"Percussion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his knife, dashed at me, and after snatching my gun from my hand, stuck his knife (as he thought) into me. Then he rushed towards the captain, pulling the trigger of my gun, and pointing straight at the latter's head; the gun was not loaded, having only the old percussion caps on. (Now I saw why he wanted me to fire, so that he might know whether my gun was loaded; but the old ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... same boat. Its crew are new hands, and therefore require much instruction from the cockswain. We are seated under an awning. The guns of the Cyane are medium thirty-two pounders; some of them have percussion locks. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... invention of my own that had been manufactured by Mr. Reilly, [*] the gunmaker, of London. This shell was composed of iron, covered with lead. The interior was a cast-iron bottle (similar in shape to a stoneware Seltzer water bottle); the neck formed a nipple to receive a percussion-cap. The entire bottle was concealed by a leaden coating, which was cast in a mould to fit a No. 8, or two-ounce rifle. The iron bottle contained three drachms of the strongest gunpowder, and a simple cap pressed down upon the nipple prepared ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... senseless sword, And when it bows stands up! Thou art left, Marcius: A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art, Were not so rich a jewel. Thou wast a soldier Even to Cato's wish, not fierce and terrible Only in strokes; but with thy grim looks and The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds Thou mad'st thine enemies shake, as if the world ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... particles of air from below to above in the ascending current, or the small oblique currents that we consider as opposing by a shock the propagation of the sonorous undulations. A shock given to the surface of a liquid will form circles around the centre of percussion, even when the liquid is agitated. Several kinds of undulations may cross each other in water, as in air, without being disturbed in their propagation: little movements may, as it were, ride over each other, and the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... "Omadhaun" Doyle, who had been struck on the head by the big mare's hoof. He lay very still, breathing stertorously, and Jerry the Swell took the trouble to come over to the four-in-hand, and inform them that he thought "Omadhaun" had got percussion of the brain, and that things looked very "omnibus" for him. However, as soon as he could swallow whisky he was pronounced out of danger, and the Kuryong party was allowed to depart in peace for home, glad enough to get away. But the two girls were afraid to drive the big mare, as she was thoroughly ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... in his hand he took me to our gun-room and gave me a quite unneeded lesson in the art of loading a gun—first so much powder, then a wad well rammed down with the old obsolete ramrod; then so much shot and a second wad and ramming down; then a percussion cap on the nipple. He then led the way to the plantation, and finding two wild pigeons sitting together in a tree, he ordered me to fire. I fired, and one fell, quite dead, and that completed my education, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... and most hard-hitting type. Old- fashioned, indeed, so far that it was not breech-loading; for he had considered that if he lost his cartridges, or spent them, his weapon would become a useless lump of iron, whereas percussion caps, powder, and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the allusion to his injustice towards me maddened him. He levelled his piece, and pulled the trigger. Luckily the percussion was damp,—or else I should not be talking with you now. His aim was straight at my head. I did not give him time for a second attempt. I was on him in an instant. I beat him down, I trampled him with rage. I snatched his ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... be the true manner of holding, balancing, and pressing the bow lightly but steadily upon the strings; in such a manner as it shall seem to breathe the first tone it gives, which must proceed from the friction of the string, and not from percussion, as by a blow given with a hammer upon it. This depends on laying the bow lightly upon the strings at the first contact, and on gently pressing it afterwards, which, if done gradually, can scarcely ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... A direct re-percussion of the Rome Conference was the great meeting which took place in Prague on May 16, on the occasion of the jubilee celebration of the foundation of ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... scene of tragedy that had just been enacted before us. I remember foolishly mumbling something to the silent man riding next to me, something about the power of recuperation of youth, about the comparative harmlessness of the pointed, steelmantled rifle bullets which on account of their terrific percussion make small clean wounds and rarely cause splintering of the bone or blood poisoning. I remember saying that I had quite a medical knowledge and that it seemed to me that his son was not mortally wounded. But he knew better. He never said a ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... the earth's surface. A boy who worked a basket by means of a rope and pulley, aided me; so aided, I confined my whole attention to spade labor. The centripetal force seemed to have made me its especial victim. I dug on until autumn. In the beginning of November I observed that, upon percussion, the sound given by the floor of my pit was resonant. I did not intermit my labor, urged as I was by a mysterious instinct downward. On applying my ear, I occasionally heard a subdued sort of rattle, which caused me to form a theory that the centre of the earth ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... thus layer after layer is put on, until the whole is of the required thickness. While yet soft it will receive and retain any impression that may be given to if on the outside. When perfectly dry the clay within is broken into small fragments by percussion, and the pieces are drawn out through the aperture which is always left fur the purpose. The common bottle of India Rubber, therefore, consists of numerous layers of pure caoutchouc, alternating with as many ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... a wonder book. In April, 1862, with a fleet of wooden frigates, mortar-schooners, and half-protected boats he entered the mouth of the Mississippi below New Orleans. The bottom of the river bristled with torpedoes—kegs filled with powder, and surrounded with long prongs that rested upon percussion caps. When a ship struck a prong it exploded the cap and the powder, and again and again a boat went to the bottom. The forts that protected the Mississippi thirty miles below the city were sheathed with sand bags, and mounted a hundred guns; while a boom of logs and chains ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... alluded to. The cartridges must, of necessity, be made by special machinery, and can be supplied only from the manufactory. To this it is replied, that the same objection may be urged against the use of percussion-caps. We grant it; and if it were possible to dispense with them, it would be an obvious gain. But because we must have caps, in spite of their disadvantages, it does not follow that we should increase unnecessarily the equipments against ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... destroying hurricane, were masters in that solitude, and many long hours would pass before the end. But even thus early in the day the Germans had demonstrated the superiority of their artillery; their percussion shells had an enormous range, and exploded, with hardly an exception, on reaching their destination, while the French time-fuse shells, with a much shorter range, burst for the most part in the air and were wasted. And there was nothing left for the poor fellows exposed to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sleighs. He bought the old Whitney forge and extended the works from the production of fowling pieces to that of muskets. Large contracts with State and National governments brought a profitable business, until, in 1846, the percussion guns ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Bang-Bang-Bang they come along in a reg'lar string down the road. They couldn't see us, an' I suppose they was just shooting on the map in the hopes o' catching any reliefs o' the infantry on the road. Most o' the shells was percussion, after the first go, an' they was slam-bangin' down in the road an' the fields alongside an' flinging dirt and gravel in showers over us. "Come on," sez the Forward Officer; "this locality is lookin' unhealthy," an' we picked up our feet an' ran for it. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... gun throws a Whitehead torpedo, carrying a charge of four and one-half pounds of explosive gelatine; the effective force of this charge is equal to that of nine pounds of dynamite, No. 1. The charge explodes, on striking, by means of a percussion fuse, and steadiness of flight is secured by means of a vane. The propelling force is a charge of seven ounces of smokeless powder. The gun is pointed in the same manner as a mortar, and fired in the same manner as a field-piece. ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... Jews soon discovered that ten cents would buy a pound of cotton behind our army; that four cents would take it to Boston, where they could receive thirty cents in gold. The bait was too tempting, and it spread like fire, when here they discovered that salt, bacon, powder, fire-arms, percussion-caps, etc., etc., were worth as much as gold; and, strange to say, this traffic was not only permitted, but encouraged. Before we in the interior could know it, hundreds, yea thousands of barrels of salt ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... literary whips of Paris famous for their rhetorical tips and the sting there is in them? What French writer ever goaded his adversary with the belly of his lash, like the Germans and the English, when he could blister him with its silken end, and the percussion of wit be ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... tendencies of this temperament may be restrained. Solid food should be substituted for a watery diet. If it be limited in quantity, this change will not only diminish the size, but increase the strength of the body. The body should be disciplined by daily percussion until the imperfectly constructed cells, which are too feeble to resist this treatment, are broken and replaced by those more hardy and enduring. Add to this treatment brisk, dry rubbing, calisthenic exercises, and daily walks, which should be ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... from the brain of man, I know of few which unite more ingenuity, utility, and simplicity than that of M. Martin (gun-maker at No. 36, Rue Phelippeaux), relative to the improvement of every description of gun that is impelled by percussion. According to the system he has introduced, and for which he has obtained a patent, all the inconvenience to which the sportsman is subjected in priming is entirely obviated, as instead of having to place the percussion cap with one's fingers, so disagreeable in very cold weather, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... balls, bullets, pikes, swords, boarding caps (always excepting the quantity of the said articles which may be necessary for the defense of the ship and those who compose the crew), saddles, bridles, cartridge-bag material, percussion and other caps, clothing adapted for uniforms, sailcloth of all kinds, hemp and cordage, intoxicating drinks other than beer and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... celestial wonders observed and published by the Tuscan astronomer. Though blind and nearly deaf, Galileo retained to the last his intellectual powers; and his friend and pupil, the celebrated Torricelli, was employed in arranging his thoughts on the nature of percussion, when he was attacked by his last illness. He died ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... agreed that should Klutchem demand protection of the police, and the colonel be hauled up for violating the law of the State, I should go bail and Fitz employ the lawyer, when we were startled by a sound like the snap of a percussion-cap, followed by loud talking in the ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... carting electric batteries (which of necessity for quickness have to be kept charged) in wagons or limbers over rocks and bad roads, and with continual loading and off-loading, becomes a trouble and anxiety to one. So for active service I should certainly recommend that percussion firing should be regarded as the first and principal method to be used with guns on the move, carrying also the electric gear for use if guns are left for any time at fixed spots as guns of position. I may here remark that when firing ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... the little front room, the oaken window-sill bright with fuchsias and geraniums, the walls adorned with an old eight-day clock, a copper warming-pan and antique trays, while over the mantel-piece was a small fowling piece, years ago reduced from flint to percussion. Upon the rafters there were half a side of bacon, bunches of dried sweet herbs, and the traditional strings of onions. The pictures consisted of four highly coloured prints of celebrated race-horses, long ago buried and forgotten. It was in this cottage ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... end. On the upper end there was a spring trigger, which was held by a light iron cross bar, ingeniously attached to the longitudinal bar, so arranged that from the lightest touch it would fall off, letting the trigger fall on the upper part of the torpedo, striking a percussion cap immediately underneath it in the powder chamber, thus ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... promenade deck she saw Courtenay, Tollemache, and Walker deep in consultation. They were arranging a percussion fuse of fulminating mercury. While she was watching them, Walker dropped a broken furnace bar on top of a small package placed on an iron block. Instantly there was a sharp report, and Joey, who was an interested ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... initiative during all those years when his authority was supreme. The floggings which broke a man's spirit and self-respect, the leathern stock which hampered his movements, all the old traditional regime found a champion in him. On the other hand, he strongly opposed the introduction of the percussion cap as opposed to the flint and steel in the musket. Neither in war nor in politics did he rightly ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have before mentioned brought a double-barrelled percussion gun for my inspection, and requested that I would test its qualities on some pigeons that were flying about; I was fortunate enough to bring down a couple on the wing, but was somewhat mortified to ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... principles of syllabication in poetry as in prose; the supposition that accent pertains not to certain letters in particular, but to certain syllables as such; the limitation of accent to stress, or percussion, only; the conversion of short syllables into long, and long into short, by a change of accent; our frequent formation of long syllables with what are called short vowels; our more frequent formation of short syllables with what are called long or open vowels; the necessity ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Caps.—The inventor of percussion caps is not known, but we read of them as being made here as early as 1816, though they were not introduced into "the service" until 1839. The manufacture of these articles has several times led to great loss of life among the workers, notes of which will be found under the head ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... following, and nearly keeping pace with us, we were in great fear lest it should break upon and overwhelm us, if not carefully avoided. Our commander, therefore, as it approached nearer and nearer, ordered one of the ship's guns to be fired, to try if the percussion of the air would disperse it. This was no sooner done than we heard a prodigious flounce in the water, at but a small distance from the ship, on the weather-quarter; and after a violent noise, or cry in the air, the cloud, that upon our firing dissipated, seemed to return again, but by degrees ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... Percussion. Stock originally full length, but has been shortened 11-1/2 inches. Brass mounts and long brass patch-box. Ramrod missing. ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... "Kammuk!"—"The Devil!"—and gave themselves up for lost. My hearty laughter finally reassured them, and made them a little ashamed of their momentary panic; but from that time forward they handled tin cans as if they were loaded percussion shells, and could never again be induced to taste a ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... evening which followed this there was a great ringing of bells in Casterbridge, and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and leather bands played round the town with more prodigality of percussion-notes than ever. Farfrae was Mayor—the two-hundredth odd of a series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles I—and the fair Lucetta was the courted of the town....But, Ah! the worm i' the bud—Henchard; what ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of application. First—Rubbing, to stimulate the skin to action. Second—Rolling, and pinching gently, also a kneading movement, used principally to stimulate. the stomach, bowels, and muscular tissues. Third—Percussion, or tapping with the ends of the fingers, softly-most effiacious in stimulating the action ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... speech was sharp. He did not spill over on every occasion. He had no little spurts of wit like a spatter of water on a hot stove, but when he let out his joke it went off like a percussion cap. The attention of the company being secured, he alluded to his present position as a change, he believed, for the better—from his former relation to society when he was preaching against, to the present time when he ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but the crack and flash of a percussion-cap. The countenance with which the pines regarded her began insensibly to change; the grass too, short as it was, and the whole winding staircase of the brook's course, began to wear a solemn freshness of appearance. And this slow transfiguration reached ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... barrels of gunpowder, there was on board several hundredweight of highly explosive percussion powder. The brig was about three miles ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... diseased,—most of them very bad cases,—indeed, extreme cases. That left eight heads, which were not condemned, because not appearing to be diseased. Here I remark, that when this disease is under the shoulder-blade, it cannot be detected by percussion. The physicians did not say that the animal was not diseased, but that they did not see sufficient evidence upon which to condemn. Such animals were to be paid for, upon the ground of their not appearing to be diseased. Nevertheless, it is proper to state that the remaining eight ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... an inclination of the head which resembled nothing so much as a hammer which much percussion upon an anvil has wrought ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... French hand grenade, fitted with percussion primer; and it lay last at the end of a long row of similar grenades along the shaded side ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... resonance in the use of the voice is still too little recognized, though obvious enough in the construction of musical instruments. With the exception of a few instruments of percussion, all musical instruments possess three elements,—a motor, a vibrator, and a resonator. The violin has the moving bow for a motor, the strings for a vibrator, and the hollow body for a resonator. The French horn has the lungs of the performer ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... time, often for several years, the deposit of any tubercular matter. During all this time an expert examiner can detect the slight but very significant changes already taking place in the pulmonary organs. Physicians determine the condition of the lungs chiefly through the sounds elicited by percussion of the chest walls by the end of the middle finger, or a small rubber hammer adapted to the purpose, and by those produced by the respired air rushing in to and out of the bronchial tubes and air vesicles. The percussion sounds yielded by the chest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... exploding by contact or time fuse. Grenades may be divided roughly into two classes—1, hand grenades, and 2, rifle grenades, and each of these classes may be subdivided as regards means of explosion, into 1, time fuse, or 2, percussion grenades. ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... that all who used liquor in this world would suffer eternal torment in the next; he advocated a return to pristine habits and customs, counseling the tribes "to throw away their flints and steels, and resort to their original mode of obtaining fire by percussion. He denounced the woolen stuffs as not equal to skins for clothing; he commended the use of the bow and arrow. As to inter-marriage between the races, all this was prohibited. The two races were distinct and must remain so. Neither could there ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... tramped on, splashing through water-pools and along rutty tracks ploughed up by the wheels of gun carriages, I heard the deeper, more sonorous booming of different guns, followed by a percussion of the air as though great winds were rushing into void spaces. These strange ominous sounds were caused by the heavy pieces which the enemy had brought up to the heights above the marshlands of the Aisne—the terrible 11-inch guns which outranged all pieces in the French or British lines. With that ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... troublesome uvula cut out, was detained at the Cape nearly two months after his family left. He was so distrusted by the authorities that they would hardly sell powder and shot to him, and he had to fight a battle that demanded all his courage and perseverance for a few boxes of percussion-caps. At the last moment, a troublesome country postmaster, to whom he had complained of an overcharge of postage, threatened an action against him for defamation of character, and, rather than be further detained, deep in debt though he was, Livingstone had to pay him a considerable ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... blacksmith,—all trades and occupations have been employed. There are saddles, bridles, knapsacks, canteens, dippers, plates, knives, stoves, kettles, tents, blankets, medicines, drums, swords, pistols, guns, cannon, powder, percussion-caps, bullets, shot, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... intended for the armies of the Confederate States, then in arms against the Federal Government. What is the reason, our Government asked, that these gentle and unwarlike inhabitants of the Bahamas have so suddenly developed such an enormous appetite for percussion caps, rifles, cannon, and other instruments of warfare? The answer, of course, lay upon the surface; the cargoes were intended for reshipment into the Southern States, and they were, in fact, immediately so reshipped. The American ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... an inner pocket of his coat a gunmetal cigarcase. He pressed a spring, and the lid flew open. Inside were four cigar shaped cylinders, each studded with a number of tiny knobs. He withdrew a cylinder, and from a small cup in its base obtained six percussion caps, which he proceeded to adjust on the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... on the 7th of July, reluctantly satisfied that Sir John Franklin had not been buried in that vicinity. The minuteness of our search will appear in the number of exploded percussion caps, shot, and other small articles that were found in various places. The Inuits who were with us evinced a most remarkable interest in our labors, and with their eagle eyes were ever finding things that would have escaped our attention. Everything ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... illustration we see some remarkable types: two scrapers or knives with strongly marked "bulb of percussion" (the spot where the flint-knapper struck and from which the flakes flew off), a very regular coup-de-poing which looks almost like a large arrowhead, and on the right a much weathered and patinated scraper which must ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... for it weighed, all complete and including the shoulder strap, less than six pounds. It had a plain blue cylindrical barrel, gauged to take a half-inch spherical bullet with three drachms of powder, was fitted with a nipple for percussion caps, and provided with a fixed sight for a range of one hundred yards and two flap sights for two hundred and five hundred yards respectively, the latter being regarded in those days as an exceptionally long range. Also, with a normal pull upon the trigger of six ounces, it was fitted ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... silk banners such as the Khalifa carried during the action, and thousands of native spears, swords, and shields. In short, it would be easier to tell what was not in that extraordinary storehouse than what was. Among other articles I saw were: Ivory, powder, percussion caps, old lead, copper, tin, bronze, cloth, looms, pianos, sewing machines, agricultural implements, boilers, steam-engines, ostrich feathers, gum, hippopotamus hides, iron and wooden bedsteads, drums, bugles, field glasses—Lieutenant Charles ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... when the gunners promised to destroy a new work erected by the Huns in front of their lines. They were heavily handicapped at the outset by the necessity of employing percussion shrapnel against a strong breastwork. But even when allowances were made, it seemed unnecessary that their first shell, a premature, should burst in the trees far behind on the Messines road, that the second should ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... propelled from a mortar. It consisted of a 4-inch cartridge case filled with a high explosive and also containing metal such as boiler punchings, nails, etc. (in one case gramophone needles were discovered), and provided with a percussion cap. It was fitted to a stick about two inches thick and five feet long. Its descent into our lines or support area was almost vertical—hence no cover then available was proof against it. Its effect was very destructive and its toll ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... out, in contrast, the musical quality of the drum. This may seem somewhat strange, accustomed as we are to think of the drum as a purely rhythmical instrument. The sounds given out by it seem at best vague in tone and more or less uniform in quality. We forget that all instruments of percussion, as they are called, are direct descendants of the drum. The bells that hang in our church towers are but modifications of the drum; for what is a bell but a metal drum with one end left open and the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... probity which the crisis developed was the revival of efforts to procure arms. The peasantry, farmers, town-population—all of every rank—sought to possess themselves of weapons of war, especially firearms. The demand for powder and percussion-caps was as eager as for weapons. Birmingham was kept busy; every hand in the gun-making trades there was employed; Sheffield was also labouring at sword cutlery, and in the manufacture of daggers and bayonets; while the smithies ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of which might almost have satisfied a Berlioz. The department of instrumental music not only comprised sections for the usual keyed, stringed, and wind instruments, but also one for instruments of percussion. Solo and choral singing were to be taught with special regard to dramatic expression. Besides these and the theoretical branches of music, the curriculum included dancing, Polish literature, French, and Italian. After reading the programme ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... single causes. They may (first) be discovered as separate sequences, by separate sets of instances. One set of observations or experiments shows that the sun is a cause of heat, another that friction is a source of it, another that percussion, another that electricity, another that chemical action is such a source. Or (secondly) the plurality may come to light in the course of collating a number of instances, when we attempt to find some circumstance in which ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the Council Office yesterday on another patent case, a gun—Baron Heurteloup, the famous lithotritic doctor and inventor—which was clicked off for the information of their Lordships. Since this Patent Bill, we have got very noisy between percussion guns and pianofortes. I walked away with Lyndhurst to hear what he had to say. He said that he understood Peel was come to town with the intention of being very active, but that the Duke talked of staying at Strathfieldsaye till after Easter; and if the Duke did not attend ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Mitchell examined Mr. P.D. The patient was sallow and emaciated, and coughed every few moments. He had night-sweats, nervous twitching, and slight dulness on percussion at the apex of the right lung, with prolonged expiration and roughened inspiration, and some ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... fabricated a percussion cap. In default of fulminate, he could easily obtain a substance similar to guncotton, since he had azotic acid at his disposal. This substance, pressed in a cartridge, and introduced among the nitro-glycerine, would burst by means of a fuse, and ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... purposes, and in guns and ammunition. The guns would have moved any modern explorer to merriment; but such as they were I managed to do a good deal of execution with them. One of them was a single-barrelled, smooth bore, fitted for percussion caps—a roer we called it—which threw a three-ounce ball, and was charged with a handful of coarse black powder. Many is the elephant that I killed with that roer, although it generally knocked me backwards when I fired it, which I only did under compulsion. ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... such fool. He is a mighty poor shot—and he knows it. Personally I believe he shuts both eyes before pulling trigger. He is armed with a long flint or percussion lock musket, whose gas-pipe barrel is bound to the wood that runs its entire length by means of brass bands, and whose effective range must be about ten yards. This archaic implement is known as a "trade gun" and has the single merit of never getting out of order. Furthermore ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... diabolic as ever; his voice was as rasping; his callous face, with the skin drawn tense as a drum-head, had no flesh to lose. A flush on his prominent cheek bones each afternoon hinted that a clinical thermometer might have revealed a symptom, and percussion might have established the fact that McGuire was breathing with only one lung, but ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... rifle; but he had apparently given this no thought, and now stepped out, flushed and determined. About his shoulders swung a bullet pouch and powder horn. He loaded the piece, carefully cutting a patch for the ball; then from his waistcoat pocket drew forth a small tin box of percussion caps, fitted one of these, and ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... respects from that to which we are accustomed, the wood-wind being strengthened by a quartet of Firbolg flutes and two Fodlaphones, while the brass is reinforced by a bass bosthoon, an instrument of extraordinary depth and sonority, and the percussion by a group of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... in to-night with a wound in the hand and shoulder from a shell which killed eleven of his men, and another who went to see four of his platoon in a house at the exact moment when a percussion shell went on the same errand; the whole house sat down, and the ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Lawrence, who, in opening her work-basket, accidentally let fall a small pistol. She smiled and blushed, and presently acknowledged, that, when she had first pulled the trigger experimentally, six months before, she had shut her eyes and screamed, although there was only a percussion-cap to explode. Yet it afterwards appeared that she was one of the few women who remained in their houses, to protect them by their presence, when the town was entered by the Missourians,—and also one of the still smaller number who brought their rifles to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... percussion-caps, and rusty nails and tools, if neglected, often lead to serious results from blood-poisoning. A hot flaxseed poultice may be needed for several days. Keep such wounds clean by washing or syringing them twice a day with hot antiseptics, which are poisons ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... method was based upon the absolutely correct system (which even at the present time is misunderstood by some German orchestras) of spreading the string quartette over the whole orchestra. This system further consisted in preventing the brass and percussion instruments from culminating in one point (and drowning each other) by dividing them on both sides, and by placing the more delicate wind instruments at a judicious distance from each other, thus forming a chain between the violins. Even some great and celebrated orchestras of the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... facilities of transport; for this city can boast of a navigable river and a canal, besides being situated on a central railroad. Colonel Rains said, that although the Southerners had certainly been hard up for gunpowder at the early part of the war, they were still harder up for percussion caps. An immense number (I forget how many) of these are now made daily in ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... of those towers and arches is matter of absolute certainty from the details. That they should have been built before the Conquest is as unlikely as, say, that the rustiest old gun with a percussion lock should be older than ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... it may be necessary to remove the shoes and practise percussion and pressure over the region of the sole. In some forms of lameness it may be necessary to destroy the sensation in the foot by injecting cocaine along the course of the nerves that supply the foot before arriving at ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... music than the percussion of hands, a man would execute a pas seul, which it is to be presumed he enjoyed. Again, with a riper and better sense of musical methods, the performer accompanied himself, or, as in this case it usually was, herself, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... reveal the main points of our system of diagnosis, which is much broader than the old system of scholastic medicine,—the performance with auscultation, percussion, X rays and the rest. Certain knowledge of these things will lead every one, ere long, to submit all disturbances of health to the hygienic physician while prevention is still probable and possible, instead of waiting until disease has taken firm hold. It will also enable men to realize ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... have a form; he is amorphous—is baronial in the highest degree. His stupendous chest seems to be a huge cavern for the secretion of gutturals, which are discharged as heavy artillery at a hint from some unseen percussion-cap within. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... I play upon an instrument of percussion I admire that other percussive machine of wood and wire, the piano, or consider ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... North could draw arms and ammunition and all the requisites of war from the markets of Europe. Foundries were accordingly established for the manufacture of artillery, and factories for muskets, ammunition, and percussion caps. The South had, in fact, to manufacture everything down to the cloth for her soldiers' uniforms and the leather for their shoes; and, as in the past she had relied wholly upon the North for such goods, it was for a time ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... beneath me. A crash like thunder accompanied it. I rose quickly, covered with dust. A glance explained the whole. The enemy had directed a gun upon the tempting group over which the flag rose, and the percussion-shell had fallen and burst in ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the academy of Mr. Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency, in case of his finding genial companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small box of percussion-caps; not that there was anything particular to be done with them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his familiarity with guns. Thus poor Tom, though he saw very clearly through Maggie's illusions, was not without illusions of his own, which were to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... no fracture,' said Sidonia, placing her on a sofa, 'nor does it appear to me that the percussion of the head, though considerable, could have been fatally violent. I have caught her pulse. Keep her in a horizontal position, and she ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... facility which nearly all the young musicians have in the same degree that all pianists have finger technic. His orchestral stream is muddy; his effects generally crass and empty of euphony. He throws the din of outlandish instruments of percussion, a battery of gongs, big and little, drums and cymbals, into his score without achieving local color. Once only does he utilize it so as to catch the ears and stir the fancy of the listeners—in the beginning of the second act, where there is a murmur of real Japanese melody. As ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 1816 a French physician, Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, achieved undying fame by publishing to the world an account of his labors in the application of mediate auscultation and of percussion to the diagnosis of the diseases of the chest. It is true that no less a personage than the "Father of Medicine," Hippocrates, is reputed to have practised succussion as a means of diagnosis; that is, the shaking of a patient, as one would shake a cask, to ascertain ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... into the sap, and I've had it put into the fire-trench. I'm taking it back to blow it up. I think it's a percussion fuse, but it seems fairly safe. I've sent for a ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... admired our clothes extremely,* [All Tibetans admire sad value English broad-cloth beyond any of our products. Woollen articles are very familiar to them, and warm clothing is one of the first requisites of life.] and then my percussion gun, the first he had seen; but above all he admired rum and water, which he drank with intense relish, leaving a mere sip for his comrades at the bottom of his little wooden cup, which they emptied, and afterwards licked clean, and replaced in his breast for him. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... this arrangement would not be great if it depended merely on the hydrostatic pressure of the waves, since this under favorable circumstances would not be more than that of a column of water twenty feet high, giving a pressure of about ten pounds to the square inch. The effect, however, of the percussion might add considerably to this, though the latter would be confined in effect to a single instance. In regard to the practical result from this arrangement, which was continued in operation for several years, it was found not to obviate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... rearward end given over to a stove, a table, and two bunks. In this place Thompson and Joe Lamont plied their traffic. MacLeod sent them Indian and half-breed trappers bearing orders for so much flour, so much tea, so many traps, so much powder and ball and percussion caps for their nigh obsolete guns. They took their "debt" and departed into the wilderness, to repay ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the count, "has fifty thousand stand of arms to sell. With them he has three million percussion-caps and three million cartridges. His price for the whole is—" he paused there and waited, looking ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... impatience. And yet we dare not make known the condition of the army,—the awful fact which may be stated here—and will not be known until after-years,—that we have not enough ammunition at Manassas to fight a battle. There are not percussion caps enough in our army for a serious skirmish. It will be obviated in a few weeks; and until then I pray there may be no battle. But if the enemy advance, our brave men will give them the cold steel. We must ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the Dutchmen, but they were soon returned with interest. Though the enemy used smokeless explosives, their battery was revealed by the yellow flash of the guns in the purple shadow of the hill. These guns were worked with marvellous accuracy, but, fortunately, many of the shells—fired with percussion fuses—dug deep into the sand before bursting. The Volunteer Battery found their own guns so inferior to those of the enemy that there was little chance of silencing them, and General French, seeing there was no question of occupying Elandslaagte ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... overwhelming force. The guns from the battlements crashed out anew, and although their fire was not nearly so accurate as that from the rebel pieces, yet, in the long run, weight of metal was bound to tell; and, while the shot was solid and had not therefore the devastating effect of the percussion shell fired from the war-ships, it began to be apparent that some of them at least were getting home, and that their effect was already becoming very galling to the rebels. The latter, now harassed almost beyond endurance by the combined fire of the fort and the ships, brought up, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... k and the g forms, making a slight percussion in the back of the mouth. Finish clearly all ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... a time when the Delaware was filled with British shipping, that Bushnell set adrift upon its swift-flowing tide a number of small kegs, filled with gunpowder, and provided with percussion apparatus, so that contact with any object would explode them. The kegs were started on their voyage at night. But Bushnell had miscalculated the distance they had to travel; so that, instead of reaching the British fleet under cover of darkness, they arrived early ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... to forgive me for taking precedence of him, for his art had already attained a state of perfection while ours was still lisping on a feeble tibia to the ill-balanced accompaniment of some more sonorous instrument of percussion. It was all we had to offer at the time, but I am sure that since then we have steadily improved. But even then we were accustomed to ring up the curtain, and so I look upon myself as a mere overture ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... in one sense far more ancient than man, and the voice was from the very commencement of human existence a source of melody: but so far as musical instruments are concerned, it is probable that percussion came first, then wind instruments, and lastly, those with strings: first the Drum, then the Flute, and thirdly, the Lyre. The early history of Music is, however, unfortunately wrapped in much obscurity. The use of letters long preceded the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the Attorney- General for Ireland. Inquire of that honourable and learned gentleman, whose last public act was to cast aside the grey goose- quill, an article of agricultural produce, and take up the pistol, which, under the system of percussion locks, has not even a flint to connect it with farming. Or put the question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... find 'T war n't I sheered most in makin' up my mind; 'T wuz this an' thet an' t' other thing thet done it, Sunthin' in th' air, I could n' seek nor shun it. Mos' folks go off so quick now in discussion, All th' ole flint locks seems altered to percussion, Whilst I in agin' sometimes git a hint Thet I 'm percussion changin' back to flint; Wal, ef it's so, I ain't agoin' to werrit, For th' ole Oueen's-arm hez this pertickler merit,— It gives the mind a hahnsome wedth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... machine-guns, rifles and pistols; mixed up with musical instruments, suits of chain armour, steel helmets, hundreds of battle flags, and thousands of native spears, swords, and shields. Besides these the collection comprised ivory, percussion caps, lead, copper, and bronze, looms, pianos, sewing machines, boilers, steam engines, agricultural implements, ostrich feathers, wooden and iron bedsteads, paints, India rubber, leather water bottles, clothes, three state coaches, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... great imitative quickness, who, having, by virtue of this, arrived at fine words and figures of speech, set off on their nimble rhetorical Pegasus, keep well out of the Muse's reach ever after! How many go conspicuously through life, snapping their smart percussion-caps upon empty barrels, because, forsooth, powder and ball do not come of themselves, and it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... cannon. Its noiseless discharge sends the missile with great force, conveying the powerful explosive within it, which is itself discharged internally upon contact with the deck of a vessel or other object upon which it strikes, through the explosion of a percussion fuse in the point of the projectile. A great degree of accuracy has been obtained by the peculiar ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... boat, that they brought it over safely to the other side; and the fact that half their clothes were wet through mattered little to men who had often hidden from the Indians in the water, with nothing but their eyes and nose out; and, at any rate, the food was safe. The matches and the percussion caps also were dry, for "Piggie" had taken care of that, and, in the worst emergency, they would have been carried on the top of his head if he also had been obliged to swim. They brought the boat into a little ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... and yet, it would seem, insufficiently, cured. There is a tiny book-shop displaying a choice of religious pamphlets and a fly-blown copy of a treatise on viniculture. And finally, an ironmonger will sell you anything but a bath, while he thrives on a lively trade in percussion-caps and gunpowder. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... of their horses; all the details of the sale are settled by an assemblage of chiefs: their constant cry in bartering (if anything else is offered to them) is "schnapper, schnapper" (a musket, a musket). They refused at first to take percussion guns in exchange, but when they saw Captain Browse cock one of these, pour a quantity of water over the lock, and fire it off, their astonishment knew no bounds, and they then eagerly bartered for them. When they found that all ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... rifles of European make, striking either flints or percussion caps, are also in occasional use as shot-guns, in preference to ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... with very little wind, and that wind lulled by the percussion of the air from the report of the guns, as it always is, has the disadvantage of not being able to disengage herself of the smoke, which rapidly accumulates and stagnates as it were between the decks. Under these circumstances you repeatedly hear the order passed upon the main and lower deck ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... another still more severe—with deafness almost total; but though he was now excluded from all communication with the external world, yet his mind still grappled with the material universe, and while he was studying the force of percussion, and preparing for a continuation of his "Dialogues on Motion," he was attacked with fever and palpitation of the heart, which, after continuing two months, terminated fatally on the 8th of January 1642, in the 78th year of ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... All my boyish shooting was done with a flint-lock gun; the percussion lock came to me as one of those new-fangled notions people had just got hold of. We ancients can make a grand display of minus quantities in our reminiscences, and the figures look almost as well as if they had the plus ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of percussion recommends itself, and in many cases no more useful diagnostic agent is to be found than the ordinary hammer. As a preliminary, the foot of the sound limb should be always tapped first. This precaution will ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... sum them all up for you in a very few words. According to the Rational of Guillaume Durand, the hardness of the metal signifies the force of the preacher. The percussion of the clapper on the sides expresses the idea that the preacher must first scourge himself to correct himself of his own vices before reproaching the vices of others. The wooden frame represents the cross of Christ, and the cord, which formerly served ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... called. These old houses were always built with a huge beam, and you can see the boards of the floor above, which are merely whitewashed. A fowling-piece, once a flint-lock, now converted to the percussion cap system, hangs against the beam, and sometimes dried herbs may be seen there too. The use of herbs is, however, going out of date. In the evening when the great logs of wood smoulder upon the enormous hearth and cast flickering shadows on the walls, revealing the cat slumbering in the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... guns, arranged in order; boxes provided for the bullets; small turned out wooden cups for powder, each cup carrying twenty little tubes of bamboo, each with a measured charge of powder, and longer bamboo tubes with percussion caps in them. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... weight,—steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry, the Baltimorean,—one of the quiet sort, who strike first; and do the talking, if there is any, afterwards. No words, but, in the place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,—followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee, which make our native fistic encounters so different ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with a rifle to his shoulder—his sallow cheek resting against the stock—the barrel apparently aligned upon my body—the quick detonation of a percussion-cap—a stream of red fire and smoke from the muzzle—a shock, followed by the quivering of the timbers to which I was tied, were perceptions and sensations of almost simultaneous occurrence. Twisting my head, and turning my eyes almost ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... just returned to the Brigadier when the Boer guns began to shell the tip of the hill. The first two or three projectiles skimmed over the surface, and roared harmlessly away. But the Boers were not long in striking their mark. Two percussion shells burst on the exposed side of the hill, and then a well-exploded shrapnel searched its summit, searched and found what it sought. Major Childe was instantly killed by a fragment that entered his brain, and half a dozen troopers ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... with the lanyard, so did I. The next moment occurred the most terrific explosion I had ever heard. As the dust and smoke lifted, we saw the shattered remains of nine men; two more died subsequently from wounds received here. Both the percussion-shell and the gun had burst, and hence the destruction of life. General Polk narrowly escaped; his cloak was swept from him and cut in two as ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... still more heartily. "Explosive bullets! —Good Lord, it was all we could do to get percussion caps. Do you know how we got percussion caps, seh? Three of our officers—dare-devils, seh —floated down the Mississippi on logs. One fellow made his way back with two hundred thousand. He's the pride of our Vicksburg ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and deafness would not immediately elect to lose both his hearing and sense of smell rather than to be blind. Since he who loves his sight is deprived of the beauty of the world and all created things, and the deaf man loves only the sound made by the percussion of the air, which is an ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... have called our attention to these remarks, have proceeded to shew that the causes of our sensations of sound and colour have no precise correspondence, do not tally with the sensations we receive. Sound is the result of a percussion of the air. Colour is produced by the reflection of the rays of light; so that the same object, placed in a position, different as to the spectator, but in itself remaining unaltered, will produce in him a sensation of different colours, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... on its winding way, is common to them all. Slipped in at the back door or rammed home at the front, delicately stirred up by the insinuating needle and its titbit of fulminate or bluntly ordered off by the snappish percussion-cap, it is the same obedient and faithful messenger, and goes on its appointed errand in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Instead of blanket tables percussion tables are sometimes used, to which a jerking motion is given against the flow of the water and pulp, and by this means the heavier minerals are gathered towards the upper part of the table, and are from thence removed from time to ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... nail flat on an anvil or stone; feel it. Bullets fired against an iron or stone surface may be picked up very hot. Note sparks that can be struck from a stone; percussion caps, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... shell (obus allonge) was introduced. To explode the shell a steel receptacle (called a gaine) is screwed into the nose of the shell. It is filled with explosive and fitted with a detonator which is exploded by a percussion fuze. Except for the means adopted to ensure detonation this shell is practically the same as the lyddite ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to "Spectrum," page 358, of last volume, I will be brief. In his third paragraph he claims that he has merely suggested that friction and percussion may often be one and the same thing; and immediately claims that in the case of the polished button rubbing a planed pine board, the force which overcomes and levels the undulations of the wood, is percussion, and that percussion is also ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Who sensibly out-dares his sencelesse Sword, And when it bowes, stand'st vp: Thou art left Martius, A Carbuncle intire: as big as thou art Weare not so rich a Iewell. Thou was't a Souldier Euen to Calues wish, not fierce and terrible Onely in strokes, but with thy grim lookes, and The Thunder-like percussion of thy sounds Thou mad'st thine enemies shake, as if the World Were Feauorous, and did tremble. Enter Martius bleeding, assaulted by ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... moreover, anxious not to disturb them just then, the party passed quietly on without firing a shot. A huge brown bear was the next animal encountered, and this time the baronet's love of sport overcame his humanity, bruin falling an easy victim to the noiseless but deadly percussion shell of Sir Reginald's large-bore rifle. A solitary prowling wolf next fell before the equally deadly weapon of the colonel; and then the explorers emerged on the other side of the forest-belt, and found themselves on the borders ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... which has the composition Sn{2}N{2}O{7}, is a snow-white crystalline powder, which is partially decomposed by water, and slowly oxidized by long exposure to the air, or by heating to 100 deg.. By rapid heating to a higher temperature, as well as by percussion and friction, it explodes violently, giving off a shower of sparks. This compound is also formed when a fine spray of nitric acid (sp. gr. 1.20) is thrown upon a surface of tin or solder. It is also formed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... the two. I'll take cotton out—cotton is king, you know, and must be had to keep all them working people in England from starving—and bring medicine back. Medicine is getting skurse and high-priced already. And percussion caps. They're the things you can make money on. Why, I have heard it said that there wasn't enough gun caps in the Confederacy to fight a battle with till Captain Semmes made that tower of his through the Northern States, buying powder and bullets, and making contracts ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... secondary channels, and response to tickling is diminished. I have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish. Again, in ordinary routine practice I have observed that, though married women show no ticklishness during auscultation and percussion of the chest, this is by no means always so in young girls. Perhaps ticklishness in virgins is Nature's self-protection against rape and sexual advances, and the young girl instinctively wishing to hide the armpits, breasts, and other ticklish regions, tucks herself up to prevent these ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... color never left the lips or cheeks. The pulse remained of the same power. Consciousness could have been but slightly diminished, inasmuch as on my then opening the eyelids I perceived a distinct upward and other movement of the eyeballs. Each percussion stroke of my examination, and even the pressure of the stethoscope, produced an expression of pain, which elicited a natural sympathy from the mother, and an assertion that a continuance of such examination would bring on further ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... from the straight line, atoms are now brought into contact with each other; "they strike against each other, and by the percussion new movements and new complications arise"—"movements from high to low, from low to high, and horizontal movements to and fro, in virtue of this reciprocal percussion." The atoms "jostling about, of their own accord, in infinite modes, were often brought together ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... government, loyalty to their Sachems, or chiefs, their skill in embroidering leather articles with dyed quills and grasses, and not least in their production of stringed musical instruments. Instruments of concussion and percussion, like drums and cymbals, and also wind instruments of shell or horn, and rude forms of bagpipes, are inventions of most savage races; but the production of even the most elementary form of stringed instrument is a distinct advance, showing an understanding, however faint, of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... surrendered, together with 172 cannon about 60,000 muskets and a large amount of ammunition. The small-arms of the enemy were far superior to the bulk of ours. Up to this time our troops at the West had been limited to the old United States flint-lock muskets changed into percussion, or the Belgian musket imported early in the war—almost as dangerous to the person firing it as to the one aimed at—and a few new and improved arms. These were of many different calibers, a fact that caused ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... ask, interrogate wench, virgin frisk, caper fill, replenish water, irrigate silly, foolish coming, advent feeling, sentiment old, antiquated forerunner, precursor sew, embroider unload, exonerate grave, sepulcher readable, legible tell, narrate kiss, osculate nose, proboscis striking, percussion green, verdant stroke, concussion grass, verdure bowman, archer drive, propel greed, avarice book, volume stingy, parsimonious warrior, belligerent bath, ablution owner, proprietor wrong, incorrect bow, obeisance top, summit kneel, genuflection food, nutrition ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... round tin boxes, about the size of a silver dollar, filled with percussion powder. To each is attached two little straps of lead, which are bent under the upper part of the rail to hold the torpedo in position. When it is struck by the ponderous wheels of a locomotive, it explodes with the sound of a cannon cracker. The explosion of two torpedoes, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... Centre of Percussion. The point in a suspended body, one free to swing like a pendulum, at which an impulse may be applied, perpendicular to the plane through the axis of the body and through the axis of support without shock to the axis. It is identical with the centre of ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... hazardous enterprises, Johnston engaged him to endeavor to carry a verbal message to General Pemberton, sending him out on the perilous and seemingly impossible venture of making his way into the closely beleaguered city. In addition to his message, he took with him a supply of some forty pounds of percussion caps for the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... nowadays think they can go anywhere without a pound of powder or an old cutlass aboard, just because there is an English or Dutch man-of-war within a hundred miles. I don't know what we'd have done when I first traded among these islands without a good brass swivel and a stock of percussion-cap muskets. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... them his view of the case with a more and more intense action of his mind upon theirs, until one only is left. Like the blow of a hammer, continually repeated until the iron bar crumbles beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that one mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the pleader's purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, 'He surpassed himself.' It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and overpowering ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... percussion cap in its place and started the mechanism. For a few moments its quiet tick-tick was the only sound heard in the room, the two bound men staring with wide-open eyes at the dial of the clock, while the whole horror of their ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... tell the more or less perfect structure of metals by their vibrations, by the answer which they give. Gold rings differently from tin, wood rings differently from stone; and different sounds are produced according to the nature of each percussion. It was the same with man, the most highly organized of nature's works. Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed, like the brute, with the power of expressing his sensations by interjections, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Pagan nations generally ascribe the invention of their musical instruments to their gods, or to certain superhuman beings of a godlike nature. The Hebrews attributed it to man, but as Jubal is mentioned as "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ" only, and as instruments of percussion were almost invariably in use long before people were led to construct stringed and wind instruments, we may suppose that, in the Biblical records, Jubal is not intended to be represented as the original inventor of ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller |
