The Playbook of Metals: Including Personal Narratives of Visits to Coal, Lead, Copper, and Tin Mines; with a Large Number of Interesting Experiments Relating to Alchemy and the Chemistry of Fifty Metallic Elements

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Routledge, 1859 - Alchemy - 502 pages
 

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Page 173 - And all King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were of silver, it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon.
Page 9 - It is a truly wonderful fact — the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity — that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in groups subordinate to groups, in the manner which we everywhere behold...
Page 366 - This having been done, and the fluid iron run in, a rapid boiling up of the metal will be heard going on within the vessel. the metal being tossed violently about and dashed from side to side, shaking the vessel by the force with which it moves. From the throat of the converting vessel, flame will then immediately issue, accompanied by a few bright sparks.
Page 147 - Containing, Great Variety of Choice Secrets in Medicine and Alchymy in the Working of Metallick Mines, and the Separation of Metals : Also, Various Cheap and Easie Ways of making Salt-petre, and Improving of Barren-Land, and the Fruits of the Earth. Together with many other things very profitable for all the Lovers of Art and Industry.
Page 366 - ... combine, and consequently that it was only necessary to bring the oxygen and carbon together in such a manner that a vast surface should be exposed to their mutual action, in order to produce a temperature hitherto unattainable in our largest furnaces. " With a view of testing practically this theory...
Page 10 - As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world.
Page 366 - At one side of the vessel, about half way up from the bottom, there is a hole made for running in the crude metal, and on the opposite side there is a tap-hole stopped with loam, by means of which the iron is run out at the end of the process. In practice this converting vessel may be made of any convenient size, but I prefer that it should not hold less than one, or more than five tons, of fluid iron at each charge.
Page 298 - Britain ; for at full tide, the intervening passage being overflowed, they appear islands, but when the sea retires a large , space is left dry, and they are seen as peninsulas. From hence, then, the traders purchase the tin of the natives and transport it into Gaul, and finally, travelling through Gaul on foot, in about thirty days they bring their burthens on horses to the mouth of the river Rhone.
Page 407 - ... turned inwards at a right angle. When an observation is to be made, a bar of platinum or malleable iron is placed in the cavity of the register ; the index is to be pressed down upon it, and firmly fixed in its place by the platinum strap and porcelain wedge. The scale is then to be applied by carefully adjusting the brass rule to the sides of the register, and fixing it by pressing the...
Page 407 - A cylindrical piece of porcelain called the index is then placed upon the top of the bar, and confined in its place by a ring or strap of platinum passing round the top of the register, which is partly cut away at the top, and tightened by a wedge of porcelain. When such an arrangement is exposed to a high temperature, it is obvious that the expansion of the metallic bar will force the index forward to the amount of the excess of its expansion over that of the black-lead, and that, when again cooled,...

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