"Decompose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... completely successful; in fact, metallic calcium remained a laboratory curiosity until the beginning of the 20th century. Davy, inspired by his successful isolation of the metals sodium and potassium by the electrolysis of their hydrates, attempted to decompose a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide by the electric current; an amalgam of calcium was obtained, but the separation of the mercury was so difficult that even Davy himself was not sure as to whether he had obtained pure metallic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the tension of the carbonic acid; that is, by an increased quantity its tension increases, and more would pass in solution in the form of bicarbonates. On the other hand, by diminishing the quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, some of the bicarbonates would decompose and carbonic acid pass ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... a method of painting would seem to Seurat and Signac to be artless, primitive, unscientific, childish, presque du Louvre—above all, unscientific. They would say, "Decompose the tone. That tone is composed of yellow, white, and violet turning towards lake"; and, having satisfied themselves in what proportions, they would dot their canvases over with pure yellow and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... to the teeth cannot be too strongly deprecated: they decompose their substance, and lead to their rapid decay. Hence the whiteness produced by acid tooth-powders and washes is not less deceitful than ruinous in its consequences. As has been just observed, they perform all that their ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... The industrial development of the electrical furnace centered about the search for a cheap method of preparing aluminum. This is the metallic base of clay and therefore is common enough. But clay, as we know from its use in making porcelain, is very infusible and difficult to decompose. Sixty years ago aluminum was priced at $140 a pound, but one would have had difficulty in buying such a large quantity as a pound at any price. At international expositions a small bar of it might be seen in a case labeled "silver from clay." Mechanics ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... which was covered with the mantle, had thawed. It may be from the heat of the burning candles, it had begun to decompose with extraordinary rapidity, and the face of the young count looked indeed terrible. The enormously swollen, and livid mouth looked something monstrous, the blue and swollen curled lips had the appearance of a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that even in green coffee there is no definite compound "caffetannic acid," and there is even less likelihood of its being present in roasted coffee. The conditions, high heat and oxidation, to which coffee is subjected in roasting would suffice to decompose this hypothetical acid if it ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... definition, but it is sufficiently good for my purpose—an element is a thing from which nothing can be obtained but the element itself. Iron is an element. You cannot get anything out of iron but iron; you cannot decompose iron. Carbon is an element; you can get nothing out of carbon but carbon. You can combine it with other things, but if you have only carbon you can get nothing out of the carbon but carbon. But ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... in the experiments of Hare and Silliman, and the visionary speculated on the possibility of black as well as white diamonds. Draper, by his most ingenious galvanic battery, of two metals and two liquids, with one set of elements, in a glass tube not the size of the little finger, was able to decompose water. Faraday, of England, discovered the principle, that when a current of electricity is set in motion, or stopped in a conductor, a neighboring conductor has a current produced in the opposite direction. Henry proved that this principle might be made available to produce an action ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is a white mass, which readily absorbs moisture and dissolves. It will not volatilize at a low red heat, nor will it decompose. Exposed to a strong heat, it is decomposed, yielding oxygen, and ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... only in a passive state. Ordinary chemical forces resume their sway, and the oxygen of the air combines with the newly deposited carbon to reproduce a little carbonic acid. But this must be placed to the account of decomposing, not of growing vegetation; for by so much as plants grow, they decompose carbonic acid and give its oxygen to the air, or, in other words, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... both of which are constantly being generated there by the decay of organic matter. So both rain and ground water are charged with active chemical agents, by the help of which they corrode and rust and decompose all rocks to a greater or less degree. We notice now three of the chief chemical processes concerned in weathering,— solution, the formation of carbonates, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... treated resisted amalgamation with mercury. Mr. Skey proved the act of absorption of sulphur by gold to be a chemical act, and that electricity was generated in sufficient quantity and intensity during the process to decompose metallic solutions. Sulphur in certain forms had long been known to exercise a prejudicial effect upon the amalgamation of gold, but this had always been attributed to the combination of the sulphur with ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... at the envelope, and turned it over slowly in his hands. Betton's eyes, fixed on him, saw his face decompose like a substance touched by some powerful acid. He clung to the envelope as if to ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... it remembered, is not subject to decay; a saint does not decompose in the flesh like mortal sinners. One of these, I have been told, dead fifty years ago and now canonised, can be seen yet in one of the monasteries of North Lebanon, keeping well his flesh and bones together—divinely embalmed. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... by defective teeth, for microbes decompose the food left in the crevices to acid substances which dissolve the lime salts from the teeth, and this process continues until the tooth ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... a primary cell, as we have seen, water is split into its constituent gases, oxygen and hydrogen. Moreover, it was discovered by Carlisle and Nicholson in the year 1800 that the current of a battery could decompose water in the outer part of the circuit. Their experiment is usually performed by the. apparatus shown in figure 20, which is termed a voltameter, and consists of a glass vessel V, containing water acidulated with a little sulphuric acid to render it a better conductor, and two glass ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... all discussion of a chemical order, since it will have been made plastic enough beforehand to adapt itself to all the known facts; and if we object that sodium cannot subsist in water because it instantaneously decomposes the latter, the answer is simply that the sodium ion does not decompose water as ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... Jackson, and pondering it in solitude. Ways of rendering the electricity sensible at the far end of the line were considered. The spark might pierce a band of travelling paper, as Professor Day had mentioned years before; it might decompose a chemical solution, and leave a stain to mark its passage, as tried by Mr. Dyar in 1827; Or it could excite an electro-magnet, which, by attracting a piece of soft iron, would inscribe the passage with a pen or pencil. The signals could be made by very short currents ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... charnel house when these bodies start to decompose." Baron hesitated. "Shouldn't we get out of town while there is ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... particular state rather, of a fungus or mould. There are many moulds which under certain conditions give rise to this torula condition, to a substance which is not distinguishable from yeast, and which has the same properties as yeast—that is to say, which is able to decompose sugar in the curious way that we shall consider by-and-by. So that the yeast plant is a plant belonging to a group of the Fungi, multiplying and growing and living in this very remarkable manner in the sugary fluid which is, so to speak, the nidus ...
— Yeast • Thomas H. Huxley
... perfect near the beach become, in ascending, gradually less and less perfect, until scarcely a trace of their original structure can be discovered. It is known that carbonate of lime and common salt left in a mass together, and slightly moistened, partially decompose each other (I am informed by Dr. Kane, through Mr. Reeks, that a manufactory was established on this principle in France, but failed from the small quantity of carbonate of soda produced. Sprengel "Gardeners' Chronicle" 1845 page 157, states, that salt and carbonate of lime ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... assimilated in such numbers as of greater interest and higher merit than Dumas. To them the jackals were far nobler than the lion, and they worked their hardest in the interest of the pack. It was their mission to decompose and disintegrate the magnificent entity which M. Blaze de Bury very happily nicknames 'Dumas-Legion,' and in the process not to render his own unto Caesar but to take from him all that was Caesar's, and divide it among the mannikins he had absorbed. And ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... syenite, reposing on clay or on one another. These do not descend the hill, and are the remains of an extensive formation which we could only find in situ at one spot on the road to Myrung (see earlier), but which must have been of immense thickness.* [The tendency of many volcanic rocks to decompose in spheres is very well known: it is conspicuous in the black basalts north of Edinburgh, but I do not know any instance equal to this of Nunklow, for the extent of decomposition and dimensions of the resulting spheres.] One block within ten yards of the bungalow door was fifteen feet ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Life, or the Soul, or the Personality that uses, and that in using shapes and moulds, the body and that also determines its strength or its weakness. When this is separated from the body, the body at once becomes a cold, inert mass, commencing immediately to decompose into the constituent material elements that composed it—literally going back to the earth and ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... movement and the consequent introduction into fiction of a vast amount of new material. Fielding tells us as much as he thought necessary to account for the actions of his creatures; he thought that each of these actions could be decomposed on the spot into a few simple personal elements, as we decompose a force in a question of abstract dynamics. The larger motives are all unknown to him; he had not understood that the nature of the landscape or the spirit of the times could be for anything in a story; and so, naturally and rightly, he said nothing about them. But ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smarting, of cold another kind of pain; it is probable by this sense of heat the pain produced by caustic bodies is perceived, and of electricity, as all these are fluids, that permeate, distend, or decompose the parts ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... than not all the dirt disappears at the same time. If this treatment is not sufficient, you might replace the soap jelly by soft soap (savon noir), but you must be careful not to leave it long on the printing, which might decompose and run, and that would do more ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... the fibre are not very stable bodies. They decompose on being exposed for any great length of time to the air, while light has a strong action on most, if not all of them; hence it follows that the diazotising process should not be carried out in a room where direct, ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... believed in a God, and that she hoped for compensation from him for the miseries she had endured. She had now begun to decompose, and to become, in turn, a plant. She who had blossomed in the sun was now to be eaten up by the cattle, carried away in herbs, and in the flesh of beasts, again to become human flesh. But that which is called the soul had been extinguished at the bottom of the dark well. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... useless gas in an arrangement like this is the nitrogen of the air, which being in large quantities does act as a serious diluent. To diminish the proportion of nitrogen, steam is often injected as well as air. The glowing coke can decompose the steam, forming carbonic oxide and hydrogen, both combustible. But of course no extra energy can be gained by the use of steam in this way; all the energy must come from the coke, the steam being already a perfectly burned product; the use of steam ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... rate, whether they irrigate or not. In the East, where people are supposed to be very industrious, we have adopted the lazier way of letting the trees grow in sod; but that is not so bad if we follow the principle brought forward by Stringfellow of letting the leaves all decompose, and adding more fertilizer and more leaves and taking away nothing. In France and Germany and England, where the trees are cultivated, particularly in France, where they are best cultivated, we ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... up will contaminate a large portion of paper; occasionally these particles are so large that they reduce the silver solutions to the metallic state, which is formed on the paper; at other times they are so minute as to simply decompose the solution, and white spots are left, much injuring ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... prefer any mad hypothesis, such as that every disintegrated molecule of the lowest forms can reproduce the parent-form, and that the molecules are universally distributed, and that they do not lose their vital power until heated to such a temperature that they decompose like ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... in summer in one or two hours, and the quantity of free acid required for its formation is reduced to the lowest amount. I proceed as follows: After having dissolved in hot water the requisite quantity of cupric sulphate, I decompose one-fourth of this salt by adding just sufficient of a solution of carbonate of soda to precipitate the copper, in that quantity of the sulphate, as carbonate. I then add just sufficient acetic acid to convert the carbonate into acetate. I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... startled us with the information that we were in the execution grounds. He pointed out spots still damp with the blood of criminals, several jars containing the heads of victims, the protruding hair matted with the lime used to decompose the flesh more rapidly, and a rude cross still remaining upon which a woman had recently been crucified and cut to pieces while alive. Her crime was the gravest known to Chinese law: she had murdered her husband. Poor wretch! ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... ground, at the extremities of the fibrous roots, both of the common and of the evergreen oak. The season for gathering them is from November to the end of March, after which those which remain become soft and decompose. They are at their best in January, when the rind is black, hard, and rough, and the inside mottled black and white. In size and shape the best resemble small round potatoes, of which the largest may weigh lb., although few are of that size. They are sought by means of dogs and swine, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... of the process is to combine the "Leblanc" and the "ammonia-soda" manufacture. But in place of using caustic lime to decompose the ammonium chloride and get back the ammonia, the "alkali waste" spoken of above is employed, it being found that not only is the ammonia driven off, but that also the sulphur in the "waste" is obtained in a form ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... and went into the interior of the cave, whither Ellen followed him. There was a fire, and some apparatus belonging to Paulett, which he had used in experiments upon the decreasing water of the basin. He knocked the stone out of its setting, and applied himself to decompose it over the fire. He put forth all his skill and all his power, and was successful; the diamond disappeared, and there remained a few drops of water. He looked at his wife and smiled; she raised her eyes to his, astonished and pleased, took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... ambitious leaders were not disturbed; what they had gained was viewed by the public as a collateral gain, indirectly adhering to a higher object, but forming no part at all of what the clergy had sought. It required the scrutiny of law courts to unmask and decompose their true object. The obstinacy of the defence betrayed the real animus of the attempt. It was an attempt which, in connexion with the Veto Act, (supposing that to have prospered,) would have laid the whole power of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... no blood, no nerves, no circulation and apparently no life in a full grown feather, yet it does not decompose; indeed, it is one of the hardest things in the world to destroy by any process of decomposition. It retains its resiliency and all its flexibility for years—all that is necessary is to keep it dry. It ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... as yeast cells are not only the cause but also the product of sugar fermentation, so disease germs are not only a cause (secondary) but also a product of morbid fermentation in the system. Furthermore, just as yeast germs live on and decompose sugar, so disease germs live on and decompose morbid matter ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... mechanical power is the sun which exhales vapors that descend in rain, to turn mills, or which causes winds to blow by the unequal rarefaction of the atmosphere. It is from the sun too that the power comes which is liberated in a steam engine. The solar rays enable plants to decompose carbonic acid gas, the product of combustion, and the vegetation thus rendered possible is the source of coal and other combustible bodies. The combustion of coal under a steam boiler therefore merely liberates the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... Shakespeare altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. Elated with success, and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no bookstall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakespeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... devious, And will not come when desired. On land and on sea It is indispensable. It is without equal, It is many-sided; It is not confined, It is incomparable; It comes from four quarters; It is noxious, it is beneficial; It is yonder, it is here; It will decompose, But it will not repair the injury; It will not suffer for its doings, Seeing it is blameless. One Being has prepared it, Out of all creatures, By a tremendous blast, To ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the jars are kept in a damp cellar where the rubbers may decompose, mold may enter through ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... and so can only be found by mail from Johnny's Selected Seeds (see Chapter 5 for their address). Poppy seed used for cooking will often sprout. Sown densely in October, it forms a thick carpet of frilly spring greens underlaid with countless massive taproots that decompose very rapidly if the plants are tilled in in April before flower stalks begin to appear. Beware if using poppies as a green manure crop: be sure to till them in early to avoid trouble with ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... contain even a trace of organic structure. The powder has been analyzed for me by Mr. T. Reeks; it consists of sulphates and muriates both of lime and soda, with very little carbonate of lime. It is known that common salt and carbonate of lime left in a mass for some time together, partly decompose each other; though this does not happen with small quantities in solution. As the half-decomposed shells in the lower parts are associated with much common salt, together with some of the saline substances composing the upper saline layer, and ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Recupero, a priest, that in sinking a pit near Iaci in the region of Mount Etna, they pierced through seven distinct formations of lava, with parallel beds of earth interposed between each stratum. He estimates that two thousand years were required to decompose the lava and form it into soil, and consequently that fourteen thousand years were needed for the whole series of formations. A little further on, he however furnishes data, showing to every candid mind on what very ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... been endeavouring to decompose carbonic acid gas by light. A faint bluish cloud, due it may be, or it may not be, to the residue of some vapour previously employed, was formed in the experimental tube. On looking across this cloud through a Nicol's prism, the line of vision being horizontal, it was ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of the nature of the sunlight is seen in the rainbow. Here the sunbeams are refracted and reflected from tiny globes of water in the clouds; these convey to us the sunlight, and in doing so decompose the white beams into the seven primary hues—red, orange, yellow, green, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... unknown, By which its nomenclature came to pass; Thus most appropriately has been shown 'Lucus a non lucendo,' not what was, But what was not; a sort of style that 's grown Extremely common in this age, whose metal The devil may decompose, but ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... apparent diameter of a great number of stars was accurately measured; and Mr. Clark, of the Cambridge staff, resolved the Crab nebula in Taurus, which the reflector of Lord Rosse had never been able to decompose. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... fossils formed? Teeth, bone and wood don't last long in their original state. However, buried materials decompose, leaving a film of carbon as a fossil. This results in a leaf tracery, or the outlines of some simple animal. On a gigantic scale, this process of forming carbon has resulted in our great ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... self-condemnation? I find it difficult to think so.... You appear to me always to wish to submit your faith to a process which invariably breaks your apparatus and leaves you very much dissatisfied, with your faith still a simple element in you, in spite of your endeavors to analyze or decompose it. Are not, after all, our convictions our only steadfastly grounded faith? I do not mean conviction wrought out in the loom of logical argument, where one's understanding must have shuttled backward and forward through every thread a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of various kinds are produced from the recrements of animal and vegetable bodies, such as phosphoric, ammoniacal, marine salt, and others; these are washed from the earth by rains, and carried down our rivers into the sea; they seem all here to decompose each other except the marine salt, which has therefore from the beginning of the habitable world been ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... do not decompose normal teeth by true electrolysis, but acids resulting from decomposition of food and fluids react upon the lime constituents of the teeth ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... and vegetable fiber are used, they produce hydrocarbon gases on being heated—gases principally composed of hydrogen and carbon. These gases are unstable in the presence of hot iron: it seems to decompose them and sooty carbon is deposited on the surface of the metal. This diffuses into the metal a little, but it acts principally by being a ready source of carbon, highly active and waiting to be carried ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... factors of the implicit notion of an animated personal subject, this belief is even more due to the animal's inward consciousness of himself as a living subject which is reflected in the extrinsic form of the other and is identified with it. The spontaneous and personal psychical effort does not decompose the object perceived into its proper elements by means of reflex attention, but it is immediately projected on those phenomena which assume a form analogous to the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... suburbs. The effects of the bombardment were evident on every side. Women and children lay frightfully mangled in the roadway. At one place a whole family had been crushed by a projectile. Dead Dervishes, already in the fierce heat beginning to decompose, dotted the ground. The houses were crammed with wounded. Hundreds of decaying carcasses of animals filled the air with a sickening smell. Here, as without the wall, the anxious inhabitants renewed their protestations of loyalty and welcome; and interpreters, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Epsom. Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis, Our happy union should that compound form, Nitrate of Potash—otherwise Saltpeter. And thus our several natures sweetly blent, We'd live and love together, until death Should decompose the fleshly TERTIUM QUID, Leaving our souls to all eternity Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Briggs And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs? We will. The day, the happy day, is nigh, When Johnson shall with ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... muet de convention, a man who foregoes the use of articulate sounds for the sake of experiment as to the process of the formation of language. Generalising this idea, Diderot proceeds to consider man as distributed into as many distinct and separate beings as he has senses. "My idea would be to decompose a man, so to speak, and to examine what he derives from each of the senses with which he is endowed. I have sometimes amused myself with this kind of metaphysical anatomy; and I found that of all the senses, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... 1883 a Mr. J.B. Thompson, of New Cross, London, patented a new process of bleaching, the main feature of which consisted in the use of carbonic acid gas in a closed vessel to decompose the chloride of lime. The "chemicking" and "souring" operations he performed at one and the same time. The reactions which took place in his bleaching keir were stated by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... added little by little to rectified oil of lavender, placed on a glass paint-grinding plate, and the salt and oil are ground together with a muller. Care is required to prevent any appreciable rise of temperature which would decompose the compound aimed at, and it is for this reason that the salt is to be added gradually. Of course the absorption of water from the air must be prevented from taking place as far as possible. Finally, the compound is diluted by adding ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... mackerel, herrings, and trout soon spoil or decompose after they are killed; therefore, to be in perfection, they should be prepared for the table on the day they are caught. With flat fish, this is not of such consequence, as they will keep longer. The turbot, for example, is improved by being kept ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... exact quantities of iodide of potassium required to decompose 50, 100, and 150 grains of nitrate of silver, the resulting weight of iodide of silver, and the weight of iodide of potassium to make a clear solution up to 2, 4, and 6 ounces, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... characters are not something which you conceive apart from the words; you apprehend them from point to point in the words, and the words as expressions of them. Afterwards, no doubt, when you are out of the poetic experience but remember it, you may by analysis decompose this unity, and attend to a substance more or less isolated, and a form more or less isolated. But these are things in your analytic head, not in the poem, which is poetic experience. And if you want to have the poem again, you cannot find it by adding together ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... believed in a God, and that she hoped to receive compensation from the latter for all the miseries she had endured. She had begun now to decompose, and to become, in turn, a plant. She who had blossomed in the sun, was now to be eaten up by the cattle, carried away in seeds, and flesh of beasts, would become again human flesh. But that which is called the soul, had been extinguished at the bottom of the dark well. She suffered no longer. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... inspection the grass turns out to be coarse and dry, and many of the trees look scrubby and half dead. Except in the 'gulches' and the deep holes between the hills, the island is covered with lava, in many places of so recent a deposit that it has not yet had time to decompose, and there is consequently only a thin layer of soil on its surface. This soil being, however, very rich, vegetation flourishes luxuriantly for a time; but as soon as the roots have penetrated a certain depth, and have come into contact with the lava, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... from the contradictions and complicated pangs of the finite. The rays of light from the everlasting sun of wisdom and love are indeed forever falling round us, but we no longer bear the prism of faith which would decompose them for us, giving them such direction as they fall upon the symbolic, the relative, that we might read in their three-fold splendor the symbolized, the Absolute. The human soul was created for the enjoyment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... third universal characteristic of these rocks is their decomposition into the purest sand and clay. Some of them decompose spontaneously, though slowly, on exposure to weather; the greater number only after being mechanically pulverized; but the sand and clay to which by one or the other process they are reducible, are both remarkable for their purity. The clay is the finest ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... all these buildings should be washed every day before the work-people leave. In case any nitro-glycerine is spilt upon the floors, after sponging it up as far as possible, the floor should be washed with an alcoholic solution of soda or potash to decompose the nitro-glycerine, which it does according ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... a dead animal that is left exposed upon the ground to decompose does not moulder away by the usual process of decay, but what is left of the body after the hungry buzzards and coyotes have finished their feast, dries up into a mummy that lasts ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... failed," continued Balthazar. "You alone could I forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose nitrogen. Go ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... be fresh, although different forms of the drug are used. It tends quickly to decompose—forming a toxic by-product—and, according to some authorities, this decomposed scopolamin is responsible for many undesirable results which have attended some cases of "twilight sleep." Various forms of morphin are also used, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... chiefly famous for its pungently offensive odor. It is made from skimmed milk, and allowed to partially decompose before pressing. It is very little known in this country, and might be less ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... ink so made was found to precipitate only after a long exposure, it required no free acid to keep the precipitate in solution, and retained the indigo blue color for a long time; alkalis did not decompose the ink, and provided blacker and more permanent writing. Determination of the correct proportions of gallic acid and ferrous-sulphate was the subject of prolonged experiments conducted on similar lines to those already detailed. The conclusions as to precipitation were ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... refuses longer to bite he is killed, and the liver placed where it will decompose without any of the moisture being lost. You can imagine what a mixture it is when thus prepared, and in it the ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... portions of bread or meat with the fingers through some gap between the badly opposed and badly formed and preserved teeth. As the patient is unable to keep the mouth clean, particles of food lodge and decompose there, causing irritation of the mucous membrane, caries of the teeth, and foetor of the saliva and breath. When osseous ankylosis occurs in childhood, it leads to arrest of development of the mandible, which is small and markedly receding, so that the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... about twenty-five gallons of water, to which I add a few drops of sulphuric acid, so as to augment its capacity as a conductor of electricity, and then I decompose it by means of a powerful Buntzen battery. Water, as you know, consists of two parts of hydrogen to one of ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... views of parties who have "crossed" (Meaning to Jordan's further shore), Those, as they say, who've "gone before," But not (unhappily) been "lost"— They make me ill; they decompose My vital essence at its fount (Excepting BARRIE'S Mary Rose, But then, of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... I am a reformed young Blue Beard. Fatima and her sister may go—have gone. I have just overhauled my 'Blue Chamber,' taken down all my suspended wives, and burned them. They ended in smoke. Lord! there wasn't flesh and blood enough in them all to decompose, and they gave out no odor even while burning. I burned them all, cleaned off all the blood-spots, ventilated the room, opened the windows, and will turn it to a workshop. No more sighing for the ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... stored water, will be an important auxiliary tool in water quality management for a good while to come. This is not a form of flushing wastes downstream from their source and out of sight, as some opponents continue to insist, but a means of helping streams to oxygenate and decompose excess wastes by the same processes they have always used on natural and normal loads. On the other hand, neither is flow augmentation the end-all cure for pollution that enthusiasts of a few years ago claimed it to be. Its effect on slow masses of water is uncertain and probably ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... stockade. Now this manner of living is identically the same as that of all savage tribes which have not passed beyond the drum state of civilization, namely, a few huts huddled together and surrounded by a palisade of bamboo or cane. Since the pith would decompose in a short time, we should probably find that the wind, whirling across such a palisade of pipes—for that is what our bamboos would have turned to—would produce musical sounds, in fact, exactly the sounds that a large set of Pan's pipes ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... dispersion must be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an intense vital energy.... Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which compose it are living and ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... (b) To decompose the elements of a secondary battery, q. v., so as to render it capable of producing a current. Thus, a spent battery is charged or recharged to enable it to do ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... white flame-arc excels other artificial light-sources in hastening the chlorination of natural gas in the production of chloroform. One advantage of the radiation from this light-source is that it does not extend far into the ultra-violet, for the ultra-violet rays of short wave-lengths decompose some compounds. In other words, it is necessary to choose radiation which is effective but which does not have rays associated with it that destroy the desired products of the reaction. By the use of a shunt across the arc the light can be gradually varied ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... Great Babylon. Young Oxonians or young barristers, even when they become slashing London critics, are more harmless than they themselves imagine, and after all inspire less awe than Ben-Nevis, or than the celebrated agriculturist who proposed to decompose that mountain with acids, and to scatter the debris as a fertiliser over the Lochaber moss. But a Highlander born, who has been nurtured on oatmeal porridge and oatmeal cakes; who in his youth wore home-spun cloth, and was innocent of shoes and stockings; who blushed in his attempts to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... muscular walls of the abdomen; this never empties the bladder, however, and the oiled hand introduced through the rectum may feel the soft, flabby organ still half full of urine. This retained urine is liable to decompose and give off ammonia, which dissolves the epithelial cells, exposing the raw, mucous membrane and causing the worst type of cystitis. Suppression and incontinence of urine are common also to obstruction of the urethra by stone or otherwise; hence this source of fallacy should be ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... ternateness of action and reaction; which press, which gravitate towards a common center, whilst others depart from and fly off towards the periphery, or circumference; which attract and repel; which by continual approximation and constant collision, produce and decompose all the bodies we behold; then, I say, there is no necessity to have recourse to supernatural powers, to account for the formation of things, and those extraordinary appearances which are ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... chemist enough to explain in detail; but it is evident the effect is produced by the fibers of the growing crop intersecting every particle of the soil, which they never could do before draining; these, with their excretions, decompose on removal of the crop, and are acted on by the alternating air and water, which also decompose and change, in a degree, the inorganic substances of the soil. Thereby drained land, which was, before, impervious to air and water, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... lime, all parts of the body are rigid, with the exception of the upper margin, the stomach, and the tentacles. The tentacles are soft and waving, projected or drawn in at will, and they retain their flexible character through life, and decompose when the animal dies. For this reason the dried specimens of Corals preserved in museums do not give us the least idea of the living Corals, in which every one of the millions of beings composing such a community is crowned by a waving wreath of white ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... trisection we shall decompose the coarse unity of the question presented by Van Dale and his Vandals, as though the one sole "issue," that could be sent down for trial before a jury, were the likelihoods of fraud and gross swindling. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... substances to use in his operations; for when he was told to employ "the homogeneous water of gold," for example, the expression might mean anything, and in despair he distilled, and calcined, and cohobated, and tried to decompose everything he could lay hands on. Those who pretended to know abused and vilified ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... grains, and burrs that wound the lining membrane of the mouth. Febrile, or digestive disorders, or any condition that may interfere with feeding, may cause this disorder. In the latter cases the mucous membrane of the mouth is not cleansed by the saliva. Particles of feed may decompose and irritating organisms set up an inflammation. Putrid or decomposed slops, hot feeds, irritating drenches and drinking from filthy wallows are common causes of inflammation of the mouth ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... acting, the cotyledons, as we shall presently see, were lifted up still enclosed in their seed-coats. They were, however, cast off in the course of two or three days by the swelling of the cotyledons. Until this occurs light is excluded, and the cotyledons cannot decompose carbonic acid; but no one probably would have thought that the advantage thus gained by a little ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin |
