Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/286

LEFT volapttb: 246 VOLCANOES used with the exception of io and q. To this the letters a, 6, and ii were added, making an alphabet of 27 letters. The vowels are sounded as the long vowels in Italian and have but one sound. The consonants are sounded, in the main, as in English. In the com- promise made necessary by the purpose of Volapiik each language had to sur- render something. French gave up its nasals; Germ.an, its gutturals; Italian, its liquids, while all alike gave up their articles and analytic form. Volapiik is a synthetic and inflectional language like Latin. By this means it can ex- press thought with great clearness and conciseness. The order of the words in a sentence, however, is of the modern type. The radicals or root words, form the basis of the language. These are usu- ally nouns. About 40 per cent, of these have been taken from English; the rest are from other Aryan languages, chiefly German, Latin, and French. By what methods the radicals, or root words, were made ready for use and from what source they were taken will now be shown. The general principle determin- ing the choice of a root seems to have been brevity, clearness, and ease of utterance. For these reasons the Vola- piik word for man is muti, a Germanic form, while the word for house is rfow, a_ Latin form. The word for time is tijyi, from the Rumanian (timp) ; for bridegroom, gam from the Greek. These radicals are generally of one syllable and begin and end in a consonant, that the case endings of the nouns and argu- ments and personal endings of the verbs may be applied directly to the root. They are, in the main, formed from ordinary words by three methods: (1) A consonant is substituted for a final vowel or for a difficult consonant. Thus English pay becomes in Volapiik pel; French mer becomes 77iel. (2) Conso- nants and vowels are dropped out alto- gether. Thus German ganz becomes gan, Latin pons becomes pon, English state becomes tat, forest becomes fat. (S) The most important syllable is chosen to represent the idea conveyed by the whole word. Thus Latin sapientia }>ecomes sap; French tapis becomes tap. Below is a short table of Volapiik roots from English, German, Latin, and French : English German, glv — gift bin — being kom — arrival. fel — field, lad — lady. fad — wire, pen — pen. gan - — goose, sag — (the) saying. ket — chain, spod — correspondence stil — ^ silence, ston — stone. nad — needle, vom — woman vol — world. Latin. French, duk — guide. mat — marriage, fin — end. mel — sea. fug — fight. pom — fruit Hum — river. tap — carpet, reg — king. tuv — discovery, sum — taking, ten — stretching. Its use, never general, has now almost entirely ceased. VOLATILE OILS, essential oils; oils which can be distilled without decom- position. They are classed under two heads; mineral and vegetable; the for- mer being composed of carbon and hydro- gen, and generically known as paraffins. The vegetable oils, which are generally procured by distilling the odoriferous substance with water, may be divided into three great classes: (1) Oils com- posed of carbon and hydrogen (binary volatile oils), of which oil of turpentine may be considered the type; (2) oils containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxy- gen (oxygenated oils), which include most of those used in medicine and per- fumery; and (3) oils containing sul- phur (sulpheretted oils), characterized by their extreme pungency and suffocating odor, such as oil of mustard, asafoetida, etc. The volatile oils are generally more limpid and less unctuous than the fixed oils, and are almost colorless after recti- fication. They are soluble in alcohol and ether, slightly soluble in water, and mix in all proportions with tlie fixed oils. VOLCANOES, orifices in the earth's strata from which molten rock, hot va- pors, and fragmental material are ejected, and around which the solidified productions of eruptions accumulate. We know by observation only the sur- face phenomena of volcanoes. What takes place in the profounder depths, where volcanic forces are generated, or what is the nature of the subterranean process, is only conjecture. We may affirm that a volcanic eruption usually consists in the escape from the depths of the earth to the surface, of molten rock, charged with intensely hot vapors, of which the most abundant is steam. The most characteristic and impressive fea- tures of the action are those produced by the vapors suddenly relieved from the pressure to which they were subject within the earth, and blowing off into the atmosphere with extreme energy. Mol- ten lava, prior to the eruption, is charged with these vapors in much the same way as soda water or wind is charged with carbonic acid; and when the pressure is relieved the gas is given off copiously. That molten rock may, under pressure, be made to absorb and "occlude" great quantities of water vapor has been ex-