A School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy: Embracing the Elementary Principles of Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Hydraulics ... Containing Also a Description of the Steam and Locomotive Engines, and of the Electro-magnetic Telegraph

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Collins & brother, 1861 - 470 pages
 

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Page 258 - Prime cheerer Light ! Of all material beings first, and best ! Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe! Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt In unessential gloom; and thou, O Sun! Soul of surrounding worlds! in whom best seen Shines out thy Maker...
Page 70 - ... of adoration and gratitude, that he will receive the illumination that gradually opens upon his soul. It is not the lifeless mass of matter, he will then feel, that he is examining, — it is the mighty machine of Eternal Wisdom : the workmanship of Him, " in whom" every thing lives, and moves, and has its being.
Page 102 - The wheels show how many swings or beats of the pendulum have taken place in a given time, because at every beat the tooth of a wheel is allowed to pass. Now, if this wheel have sixty teeth, it...
Page 200 - It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal like wax before it, — draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors, — cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves.
Page 346 - This disregard is neither supercilious nor causeless. The constellations seem to have been almost purposely named and delineated to cause as much confusion and inconvenience as possible. Innumerable snakes twine through long and contorted areas of the heavens, where no memory can follow them : bears, lions, and fishes, large and small, northern and southern, confuse all nomenclature, &c. A better system of constellations might have been a ma. tvi i.il help as an artificial memory.
Page 147 - Whatever change of weather suddenly follows a change in the barometer may be expected to last but a short time. Thus, if fair weather follow immediately the rise of the mercury, there will be very little of it ; and in the same way, if foul weather follow the fall of mercury it will last but a short time.
Page 200 - The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin, or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal...
Page 141 - ... vapors and exhalations from the earth, which float in it, and act in some degree as a covering, which preserves us equally from the intensity of the sun's rays, and from the severity of the cold.

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