A Manual of Chemistry: Containing the Principal Facts of the Science, Arranged in the Order in which They are Discussed and Illustrated in the Lectures at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Volume 1

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Long, 1821 - Chemistry - 638 pages
 

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Page 545 - The power of soils to absorb moisture ought to be much greater in warm or dry countries, than in cold and moist ones ; and the quantity of clay, or vegetable -or animal matter they contain, greater.
Page 527 - For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small : beauty should be smooth and polished ; the great, rugged and negligent; beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great in many cases loves the right line, and when it deviates it often makes a strong deviation : beauty should not be obscure ; the great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive.
Page 542 - And when the leaves are fully developed, the ground is shaded, and any injurious influence, which in the summer might be expected from too great a heat, entirely prevented ; so that the temperature of the surface, when bare and exposed to the rays of the sun, affords at least one indication of the degrees of its fertility; and the thermometer may be sometimes a useful instrument to the purchaser or improver...
Page 48 - ... the mass of the metal. • The power of a metallic or other tissue to prevent explosion, will depend upon the heat required to produce the combustion as compared with that acquired by the tissue; and the flame of the most inflammable substances, and of those that produce most heat in combustion, will pass through a metallic tissue that will interrupt the flame of less inflammable substances, or those that produce little heat in combustion. Or the tissue being the same, and impermeable to...
Page 544 - Water, and the decomposing animal and vegetable matter existing in the soil, constitute the true nourishment of plants: and as the earthy parts of the soil are useful in retaining water, so as to supply it in the proper proportions to the roots of the vegetables...
Page 537 - The next process, however, after that of heating, should be their separation, which may be easily accomplished by the sieve, after the soil has been gently bruised in a mortar. The weights of the vegetable fibres or wood, and of the gravel and stones, should be separately noted down, and the nature of the last ascertained ; if calcareous, they will effervesce with acids ; if siliceous, they will be sufficiently hard to scratch glass ; and if of the common aluminous class of stones, they will be soft,...
Page 117 - The viscid product, washed and dried over oil of vitriol in vacuo, yields hydrochlorate of acrolein as a mass of velvety crystals, which melt at 32° into a thick oil, having the odour of rancid fat. It is insoluble in water, but readily soluble in alcohol and ether, on the evaporation of which it remains as a thick oil. It is resolved by heat into acrolein and hydrochloric acid. It is not apparently altered by boiling with water, or by the action of dilute solutions of the alkalis.
Page 544 - I have compared the absorbent powers of many soils with respect to atmospheric moisture, and I have always found it greatest in the most fertile soils ; so that it affords one method of judging of the productiveness of land.
Page 538 - ... combination as muriates. The silica, after the usual process of lixiviation, must be heated red ; the other substances may be separated in the same manner as from the muriatic and sulphuric solutions. This process is the one usually employed by chemical philosophers for the analysis of stones. 8. If any saline matter, or soluble vegetable or animal matter, is suspected in the soil, it will be found in the water of lixiviation used for separating the sand.
Page 538 - ... and exposed for some days to the atmosphere in an open vessel. If any notable quantity of sulphate of lime (gypsum) existed in the soil, a white precipitate will gradually form in the fluid, and the weight of it will indicate the proportion.

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