The Year-book of Facts in Science and Art

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Charles W. Vincent, James Mason
Simpkin, Marshall, and Company, 1849 - Science
 

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Page 152 - It is hardly possible to take one of the soles sold by the shoemakers out of paper or into the hand, without exciting it to such a degree as to open the leaves of an electrometer one or more inches; or if it be unelectrified, the slightest passage over the hand or face, the clothes, or almost any other substance gives it an electric state. Some of the gutta...
Page 243 - A party of four men thus employed at the lower mines averaged $100 a day. The Indians, and those who have nothing but pans or willow baskets, gradually wash out the earth and separate the gravel by hand, leaving nothing but the gold mixed with sand, which is separated in the manner before described. The gold in the lower mines is in fine bright scales...
Page 196 - Sir, — In reply to your letter of this day's date, requiring information as to the truth of a statement published in The Times newspaper, of a sea-serpent of extraordinary dimensions having been seen from Her Majesty's ship Daedalus, under my command, on her passage from the East Indies, I have the honour to acquaint you, for the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at 5 o'clock PM on the 6th of August last, in latitude 24° 44...
Page 152 - ... such as to suggest the making a thicker sheet of the substance into a plate electrical machine for the production of negative electricity. Then as to inductive action through the substance, a sheet of it is soon converted into an excellent electrophorus ; or it may be coated and used in place of a Leyden jar ; or in any of the many other forms of apparatus dependent on inductive action. I have said that all gutta percha is not in this good electrical condition.
Page 163 - I have said elsewhere on the relation of common and voltaic electricity (371, 375), it will not be too much to say that this necessary quantity of electricity is equal to a very powerful flash of lightning. Yet we have it under perfect command; can evolve, direct, and employ it at pleasure; and when it has performed its full work of electrolyzation, it has only separated the elements of a single grain of water.
Page 163 - The same elegant and correct experimentalist has shown that zinc and platinum wires, one-eighteenth of an inch in diameter, and about half an inch long, dipped into dilute sulphuric acid, so weak that it is not sensibly sour to the tongue, will evolve more electricity in...
Page 202 - It pursued a steady, undeviating course, keeping its head horizontal with the surface of the water and in rather a raised position, disappearing occasionally beneath a wave for a very brief interval, and not apparently for purposes of respiration.
Page 197 - ... a dark brown with yellowish white about the throat. It had no fins, but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed, washed about its back.
Page 199 - ... leonina, explained by the similes above cited. The organs of locomotion would be out of sight. The pectoral fins being set on very low down, as in my sketch, the chief impelling force would be the action of the deeper immersed terminal fins and tail, which would create a long eddy, readily mistakable by one looking at the strange phenomenon with a sea-serpent in his mind's eye, for an indefinite prolongation of the body.
Page 152 - ... to open the leaves of an electrometer one or more inches; or if it be unelectrified, the slightest passage over the hand or face, the clothes, or almost any other substance gives it an electric state. Some of the gutta percha is sold in very thin sheets, resembling in general appearance oiled silk ; and if a strip of this be drawn through the fingers, it is so electric as to adhere to the hand or attract pieces of paper. The appearance is such...

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