The Annual of Scientific Discovery, Or, Year-book of Facts in Science and Art

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Gould and Lincoln, 1865
 

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Page 281 - When speculations on the long series of events which occurred in the glacial and post-glacial periods are indulged in, the imagination is apt to take alarm at the immensity of the time required to interpret the monuments of these ages, all referable to the era of existing species. In order to abridge the number of centuries which would otherwise be indispensable, a disposition is shown by many to magnify the rate of change in prehistoric times by investing the causes which have modified the animate...
Page 174 - In these instruments, as is well known, an object represented on a revolving disc, in the successive positions it assumes in performing a given evolution, is seen to execute the movement so delineated ; in the stereotrope the effect of solidity is superadded, so that the object is perceived as if in motion and with an appearance of relief as in nature.
Page xii - But whether the end be seventy years hence, or seven hundred — be the close of the mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us — this only we may foretell with confidence — that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain — that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities...
Page 140 - Kepler's celebrated statement that " there are more comets in the heavens than fish in the ocean," is founded on the fact that, of all the comets belonging to our solar system, comparatively few can be seen by the inhabitants of the earth, and therefore the not inconsiderable number of actually observed comets obliges us, according to the rules of the calculus of probabilities, to assume the existence of a great many more beyond the sphere of our vision. Besides planets, satellites, and comets, another...
Page 144 - ... render it. Other methods furnish the same conclusion. If we imagine the sun to be surrounded by a hollow sphere, it is clear that the inner surface of this sphere must receive all the heat radiated from the sun. At the distance of our globe from the sun, such a sphere would have a radius...
Page 284 - ... of the plastic condition of the calcified mud of the breccia at the time of interment, by the chemical constitution of the human bones, corresponding with that of the other animal remains, and by the similarity of their position and relations in the surrounding breccia. Among the principal remains of the men of the...
Page 165 - They seem to lead to the conclusion that the ultimate atom itself is essentially elastic, For if heat-vibrations do not consist in excursions of the atom, then it must consist in alternate expansions and contractions of the atom itself. This again is opposed to the ordinary idea that the atom is essentially solid and impenetrable ; but it favors the modern idea that matter consists of a force of resistance acting from a center.
Page 271 - I have therefore little doubt that the Bath springs, like most other thermal waters, mark the site of some great convulsion and fracture which took place in the crust of the earth at some former period — perhaps not a very remote one, geologically speaking. The uppermost part of the rent through which the hot water rises is situated in horizontal strata of Lias, and Trias, 300 feet thick; and...
Page 112 - ... on warming, emerge in their proper order. This is equally true of our bodies and our minds. We are involved in the universal metamorphosis. Nothing leaves us wholly as it found us. Every man we meet, every book we read, every picture or landscape we see, every word or tone we hear, mingles with our being and modifies it. There are cases on record of ignorant women, in states of insanity, uttering Greek and Hebrew phrases, which in past years they have heard their masters utter, without, of course,...
Page 275 - ... and fluor spar, together with siliceous minerals, such as opal, — all found in the interspaces of the bricks and mortar, or constituting part of their rearranged materials. The quantity of heat brought into action in this instance in the course of...

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