such cases is from decomposition of the urea in fermenting urine. In order to produce this a ferment is necessary, however, and therefore, as an additional prerequisite, the presence of bacteria, or fungi, in the urine is essential. These ferments may make their way ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... probably, sea-island cotton would do well; a single plant of it, reared by Major Sicard, flourished and produced the long staple and peculiar tinge of this celebrated variety, though planted only in the street at Tette; and there also a salt efflorescence appears, probably from decomposition of the rock, off which the people scrape ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... before you, gentlemen of the jury, a crime characteristic, if I may so express myself, of the end of our century, bearing, as it were, all the specific features of the first symptoms of decomposition, to which those elements of our society, which are exposed, as it were, to the more scorching rays of that ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... produced soils fitted to yield the largest returns to labour; yet for this reason are they inaccessible. Their character exhibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, and in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid the process of decomposition, but the poor settler wants the power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He begins on the hillside, but by degrees he obtains better machinery of cultivation, and with each step in this direction ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... still the Sultan of Turkey. The effect of the Young Turk coup in the Balkan States was as any one who visited them at that time can testify, both pathetic and intensely humorous. The permanent chaos of the Turkish empire, and the process of watching for years its gradual but inevitable decomposition, had created amongst the neighbouring states an atmosphere of excited anticipation, which was really the breath of their nostrils; it had stimulated them during the endless Macedonian insurrections to commit the most awful outrages against each other's nationals and then lay the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... solar system, and, extending beyond this, through the discoveries of Herschel, affording an insight into the distribution of the stellar archipelagos, and of the grand outlines of celestial architecture. In physics, the decomposition of light and the principles of optics discovered by Newton, the velocity of sound, the form of its undulations, and from Sauveur to Chladni, from Newton to Bernouilli and Lagrange, the experimental laws and leading theorems of Acoustics, the primary laws of the radiation of heat by Newton, Kraft ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... singular circumstance is easily accounted for. Bodies decomposing from putridity, generate a quantity of gas, which swells them up to an enormous size, and renders them buoyant. The body of this man was thrown overboard just as decomposition was in progress: the shot made fast to the feet were sufficient to sink it at the time; but in a few hours after were not competent to keep it at the bottom, and it came up to the surface in that perpendicular position which I have described. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this direction were Sir John Herschel[373]—who, however, applied himself to the subject in the interests of optics, not of chemistry—W. A. Miller,[374] and Wheatstone. The last especially made a notable advance when, in the course of his studies on the "prismatic decomposition" of the electric light, he reached the significant conclusion that the rays visible in its spectrum were different for each kind of metal employed as "electrodes."[375] Thus indications of a wider principle were to be found in several quarters, but no positive certainty on any single ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... 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 in the cotton fibre. Secondly, I will similarly treat some silk. Ammonia escapes, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... 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. ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... Vitruvius. Since that time it has been well established, by numerous observations and experiments, that light possesses, in a high degree, the power of exerting chemical action, i.e., causing the combination or decomposition of a large number of substances. The union of chlorine with hydrogen gas, the blackening of silver salts, the reduction of bichromate of potash and of certain ferric salts in contact with organic substances, are all familiar instances of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... Abbe D'Abbon relates, indignant at this desecration, sent a terrible plague among the cattle, and when the Danes in the morning entered the church it contained nothing but carcasses in the last state of decomposition. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... stood about a dozen skin tents or Indian lodges, some with the curtain-doors closed, others open, exposing the interiors, on the floors of which the dead bodies of Indian men, women, and children, lay in every attitude and in all stages of decomposition. Outside of the tents other corpses lay strewn on the ground, and most of these bore evidence of having been more or less torn by wolves. The travellers knew at a glance that these unfortunate people ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 then recombine ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a discussion on primitive society and autochthonous races. "The vigor of a nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in remote ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both sword and censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king. To-day ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... diseased body. So far as these ailments are concerned, there is therefore a very serious element of danger added in the case of faeces to the other evil effects which are produced by an improper disposal of any refuse organic matter. That any one or all of these diseases can originate from the decomposition, under certain circumstances of faecal matters, is not clearly determined. There is, however, good reason for believing that one common effect of the gases arising from improperly treated matters of this kind is to debilitate the human system, and so to create a disposition ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... 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 ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... ocean. I am disposed to think that such islands and ranges of the sandstone were formed before the deposit of the basalt, and that the form of the surface is now returning to what it then was, by the gradual decomposition and wearing away of the latter rock. Much, however, may be said on both sides of this, as of every other question. After descending from the sandstone of the Vindhya[3] range into Bundelkhand, we ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... and Casamicciola, this tufa is seen reaching down to the sea; but, in all other parts, it is covered by streams of trachitic lava, by more recent tufas, or by a deposit of marly appearance, which is regarded by Fuchs as resulting from the decomposition ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... see no typical characters, none of those new creations of whom people talk so much. The life of the people is undergoing a process of development and—throughout the whole mass—of decomposition and recomposition: it needs helpers, not leaders, and only at the end of this period will important, original figures appear. I have just said that you will not see them. You are still young. You will live to see the day: as for me, that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... emerged, embodying the application of flame to the junction of two different metals. Davy, of the safety-lamp, threw a volume of current across the gap between two sticks of charcoal, and the voltaic arc, forerunner of electric lighting, shed its bright beams upon a dazzled world. The decomposition of water by electrolytic action was recognized and made the basis of communicating at a distance even before the days of the electromagnet. The ties that bind electricity and magnetism in twinship of relation and interaction were detected, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... "Decomposition must of course have done its work, but still there must be a something to show that a corpse has so undergone the process common to all nature. Double the lapse of time surely could not obliterate all traces of that which ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... huts the light of the sun can never penetrate, and compared to them underground dungeons would be desirable residences. Our local guide told us there were over two thousand public temples and shrines in Benares, and he might have added in every stage of dirt, decomposition, and ruin. The sights to be witnessed in them were most repulsive, and yet there were some sincere votaries there. There were rogues also, a fact proven by the circumstance that the guide, native and resident here, had ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... heaps on every side, and found it to consist of grains of four kinds,—white, yellow, red, and black; the latter colour caused by the presence of iron. These variegated sands form the basis of sandstone, and may be a decomposition of sandstone. The sand near Tripoli is of a finer sort, consisting mostly of a decomposition of limestone. There is a blue-black earth in the wadys, arising from the wood, a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... ranked as the least important of all the senses, yet it is of great value to the blind. Through this avenue to the mind come many pleasurable sensations. By it we are aided in the selection of our food, in choosing ripe and healthful fruits, in detecting decomposition, dirt and filth, and in ascertaining much that eyes discover to those who have them. Without it flowers would have no attraction for us, and life would lack many of its pleasures. At the risk of being classed among dogs and vultures. I acknowledge that I am often guided by my olfactories ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... 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 ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... 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 ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... particular, till he showed us, in one of the trees, among the branches, a large bunch of something, but we could not make out what it was. This, he told us, was the body of a chief, then undergoing the process of decomposition, previous to interment, which process is witnessed by men appointed for that purpose, who alone are permitted to approach the spot. The ground all round is tabooed, so that, had it not been for the interference of our young guide, we should ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... of the decomposition of the elements is closely bound up with the meteoritic theory. In a word, it may be said of each that Professor Lockyer is firmly convinced that all the evidence that has accumulated in recent years is so strongly in favor as to bring these theories almost to a demonstration. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... looked for, not in 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 ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was soon uncovered. It was the missing man. His face was not recognizable, as decomposition had begun, and the nose was broken and laid flat by a blow. But all the garments, even to the shirt with his name woven into it, were known to those who stood there. In one ear was a leaden ring, which, as we all knew, Niels Bruus had ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... by his labours that these organisms were rescued from the obscurity of 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 ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... possession of the Danish forests long before the beech ever reached the country, and that certain districts are unfavourable to the growth of the latter. But wherever the soil has been enriched by the decomposition of the leaves of the birch the battle begins. The birch still flourishes on the borders of lakes and other marshy places, where its enemy cannot exist. In the same way, in the forests of Zeeland, the fir forests are disappearing before the beech. Left to themselves, the firs are soon displaced ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Louis was, immediately after the execution, removed to the ancient cemetery of the Madeleine. Large quantities of quicklime were thrown into the grave, which occasioned so rapid a decomposition that, when his remains were sought for in 1816, it was with difficulty any part could be recovered. Over the spot where he was interred Napoleon commenced the splendid Temple of Glory, after the battle of Jena; ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... 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 water under ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... kind. The preacher described, with ghastly minuteness, the last feeble fainting moments of human life, and then the gradual progress of decay after death, which he followed through every process up to the loathsome stage of decomposition. Suddenly changing his tone, which had been that of sober, accurate description, into the shrill voice of horror, he bent forward his head, as if to gaze on some object beneath the pulpit, and made known to us what he saw in the pit that seemed to open before him. The device ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... been 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 ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... houses, which had been originally built of wood, had severally disappeared. Some had been taken to pieces and removed to Halifax or St John; others had been converted into fuel, and the rest had fallen a prey to neglect and decomposition. The chimneys stood up erect, and marked the spot around which the social circle had assembled; and the blackened fireplaces, ranged one above another, bespoke the size of the tenement and the means ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... 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 of ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... the walls from peristaltic onrushes as described above, and the infection that this part of the alimentary canal is subjected to because of the decomposition of food that is going on to a greater or less extent in all victims of constipation, are the causes of inflammation in the cecum. If the inflammation involves the appendix or the cecal location of the appendix, it may be called appendicitis, but the appendix is involved the same as any other ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... 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 take place. ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... 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 detail ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... 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 flavour ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... The decomposition of animal and of some vegetable bodies in the soil causes the production of one constituent of saltpetre, while the earth and the animal remains supply the other. Evaporation of pure water from the surface of the earth causes the moisture which rises ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the insufficiency of the common argument which attempts to prove that the soul—it being granted that it is a simple being—cannot perish by dissolution or decomposition; he saw it is not impossible for it to cease to be by extinction, or disappearance. He endeavoured to prove in his Phaedo, that the soul cannot be annihilated, by showing that a simple being cannot cease to exist. Inasmuch as, he said, a simple existence cannot diminish, nor gradually lose ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant |
