Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews. V. 1-2

The position of these bright bands never varies, and each metal has its own system. Hence the competent observer can infer from the bands of the spectrum the metals which produc...

Hypotheses in science, though apparently transcending experience, are in reality experience modified by scientific thought and pushed into an ultra experiential region. At the t...

Force in this form has a definite mechanical measure, in the amount of work that it can perform. The simplest form of work is the raising of a weight. A man walking up-hill, or...

This idea of attraction between sun and planets had become familiar in the time of Newton. He set himself to examine the attraction; and here, as elsewhere, we find the speculat...

Now, I think, without further preface, you will be able' to comprehend for yourselves, and explain to others, one of the most interesting effects in the whole domain of magnetis...

When the pole of an ordinary magnet is brought to act upon the swimming needle, the latter is attracted,--the reason being that the attracted end of the needle being nearer to t...

The fact that in historic times, even within the memory of man, the fall has sensibly receded, prompts the question, How far has this recession gone? At what point did the ledge...

CHARLES DARWIN.--Observations on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, and of the other parts of Lochaber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they are of marine origin. Phil. T...

Those who have visited the slate quarries of Cumberland and North Wales will have witnessed the phenomenon to which I refer. We have long drawn our supply of roofing-slates from...

As regards the function of miracles in the founding of a religion, Mr. Mozley institutes a comparison between the religion of Christ and that of Mahomet; and he derides the latt...

But if the Jesuit notion be rejected, what are we to accept? Physiologists say that every human being comes from an egg not more than the 1/120th of an inch in diameter. Is this...

The sun warms the tropical ocean, converting a portion of its liquid into vapour, which rises in the air and is recondensed on mountain heights, returning in rivers to the ocean...

Other observations confirmed this one. The "Urgent" is a screw steamer, and right over the blades of the screw was an orifice called the screw-well, through which one could look...

But the secret is an open one--the practical monitions are plain enough, which declare that on our dealings with matter depend our weal and woe, physical and moral. The state of...

And I may now cry 'Act!' but the potency of action must be yours. I may pull the trigger, but if the gun be not charged there is no result. We are creators in the intellectual w...

The fracture theory, then, if it regards the elevation of the Alps as due to the operation of a force acting throughout the entire region, is, in my opinion, utterly incompetent...

Some years ago, when the spirits were particularly active in this country, Faraday was invited, or rather entreated, by one of his friends to meet and question them. He had, how...

This is the simple and natural account, given subsequently by Mayer himself, of the course of thought started by his observation in Java. But the conviction once formed, that an...

With such chambers I tested, in the autumn and winter of 1875-6, infusions of the most various kinds, embracing natural animal liquids, the flesh and viscera of domestic animals...

Cadiz soon sank beneath the sea, and we sighted in succession Cape Trafalgar, Tarifa, and the revolving light of Ceuta. The water was very calm, and the moon rose in a quiet hea...

The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human mind are traceable throughout history, great writers ranging themselves sometimes on the one side, sometimes on the other. Men...

Before parting from Professor Knight, let me commend his courage as well as his insight. We have heard much of late of the peril to morality involved in the decay of religious b...

With one special utterance of Professor Virchow his translator connects me by name. 'I have no objection,' observes the Professor, 'to your saying that atoms of carbon also poss...

The last great agent employed in lighthouse illumination is electricity. It was in this Institution, beginning in 1831, that Faraday proved the existence and illustrated the law...

Now take a second darning-needle like the first, and magnetise it in precisely the same manner: freely suspended it also will turn its eye to the north and its point to the sout...

Have we any reason to believe that such bodies exist in space, and that they may be raining down upon the sun? The meteorites flashing through the air are small planetary bodies...

Feeling, I say again, dates from as old an origin and as high a source as intelligence, and it equally demands its range of play. The wise teacher of humanity will recognise the...

But this water, so admirable as regards freedom from mechanical impurity, labours under the disadvantage of being rendered very hard by the carbonate of lime which it holds in s...

Those, therefore, who believe that the miraculous is still active in nature, may, with perfect consistency, join in our periodic prayers for fair weather and for rain: while tho...

And when we reverse the process, and employ those tremors of heat to raise a weight--which is done through the intermediation of an elastic fluid in the steam-engine--a certain...

That the motion should thus transfer itself through the air it is necessary that the two forks should be in perfect unison. If a morsel of wax not larger than a pea be placed on...

The term Physics, as made use of in the present Lecture, refers to that portion of natural science which lies midway between astronomy and chemistry. The former, indeed, is Phys...

Permettez-moi de terminer ces quelques lignes que je dois dicter, vaincu que je suis par la maladie, en vous faisant observer que vous rendriez service aux Colonies de la Grande...

Thus, in brief outline, have been brought before you a few of the results of recent enquiry. If you ask me what is the use of them, I can hardly answer you, unless you define th...

To study this effect a platinum wire was stretched across the beam, the two ends of the wire being connected with the two poles of a voltaic battery. To regulate the strength of...

It was these organisms acting in wound and abscess which so frequently converted our hospitals into charnel-houses, and it is their destruction by the antiseptic system that now...

The latter also underwent slow but incessant modification. It first resolved itself into a series of strata resembling those of the electric discharge. After a little time, and...

This complex mass of action, emotional, intellectual, and mechanical, is evoked by the impact upon the retina of the infinitesimal waves of light coming from a few pencil marks...

Various ameliorations and improvements have recently been introduced into the smoke respirator. The hood of Captain Shaw has been improved upon by the simple and less expensive...

It is thus proved that in the quantity of aethereal motion which it is competent to take up, we have a practical measure of the carbonic acid of the breath, and hence of the com...

It is not my habit of mind to think otherwise than solemnly of the feeling which prompts prayer. It is a power which I should like to see guided, not extinguished--devoted to pr...

The adjustments also extend in time, covering continually greater intervals. Along with this extension in space and time the adjustments also increase in speciality and complexi...

'Et vous, monsieur,' he writes to Faraday, 'qui appartenez à une société à laquelle je n'avais rien offert, vous qui me connaissiez à peine de nom; vous n'avez pas demandé si j'...

The spray was in general blinding, but at times it disappeared and yielded noble views of the fall. The edge of the cataract is crimped by indentations which exalt its beauty. H...

The first volume deals almost exclusively with the laws and phenomena of matter. The second trenches upon questions in which the phenomena of matter interlace more or less with...

The experimental tube s s' being exhausted, a cock at the end s' is turned carefully on. The air passes slowly through the cotton-wool, the caustic potash, and the sulphuric aci...

The proper function of the inductive principle, or the belief in the order of nature, says Mr. Mozley, is 'to act as a practical basis for the affairs of life, and the carrying...

A few exceptions to the general state of union of the molecules of the earth's crust--vast in relation to us, but trivial in comparison to the total store of which they are the...

You will notice that I am stating the truth strongly, as at the beginning we agreed it should be stated. But I must go still further, and affirm that in the eye of science the a...

From their perviousness to stellar light, and other considerations, Sir John Herschel drew some startling conclusions regarding the density and weight of comets. You know that t...

Neither of us, I trust, will be afraid or ashamed to begin at the alphabet of this question. Our first effort must be to understand each other, and this mutual understanding can...

NOTE.--As might have been expected, Professor Virchow, shows himself in practice far too sound a philosopher to be restricted by the canon laid down in his critique of Dr. Haeck...

Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield to it a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypot...

And let him who is dazzled by such applications--who sees in the steam-engine and the electric telegraph the highest embodiment of human genius and the only legitimate object of...

We now approach an aspect of this question which concerns us still more closely, and will be best illustrated by an actual fact. A few years ago I was bathing in an Alpine strea...

In the cases hitherto considered, the fermentation is proved to be the invariable correlative of life, being produced by organisms foreign to the fermentable substance. But the...

This extraordinary deportment of the elementary gases naturally directed attention to elementary bodies in other states of aggregation. Some of Melloni's results now attained a...

In October 1813 he quitted England with Sir Humphry and Lady Davy. During his absence he kept a journal, from which copious and interesting extracts have been made by Dr. Bence...

Not with the vagueness belonging to the emotions, but with the definiteness belonging to the understanding, the scientific man has to put to himself these questions regarding th...

The laboratory was next filled with the fumes of gunpowder. In five successive experiments, corresponding to five different densities of the gunpowder-smoke, the angles enclosed...

We now proceed to the calm and thorough consideration of another subject, more important if possible than the foregoing one, but like it somewhat difficult to seize by reason of...

The most 'materialistic' speculation for which I was responsible, prior to the 'Belfast Address,' is embodied in the following extract from a brief article written as far back a...

What, then, is the physical meaning of opacity and transparency as regards light and radiant heat? The visible rays of the spectrum differ from the invisible ones simply in peri...

Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different light-waves produce different colours. Red, for example, is produced by the largest waves, violet by the smallest, whil...

Most heartily do I recognise and admire the spiritual radiance, if I may use the term, shed by religion on the minds and lives of many personally known to me. At the same time I...

In 1866 a great step in the intensification of induced currents, and the consequent augmentation of the magneto-electric light, was taken by Mr. Henry Wilde. It fell to my lot t...

Pasteur followed this parasitic destroyer from year to year, and led by his singular power of combining facts with the logic of facts, discovered eventually the precise phase in...

And thus it is with all other kinds of matter, as far as they have hitherto been examined. Coke, whether brought to a white heat by the electric current, or by the oxyhydrogen j...

Biassed, however, by their previous education, the great majority of naturalists invoked a special creative act to account for the appearance of each new group of organisms. Dou...

Towards the close of the day the atmosphere became very serene. A few distant cumuli sailed near the horizon, but the zenith and a vast angular space all round it were absolutel...

The wind sinking, we lifted anchor on the 24th. For some hours we went pleasantly along; but during the afternoon the storm revived, and it blew heavily against us all the night...

Whewell makes many wise and brave remarks regarding the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit. The seekers after natural knowledge had forsaken the fountain of livin...

To one inventor in particular belongs the honour of the idea, and the realisation of the idea, of causing the carbon rods to burn away like a candle. It is needless to say that...