United States or Syria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On examining, after I had reached America, those earthy and friable masses, I found crystals of sulphate of alumine.
These organs contain lime and magnesia in the bones, in the lymph of the thoracic duct, in the colouring matter of the blood, and in white hairs; they afford very small quantities of silex in black hair; and, according to Vauquelin, but a few atoms of alumine in the bones, though this is contained abundantly in the greater part of those vegetable substances which form part of our nourishment.
Besides, in what does this smell consist? Do the silex, the alumine, and the other earths, with their compounds, emit any odor? Rarely, I believe, unless when mixed with vegetable matter. But no gases necessary to health are evolved during the decomposition of vegetable matter; on the contrary, it is well known that many of them tend to induce disease.
A great number of physiological phenomena prove that a temporary cessation of hunger may be produced though the substances that are submitted to the organs of digestion may not be, properly speaking, nutritive. The earth of the Ottomacs, composed of alumine and silex, furnishes probably nothing, or almost nothing, to the composition of the organs of man.
The porphyritic lavas are affected by the action of the sulphuric acid: the alumine, magnesia, soda, and metallic oxides gradually disappear; and often nothing remains but the silex, which unites in mammillary plates, like opal. It is not easy to form an idea of the origin of these incrustations.
One general character of all argillaceous rocks is to give out a peculiar, earthy odour when breathed upon, which is a test of the presence of alumine, although it does not belong to pure alumine, but, apparently, to the combination of that substance with oxide of iron. This division comprehends those rocks which, like chalk, are composed chiefly of lime and carbonic acid.
The waters of these are pure, and impregnated chiefly with aluminous and calcareous matter, giving to the St. Lawrence river a fresh and admirable element and aliment. The St. Lawrence is of a fine cerulean hue, but, like its parent waters of Erie and Ontario, rapidly deposits lime and alumine, so that the boilers of steam-vessels, and even teakettles, soon become furred and incrusted.
Word Of The Day