Sir Humphry Davy, 1778-1829, was an eminent chemist of England. He made
many important chemical discoveries, and was the inventor of the miner's
safety lamp.
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Time is almost a human word, and Change entirely a human idea; in the
system of nature, we should rather say progress than change. The sun
appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another
hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more
magnificent structures: even when they are destroyed so as to produce only
dust, Nature asserts her empire over them; and the vegetable world rises
in constant youth, in a period of annual successions, by the labors of
man--providing food, vitality, and beauty--upon the wrecks of monuments
which were raised for the purposes of glory, but which are now applied to
objects of utility.