The American Journal of Science and Arts

Front Cover
S. Converse, 1845
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 104 - Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Page 187 - ... primitive type, under a law to which that of like-production is subordinate, gave birth to the type next above it, that this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases very small- — namely, from one species only to another ; so that the phenomenon has always been of a simple and modest character.
Page 213 - ... experiment of a plate suspended from a scale beam over a vessel of the liquid. It is, however, more in accordance with all the phenomena of cohesion to suppose, instead of the attraction of the liquid being neutralized by the heat, that the effect of this agent is merely to neutralize the polarity of the molecules so as to give them perfect freedom of motion around every imaginable axis.
Page 107 - My heart is awed within me when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on, In silence, round me, — the perpetual work Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed Forever.
Page 213 - The passage of a body from a solid to a liquid state is generally attributed to the neutralization of the attraction of cohesion by the repulsion of the increased quantity of heat ; the liquid being supposed to retain a small portion of its original attraction, which is shown by the force necessary to separate a surface of water from water in the well known experiment of a plate suspended from a scale beam over a vessel of the liquid.
Page 247 - ... system) ; for gravitation is a property of matter dependent on a certain force, and it is this force which constitutes the matter. In that view matter is not merely mutually penetrable, but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system, yet always retaining its own centre of force.
Page 212 - A Treatise on the Forces which produce the Organization of Plants. With an Appendix, containing several Memoirs on Capillary Attraction, Electricity, and the Chemical Action of Light.
Page 215 - Many experiments were made to determine the amount of this force, by blowing a bubble on the larger end of a glass tube in the form of a letter U, and partially filled with water; the contractile force of the bubble, transmitted through the enclosed air, forced down the water in the larger leg of the tube and caused it to rise in the smaller. The difference of level observed by means of a microscope gave the force in grains per square inch, derived from the known pressure of a given height of water....
Page 195 - StiltBird (Himantoput) would never have revealed the anomalous development of the other bones of the leg; but so far as my skill in interpreting an osseous fragment may be credited, I am willing to risk the reputation for it on the statement that there has existed, if there does not now exist, in New Zealand, a struthious bird nearly if not quite equal in size to the ostrich.
Page 160 - ... of the water also indicates that it is not like other southern lands, abrupt and precipitous. This cause is sufficient to retain the huge masses of ice, by their being attached by their lower surfaces instead of their sides only.

Bibliographic information