The American Journal of Science and Arts

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S. Converse, 1876

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Page 405 - A Short History of Natural Science and of the Progress of Discovery, From the Time of the Greeks to the Present Time.
Page 293 - This reasoning applies word for word to the development of Bacteria from that floating matter which the electric beam reveals in the air, and in the absence of which no Bacterial life has been generated. There seems no flaw in this reasoning ; and it is so simple as to render it unlikely that the notion of Bacterial life developed from dead dust can ever gain currency among the members of a great scientific profession. A novel mode of experiment has been here pursued, and it may be urged that the...
Page 290 - Vacher reply that notwithstanding " an almost incalculable amount of patient labour, the actual results obtained, especially as regards the manner of generation of contagium, have been most disappointing. Observers are even yet at variance whether these minute particles, whose discovery we have just noticed, and other disease germs, are always produced from like bodies previously existing, or whether they do not, under certain favourable conditions, spring into existence de novo...
Page 57 - In whatever direction a body moves on the surface of the earth, there is a force arising from the earth's rotation, which deflects it to the right, in the northern hemisphere, but to the left, in the southern.
Page 290 - Into two other smaller apertures in the top of the cupboard are inserted, air-tight, the open ends of two narrow tubes, intended to connect the interior space with the atmosphere. The tubes are bent several times up and down, so as to intercept and retain the particles carried by such feeble currents as changes of temperature might cause to set in between the outer and the inner air.
Page 327 - Mr. Mason, a young and ardent astronomer, a native of the United States of America, whose premature death is the more to be regretted as he was (so far as I am aware) the only other recent observer who has given himself with the assiduity which the subject requires, to the exact delineation of Nebula;, and whose figures I find at all satisfactory.'^ He also prepared a college treatise on Practical Astronomy.
Page 292 - Briicke, dissolve clean gum mastic in alcohol, and drop it into water, the mastic is precipitated, and milkiness produced. If the solution be very strong the mastic separates in curds ; but by gradually diluting the alcoholic solution we finally reach a point where the milkiness disappears, the liquid assuming, by reflected light, a bright cerulean hue. It is, in point of fact, the colour of the sky, and is due to a similar cause, namely, the scattering of light by particles, small in comparison...
Page 227 - Our Place among Infinities : A Series of Essays contrasting our Little Abode in Space and Time with the Infinities Around us.
Page 292 - ... as certain as if they could be felt between the fingers or seen by the naked eye. Supposing them to augment in magnitude until they come, not only within range of the microscope, but within range of the unaided senses. Let it be assumed that our knowledge of them under these circumstances remains as defective as it is now — that we do not know whether they are germs, particles of dead organic dust, or particles of mineral matter. Suppose a vessel (say a flower-pot) to be at hand filled with...
Page 290 - My principal stimulus, however, was the desire to free my mind, and if possible the minds of others, from the uncertainty and confusion which now beset the doctrine of "spontaneous generation." Pasteur has pronounced it " a chimera," and expressed the undoubting conviction that, this being so, it is possible to remove parasitic diseases from the earth.

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