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"It is generally known even amongst the ignorant that rock grows grows from the outside but the rock here, a specimen of which I hold in my hand, is now in the process of decomposition; to be plain it is rotting in an advanced stage of decomposition so much so that you are not able to identify it with any geological period or formation, even as you may not be able to identify any other extremely decomposed body."
We now arrive at the important result known to chemists as the precipitation of insoluble compounds from solutions. In order to define this result, however, we must, of course, first consider the circumstances of causation of the result. Let us take a simple case of chemical decomposition resulting in the deposition or precipitation of a substance from solution in the insoluble state.
His paper on Electro-chemical Decomposition, received by the Royal Society on January 9, 1834, opens with the proposal of a new terminology. He would avoid the word 'current' if he could. He does abandon the word 'poles' as applied to the ends of a decomposing cell, because it suggests the idea of attraction, substituting for it the perfectly natural term Electrodes.
There would be no pollution from those bodies taken from the river before decomposition set in, and the force of the freshet would tend to clear the river bed of any impurities in it rather than make new deposits. The argument which had the most weight, however, with the President was the efficiency of the local authorities.
"Plants imbibe from the air carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products exhaled by animals or developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. On the other hand, the vegetable pours into the atmosphere oxygen, which is taken up by animals and appropriated by them.
He knew that decomposition had made such progress even while he was still living as to render embalming impossible: He accordingly instructed Don Christopher to see his body wrapped in a shroud just as it lay, and to cause it to be placed in a well-soldered metallic coffin already provided.
The cause of these rich deposits near the surface does not appear to me to be that the lodes originally, before they were exposed by denudation, contained more gold in their upper portions than below, but to be the effect of the decomposition and wearing down of the higher parts, and the concentration of the gold they contained in the lode below that worn away.
Indaba-zimbi lay on the ground like a person quite dead. His limbs had all the utter relaxation of death. But as I watched I saw them begin to stiffen, exactly as though rigor mortis had set in. Then, to my astonishment, I perceived them once more relax, and this time there appeared upon his chest the stain of decomposition.
It is probable that the decomposition of the contents is the result of the presence of bacteria, and that from the surgical point of view they should be regarded as infective. A sebaceous cyst may remain indefinitely without change, or may slowly increase in size, the skin over it becoming stretched and closely adherent to the cyst wall as a result of friction and pressure.
In short, it was scientific chemistry, in the modern acceptance of the term. Lavoisier's observations on combustion are at once important and interesting: "Combustion," he says, "... is the decomposition of oxygen produced by a combustible body. The oxygen which forms the base of this gas is absorbed by and enters into combination with the burning body, while the caloric and light are set free.
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