Familiar lectures on scientific subjects

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Page 27 - The bottom was covered with lava, and the south-west and northern parts of it were one vast flood of burning matter, in a state of terrific ebullition, rolling to and fro its " fiery surge
Page 35 - I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air...
Page 408 - The actual force necessary to be originated to give rise to the utmost imaginable exertion of animal force in any case, may be no greater than is required to remove a single material molecule from its place through a space inconceivably minute — no more, in comparison with the dynamical force disengaged, directly or indirectly, by the act, than the pull of a hair-trigger in comparison with the force of the mine which it explodes. But without the power to make some material disposition...
Page 17 - ... at Naples. In an instant, a fountain of liquid transparent fire began to rise, and gradually increasing, arrived at so amazing a height as to strike every one who beheld it with the most awful astonishment. I shall scarcely...
Page 408 - ... in comparison with the force of the mine which it explodes. But without the power to make some material disposition,' to originate some movement, or to change, at least temporarily, the amount of dynamical force appropriate to some one or more material molecules, the mechanical results of human or animal volition are inconceivable. It matters not that we are ignorant of the mode in which this is performed. It suffices to bring the origination of dynamical power, to however small an extent, within...
Page 25 - Sang'ir appeared like a body of liquid fire, extending itself in every direction. The fire and columns of flame continued to rage with unabated fury, until the darkness, caused by the quantity of falling matter, obscured it at about 8 PM Stones at this time fell very thick at Sang'ir, some of them as large as two fists, but generally not larger than walnuts.
Page 401 - In every such change we recognize the action of Force. And in the only case in which we are admitted into any personal knowledge of the origin of force, we find it connected (possibly by intermediate links untraceable by our faculties, but yet indisputably connected] with volition, and by inevitable consequence with motive, with intellect, and with all those attributes of mind in which personality consists.
Page 26 - Pekate no vestige of a house is left ; twenty-six of the people, who were at Sumbawa at the time, are the whole of the population who have escaped. From the most particular inquiries I have been able to make, there were certainly not fewer than 12,000 individuals in Tomboro and Pekate' at the time of the eruption, of whom only five or six survive.
Page 17 - Puffs of smoke, as black as can possibly be imagined, succeeded one another hastily, and accompanied the red-hot, transparent, and liquid lava, interrupting its splendid brightness here and there by patches of the darkest hue. Within these purls of smoke, at the very moment of their emission from the crater, I could perceive a bright, but pale, electrical fire, briskly playing about in zig.zag lines t.
Page 389 - And thus the change which would place our system of linear measure on a perfectly faultless basis, would at the same time rescue our weights and measures of capacity from their present utter confusion...

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