Water moccasin

“ Tuesday, October 9.—John Glass has made each of us a pair of moccasins. He brought them in with much satisfaction on Saturday evening, and we at once tried them on. They are made with rather pointed toes which do not quite suit our feet. They have to be put on damp so that they may take the shape of the foot; and when they get very hard, as they do in summer, have to be soaked in water. They soon wear out, generally not lasting longer than three weeks, as the ground is so rocky.
Repetto is writing letters to be corrected by Graham, and really writes them very well for one entirely self-taught. ”

“ It seems equally reasonable to believe that osmose would take place through both the outer coating of the body and the cell-walls of the animal's body. As long as the oyster stays in the salt water, the solution of salts within its body would naturally be in equilibrium with the water outside. When the animal is brought into fresh or brackish water, i. e., into a more dilute solution, we should expect the salts in the more concentrated solution within its body to pass out, and a larger amount of fresh water to enter, and produce just such a distention as actually takes place in the floating. ”

“ Acetate of lead is now added to the filtrate until no further precipitation occurs; the liquid is then boiled and filtered. The meconic acid remains on the filter as meconate of lead, while the filtrate contains the morphine as acetate. The liquid is freed from excess of lead by passing through it a current of sulphuretted hydrogen, filtered to remove the precipitated sulphide of lead, and the [Pg 340] resulting liquid evaporated to an extract on a water bath, and treated with alcohol. The alcoholic solution on evaporation gives acetate of morphine, which may then be tested. ”

“ The morphia may be recovered by digesting the precipitate in weak solution of potassa.
Prop., &c. Freely soluble in alcohol and ether; soluble in 80 parts of cold and 17 parts of boiling water. Its solution in the latter, by slow evaporation, yields large, transparent octahedra. With the acids it forms crystallisable salts. These possess the singular property of producing a general and violent itching of the surface of the body when administered internally. The same symptoms frequently follow the exhibition of opium and hydrochlorate of morphia, and are referred to the presence of codeia. ”

“ These may all be made by the direct solution of the alkaloid in the dilute acid. The only ones of importance are the acetate, hydrochlorate, and sulphate.
Pur. Commercial morphia and its preparations are often contaminated with codeine, narcotine, and colouring matter. The proportion of the first two may be estimated by the loss of weight which the sample suffers when digested in ether; or by dissolving out the morphine by digestion in weak liquor of potassa. Pure morphia “is scarcely soluble in cold water, sparingly so in boiling water, and readily so in alcohol. ”

“ But, on the other hand, the Acid hath, by its union with the earth, lost part of the affinity it had with water; so that if a Sal Salsum be dried, and freed of all superfluous humidity, it will remain, in that dry solid form, instead of attracting the moisture of the air, and running per deliquium, as the Acid would do if it were pure and unmixed with earth. ”

“ The white matter, that remains after the evaporation of the fluid, is one of the most violent corrosives, and would prove an actual poison if taken internally. By washing it several times in warm water it is freed from a great deal of its Acid, and so considerably sweetened. The proof is this; [Pg 304] if the water used in washing the Turbith be evaporated, there remains after the evaporation a matter in form of a Salt, that being set in a cellar runs into a liquor called Oil of Mercury, which is a powerful corrosive. ”

“ Let us for a moment consider this fluid we call water, especially sea water. Chemically speaking, pure water is one of the rarest things—that is, water absolutely free from all foreign matter, divested of everything save hydrogen and oxygen in the combining proportions, by weight one part of hydrogen to eight of oxygen; by volume, two of hydrogen to one of oxygen, we have pure water—an oxide of hydrogen. But absolutely pure water must be prepared in a vacuum, and it must never have contact with air of any kind. ”

“ Being exposed very dry to the air, it grows moist, and runs into a liquor in a very little time. It dissolves easily and readily in a very small quantity of cold water. This solution being mixed with Fixed Alkalis, in various proportions, doth not grow turbid, nor drops any precipitate; but with a decoction of galls it makes ink. Acids give it a much clearer colour, and at first produce no precipitation; but, in a quarter of an hour, there appears a precipitate much of the same colour with the solution. ”

“ Decomposition takes place on contact with a body already undergoing the same change, in the same manner that yeast causes fermentation. Animal matter enters into combination with oxygen in precisely the same way as vegetable matter, but as, in addition to carbon and hydrogen, it contains nitrogen, the products of the eremacausis are more numerous, being carbon and nitrate of ammonia, carburetted and sulphuretted hydrogen, and water, and these ammoniacal salts greatly favor the growth of fungi. Now paper consists essentially of woody fibre, having animal matter as size on its surface. ”

“ Every day you must put down new mats and throw away the old ones.” Then he said to the mats: “There must be new mats here each day.”
Wus started. He traveled fast. Each pair of new moccasins lasted ten days. When there was a hole in the heel of one moccasin, he threw the pair away. He wore out five pairs; then he was near the house where the strangers lived. He [345] climbed a high mountain and stayed there all day, watching the people in the valley. He saw his sister; she was almost dead. Men were throwing captives back and forth across a fire; their bodies were burned and black with smoke. ”

“ This inflow is called endosmosis, and the outflow of the solution is called exosmosis. If an indiarubber bottle be filled with water and immersed in alcohol or ether, the endosmosis of the spirit will be so powerfully exerted as to distend the bottle considerably. If the bottle be filled with alcohol or ether, and surrounded by water, it will nearly empty itself.
The force exerted by this action is displayed by the rising of the sap from the rootlets of a forest giant to the cells of its topmost leaves. Not only plants, but animals also, are complex osmotic machines. ”

“ In this state the flowers of the Sedative Salt seem to issue out of the circle, as from their basis: they appear like very thin, light, shining scales, and must be brushed off with a feather.
At the bottom of the retort will be left a saline mass: dissolve this in a sufficient quantity of hot water; filter the solution in order to free it from a brown earth which it deposites; set the liquor to evaporate, and crystals of Sedative Salt will form in it. ”

“ On the other hand, magnesium, calcium and potassium, all inhibit and do not stimulate the disk. Indeed, the stimulating effect of the common salt in the sea-water is exactly offset by the subduing tendency of the magnesium, calcium and potassium; and thus it is that the sea-water as a whole neither stimulates nor inhibits the pulsation of the jellyfish. The sea-water maintains the medusa in a delicately balanced fluid for it contains poisons and antidotes as does our blood, which exactly counteract one the other. ”

“ The impurities become diluted and if sufficient time elapses the bacteria and microörganisms will die a natural death.
The principal process involved in self-purification of water is the oxidation of nitrogenous organic matter which is a chemical process. In the course of time the microörganisms die as a result of the biological action. Then there is the effect of dilution, sedimentation, especially in lakes and still water, and the effect of sunlight.
Food for the bacteria is lessened as a result of the destruction of the organic matter through oxidation. ”

“ When, finally, osmotic pressure within the living cell and in the surrounding medium is equal, the interchange of water ceases. All these processes are explained by diffusion. Self-regulation takes place in this regard simply by osmotic means. The conditions in respect to those decomposition products consisting in more complicated organic combinations, such as lactic acid, fatty acids and nitrogen derivatives of protein disintegration, are somewhat different in that the protoplasm surface possesses the property of hindering the passage of these substances into the medium. ”

“ Nature has dispensed the first necessary of life with a most niggard hand, those pools which have not a constant supply of running water soon become adulterated by various decompositions of organic and inorganic matter. Wacke cannot resist any long exposure, and hence fluid in contact with it imbibes oxide of iron and muriate of soda; whilst flocks and herds, corrupting the element in a still more offensive manner, not only impart a fetid taste and smell, but stir up the deposited mud, which emits a volume of sulphuretted hydrogen. ”

“ The importance of the osmotic pressure of sea-water in biology will be easily understood from the fact that a frog placed in sea-water loses water by exosmosis and soon becomes 20% lighter than its original weight, while a true salt-water fish suddenly transferred to fresh water gains water by endosmosis, swells up and quickly succumbs. The elevation of the boiling point is of little practical importance, but the reduction of vapour pressure means that sea-water evaporates more slowly than fresh water, and the more slowly the higher the salinity. ”

“ No alteration is produced in a solution of pyrocatechin by protosalts of iron.
Among the few medicinal preparations of tar, is Tar Water, called Aqua vel Liquor Picis, made by agitating wood-tar with water. The presence in it of pyrocatechin is easily proved by the above-mentioned reactions, or by a few drops of red chromate of potassium, which produces a brownish black colouration. It may hence be inferred that pyrocatechin is perhaps the active ingredient in tar-water, and that for making this liquid the granular, crystalline sorts of tar should be preferred. ”

“ In some species multiplication does not appear to depend on the presence of much organic matter, and, indeed, some can live and multiply in sterilised water: Micrococcus aquatilis and Bacillus erythrosporus. Again, others depend not upon the quantity of organic matter, but upon its quality. And frequently in a water of a high degree of organic pollution it will be found that bacteria have been restrained in their development by the competition of other species monopolising the pabulum. Probably at least one hundred different species of non-pathogenic organisms have been isolated from water. ”

“ Indeed the Chymists have not yet been able to procure a Saline Substance, by combining earth and water together. This favours a suspicion, that, besides these two, there is some other principle in the composition of salts, which escapes our researches, because we cannot preserve it when we decompose them; but it is sufficient to our purpose, that water and earth are demonstrably amongst the real principles of Saline Substances, and that no experiment hath ever shewn us any other. ”

“ Mocha is about fifteen miles in circumference, hilly in the centre, and sloping towards the coast, more so on the western side, where a tolerably good anchorage and a safe landing place, on a sandy beach, may be found. Fresh water flows from several springs; wild turnips, mint and other herbs grow in abundance; the trees on the hilly part are principally the white cinnamon, named by the Spaniards canelo, the magui, the luma, a tree called espino, and others. ”

“ Should by any misfortune fungus get into the rearing boxes, a dose of salt may very likely cure it. Sea water is the best, but if this is not obtainable, a solution of salt and water run through the boxes will probably cure the disease. Considerable good may also be done to the young fish by occasionally putting a lump of rock salt in at the inlet, and the water allowed to run over and dissolve it. ”

“ The water resulting from this detonation was so small in quantity, and in such a state of minute division, as to be invisible. But water certainly was produced; for oxygen is incapable of combining with hydrogen in any other proportions than those that form water; therefore water must always be the result of their combination. ”

“ But in the act of propagation, on the contrary, and when about to pass into the still condition, the motile Protococcus cell seems to shun light, and falls to the bottom of the vessel. Too strong sunlight, as when concentrated by a lens, quickly kills the young zoospores. A temperature of undue elevation is injurious to the development of their vital activity and the formation of the zoospores. Frost destroys motile, but not still zoospores.55
Stephanosphæra pluvialis is a conspicuous variety of the fresh-water algals, described by Cohn. ”

“ Physiologists declare that water is formed in the body by a direct union of oxygen and hydrogen, but those who have cultivated the drink-little habit need not hope to find an excuse for themselves in this fact: chronic ill-health betrays them. Water in organic relations with the body never exists uncombined with inorganic salts (especially sodium chloride) in any of the fluids, semi-solids, or solids of the body. It enters into the constitution of the tissues, not as pure water, but always in connection with inorganic salts. ”