"Decomposition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then informed me that he had made the discovery that the art was extremely simple, and the expense attending the decomposition so slight as to ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... from the air. But the fixation of nitrogen is a new business in this country and our chief reliance so far has been the coke ovens. When coal is heated in retorts or ovens for making coke or gas a lot of ammonia comes off with the other products of decomposition and is caught in the sulfuric acid used to wash the gas as ammonium sulfate. Our American coke-makers have been in the habit of letting this escape into the air and consequently we have been losing some 700,000 tons of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... certain, but very long period, it is brought by human industry into such a state as to become the richest soil for cultivation: but when we reflect on the necessity of some ages to effect this wished-for state of decomposition, we bewilder the mind without arriving at any certain conclusion. When this process is duly effected, the cactus opuntia, or prickly pear, is planted, which hastens the desired event, and has the power to break up the lava, and render it fit for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... few tints used, the modesty of the tints, and therewithal the clearness and precision of all boundary lines. In all fine flat colouring there are regular systems of dividing colour from colour. Above all, don't attempt iridescent blendings of colour, which look like decomposition. They are about as much as ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... and hornblende. No great elevation is attained—nothing above 160 feet; the grandeur of the coasts, which certainly does not equal that of North Cornwall, consists in their rugged wildness and the fantastic weathering of their crags. Contorted formations, logans and rock-basins, reveal the decomposition of softer measures that has been proceeding for ages. The isles lie about 27 miles west of Land's End, but the journey from Penzance to St. Mary's is about 40 miles, and the small steamers that make the passage usually ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... subject conclude that the function of the thyroid gland is to destroy poisonous products formed by the decomposition of proteid food substances. It is believed by others that it also has a defensive action against other poisons in the body, including alcohol and poisonous drugs. In other words, it is thought to have an "antitoxic" action. It has ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... which are native to the soil; while organic, or animal and vegetable, manures, (especially when applied, as is usual, in an incompletely fermented condition,) absolutely require fresh supplies of atmospheric air, to continue the decomposition which alone can prepare them for their proper ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... is without scruple mixed with the common mushroom, and it should seem without any bad consequence except the deterioration of the ketchup.[V] There is an extensive manufacture of ketchup conducted at Lubbenham, near Market Harborough, but the great difficulty appears to be the prevention of decomposition. Messrs. Perkins receive tons of mushrooms from every part of the kingdom, and they find, even in the same species, an immense difference in the quality and quantity of the produce. The price of mushrooms varies greatly with the season, ranging between one ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... water, and whose most delicate relief and finest impressions have been preserved by this species of tar solidified by cooling. (2) It has also been considered as the result of the more or less complete decomposition of plants under the influence of heat and dampness, which has led them to pass successively through the following principal stages: peat, lignite, bituminous coal, anthracite. (3) Finally, while admitting that the decomposition of plants can cause organic matter ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... living polities, and to be endowed with a somewhat abstract and, from the outset, weakened nationality. In the ancient world also Judaism was an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism and of national decomposition." ********************************************* ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... reproduce; but contrasted with this mild old monarch their prancing horsemen suggest a succession of riding-masters taking out young ladies' schools. The admirably human character of the figure survives the rusty decomposition of the bronze and the slight "debasement" of the art; and one may call it singular that in the capital of Christendom the portrait most suggestive of a Christian conscience is that ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... for a general attack upon it. It is subjected to every kind of sacrilegious indignity, vituperated as a usurper and an "accident," struck with rotten eggs and dead cats, and undergoes the meanest misrepresentation. Its attitude in the chair, its fallen jaw, glazed eyes and degree of decomposition are caricatured and exaggerated out of all reason. Yet such as it is it must be endured for the unexpired term for which its predecessor was chosen. To guard against a possible interregnum, however, a law has recently been passed providing that if it should tumble out of the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... determinant of the n-th order, taking the decomposition to be 1 (n - 1), we fall back upon the equations given at the commencement, in order to show the genesis of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... detonation ensues; if gunpowder or the fulminates of mercury, silver or gun-cotton be ignited in a vacuum by a galvanic battery, none of them will explode; if any gas be introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then a rapid evolution of gases will result; the results of decomposition in a vacuum differ from those under atmospheric pressure or when they are burnt in a pistol, musket, a cannon, or in a mine; where we have little or no pressure it is difficult to get these ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... possibilities of higher and still higher explosives for use in war, the neglect of the mechanical application of this class of substance being largely due to the fact, that chemists are not as a rule engineers, nor engineers chemists. But an easily portable substance, the decomposition of which would evolve energy, or—what is, from the practical point of view, much the same thing—an easily portable substance, which could be decomposed electrically by wind or water power, and which would then recombine and supply force, either in intermittent thrusts at a piston, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... hundred teams, had partially reduced the mountain of wreckage, cremation fires yet burned continuously—fed not only by human bodies, but by thousands of carcasses of domestic animals. By that time, in the hot, moist atmosphere of the latitude, decomposition had so far advanced that the corpses—which at first were decently carried in carts or on stretchers, then shoveled upon boards or blankets—had finally to be scooped up with pitchforks, in the hands of negroes, kept at their awful task by ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... worthy of a little description, as it was typical of any farm in Flanders. The three buildings that constituted the house, barn, and cowbyre were arranged in a hollow square around a brick courtyard, the centre of which was graced by a large pile of manure in an advanced stage of decomposition. Outside the square of buildings was a moat full of green slime and mosquito larvae. Here the men washed, and here, too, our buckets were filled each morning for the "lick and a promise" that served as a substitute ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... intestinal poisoning, we may here again mention the importance of avoiding the poisoning which comes from too much protein. This poisoning is probably due largely to the decomposition of ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... decomposition of the fossil bones seem to have been arrested in most of the caves by a constant supply of water charged with carbonate of lime, which dripped from the roofs while the caves were becoming gradually filled up. By similar agency the mud, sand, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... stood is there yet, a majestic tree. The selection of a site for the little cemetery is most judicious, several little streams from the heights in the rear filter through the ground, producing a moisture calculated to prevent decomposition and explanatory of the singular appearance of the bodies disinterred there in 1855. Every visitor will be struck with the beauty, healthiness and shelter which this sequestered nook at Sillery presents for a settlement, and with its adaptability for the purposes for which it was chosen, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... acceleration, and then, as the four relays cut out again, the acceleration was gone. The screen regained life as Arcot opened the shutters. Before them, still directly in their path, was the huge Thessian ship. But now its screen was down, the relux iridescent in decomposition. It was falling, helplessly falling to the rocky plateau seven miles below. Its rays reached out even yet—and again the Ancient Mariner staggered under the terrific pull of some acceleration. The Thessian ship lurched upward, and a terrific concussion came, and the entire neighborhood ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... disappear, and we should simply have left the small amount of alumina which they previously contained. In process of time this alumina would accumulate to form a bed of clay; and as this clay had been directly derived from the decomposition of the shells of animals, it would be fairly entitled to be considered an organic deposit. Though not finally established, the hypothesis of Sir Wyville Thomson on this subject is of the greatest interest to the ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... overnight, as if cooked too soon after-killing, it is hard and does not taste well. It is not the custom in America, as in some parts of Europe, to keep game, or indeed any sort of eatable, till it begins to taint; all food when inclining to decomposition being ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... deposits. I am further inclined to believe that these extend over the whole island, although often intercepted and changed in their direction by the rising of the yellow granite." It is highly probable that the finest rubies are to be found in them, perfect and unchanged by decomposition; and that they are to be obtained by opening a regular mine in the rock like the ruby mine of Badakshan in Bactria described by Sir Alexander Burnes. Dr. Gygax adds that having often received the minerals of this stratum with the crystals perfect, he has ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Comte has gone to have a horse put to. They're sending for Dr. Jouet, who will make the usual examination. In my opinion, death must have taken place a week ago, at least. The state of decomposition of the corpse—but you don't seem to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... is very tenacious, and near the surface is generally of a brown colour, probably owing to the decomposition of the iron pyrites which it contains. It abounds in selenite or sulphate of lime, and in nodules which often contain organic remains. Fossil wood with Teredo antenautae is also met with, and pyritous ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... after they were supposed to be dead, and this led to the conclusion that the spirit sometimes returned to animate the body after it had once fled. If there was no signs of life for ten days, the fire was extinguished and the body left unmolested until decomposition had begun to take place, when the remains were buried, or, as was often the case, kept in the lodge for many years. If they were obliged to desert the settlement where they had long resided, these skeletons were collected from all the families and buried ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... Boe, Boe! like a poor benighted crittur as you are, but what do you say to that?" cried the pedlar in a triumphant voice, as he held close to the negro's nose a piece of linen rag on which he had smeared a green greasy substance bearing a strong resemblance to paste-blacking in a state of decomposition. Then, taking up the box which contained this precious compound, he put it in close proximity to the obtuse snout of the blackamoor, who made a grimace as if his olfactories were but moderately regaled by the odour emanating from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... gradually increasing in popularity, and of course, when time and circumstances permit, it is the ideal method of treatment. The cause of death in the case of intestinal obstruction is usually due to the blood being poisoned by the absorption of the products of decomposition of the fluid contents of the bowel above the obstruction. It is now the custom, therefore, for the surgeon to complete his operation for the relief of obstruction by drawing out a loop of the distended bowel, incising and evacuating it, and then carefully suturing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... majority of these plants consist of very simple vegetable cells, enclosed in indestructible silex (as other Algae are in carbonate of lime), it is obvious that the death and decomposition of such multitudes must form sedimentary deposits, proportionate in their extent to the length and exposure of the coast against which they are washed, in thickness to the power of such agents as the winds, currents, and sea, which sweep them more energetically to certain ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... killed many an animal, not only to study its organism, but also to investigate how it has built up its form. But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has become blunt rather than keen. I tell you that the beginning of things is not more attractive to contemplate than their death and decomposition." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... authority; very often it is the last stage, and continues till the society is destroyed. The usage is relaxed, the rules are violated, the persons in authority cease to be obeyed; this is the stage of revolt and decomposition. Finally, in certain civilised societies, the rule is criticised, the persons in authority are censured, by the action of a part of the subjects a rational change is effected in the composition of the governing body, which is subjected ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... untouched strings of his own violin. 'He had died suddenly from syncope, or heart-failure.' Heart-failure, EUGENIUS. Doth not thy gentle heart fail at the thought? 'Dr. COLLEY found the body in an advanced stage of decomposition, and life had probably been extinct since the preceding Thursday night.' Prithee, Sir, is 'MARIA, sitting pensive under her poplar, more pathetic than this poor broken musician, dying alone, in his poverty ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... are more or less liable to disease. I might even say more. When not fresh, they are diseased. On this point we have the testimony of Drs. Willich and Dunglison. The truth is, that the yolk of the egg has a strong tendency to decomposition, and this decomposing or putrefying process begins long before it is perceived, or even suspected, by most people. There is much reason for believing that a large proportion of the eggs eaten in civic life,—except when we keep the poultry ourselves,—are, when used, more or less in a state ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... particulars of Dagara's death and burial, when it transpired that the old king's body, after the fashion of his predecessors, was sewn up in a cow-skin, and placed in a boat floating on the lake, where it remained for three days, until decomposition set in and maggots were engendered, of which three were taken into the palace and given in charge to the heir-elect; but instead of remaining as they were, one worm was transformed into a lion, another into a leopard, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... method, not quite so learned, to convey an idea of the generation of colors, and the decomposition of the solar ray. Instead of examining them in a prism of glass, we shall consider them in the heavens, and there we shall behold the five primordial colours unfold themselves in the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... case, testified that, having put to a test the specifications in all the patents involved, he had found it necessary in no case to inject live steam into the mixtures of acid and rubber scrap in order to effect the decomposition and removal of either woolen or cotton fiber. The use of the acids specified was sufficient for this, and the various high temperatures called for were not essential for the destruction of the fibers. He neglected to mention, however, that the steam served ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... him harmonized with his own gloomy thoughts. Pursuing his walk along the side of the river, he was checked by a horrible smell, and looking downward, he perceived a carcass in the last stage of decomposition lying in the mud. It had been washed ashore by the tide, and a large bird of prey was contending for the possession of it with a legion of water-rats. Sickened by the sight, he turned up a narrow thoroughfare near Baynard's Castle, and crossing Thames-street, was about to ascend ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... interfere with each other's healthy existence. Food would become scarce, and hence the larger individuals would probably decompose or diminish in size. The deficiency of nourishment would lead to parts of the organism not being renewed; they would become fixed, and liable to more or less slow decomposition as dead parts within a living body. The smaller organisms would have a better chance of finding food, the larger ones less chance. That one which gave off several small portions to form each a new organism would have a better ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... more active parts of the manure, great loss must inevitably result from all such applications, and because, more moisture than is to be found on the surface, is necessary to excite, and carry on, that healthful progressive state of decomposition, which is required to render guano most available for ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... the crystallisations of the calcareous matter, which is everywhere deposited in consequence of the escape of carbonic acid, likewise proceed, giving a constant milkiness to what, from its tint, would otherwise be a blue fluid. So rapid is the vegetation, owing to the decomposition of the carbonic acid, that, even in winter, masses of confervae and lichens, mixed with deposited travertine, are constantly detached by the currents of water from the bank and float down the stream, which being a considerable river is never without many ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... highest rank—men of science, men of letters, and men of trade—but women of fashion and blue-stockings, old and young, pressed into the theatre of the Institution to cover him with applause. His greatest labors were his discovery of the decomposition of the fixed alkalies, and the re-establishment of the simple nature of chlorine; his other researches were the investigation of astringent vegetables in connection with the art of tanning; the analysis of rocks and minerals in connection with geology; the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... different causes of abrasion. In characteristic localities the loose materials deposited by glaciers may readily be recognized at first sight, and distinguished from water-worn pebbles; nor is it difficult to distinguish both from loose materials resulting from the decomposition of rocks on the spot,—the latter always agreeing with the rocks on which they rest, while the decomposition to which they owe their separation from the solid rock is often still going on. Such debris are found everywhere about disintegrating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... person, and from without its folds a few withered flowers had fallen. A strong aromatic odor, of a pungent nature, was diffused around; giving evidence that the art by which the ancient Egyptians endeavored to rescue their kindred from decomposition had been resorted to, to preserve the fleeting charms of the unfortunate ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... me for de grave; but as my limbs did not stiffen, Mada Malachi sent for a doctor who placed a glass before my face, an' moisture gathered on it. He tole 'em it was not entirely cole over de heart, an' da mus'n't bury me until decomposition took place, cuze it might be a trance. An' da kep' me in de kitchen wid Aunt Milla, de cook, to watch me. It 'peared like I's goin' down into a horrible place of awful soun's an' rattlin' of chains; an' I prayed mightily for help, an' ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... meal, and the rest of the day was spent in preparing the deer meat to keep in store; the effect of the hot sun being wonderful, the heat drying up the juices and checking the decomposition that might have been expected to succeed its exposure. But it in no case improved the appearance of ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... color in pigments are of four kinds, all of them chemical effects. 1, the action of light; 2, the action of the atmosphere; 3, the action of the medium; and 4, the action of the pigments themselves on each other. The action of light is to bring about or to assist in the decomposition of the pigment. It is less marked in oil than in water color, because the oil forms a sort of sheath for the color particles. The manner in which light does its deteriorating work is somewhat similar to that of heat. The action ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... special type and construction of its parents, works and undergoes a constant waste, and that waste is made good by nutriment derived from the inorganic world; the waste given off in this way being directly added to the inorganic world. Eventually the animal itself dies, and, by the process of decomposition, its whole body is returned to those conditions of inorganic matter in ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... crust of the earth, as far as it has been exposed to our view in mines or mountains, countenances this opinion; since these have evidently for the most part had their origin from the shells of fishes, the decomposition of vegetables, and the recrements of other animal materials, and must therefore have been formed progressively from small beginnings. There are likewise some apparently useless or incomplete appendages to plants and animals, which seem to shew they have ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... level of the ground. If a deep pit is dug in the ground, into which the refuse is thrown in the intervals between times of removal, rain and surface water will mix with the refuse and hasten its decomposition, and generally the lowest part of the filth will not be removed, but will be left to fester and produce malaria. In all places where the occupation is permanent the following conditions should be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... still joking: "Whew! it's not fresh. What a catch, old man! It isn't thin, either!" He kept swimming about at a distance from the animal that was in a state of decomposition. Then, suddenly, he was silent and looked at it: attentively. This time he came near enough to touch, it. He looked fixedly at the collar, then he stretched out his arm, seized the neck, swung the corpse round and drew it up close to him and read on the copper ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Already had decomposition commenced its repulsive work in the form of the little son, and he was laid away, while the coffin returned for the other dear one, who was to moulder with ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... material body. Viewed from this standpoint of terrestrial experience, there is no more reason for supposing that consciousness survives the dissolution of the brain than for supposing that the pungent flavour of table-salt survives its decomposition into metallic ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... a drop of water were decomposed into its component parts, and if these were brought together again, and again decomposed and again brought together any number of times over, the results would be invariably the same, whether decomposition or combination, yet no one will refer the invariableness of the action during each repetition, to recollection by the gaseous molecules of the course taken when the process was last repeated. On the contrary, we are assured that molecules in some distant part of the world which ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... has completely overcome its rival, mind. So soon as the will is entirely extinct, the being ceases to live; or it is no longer an animal. It falls and reverts altogether to the element of matter. The processes of decomposition and incorporation are longer, or shorter, according to circumstances; and these fossil remains of which your writers say so much, are merely cases that have met with accidental obstacles to their final decomposition. As respects our two species, a very cursory examination ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the patients of this or that physician. In the course of a generation, more or less, physicians themselves are liable to get tired of a practice which has so little effect upon the average movement of vital decomposition. Then they are ready for a change, even if it were back again to a method which has already ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of decomposition. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... was a decayed gentlewoman who carried on her decomposition in a modest wayside cottage in Thuringia. She was an excellent sample of the Thuringian widow, a species not yet extinct, but trying very hard to become so. The same may be said of the whole genus. Madame Yonsmit was quite young, very comely, cultivated, gracious, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the time of the Commonwealth, the Princess Elizabeth died at Carisbrook, it was loudly asserted that Cromwell had stooped to the senseless and dastardly wickedness of mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom he had no conceivable motive to injure. [221] A few years later, the rapid decomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a deadly potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles the Second could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The public ear had been repeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots against ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as he ground away at the biltong, that popular South African delicacy, formed by cutting fresh meat into long strips, and drying them in the sun before the flesh has time to go bad—a capital plan in a torrid country, where decomposition is rapid and salt none too plentiful; but it has its drawbacks, and is best suited to the taste of those who appreciate the chewing of leather with a superlatively high flavour ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... dropsy. As the visitor ascended the splendid, red-carpeted staircase, cumbered with statues, vases, and paintings, he was incommoded by a pestilential odour that assailed his nostrils. Death had begun the decomposition of the sick man's body even before it was a corpse. At the door of the chamber Hugo caught the sound of hoarse, stertorous breathing. He entered, and saw on the mahogany bed an almost unrecognizable form bolstered up on a ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... decomposition of discharges from the womb and vagina, inflammation of the inner lining of the womb and of the vagina. Foul, putrid discharges from neglected supports (pessaries) and tampons in the vagina; sloughings from cancer may act ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of this experiment Davy added the following note:—'In desiring Mr. Faraday to expose the hydrate of chlorine in a closed glass tube, it occurred to me that one of three things would happen: that decomposition of water would occur;... or that the chlorine would separate in a fluid state.' Davy, moreover, immediately applied the method of self-compressing atmosphere to the liquefaction of muriatic gas. Faraday continued the experiments, and succeeded in reducing a number of gases till then ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... electricity, better adapted for the telegraph, and Salva was apparently the first to recognise this, for, in the same year, he proposed to use it and interpret the signals by the twitching of a frog's limb, or the decomposition of water. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... as to form a whole or compound. Thus, in putting together letters so as to form syllables, syllables so as to form words, words so as to form sentences, and sentences so as to form a discourse, the process is called synthetic. Analysis, on the contrary, is the act of decomposition; that is, the act of separating any thing compounded into its simple parts, and thereby exhibiting its elementary principles. Etymology treats of the analysis of language. To analyze a sentence, is to separate from ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... as the travellers advanced. Few natives appeared to greet them on the banks of the river as they went along, and these few resembled living skeletons. In many places they found dead bodies lying on the ground in various stages of decomposition, and everywhere they beheld an aspect of settled unutterable despair on the faces of the scattered remnant of the bereaved and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... insulated and anomalous affection of certain salts of silver or gold, but one which, doubtless, in a greater or less degree, pervades all nature, and connects itself intimately with the mechanism by which chemical combination and decomposition is operated. The general instability of organic combinations might lead us to expect the occurrence of numerous and remarkable cases of this affection among bodies of that class, but among metallic and other elements ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... begun, however slightly, to decay, should be rejected. Juice circulates through its tissues in much the same manner as the blood circulates through animal tissues, though not so rapidly and freely. The circulation is sufficient, however, to convey to all parts the products of decomposition, when only a small portion has undergone decay, and although serious results do not always follow the use of such fruit, it certainly is not ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... among the learned of former times, said to have been found burning after many centuries, on opening tombs, are nothing more than fables, arising perhaps from phosphorescent appearances, caused by decomposition in confined places, which vanished as soon as fresh air was admitted. Such phenomena have frequently been ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... from the limits of the savannah to the foot of the hills—I should think that the fever so prevalent in these districts must be in a great degree attributable to the absolute want of drainage and the decomposition of vegetable matter. Its position was most insalubrious, for the marshy swamps commenced at the very base of hills, and thus as it were encircled the savannahs with a belt ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... well as partly real; they partly arise from the actual motion of each star and partly from the motion of the sun, in which we partake, and which produces an apparent motion of the star. How are these to be discriminated? Our telescopes and our observations can never effect this decomposition directly. To accomplish the analysis, Herschel resorted to certain geometrical methods. His materials at that time were but scanty, but in his hands they proved adequate, and he boldly announced his discovery of the movement ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... this aperture, ornamented like the coffin, and fixed in its place by a fine lime cement. A second aperture at the lower extremity of the coffin allowed for the escape of the gases disengaged during decomposition. The ornamentation of the coffins varied, but consisted generally of small figures of men, about six or seven inches in length, the most usual figure being a warrior with his arms akimbo and his legs astride, wearing on his head a coiffure, like ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... seeds among them. It requires something more than a phantom life-boat to rescue the Gipsy and bring him to land. Scents and perfumes in a death-bed chamber only last for a short time. A bottle of rose-water thrown into a room where decomposition is at work upon a body will not restore life. Scattering flowers upon a cesspool of iniquity will not purify it. A fictitious rope composed of beautiful ideas is not the thing to save drowning Gipsy children. To put artificially-coloured ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... absorption and expansion, not precipitation. There is also a change in chemical conditions, the water at least being decomposed. For it would seem to be a law of vegetal growth that reproduction should begin in decomposition and decay. The Apostle's description of the "death of the grain," as symbolizing the death of man, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, points conclusively in this direction. It is in the decomposition and decay of the grain that the implanted germ is quickened into life—ascends ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... with the gas for inflation. Coal gas was not always readily available, so that hydrogen had to be depended upon for the most part. But then another difficulty arose. This was the manufacture of the requisite gas. Various methods were tested, such as the electrolytic decomposition of water, the decomposition of sulphuric acid by means of iron, the reaction between slaked lime and zinc, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... Versailles nor St. Germain has any lasting work been done. The germs of decomposition and death lie in this peace. The paroxysms that shattered Europe are not yet over; as, after a terrible earthquake, the subterraneous rumblings may still be heard. Again and again we shall see the earth open, now here, now there, and shoot up flames into the heavens; again and ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... result of the denudation and decomposition of felspathic and siliceous rocks, and consist of the fine insoluble particles which have been carried in suspension in water and deposited in geologic basins according to their specific gravity and degree of fineness (see CLAY). These deposits have been formed in all geologic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... on the organism two chief effects, which it is very difficult to connect together,—namely, the raising the activity of the vascular and nervous systems, and protracting remarkably the decomposition of the tissues. Second,—that it is the reciprocal modifications of the specific actions of the empyreumatic oil and cafeine contained in the bean which call forth the stimulant effects of coffee, and therefore those peculiarities of it which possess importance in our eyes,—such as the rousing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... that now encompassed me. I felt as if I had inhaled a poisonous and subtle fluid, whose power instantly bereft my stomach of all vigour. Some fatal influence appeared to seize upon my vitals, and the work of corrosion and decomposition to be ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... officers, who, with nothing more formidable than a light walking-stick in their hands, stood by, stiff and silent, and superintended the work. They had requisitioned the inhabitants of all the villages of the vicinity in this manner, fearing that decomposition might be hastened, owing to the rainy weather. Two cart-loads of dead bodies were standing near, and a gang of men was unloading them, laying the corpses side by side in close contiguity to one another, not searching them, not even looking at their faces, while two men followed after, equipped ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... cotton would do well; a single plant of it, reared by Major Sicard, flourished and produced the long staple and peculiar tinge of this celebrated variety, though planted only in the street at Tette; and there also a salt efflorescence appears, probably from decomposition of the rock, off which the people scrape it ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... 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 is finished all along the rib (or quill) with a hard, glossy enamel on the outside and this enamel keeps its polish as long ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... attained its highest degree, the blowing was discontinued and the product taken out. This consisted of a dross, or, rather, of the collected pieces of ore themselves, which, on account of the flinty contents of the stones composing the funnel, were transformed by the decomposition of the sulphurous metal into a porous mass, and which could not be converted into dross nor form combinations with silicious acid, being deficient in the base as well as in the requisite heat; and also of a very impure "stone," of from four to five kilograms weight, and containing ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the soldiers only attach themselves to the long worm-like tongue of this animal, so that the workers, on whom the prosperity of the termitarum depends, are saved by the self-sacrifice of the fighting caste. The office of the termites in the tropics seems to be to hasten the decomposition of decaying vegetation. But they also work their way into houses, trunks, wardrobes, and libraries. "It is principally owing to their destructiveness" (wrote Humboldt) "that it is so rare to find papers in tropical America older ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... by it; nor should the face be closely covered; nor rough usage of any kind be allowed. In case there is great doubt, the body should not be allowed to be inclosed in the coffin, and under no circumstances should burial be allowed until there are unmistakable signs of decomposition. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... their tracks disease-producing germs which have adhered to their sticky feet where they have previously dined." Declare war upon the "fly who won't wipe his feet" by keeping the garbage in a covered galvanized-iron pail and dispose of it before decomposition takes place. Wash and dry the pail after emptying. If the camp is located near a farm, give the garbage to the farmer. It is the natural food of swine or poultry. Where this is not possible, the garbage should be buried every day in the earth and ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... hatreds of passionate admirers or enemies. Of such times we know nothing, save the broad results as they are measured from century to century, with here and there some indestructible pebble, some law, some fragment of remarkable poetry which has resisted decomposition. These periods are the proper subject of the philosophic historian, and to him we leave them. But there are others, a few, at which intellectual activity was as great as it is now, with its written records surviving, in which the passions, the opinions, the ambitions of the age are all before ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... economical classification, but not of social classification. In his view, the Fourth Estate is a stratum produced by the perpetual abrasion of the other great social groups; it is the sign and result of the decomposition which is commencing in the organic constitution of society. Its elements are derived alike from the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the peasantry. It assembles under its banner the deserters of historical society, and forms them into a terrible army, which is only just ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... madness to cause it to gain the suffrages of a large number of people. It was affirmed that those who had examined into the matter had found that the bodies of suicides were mysteriously preserved from decomposition until the day arrived on which they would naturally—that is, according to God's decree—have died. About the year 1834, I was taking a walk along the banks of the canal north of Glasgow, and sat down beside a group of well-dressed men, who were conversing ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... but bad, engaging you in idle cloudy dreams;—still worse, promoting composure among the palpably chaotic and discomposed; soothing all things into lazy peace; that all things may be left to themselves very much, and to the laws of gravity and decomposition. Whereby German affairs are come to be greatly overgrown with funguses in our Time; and give symptoms of dry and of wet rot, wherever handled. George I., we say, had his Tabagie; and other German Sovereigns had: but none of them turned it to a Political Institution, as Friedrich ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Alcohol. The ceaseless action of minute forms of plant life, in bringing about the decomposition of the elaborated products of organized plant or animal structures, will be described ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... correct, yet, as usual, the conclusion was wrong. The years of Palmerston's last Cabinet, 1859 to 1865, were avowedly years of truce — of arrested development. The British system like the French, was in its last stage of decomposition. Never had the British mind shown itself so decousu — so unravelled, at sea, floundering in every sort of historical shipwreck. Eccentricities had a free field. Contradictions swarmed in State and Church. England devoted thirty years of arduous labor to clearing away ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the imagination, Aristotle to reason. The former descended from the decomposition of a primitive idea into particulars, the latter united particulars into a general conception. Hence the method of Plato was capable of quickly producing what seemed to be splendid, though in reality unsubstantial results; that of Aristotle was more tardy in its operation, but much ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... coal tar. It was discovered about six years ago in the laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, by Prof. Remsen and a student named Fahlberg, who has since taken out patents upon it. It is greatly superior to sugar, as it is free from fermentation and decomposition. A small quantity added to starch or glucose will make a compound equal to sugar in sweetness. It is a valuable antiseptic and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... shrieking of the tempest, and the frenzied moanings of the wounded beasts, and the reader will have some faint idea of the fearful scenes of danger and carnage ... the dead beasts, advanced, perhaps, in decomposition before death ended their sufferings, are ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... the one exception of a young woman, who, rosy and gay under her parasol, walked on with an easy queen-like step, as if the fiery element were her proper sphere. But what especially rendered this picture terrible was a new interpretation of the effects of light, a very accurate decomposition of the sunrays, which ran counter to all the habits of eyesight, by emphasising blues, yellows and reds, where nobody had been accustomed to see any. In the background the Tuileries vanished in a golden ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... secretaries of societies, the number of which is greater than that of the social questions they seek to solve. Society on its grand scale has been demolished to make a million of little ones in the image of the defunct. These parasitic organizations reveal decomposition; are they not the swarming of maggots in the dead body? All these societies are the daughters of one mother, Vanity. It is not thus that Catholic charity or true beneficence proceeds; they study evils in wounds ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... upon inspection, a hole was observed to have been drilled in the wood, as if by the teeth of some animal, it was judged expedient to open and examine it further. The remains of the marquess were discovered in a state of dry decomposition, with his head as completely severed from his body as if by the stroke of the axe; but, horror of horrors! that head, that skeleton skull, moved, as those who opened the coffin stood to gaze on its revolting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... but that time I was not so unpleasantly near. The heavy rain of the previous night, coming after a long period of drought, was probably the cause of these already-loosened stones starting upon their downward career. All these calcareous rocks are breaking up. The process of disintegration and decomposition is slow, but it is sure. Every frost does something to split them, and every shower of rain entering the crevices does something to rot them; so that even they cannot last. The Tarn is carrying them back to the sea, to be deposited again, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... parts of air condense into one of water. Any element which is fastened upon by fire is cut by the sharpness of the triangles, until at length, coalescing with the fire, it is at rest; for similars are not affected by similars. When two kinds of bodies quarrel with one another, then the tendency to decomposition continues until the smaller either escapes to its kindred element or becomes one with its conqueror. And this tendency in bodies to condense or escape is a source of motion...Where there is motion there must be a mover, and where there is a mover ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... produced immediately above or below seams of coal, which have taken fire, and burnt for a length of time.' There is lignite and other coaly matter enough in the rocks to have burnt like coal, if it had once been ignited; and the cause of ignition may be, as Mr. Wall suggests, the decomposition of pyrites, of which also there is enough around. That the heat did not come from below, as volcanic heat would have done, is proved by the fact that the lignite beds underneath the porcellanite are unburnt. We found asphalt under the porcellanite. We found even ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... could of course pass the absolute cold and void of space without being affected, no mortal body could; and that in the same manner Elijah's body dissolved into air without the usual intervention of decomposition; for we know that, though matter can easily change its form, it can never be destroyed." All assented to this, and Ayrault continued: "If apergy can annul gravitation, I do not see why it should not do more, for to annul it the repulsion of the earth that ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... method by which these signs may be recorded permanently, evidently by chemical decomposition on a strip of paper passed along over two rollers. He then shows a message which could be sent by this means, interspersed with ideas for insulating the wires in tubes or pipes. And here I want to call attention to a point which has never, to my knowledge, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... A yellowish fog had come down, the dreaded igniis fatui. Unless one kept moving, decomposition of the blood set in, essential salts within the body were dissolved and cellular activity ceased. Latham grinned wryly. He doubted if it could touch him! There was too much tsith within his alchemy. Nevertheless he moved and worked ceaselessly. He could see that caricature of a Martian standing ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... possible also that there may be a gradual decomposition of the zyloidin itself, and consequent liberation of the iodide by this means, with formation of nitrate of potassa or ammonia; but the most probable cause I consider to be the following. The ether gradually ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... composed of oxygen and nitrogen. Their proportions are, one part of oxygen to four parts of nitrogen. Oxygen is the active agent in the combustion, decay, and decomposition of organized bodies (those which have possessed animal or vegetable life, that is, organic matter), and others also, in the breathing of animals. Experiments have proved that if the atmosphere consisted of pure oxygen every thing would ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... hardly be needful to make it clear that no society in which the elements of decomposition are thus swiftly and surely accumulating can hope to win in the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... them underground dungeons would be desirable residences. Our local guide told us there were over two thousand public temples and shrines in Benares, and he might have added in every stage of dirt, decomposition, and ruin. The sights to be witnessed in them were most repulsive, and yet there were some sincere votaries there. There were rogues also, a fact proven by the circumstance that the guide, native and resident here, had his pocket picked before the altar while ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... encircling ridge was occupied by a belt of small trees, while on the plain grew only a short scrubby vegetation, a foot or two in height. Some vegetable soil was found, a few inches in thickness, the result of the decomposition of vegetable matter and birds' dung. On the weather side of the island was a coral reef of two miles in diameter, enclosing a shallow lagoon. In this lagoon were both sharks and turtles swimming about. The island was stocked with sea-fowl, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the Sultan of Turkey. The effect of the Young Turk coup in the Balkan States was as any one who visited them at that time can testify, both pathetic and intensely humorous. The permanent chaos of the Turkish empire, and the process of watching for years its gradual but inevitable decomposition, had created amongst the neighbouring states an atmosphere of excited anticipation, which was really the breath of their nostrils; it had stimulated them during the endless Macedonian insurrections to commit the most awful outrages against each other's nationals ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... Celt, Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from it all will come in the fulness ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... representations exist outside of the representative faculty—is absurd. Matter is infinitely divisible, no doubt, yet it does not consist of infinitely numerous parts, and just as little of a definite number of simple parts, but the parts exist merely in the representation of them, in the division (decomposition), and this goes as far as possible experience extends. The case is different with the dynamical antinomies, where thesis and antithesis can both be true, in so far as the former is referred to ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... said the man of learning who, for the benefit of the inattentive sculptor, had opened a discussion on primitive society and autochthonous races. "The vigor of a nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in remote ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both sword and censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king. To-day our society, the latest word of civilization, has distributed ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... in a proper state for the next process, it betrays evidences of incipient decomposition; the fibres are relaxed and softened, and rendered perfectly malleable. The different strips are now extended, one by one, in successive layers, upon some smooth surface—generally the prostrate trunk of a cocoanut tree—and the heap thus formed is subjected, at every new increase, to a moderate ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... to work now, gentlemen," he announced. "I need not remind you, of course, that the body you are about to see, that of the woman found in the Cite Frochot, has already undergone certain changes due to decomposition, which have ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... from its torpor. Some had eaten until their abdomens were so distended that I thought they must burst, for beside the thag there had been fully a hundred antelopes of various sizes and varied degrees of decomposition, which they had unearthed from burial beneath the floors of their ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... convincing the young Hegelians that ideas were mere smoke and dust, seeing that the only reality in existence was the individual Ego. These teachings, eagerly received by the Russian youth, were destined to produce a state of moral decomposition, the earliest symptoms of which were admirably analysed ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... freedom. Roadways have been extensively carved along the sides of the hills with the aid of only pick and shovel. Close examination of the rock shows that layers of sediment exist between the crystal faces, either washed down by percolating rain or formed through decomposition of the crystals in place. The next illustration, Fig. 119, shows how large the growth on such soils may be, and in Fig. 120 the vegetation and forest growth are seen coming back, closely covering just such soil surfaces and rock structure ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... On Tuesday night I certainly was in the grasp of death; a cold clammy perspiration, with a tremulous motion, kept creeping slowly over my body during the night, and everything near me had the smell of decaying mortality in the last stage of decomposition and of the grave. I sincerely thank the Almighty Giver of all Good, that He, in His infinite goodness and mercy, gave me strength and courage to overcome the grim and hoary-headed king of terrors, and has kindly permitted me yet to live a little longer in this world. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... with metallic oxides. As to the operation of the tan, from its affinity for metallic salts, we may conjecture, that, in the first instance, it forms a triple compound with the gallic acid and the iron; and that, in consequence of the decomposition of the tan, this compound is afterwards destroyed. Owing to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of entirely depriving the infusion of galls of any one of its ingredients, without, in some degree, affecting the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... views. If I had been called upon two months earlier to pronounce an oration upon the vast benefits of general employment and high wages, I should have launched out con amore. Now, the spectacle which I beheld suggested no other idea than that of an enormous cheese fast hastening to decomposition and decay beneath the nibbling of myriads ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the thirty feet or more of narrow tunnel which led into the hut proper. She did likewise. In the igloo he threw himself down on the ice floor among the squalor and quantities of bear meat in various stages of decomposition. The smell from the whale-oil lamp almost choked him. The girl sat down and ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... dooryard with its infallible index finger pointing to tell a tale. You can scarcely thread your way through it for vehicles of all sorts congregated there to undergo slow decomposition at the hands of wind and weather. This farmer is a tradesman by nature, and though, for thrift's sake, his fields must be tilled, he is yet inwardly constrained to keep on buying and selling, albeit to no purpose. He is everlastingly swapping and bargaining, giving play to a faculty which ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown |
