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The part of a voltaic battery by which the electric current leaves substances through which it passes, or the surface at which the electric current passes out of the electrolyte; the negative pole; -- opposed to anode. Faraday. Cathode ray (Phys.), a kind of ray generated at the cathode in a vacuum tube, by the electri…

An electro-positive substance, which in electro-decomposition is evolved at the cathode; -- opposed to anion. Faraday.

ight, a light in which the rays are concentrated by reflectors into a beam visible at a distance.

ult; that from which anything proceeds, and without which it would not exist. Cause is substance exerting its power into act, to make one thing begin to be. Locke.

Any substance or means which, applied to animal or other organic tissue, burns, corrodes, or destroys it by chemical action; an escharotic.

Capable of destroying the texture of anything or eating away its substance by chemical action; burning; corrosive; searing.

A cauterizing substance.

The iron of other agent in cauterizing. Actual cautery, a substance or agent (as a hot iron) which cauterizes or sears by actual heat; or the burning so effected. -- Potential cautery, a substance which cauterizes by chemical action; as, lunar caustic; also, the cauterizing produced by such substance.…

of red cedar, and regarded as a polymeric terpene; also any one of a class of similar substances, as the essential oils of cloves, cubebs, juniper, etc., of which cedrene proper is the type. [Written also cedren.]

A substance composed essentially of gun cotton and camphor, and when pure resembling ivory in texture and color, but variously colored to imitate coral, tortoise shell, amber, malachite, etc. It is used in the manufacture of jewelry and many small articles, as combs, brushes, collars, and cuffs; -- originaly called xyl…

The substance which constitutes the essential part of the solid framework of plants, of ordinary wood, linen, paper, etc. It is also found to a slight extent in certain animals, as the tunicates. It is a carbohydrate, (C6H10O5)n, isomeric with starch, and is convertible into starches and sugars by the action of heat an…

Any substance used for making bodies adhere to each other, as mortar, glue, etc.

A process which consists in surrounding a solid body with the powder of other substances, and heating the whole to a degree not sufficient to cause fusion, the physical properties of the body being changed by chemical combination with powder; thus iron becomes steel by cementation with charcoal, and green glass becomes…

e amidships, when in shallow water, or may be lowered to increase the area of lateral resistance and prevent leeway when the vessel is beating to windward. It is used in vessels of all sizes along the coast of the United States

meter having the zero or 0 at the point indicating the freezing state of water, and the distance between that and the point indicating the boiling state of water divided into one hundred degrees. It is called also the Celsius thermometer, from Anders Celsius, the originator of this scale.

A white amorphous substance, the insoluble part of cherry gum; -- called also meta-arabinic acid.

A nitrogenous substance closely resembling diastase, obtained from bran, and possessing the power of converting starch into dextrin, sugar, and lactic acid. Watts.

Like the brain in form or substance.

A nonphosphorized, nitrogenous substance, obtained from brain and nerve tissue by extraction with boiling alcohol. It is uncertain whether it exists as such in nerve tissue, or is a product of the decomposition of some more complex substance.

Cerium oxide, CeO2, a white infusible substance constituting about one per cent of the material of the common incandescent mantle.