Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects

Front Cover
A. Strahan, 1867 - 507 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 37 - 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 47 - 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 392 - The movement of the upper one was shown by an index, that pointed to the right or to the left according to the direction of the motion.
Page 463 - 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 463 - ... 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 26 - ... 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 35 - 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 132 - ... say, when the full effect of the sun's perihelion action had been endured, — the nucleus offered every appearance of most violent and, so to speak, angry excitement, evidenced by the complicated structure and convolutions of the jets issuing from it."
Page 457 - 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 36 - Peltate" 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.

Bibliographic information