In the East Indies, attar is a general term for a perfume made from flowers. In Europe the term is generally used only of the attar or otto of roses, an essential oil made from Rosacentifolia, the hundred-leaved or cabbage-rose, Rosa damascena or damask-rose, Rosa moschdta or musk-rose, etc, 100,000 roses yielding only 180 grains of attar. Cashmere, Shiraz, and Damascus are celebrated for its manufacture, and there are extensive rose farms in the valley of Kezanlik in Roumelia and at Ghazipur in Benares. The oil is at first greenish, but afterwards it presents various tints of green, yellow, and red. It is concrete at all ordinary temperatures, but becomes liquid about 84 degrees Fahrenheit. It consists of two substances, a hydrocarbon and an oxygenated oil, and is frequently adulterated with the oils of rhodium, sandal-wood, and geranium, with the addition of camphor or spermaceti. Research Attar
The bushel is a unit of capacity measurement equivalent to 4 pecks, 8 gallons or 3.637 dekalitres. It is also used as a measure of weight for apples, equivalent to about 40 lbs. Henry VIII ordered that a bushel should hold eight gallons of wheat in 1520. A bushel of barley was 47 lbs, of oats 38 lbs and of wheat 60 lbs.
The British imperial bushel introduced in 1826 has a capacity of 2218.192 cubic inches, and holds 80 lbsavoirdupois of distilled water at the temperature of 62° Fahrenheit with the barometer at 30 inches. Previous to this the Winchester bushel had been the standard measure. Its capacity was 2150.42 cubic inches. Research Bushel
China Wax is a sort of wax deposited by insects on a deciduous tree with light-green ovate, serrated leaves, cultivated in the province of Sichuen in South-western China. The insects, a species of Coccus, are bred in galls which are formed on a different tree, an evergreen (a species of Ligustrum or privet), and these galls are transported in great quantities to the districts where the wax trees are grown, to the branches of which they are suspended. Having emerged from the galls the insects spread themselves over the branches, which gradually become coated with a white waxy substance, reaching in 90 or 100 days the thickness of a quarter of an inch. The branches are then lopped off and the wax removed. It is white in colour and is chiefly made into candles; it melts at 160 degrees whereas tallow melts at about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Research China Wax
The Gulf Stream is a well-known oceanic current, so called because it issues from the Gulf of Mexico. It owes its origin to the fact that the westward moving waters of the tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean, encountering the eastward projection of South America, become divided into two currents, one setting southwards along the Brazilian coast, and the other northward past the mouths of the Amazon and Orinoco, into the Caribbean Sea. It then enters the Gulf of Mexico, and thence emerges through the Channel of Florida as the Gulf Stream. Its course is next to the north and eastwards, in a direction parallel to the coast of the United States, past Cape Hatteras, along the southern edge of the 'great banks' of Nantucket and Newfoundland (between the meridians of 48 and 60 degrees west), after which its course as a distinct current is less obvious.
In the earlier part of its course, especially when rounding the extremity of Florida, the Gulf Stream forms a well-defined current, distinguished by its high temperature and its deep blue or indigo colour. On account of the descent of the Polar or Baffin Bay current along the coast in a direction opposite to that of the Gulf Stream, the water on its inland side is colder than that to the eastward of it. The difference of temperature between the Gulf Stream and this cold current sometimes amounts to 20 or even 30 degrees Fahrenheit
The velocity of the Gulf Stream varies with its course. Within the Florida Channel it attains a mean of 65 miles per day, this sinks to 56 miles off Charleston, becomes 36 miles to 46 off Nautucket, and 28 miles to the south of the Newfoundland Banks; 300 miles to the eastward of Newfoundland its movement is hardly perceptible. At the bottom of the Florida Channel the observed temperature is 34 degrees that of the surface from 80 to 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Research Gulf Stream
The inch is a unit of the imperial scale of measurement of the length equivalent to 25.4 millimetres. It was defined in 1824 by an act of parliament that 39.13929 inches is the length of a seconds pendulum in the latitude of London, vibrating in vacuo at sea level, at the temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit.
An animal is an organized and sentient living being. Life in the earlier periods of natural history was attributed almost exclusively to animals. With the progress of science, however, it was extended to plants. In the case of the higher animals and plants there is no difficulty in assigning the individual to one of the two great kingdoms of organic nature, but in their lowest manifestations, the vegetable and animal kingdoms are brought into such immediate contact that it becomes almost impossible to assign them precise limits, and to say with certainty where the one begins and the other ends. From form no absolute distinction can be fixed between animals and plants. Many animals, such as the sea-shrubs, sea-mats, etc, so resemble plants in external appearance that they were looked upon as such. With regard to internal structure no line of demarcation can be laid down, all plants and animals being, in this respect, fundamentally similar; that is, alike composed of molecular, cellular, and fibrous tissues. Neither are the chemical characters of animal and vegetable substances more distinct. Animals contain in their tissues and fluids a larger proportion of nitrogen than plants, whilst plants are richer in carbonaceous compounds than the former. In some animals, moreover, substances almost exclusively confined to plants are found. Thus the outer wall of Sea-squirts contains cellulose, a substance largely found in plant-tissues; whilst chlorophyll, the colouring-matter of plants, occurs in Hydra and many other lower animals.
Power of motion, again, though broadly distinctive of animals, cannot be said to be absolutely characteristic of them. Thus many animals, as oysters, sponges, corals, etc, in their mature condition are rooted or fixed, while the embryos of many plants, together with numerous fully developed forms, are endowed with locomotive power by means of vibratile, hair-like processes called cilia. The distinctive points between animals and plants which are most to be relied on are those derived from the nature and mode of assimilation of the food. Plants feed on inorganic matters, consisting of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, and mineral matters. They can only take in food which is presented to them in a liquid or gaseous state. The exceptions to these rules are found chiefly in the case of plants which live parasitically on other plants or on animals, in which cases the plant may be said to feed on organic matters, represented by the juices of their hosts. Animals, on the contrary, require organized matters for food. They feed either upon plants or upon other animals. But even carnivorous animals can be shown to be dependent upon plants for subsistence; since the animals upon which Carnivora prey are in their turn supported by plants. Animals, further, can subsist on solid food in addition to liquids and gases; but many animals (such as the Tapeworms) live by the mere imbibition of fluids which are absorbed by their tissues, such forms possessing no distinct digestive system.
Animals require a due supply of oxygen gas for their sustenance, this gas being used in respiration. Plants, on the contrary, require carbon dioxide. The animal exhales or gives out carbon dioxide as the part result of its tissue-waste, whilst the plant taking in this gas is enabled to decompose it into its constituent carbon and oxygen. The plant retains the former for the uses of its economy, and liberates the oxygen, which is thus restored to the atmosphere for the use of the animal. Animals receive their food into the interior of their bodies, and assimilation takes place in their internal surfaces. Plants, on the other hand, receive their food into their external surfaces, and assimilation is effected in the external parts, as are exemplified in the leaf-surfaces under the influence of sunlight. All animals possess a certain amount of heat or temperature which is necessary for the performance of vital action. The only classes of animals in which a constantly-elevated temperature is kept up are birds and mammals. The bodily heat of the former varies from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 112 degrees Fahrenheit and of the latter from 96 degrees to 104 degrees. The mean or average heat of the human body is about 99 degrees Fahrenheit, and it never falls much below this in health. Below birds animals are named cold-blooded, this term meaning in its strictly physiological sense that their temperature is usually that of the medium in which they live, and that it varies with that of the surrounding medium, Warm-blooded animals, on the contrary, do not exhibit such variations, but mostly retain their normal temperature in any atmosphere. The cause of the evolution of heat in the animal body is referred to the union (by a process resembling ordinary combustion) of the carbon and hydrogen of the system with the oxygen taken in from the air in the process of respiration. Research Animal
Body temperature is the balance between the heat produced by the body and the heat lost from the body. In humans, as other mammals, the core temperature of the body remains constant despite the temperature of the surrounding environment. For the body to function optimally, the temperature must be maintained within narrow limits. There are two kinds of body temperature: core temperature and surface temperature. Core temperature is the temperature of the deep tissues of the body. It normally remains constant at about 98. 6 degrees Fahrenheit (37.0 degrees Celsius). However, body temperature varies from person to person and is affected by factors such as exercise, sleep, eating and drinking, and time of day.
The body's surface temperature rises and falls in response to the environment. Body temperature is maintained by the hypothalamus, which constantly monitors bloodtemperature and activates mechanisms to compensate for changes. When the body's surface temperature falls, the hypothalamus sends nerve impulses to the skin to stimulate shivering, which generates heat by muscle activity, and to restrict the blood vessels in the skin, which limits heat loss. When the surface temperature rises, the hypothalamus stimulates the sweat glands in the skin to produce sweat and dilates the blood vessels in the skin to increase heat loss. There is a danger to life should the body temperature drop and remain below 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) or rise and remain at or above 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius). Chemical reactions in the body increase an average of about 120% for every 10 degree rise in temperature. Research Body Temperature
Alcohol, or ethyl alcohol,( CaHgO), is the intoxicating part of all liquids that have undergone vinous fermentation, may be extracted by distillation, and is a limpid colourless liquid, with an agreeable smell and a strong pungent taste. When brandy, whisky, and other spirituous liquors, themselves distilled from cruder materials, are redistilled, highly volatile alcohol is the first product to pass off. The alcohol thus obtained contains much extraneous matter, including water, from the first as much as 20 or 25 percent, and increasing greatly as the process continues. Charcoal and carbonate of soda put in the brandy or other liquor, partly retain the fusel-oil and acetic acid it contains. The product thus obtained by distillation is called rectified spirits or spirits of wine, and contains from 55 to 85 percent of alcohol, the rest being water. By distilling rectified spirits over carbonate of potassium, powdered quicklime, or chloride of calcium, the greater part of the water is retained, and nearly pure alcohol passes over. It is only, however, by repeated digestion with desiccating agents and subsequent distillation that the last traces of water can be removed.
The specific gravity of alcohol varies with its purity, decreasing as the quantity of water it contains decreases. This property is a convenient test of the alcoholic strength of liquors that contain only alcohol and water; but on account of the condensation that invariably takes place on the mixture of these two liquids, it can be applied only in connection with special tables of reference, or by means of an instrument specially adapted for the purpose (known as an alcoholometer.) By simple distillation the specific gravity of alcohol can scarcely be reduced below .825 at 60 degrees Fahrenheit; by rectification over chloride of calcium it may be reduced to .794; as it usually occurs it is about .820. Alcohol is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, in the proportions expressed by the formula CaHgO. Under a barometric pressure of 29.5 inches it boils at 173 degrees Fahrenheit or 78.4 degrees Centigrade; in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump it boils at ordinary temperatures. The freezing of alcohol is effected only at the very low temperature of -203 degrees Fahrenheit. Its very low freezing-point renders it valuable for use in thermometers suited for very low temperatures.
Alcohol vapour is extremely inflammable, and burns with a pale-blue flame, scarcely visible in bright daylight. It occasions no carbonaceous deposit upon substances held over it, and the products of its combustion are carbon dioxide and water. The steady and uniform heat which it produces during combustion makes it a valuable material for lamps. It dissolves the vegetable acids, the volatile oils, the resins, extractive matters, and many of the soaps; the greater number of the fixed oils are taken up by it in small quantities only, but some are dissolved largely. When alcohol is submitted to distillation with certain acids a peculiar compound is formed, called ether. It is alcohol which gives all intoxicating liquors the property whence they are so called. Alcohol acts strongly on the nervous system, and though in small doses it is stimulating and exhilarating, in large doses it acts as a poison. In medicine it is often of great service.
The name alcohol is also applied in chemistry to a large group of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, whose chemical properties are analogous to those of common or ethylic alcohol. Research Alcohol
An alloy is a substance produced by melting together two or more metals, sometimes a definite chemical compound, but more generally a solid solution of some such compound in an excess of one of the components. Most metals mix together in all proportions, but others unite only in definite proportions, and form true chemical compounds. Others, again, will not alloy, and when fused together, and then allowed to solidify, form not a homogeneous mixture, but a conglomerate of distinct masses.
Alloys differ from their components in most of their physical properties. Their hardness is in general increased, their malleability and ductility impaired. The colour of an alloy may closely resemble that of one of the components, or may be entirely different from the colours of both. Its specific gravity is sometimes less than the mean of its component metals. Alloys are always more fusible than their components, at any rate than the least fusible component. Newton's fusible metal, composed of three parts of tin, two or five parts of lead, and five or eight parts of bismuth, melts at temperatures varying from 198 degrees to 210 degrees Fahrenheit (and therefore in boiling water); its components fuse respectively at the temperatures 442 degrees, 600 degrees and 478 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes each metal retains its own fusing-point. With few exceptions metals are not much used in a pure state. 19th century British gold coins contained eight percent silver; 19th century British silver coins 7.1 percent copper. Printer's types were made from an alloy of lead and antimony; brass and a numerous list of other alloys are formed from copper and zinc; bronze from copper and tin. Research Alloy
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Attar
