United States Tariff Commission - "Men's Sewed Straw Hats"

George Colman - "John Bull"

Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Essays, First Series"

Ian Maclaren - "Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Botanic Garden

E >> Erasmus Darwin >> The Botanic Garden




Whence it would appear, that though most collieries with their attendant
strata of clay, sand-stone, and iron, were formed on the places where
the vegetables grew, from which they had their origin; yet that other
collections of vegetable matter were washed down from eminences by
currents of waters into the beds of rivers, or the neighbouring seas,
and were there accumulated at different periods of time, and underwent a
great degree of heat from their fermentation, in the same manner as
those beds of morass which had continued on the plains where they were
produced. And that by this fermentation many of them had been raised
from the ocean with sand and sea-shells over them; and others from the
beds of rivers with accumulations of gravel upon them.

4. For the purpose of bringing this history of the products of morasses
more distinctly to the eye of the reader, I shall here subjoin two or
three accounts of sinking or boring for coals, out of above twenty which
I have procured from various places, though the terms are not very
intelligible, being the language of the overseers of coal-works.

1. _Whitfield mine_ near the Pottery in Staffordshire. Soil 1 foot.
brick-clay 3 feet. shale 4. metal which is hard brown and falls in the
weather 42. coal 3. warrant clay 6. brown gritstone 36. coal 31/2. warrant
clay 31/2. bass and metal 531/2. hardstone 4. shaly bass 11/2. coal 4.
warrant clay, depth unknown. in all about 55 yards.

2. _Coal-mine at Alfreton_ in Derbyshire. Soil and clay 7 feet.
fragments of stone 9. bind 13. stone 6. bind 34. stone 5. bind 2. stone
2. bind 10. coal 11/2. bind 11/2. stone 37. bind 7. soft coal 3. bind 3.
stone 20. bind 16. coal 71/2. in all about 61 yards.

3. _A basset coal-mine at Woolarton_ in Nottinghamshire. Sand and gravel
6 feet. bind 21. stone 10. smut or effete coal 1. clunch 4. bind 21.
stone 18. bind 18. stone-bind 15. soft coal 2. clunch and bind 21. coal
7. in all about 48 yards.

4. _Coal-mine at West-Hallam_ in Nottinghamshire. Soil and clay 7 feet.
bind 48. smut 11/2. clunch 4. bind 3. stone 2. bind 1. stone 1. bind 3.
stone 1. bind 16. shale 2. bind 12. shale 3. clunch, stone, and a bed of
cank 54. soft coal 4. clay and dun 1. soft coal 41/2. clunch and bind 21.
coal 1. broad bind 26. hard coal 6. in all about 74 yards.

As these strata generally lie inclined, I suppose parallel with the
limestone on which they rest, the upper edges of them all come out to
day, which is termed bassetting; when the whole mass was ignited by its
fermentation, it is probable that the inflammable part of some strata
might thus more easily escape than of others in the form of vapour; as
dews are known to slide between such strata in the production of
springs; which accounts for some coal-beds being so much worse than
others. See note XX.

From this account of the production of coals from morasses it would
appear, that coal-beds are not to be expected beneath masses of lime-
stone. Nevertheless I have been lately informed by my friend Mr. Michell
of Thornhill, who I hope will soon favour the public with his geological
investigations, that the beds of chalk are the uppermost of all the
limestones; and that they rest on the granulated limestone, called
ketton-stone; which I suppose is similar to that which covers the whole
country from Leadenham to Sleaford, and from Sleaford to Lincoln; and
that, thirdly, coal-delphs are frequently found beneath these two
uppermost beds of limestone.

Now as the beds of chalk and of granulated limestone may have been
formed by alluviation, on or beneath the shores of the sea, or in
vallies of the land; it would seem, that some coal countries, which in
the great commotions of the earth had been sunk beneath the water, were
thus covered with alluvial limestone, as well as others with alluvial
basaltes, or common gravel-beds. Very extensive plains which now consist
of alluvial materials, were in the early times covered with water; which
has since diminished as the solid parts of the earth have increased. For
the solid parts of the earth consisting chiefly of animal and vegetable
recrements must have originally been formed or produced from the water
by animal and vegetable processes; and as the solid parts of the earth
may be supposed to be thrice as heavy as water, it follows that thrice
the quantity of water must have vanished compared with the quantity of
earth thus produced. This may account for many immense beds of alluvial
materials, as gravel, rounded sand granulated limestone, and chalk,
covering such extensive plains as Lincoln-heath, having become dry
without the supposition of their having been again elevated from the
ocean. At the same time we acquire the knowledge of one of the uses or
final causes of the organized world, not indeed very flattering to our
vanity, that it converts water into earth, forming islands and
continents by its recrements or exuviae.




NOTE XXIV.--GRANITE.


_Climb the rude steeps, the Granite-cliffs surround._

CANTO II. l. 523.


The lowest stratum of the earth which human labour has arrived to, is
granite; and of this likewise consists the highest mountains of the
world. It is known under variety of names according to some difference
in its appearance or composition, but is now generally considered by
philosophers as a species of lava; if it contains quartz, feltspat, and
mica in distinct crystals, it is called granite; which is found in
Cornwall in rocks; and in loose stones in the gravel near Drayton in
Shropshire, in the road towards Newcastle. If these parts of the
composition be less distinct, or if only two of them be visible to the
eye, it is termed porphyry, trap, whinstone, moorstone, slate. And if it
appears in a regular angular form, it is called basaltes. The affinity
of these bodies has lately been further well established by Dr. Beddoes
in the Phil. Trans. Vol. LXXX.

These are all esteemed to have been volcanic productions that have
undergone different degrees of heat; it is well known that in Papin's
digester water may be made red hot by confinement, and will then
dissolve many bodies which otherwise are little or not at all acted upon
by it. From hence it may be conceived, that under immense pressure of
superincumbent materials, and by great heat, these masses of lava may
have undergone a kind of aqueous solution, without any tendency to
vitrification, and might thence have a power of crystallization, whence
all the varieties above mentioned from the different proportion of the
materials, or the different degrees of heat they may have undergone in
this aqueous solution. And that the uniformity of the mixture of the
original earths, as of lime, argil, silex, magnesia, and barytes, which
they contain, was owing to their boiling together a longer or shorter
time before their elevation into mountains. See note XIX. art. 8.

The seat of volcanos seems to be principally, if not entirely, in these
strata of granite; as many of them are situated on granite mountains,
and throw up from time to time sheets of lava which run down over the
proceeding strata from the same origin; and in this they seem to differ
from the heat which has separated the clay, coal, and sand in morasses,
which would appear to have risen from a kind of fermentation, and thus
to have pervaded the whole mass without any expuition of lava.

[Illustration: _Section of the Earth. A sketch of a supposed Section of
the Earth in respect to the disposition of the Strata over each other
without regard to their proportions or number. London Published Dec'r
1st 1791 by J. Johnson St Paul's Church Yard._]

All the lavas from Vesuvius contain one fourth part of iron, (Kirwan's
Min.) and all the five primitive earths, viz. calcareous, argillaceous,
siliceous, barytic, and magnesian earths, which are also evidently
produced now daily from the recrements of animal and vegetable bodies.
What is to be thence concluded? Has the granite stratum in very antient
times been produced like the present calcareous and siliceous masses,
according to the ingenious theory of Dr. Hutton, who says new continents
are now forming at the bottom of the sea to rise in their turn, and that
thus the terraqueous globe has been, and will be, eternal? Or shall we
suppose that this internal heated mass of granite, which forms the
nucleus of the earth, was a part of the body of the sun before it was
separated by an explosion? Or was the sun originally a planet, inhabited
like ours, and a satellite to some other greater sun, which has long
been extinguished by diffusion of its light, and around which the
present sun continues to revolve, according to a conjecture of the
celebrated Mr. Herschell, and which conveys to the mind a most sublime
idea of the progressive and increasing excellence of the works of the
Creator of all things?

For the more easy comprehension of the facts and conjectures concerning
the situation and production of the various strata of the earth, I shall
here subjoin a supposed section of the globe, but without any attempt to
give the proportions of the parts, or the number of them, but only their
respective situation over each other, and a geological recapitulation.


GEOLOGICAL RECAPITULATION.

1. The earth was projected along with the other primary planets from the
sun, which is supposed to be on fire only on its surface, emitting light
without much internal heat like a ball of burning camphor.

2. The rotation of the earth round its axis was occasioned by its
greater friction or adhesion to one side of the cavity from which it was
ejected; and from this rotation it acquired its spheroidical form. As it
cooled in its ascent from the sun its nucleus became harder; and its
attendant vapours were condensed, forming the ocean.

3. The masses or mountains of granite, porphery, basalt, and stones of
similar structure, were a part of the original nucleus of the earth; or
consist of volcanic productions since formed.

4. On this nucleus of granite and basaltes, thus covered by the ocean,
were formed the calcareous beds of limestone, marble, chalk, spar, from
the exuviae of marine animals; with the flints, or chertz, which
accompany them. And were stratified by their having been formed at
different and very distant periods of time.

5. The whole terraqueous globe was burst by central fires; islands and
continents were raised, consisting of granite or lava in some parts, and
of limestone in others; and great vallies were sunk, into which the
ocean retired.

6. During these central earthquakes the moon was ejected from the earth,
causing new tides; and the earth's axis suffered some change in its
inclination, and its rotatory motion was retarded.

7. On some parts of these islands and continents of granite or limestone
were gradually produced extensive morasses from the recrements of
vegetables and of land animals; and from these morasses, heated by
fermentation, were produced clay, marle, sandstone, coal, iron, (with
the bases of variety of acids;) all which were stratified by their
having been formed at different, and very distant periods of time.

8. In the elevation of the mountains very numerous and deep fissures
necessarily were produced. In these fissures many of the metals are
formed partly from descending materials, and partly from ascending ones
raised in vapour by subterraneous fires. In the fissures of granite or
porphery quartz is formed; in the fissures of limestone calcareous spar
is produced.

9. During these first great volcanic fires it is probable the atmosphere
was either produced, or much increased; a process which is perhaps now
going on in the moon; Mr. Herschell having discovered a volcanic crater
three miles broad burning on her disk.

10. The summits of the new mountains were cracked into innumerable
lozenges by the cold dews or snows falling upon them when red hot. From
these summits, which were then twice as high as at present, cubes and
lozenges of granite, and basalt, and quartz in some countries, and of
marble and flints in others, descended gradually into the valleys, and
were rolled together in the beds of rivers, (which were then so large as
to occupy the whole valleys, which they now only intersect;) and
produced the great beds of gravel, of which many valleys consist.

11. In several parts of the earth's surface subsequent earthquakes, from
the fermentation of morasses, have at different periods of time deranged
the position of the matters above described. Hence the gravel, which was
before in the beds of rivers, has in some places been raised into
mountains, along with clay and coal strata which were formed from
morasses and washed down from eminences into the beds of rivers or the
neighbouring seas, and in part raised again with gravel or marine shells
over them; but this has only obtained in few places compared with the
general distribution of such materials. Hence there seem to have existed
two sources of earthquakes, which have occurred at great distance of
time from each other; one from the granite beds in the central parts of
the earth, and the other from the morasses on its surface. All the
subsequent earthquakes and volcanos of modern days compared with these
are of small extent and insignificant effect.

12. Besides the argillaceous sand-stone produced from morasses, which is
stratified with clay, and coal, and iron, other great beds of siliceous
sand have been formed in the sea by the combination of an unknown acid
from morasses, and the calcareous matters of the ocean.

13. The warm waters which are found in many countries, are owing to
steam arising from great depths through the fissures of limestone or
lava, elevated by subterranean fires, and condensed between the strata
of the hills over them; and not from any decomposition of pyrites or
manganese near the surface of the earth.

14. The columns of basaltes have been raised by the congelation or
expansion of granite beds in the act of cooling from their semi-vitreous
fusion.




NOTE XXV.--EVAPORATION.


_Aquatic nymphs! you lead with viewless march
The winged vapour up the aerial arch._

CANTO III. l. 13.


I. The atmosphere will dissolve a certain quantity of moisture as a
chemical menstruum, even when it is much below the freezing point, as
appears from the diminution of ice suspended in frosty air, but a much
greater quantity of water is evaporated and suspended in the air by
means of heat, which is perhaps the universal cause of fluidity, for
water is known to boil with less heat in vacuo, which is a proof that it
will evaporate faster in vacuo, and that the air therefore rather
hinders than promotes its evaporation in higher degrees of heat. The
quick evaporation occasioned in vacuo by a small degree of heat is
agreeably seen in what is termed a pulse-glass, which consists of an
exhausted tube of glass with a bulb at each end of it and with about two
thirds of the cavity filled with alcohol, in which the spirit is
instantly seen to boil by the heat of the finger-end applied on a bubble
of steam in the lower bulb, and is condensed again in the upper bulb by
the least conceivable comparative coldness.

2. Another circumstance evincing that heat is the principal cause of
evaporation is that at the time of water being converted into steam, a
great quantity of heat is taken away from the neighbouring bodies. If a
thermometer be repeatedly dipped in ether, or in rectified spirit of
wine, and exposed to a blast of air, to expedite the evaporation by
perpetually removing the saturated air from it, the thermometer will
presently sink below freezing. This warmth, taken from the ambient
bodies at the time of evaporation by the steam, is again given out when
the steam is condensed into water. Hence the water in a worm-tub during
distillation so soon becomes hot; and hence the warmth accompanying the
descent of rain in cold weather.

3. The third circumstance, shewing that heat is the principal cause of
evaporation, is, that some of the steam becomes again condensed when any
part of the heat is withdrawn. Thus when warmer south-west winds replete
with moisture succeed the colder north-east winds all bodies that are
dense and substantial, as stone walls, brick floors, &c. absorb some of
the heat from the passing air, and its moisture becomes precipitated on
them, while the north-east winds become warmer on their arrival in this
latitude, and are thence disposed to take up more moisture, and are
termed drying winds.

4. Heat seems to be the principal cause of the solution of many other
bodies, as common salt, or blue vitriol dissolved in water, which when
exposed to severe cold are precipitated, or carried, to the part of the
water last frozen; this I observed in a phial filled with a solution of
blue vitriol which was frozen; the phial was burst, the ice thawed, and
a blue column of cupreous vitriol was left standing upright on the
bottom of the broken glass, as described in note XIX.

II. Hence water may either be dissolved in air, and may then be called
an aerial solution of water; or it may be dissolved in the fluid matter
of heat, according to the theory of M. Lavoisier, and may then be called
steam. In the former case it is probable there are many other vapours
which may precipitate it, as marine acid gas, or fluor acid gas. So
alcaline gas and acid gas dissolved in air precipitate each other,
nitrous gas precipitates vital air from its azote, and inflammable gas
mixed with vital air ignited by an electric spark either produces or
precipitates the water in both of them. Are there any subtle exhalations
occasionally diffused in the atmosphere which may thus cause rain?

1. But as water is perhaps many hundred times more soluble in the fluid
matter of heat than in air, I suppose the eduction of this heat, by
whatever means it is occasioned, is the principal cause of devaporation.
Thus if a region of air is brought from a warmer climate, as the S.W.
winds, it becomes cooled by its contact with the earth in this latitude,
and parts with so much of its moisture as was dissolved in the quantity
of calorique, or heat, which it now looses, but retains that part which
was suspended by its attraction to the particles of air, or by aerial
solution, even in the most severe frosts.

2. A second immediate cause of rain is a stream of N.E. wind descending
from a superior current of air, and mixing with the warmer S.W. wind
below; or the reverse of this, viz. a superior current of S.W. wind
mixing with an inferior one of N.E. wind; in both these cases the whole
heaven becomes instantly clouded, and the moisture contained in the S.W.
current is precipitated. This cause of devaporation has been ingeniously
explained by Dr. Hutton in the Transact. of Edinburgh, Vol. I, and seems
to arise from this circumstance; the particles of air of the N.E. wind
educe part of the heat from the S.W. wind, and therefore the water which
was dissolved by that quantity of _heat_ is precipitated; all the other
part of the water, which was suspended by its attraction to the
particles of air, or dissolved in the remainder of the heat, continues
unprecipitated.

3. A third method by which a region of air becomes cooled, and in
consequence deposits much of its moisture, is from the mechanical
expansion of air, when part of the pressure is taken off. In this case
the expanded air becomes capable of receiving or attracting more of the
matter of heat into its interstices, and the vapour, which was
previously dissolved in this heat, is deposited, as is seen in the
receiver of an air-pump, which becomes dewy, as the air within becomes
expanded by the eduction of part of it. See note VII. Hence when the
mercury in the barometer sinks without a change of the wind the air
generally becomes colder. See note VII. on Elementary Heat. And it is
probably from the varying pressure of the incumbent air that in summer
days small black clouds are often thus suddenly produced, and again soon
vanish. See a paper in Philos. Trans. Vol. LXXVIII. intitled Frigorific
Experiments on the Mechanical Expansion of Air.

4. Another portion of atmospheric water may possibly be held in solution
by the electric fluid, since in thunder storms a precipitation of the
water seems to be either the cause or the consequence of the eduction of
the electricity. But it appears more probable that the water is
condensed into clouds by the eduction of its heat, and that then the
surplus of electricity prevents their coalescence into larger drops,
which immediately succeeds the departure of the lightning.

5. The immediate cause why the barometer sinks before rain is, first,
because a region of warm air, brought to us in the place of the cold air
which it had displaced, must weigh lighter, both specifically and
absolutely, if the height of the warm atmosphere be supposed to be equal
to that of the preceeding cold one. And secondly, after the drops of
rain begin to fall in any column of air, that column becomes lighter,
the falling drops only adding to the pressure of the air in proportion
to the resistance which they meet with in passing through that fluid.

If we could suppose water to be dissolved in air without heat, or in
very low degrees of heat, I suppose the air would become heavier, as
happens in many chemical solutions, but if water dissolved in the matter
of heat, or calorique, be mixed with an aerial solution of water, there
can be no doubt but an atmosphere consisting of such a mixture must
become lighter in proportion to the quantity of calorique. On the same
circumstance depends the visible vapour produced from the breath of
animals in cold weather, or from a boiling kettle; the particles of cold
air, with which it is mixed, steal a part of its heat, and become
themselves raised in temperature, whence part of the water is
precipitated in visible vapour, which, if in great quantity sinks to the
ground; if in small quantity, and the surrounding air is not previously
saturated, it spreads itself till it becomes again dissolved.




NOTE XXVI.--SPRINGS


_Your lucid bands condense with fingers chill
The blue mist hovering round the gelid hill_.

CANTO III. l. 19.


The surface of the earth consists of strata many of which were formed
originally beneath the sea, the mountains were afterwards forced up by
subterraneous fires, as appears from the fissures in the rocks of which
they consist, the quantity of volcanic productions all over the world,
and the numerous remains of craters of volcanos in mountainous
countries. Hence the strata which compose the sides of mountains lie
slanting downwards, and one or two or more of the external strata not
reaching to the summit when the mountain was raised up, the second or
third stratum or a more inferior one is there exposed to day; this may
be well represented by forceably thrusting a blunt instrument through
several sheets of paper, a bur will stand up with the lowermost sheet
standing highest in the center of it. On this uppermost stratum, which
is colder as it is more elevated, the dews are condensed in large
quantities; and sliding down pass under the first or second or third
stratum which compose the sides of the hill; and either form a morass
below, or a weeping rock, by oozing out in numerous places, or many of
these less currents meeting together burst out in a more copious rill.

The summits of mountains are much colder than the plains in their
vicinity, owing to several causes; 1. Their being in a manner insulated
or cut off from the common heat of the earth, which is always of 48
degrees, and perpetually counteracts the effects of external cold
beneath that degree. 2. From their surfaces being larger in proportion
to their solid contents, and hence their heat more expeditiously carried
away by the ever-moving atmosphere. 3. The increasing rarity of the air
as the mountain rises. All those bodies which conduct electricity well
or ill, conduct the matter of heat likewise well or ill. See note VII.
Atmospheric air is a bad conductor of electricity and thence confines it
on the body where it is accumulated, but when it is made very rare, as
in the exhausted receiver, the electric aura passes away immediately to
any distance. The same circumstance probably happens in respect to heat,
which is thus kept by the denser air on the plains from escaping, but is
dissipated on the hills where the air is thinner. 4. As the currents of
air rise up the sides of mountains they become mechanically rarefied,
the pressure of the incumbent column lessening as they ascend. Hence the
expanding air absorbs heat from the mountain as it ascends, as explained
in note VII. 5. There is another, and perhaps more powerful cause, I
suspect, which may occasion the great cold on mountains, and in the
higher parts of the atmosphere, and which has not yet been attended to;
I mean that the fluid matter of heat may probably gravitate round the
earth, and form an atmosphere on its surface, mixed with the aerial
atmosphere, which may diminish or become rarer, as it recedes from the
earth's surface, in a greater proportion than the air diminishes.

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