"Excavation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charge of B. F. Cresson, Jr., M. Am. Soc. C. E., Resident Engineer, comprising the work from the east side of Ninth Avenue to the east side of Tenth Avenue, including excavation, retaining and face walls, and the extensive work of underpinning Ninth Avenue with its surface and elevated railroads and ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles M. Jacobs
... of the "parallax of profundity"[451]—that is, of apparent displacements attendant on the sun's rotation, due to depression below the sun's surface. He found that in every case it fell short of 4,000 miles, and averaged not more than 1,321, corresponding, on the terrestrial scale, to an excavation in the earth's crust of 1-1/5 miles. Of late, however, the reality of even this moderate amount of depression has been denied. Mr. Howlett's persevering observations, extending over a third of a century, the results ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... vegetables should always be placed in as well-drained a place as possible. A shallow excavation should be made from one to two feet deep, four feet wide and as long as desired. Line the pit with straw, hay or leaves, then place the vegetables in a conical pile on the straw. Cover the vegetables with six inches of the ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... Teresa Sclafani, and that exquisite creature Lauretta Acton, who afterwards became Madame Minghetti, and many another! Now it would be a night ascent of Vesuvius, in eruption, and then again a moonlight excavation at Pompeii. Show me the man who would not have fallen in love in such company, beneath that exquisite sky, environed and intoxicated by the indefinable enchantments in which the landscape and the very air you breathed were steeped! But the signal to get under way is hoisted at ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... black fringe. They alone attracted the eye; the slope, of a dusty, dirty grey, stretched out bare and devastated, dotted by a few bushes, among which peeped fragments of ancient walls. All was instinct with the ravaged, leprous sadness of a spot handed over to excavation, and where only men of learning ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... house on fairly level ground, but Adelle wanted to have the court cut out of the steep hillside above the pool. Having found what she considered to be the right spot, which would necessitate much expensive excavation and building of retaining walls, she followed a little worn path through the eucalyptus grove over the brow of the hill, curious to discover where it led. After a time she emerged on the other side of the hill, and getting through the barbed wire fence that ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... blood flowed from the stigmas excepting upon the 3rd of March, the day of the finding of the holy Cross. She had also a vision of the discovery of the true cross by St. Helena, and imagined herself to be lying in the excavation near the cross. Much blood came in the morning from her head and side, and in the afternoon from her hands and feet, and it seemed to her as though she were being made the test of whether the cross was really the Cross ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... exposures ranging from 3.4 to 4.7 roentgens. Film badge readings for this three-day period indicate that the two individuals who operated mechanical shovels received 3.4 and 4.3 roentgens, while the two who supervised and monitored the excavation received exposures of 4.2 and 4.7 roentgens. The individual receiving 4.7 roentgens during the excavation operation had received 1.3 roentgens from a previous exposure, making his ...
— Project Trinity 1945-1946 • Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer
... all these apparent boulders are ponderous fossils which have slowly accumulated or washed out on the surface from a great dinosaur bed beneath. A Mexican sheep-herder had collected some of these petrified bones for the foundations of his cabin, the first ever built of such strange materials. The excavation of a promising outcrop was almost immediately rewarded by finding a thigh-bone nearly six feet in length which sloped downward into the earth, running into the lower leg and finally into the foot, with all the respective parts lying in the natural ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... which we have spoken as being close to the sycamore walk, at the foot of a wall against which it flowed, forming a rather deep excavation, the current had found a vein of soft, brittle stone which, by its incessant force, it had ended in wearing away. It was a natural grotto formed by water, but which earth, in its turn, had undertaken to embellish. An enormous willow had taken root in a few inches ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... suffered, as I have already observed, from their way of making their huts. They excavated a space, to the depth of three or four feet, and used the earth they threw out to embank the walls raised upon the edge of the excavation. This procured warmth in winter and coolness in hot weather; but the interior was damp and ill-ventilated; and as soon as there was any collection of refuse within, cholera and fever broke out. It is essential to health that the dwelling should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... over an Excavation.—A hole may be dug deeply beneath the tent floor, partly for the purpose of a store-room, and partly for that of a living-room when the weather is very inclement. This was practised before Sebastopol in the manner shown in the fig. p. 158. The notched ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... direction of that part of the Irwin River where for the discovery of coal the colony is indebted to yourself and brothers, it would be desirable that you should devote a short time to the examination of the locality where it was first found; to excavation, to some moderate extent, in the vicinity of the veins of coal of most promise; and, above all, to the ascertainment of the fact if coal crops out, or if there be in the soil any indications of it between the place where the mine ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... is not clear; but at last he climbed to the bed, white as no fuller could white it, and he dripping with soot. Here the ground beneath him was of such a suspicious and unreasonable softness that he apparently resolved to dig a hole and see what was the matter. In the course of his excavation he reached Mrs. Walters's feather-bed, upon which he must have fallen with fresh violence, tooth and nail, in the idea that so many feathers could not possibly mean ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... excavation and lining in the North Tunnel is shown graphically on the progress diagram, Fig. 9, that of the South Tunnel being practically ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... from his estate to the sea, discovered, away up at the very furthest extremity of the Gulf of Honduras, a vast ancient canal, two hundred and forty feet wide, seventy feet deep, and walled in on both sides with gigantic masses of rough cut stone. The Doctor at once gave up his own trifling modern excavation, and plunged into an explanation of this vast ancient one, as zealously as if he were probing after some uncertain bullet in a poor fellow's leg. The monstrous canal carried him in a straight line up the country, to the south-westward. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... to have been thrown on his engine, that it must have condensed all his steam, as little notice is taken of it except that he got no encouragement. We find that it has also been used by some of the ancients in connection with their deities. Rusterich, one of the Teutonic gods, which was found in an excavation, proves how the priests deceived the people. The head of this one was made of metal and contained a pot of water. The mouth and another hole in the forehead being stopped by wooden plugs, a fire of charcoal was lighted under this pot of water, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... letting down a light, till it nearly reaches the bottom, at about 20 feet. The diameter at the top may be 7 feet, and after a descent of 7 or 8 feet, it gradually widens to 18 or 20 feet diameter, cut out of the solid rock. There is no appearance of any similar excavation at the north-east corner. The Castle, when surrendered, was abundantly supplied with provisions, and it contained the Cardinal's money and furniture, to the value, it is said, of L100,000; and also the property of other persons, which had ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of stakes stretching away across the hills was a mecca for Sunday sight-seers. The contracts for the moving of dirt from the intake to the first station had been let and when the first furrow was turned and the first scoop of dirt removed from the excavation, Crowheart all but carried Andy P. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... by the extremely quick fire of the machine guns, each of which delivered from 300 to 600 bullets a minute with absolute precision. In the field-trench, a soldier enjoyed far greater security than he would if merely prone behind his knapsack in an excavation barely fifteen inches deep. He had merely to stoop down a little to disappear below the level of the ground and be immune from infantry fire; moreover, his machine guns fired without endangering him. In addition, this stooping position brought the man's knapsack on a level with his helmet, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... upon sub structures and inscriptions; but no one bethought him that they had discovered the place of the buried city. However, the amphitheatre, which, roofed in by a layer of the soil, formed a regular excavation, indicated an ancient edifice, and the neighboring peasantry, with better information than the learned, designated by the half-Latin name of Civita, which dim tradition had handed down, the soil and debris ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... by piecemeal brought the pile; No barks embowel'd Portland Isle; Dig, cried experience, dig away, Bring the firm quarry into day, The excavation still shall save Those ramparts which its entrails gave. "Here kings shall dwell," the builders cried; "Here England's foes shall low'r their pride; Hither shall suppliant nobles come, And this be England's royal home." ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... frog. Following it cautiously up, I at last determined upon the exact spot from whence the sound issued; lifting up the thick layer of leaves, there sat a frog—the wood frog, one of the first to appear in the marshes in spring, and which I have elsewhere called the "clucking frog"—in a little excavation in the surface of the leaf-mould. As it sat there the top of its back was level with the surface of the ground. This, then, was its hibernaculum; here it was prepared to pass the winter, with only a coverlid of wet matted leaves between ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... unpractised feet of her companion, would permit. They had travelled in this manner for upwards of four hours, without meeting a breathing thing, or even so much as exchanging a sound between themselves, when, at length, the Indian stopped at the edge of a deep cavern-like excavation in the earth, produced by the tearing up, by the wild tempest, of an enormous pine. Into this she descended, and presently reappeared with several blankets, and two light painted paddles. Then unloosing the thong from the waist of the exhausted girl, she proceeded to disguise her in one of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... civilizations he would wish restored, would not hesitate long in deciding for the Hellenic one. Readers of Lenormant will call to mind his glowing pages on the wonders that might be found buried on the site of Sybaris. His plan of excavation sounds feasible enough. But how remote it becomes, when one remembers the case of Herculaneum! Here, to our certain knowledge, many miracles of antique art and literature lie within a few feet of our reach; yet nothing is done. These ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... an early date have been unearthed at Abu-Habba (Sippara) and Jokha (Isin) by Dr. Scheil, working for the Turkish government. But the most important finds have been at Niffer, the ancient Nippur, in Northern Babylonia, where the American expedition has brought to a close its long work of systematic excavation. Here Mr. Haynes has dug down to the very foundations of the great temple of El-lil, and the chief historical results of his labours have been published by Professor Hilprecht (in The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the wild bull and the boar in the woods of Hampstead. Even under the later Plantagenets the royal forests were sixty-eight in number. In the forest of Arden it was said that down to modern times a squirrel might leap from tree to tree for nearly the whole length of Warwickshire. The excavation of ancient pile-villages in the valley of the Po has shown that long before the rise and probably the foundation of Rome the north of Italy was covered with dense woods of elms, chestnuts, and especially of oaks. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... little cave just big enough to hide in," said Emily pointing to an excavation in the highest wall of the quarry. ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... Manifestations are there made manifest to us and we are taught, with tedious iteration, the things we knew, and need not have known, before. In my research, I have had only such poor guides as Punch, or the London Charivari and The Queen, the Lady's Newspaper. Excavation, which in the East has been productive of rich material for the archaeologist, was indeed suggested to me. I was told that, just before Cleopatra's Needle was set upon the Embankment, an iron box, containing a photograph of Mrs. Langtry, some current coins and ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... excavation in the wall of the Parliament House had increased day by day, until a hole some five or six feet in length, large enough to admit the body of a man, was bored through the solid masonry. With the assistance of the two additional members to their little party ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... distance, while the Pequod slid in between him and Stubb's whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, .. and hailing the pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... were placed on the shelves or niches of the excavation, amply demonstrative of the luxurious and profuse mode of life these outcasts of society had, at a period rather recently, followed. The roof and sides of this snug retreat were also entirely covered with the uncouth figures I ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Mr. Buchanan Reed, the artist and poet, and Miss Brewster, as well as a score or more of others of our countrymen, then or since distinguished, in art and letters at home and abroad. We remained some days in Naples, and during the time went to Pompeii to witness a special excavation among the ruins of the buried city, which search was instituted on account of our visit. A number of ancient household articles were dug up, and one, a terra cotta lamp bearing upon its crown in bas-relief ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... camping ground. I descended by a steep path some six hundred or seven hundred feet to the bottom. It is an immense amphitheatre at the base of thickly wooded hills. It is larger in extent than the vast open excavation formed by the "Kimberley" Mine at Kimberley. The salt and soda brine is perpetually oosing from the bottom, and is continually being scraped up with a sort of wooden scraper into heaps, where, after a time, by the action of the ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... Deacon BREWSTER'S house, at Standish Four Corners, there can be no doubt of its success. Advantage will be taken of the duck-pond of Captain JEHOIAKIM BROWN, which is situated in the course of the proposed canal. By leading the Canal directly through this pond, at least a quarter of a mile of excavation will be avoided. M. DE LESSEPS is known to have decided upon making a similar use of the Bitter Lakes in the construction of his Suez ditch, after having seen ELKANAH HOPKINS' plans for our great Cape Cod Canal. Vessels will hereafter pass through this Canal instead of taking the long voyage ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... moment food might be brought me. I must wait until after that; then I should probably remain undisturbed for several hours. I shoved back the bed in such position its head-board completely concealed the slight excavation, and sat down upon it, planning anew how best to proceed. The time passed with no unusual sound reaching me from the hall without. Billie evidently felt no desire to acquaint Judge Moran with my real identity, and perhaps would thus experience some difficulty in procuring ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... that the poultry-house and pigsty should form an extension to the barn, and that both should be built in the side of the bank also. They would thus have an exposure to the south, and at the same time, being formed in part by an excavation, would be cool in summer. The floor of the sty should have a slight downward slope, and be cemented. Therefore it could be kept perfectly clean. This residence of Bobsey's future pets should be at the extreme end ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... counter attack from the Bolo, as our force was much smaller than his, and spent the first part of the night making trenches. An excavation deeper than eighteen inches would have water in the bottom. We were very cold, as it was October in Russia, and every man wet to the skin, with no blankets or overcoats. About midnight the British sent up two jugs of rum, which was immediately issued, contrary to military regulations. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the wish or pleasure of all Englishmen, who has more frequent need to solicit than exclude the sun; but Pope's excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden; and, as some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and speculative, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... himself, by another examination, that matters outside wore a peaceful aspect, he repaired to the cellar, to commence the excavation. Luckily for Charlie's plan, the cellar walls had been carelessly constructed, and in a corner he found a large-sized stone, that he could remove from its place in the foundation without disturbing the others. Taking this out, with the iron fire-shovel, he ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... I got to the end of the grove, on the green sward near some laurel and juniper bushes, I came on an excavation apparently just made, the loose earth which had been dug out looking quite fresh and moist. The hole or foss was narrow, about five feet deep and seven feet long, and looked, I imagined, curiously like ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... stood at the bottom of the sloping tunnel, and was lighting her candle. When it burned up, she found herself looking into a level gallery, the roof of which she could touch. It was not an excavation, but had been trenched from the surface, for it was roofed with great slabs of stone. Its sides, of rough stones, were six or seven feet apart at the floor, which was paved with small boulders, but sloped so much toward each other that at the top ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... aspect. The circle of the French provinces was as desolate as the Pompeiian Forum, and save for the bright colours of the banks of flowers that were heaped upon the monuments to Alsace and Lorraine, the place might have been an excavation rather than the heart of a great world metropolis. Before the war, to cross the Place de la Concorde and go into the Champs Elysees was an adventure of a life time. One took one's chances. One survived, but he had his thrills. But that morning we might have walked safely with bowed head and ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... them in a really deep trench, firstly to keep them safe, and secondly to prevent their waving or signalling to the enemy. The existence of this ravine, therefore, saved much digging, as it only required some hollowing out at the bottom and a little excavation to ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... according to Herodotus, with whose account Diodorus Siculus and Mela agree, was entirely an artificial excavation, made by king Moeris, to carry off the overflowing waters of the Nile, and reserve them for the purposes of irrigation. It was, in the time of Herodotus, 3,600 stadia or 450 miles in circumference, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the water-level is such that the excavation of a canal, or other channel, does not furnish earth enough for its own banks, recourse is had to back-cutting, or the nearest earth behind the base ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet; the width of the entrances is not specified. Whether these dimensions and the proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them as elephants' stalls, remains to be settled by ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... boys reached the entrance to the chamber they heard the sounds of a pick. When they came nearer and looked in they saw the detective poking away at heap of "gob" which lay in one corner of the excavation. He worked industriously, and apparently without fear of discovery. Now and then he stooped down to peer into a crevice in the wall, but soon ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... should freeze, they determined to complete the cellar, which was to be made small—to be, indeed, little more than a cave beneath the house, that would accommodate such stores as it would be necessary to shield from the frost. A fortnight of steady work, by both the men, not only completed the excavation, but built the wall. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... of the Biblical Record. Each new excavation made in the ruins of the ancient, long-buried, cities throws new light upon the scriptures and always confirms its statements. There are on the tablets of clay found in the old libraries statements concerning the social, commercial, religious and political conditions ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... southern California species, which builds the cork-type door, including observations of them at night, when they are particularly active, indicates that the construction of the tube involves other material than the silken lining employed by many burrowing spiders. In the excavation of the tube and retention of the walls, the spider appears to employ a glairy substance, which thoroughly saturates the soil and renders the interior of the tube of almost cement- like hardness. It is then plastered with a thick jet of silk from the spinning glands. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... and of publications, is smaller than in 1913. In part the outbreak of war in August called off various supervisors and not a few workmen from excavations then in progress; in one case it prevented a proposed excavation from being begun. It also seems to have retarded the issue of some archaeological periodicals. But the scarcity of finds is much more due to natural causes. The most extensive excavations of the year, those of Wroxeter and Corbridge, yielded ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... for foundations. These can be sunk to almost any depth or brought up to any height, and are filled with Portland cement concrete. They are sometimes excavated by grabs. Sometimes they are closed in and kept free of water by compressed air so that excavation work can be carried on inside them (fig. 35). Sometimes in silty river beds they are sunk 100 ft. or more, for [v.04 p.0546] security against deep scouring of the river-bed in floods. In the case of the Empress bridge over the Sutlej each pier consisted of three ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... walking with a missionary's wife through the streets of Seoul. There was an excavation being made and a little railroad track was being run along this excavation. A Korean boy had been set to guard this track to keep folks from getting hurt when the dump car came down its steep grade. He had been ordered by his Japanese employers to stop all passage ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... from before the door, they entered and started to "plant the treasure," as one of them expressed it. They dug a hole four feet deep and wide enough to contain the trunk. Then they filled the trunk with sand and lowered it into the excavation. This done, they filled the hole up again, replaced the rotting boards that formed the floor and surveyed ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... road, he is a trespasser and liable for damages, although he does only what a highway surveyor might properly do.[17] It is also the duty of cities and towns to guard with sufficient and suitable railings every road which passes over a bank, bridge, or along a precipice, excavation, or deep water; and it makes no difference whether these dangerous places are within or without the limits of the road, if they are so imminent to the line of public travel as to expose travellers to unusual hazard.[18] But towns are not ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... of a cavern is complete or is to be deemed satisfactory unless a depth is reached where the geological deposits are undeniably of such age as to antedate the possible appearance of man upon the scene. This is not assured until the excavation has reached the original floor, which may be either the bed-rock or the clay left by the eroding stream when its volume had become so diminished from any cause that it was no longer able to keep its channel ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... or three thousand boxes of apples for three or four months and propose to do it in this way: Make an excavation in dry earth, putting at the bottom of the excavation straw. Upon this straw place the apples, then dry straw over the apples, and upon the top of this two or three feet of dry earth. Will it be a good plan to pour on water from time to time over the top ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... been joined in his visit to the excavation by Miss Stackpole and her attendant, and these three now emerged from among the mounds of earth and stone collected round the aperture and came into sight of Isabel and her companion. Poor Ralph hailed his friend with joy qualified by wonder, and Henrietta exclaimed ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... simply an excavation, about three feet deep, twelve feet long, and sixteen feet wide. Spruce saplings about four feet long and four inches through are set upright side by side around the interior, supported by the beams. Two posts six feet long and one ridge piece support the arched roof, light ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... making smooth cups or saucers when they excavated in a thick piece of wax, which saucers stood so close that hexagons were built on their intersecting edges. And, lastly, because when they excavated on a thin slip of wax, the excavation on both sides of similar smooth basins was stopped, and flat planes left between the nearly opposed basins. If my view were wholly false these cases would, I think, never have occurred. Sedgwick and Co. may abuse me to their hearts' content, but I shall as yet continue to think that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and waters, filled me with an inexpressible emotion, a wide-flung hope, a sense of the immensity and intricacy of life. But to my dog it meant nothing at all, though he saw just what I did. To him it was nothing but a great excavation in the earth, patched and streaked with green. It was not then the scene itself that I loved; that was only a symbol of emotions and ideas within me. It touched the spring of a host of beautiful thoughts; but the beauty and the sweetness were the contribution ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was calling to me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the excavation. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Philadelphia, Chicago and Manchester, receiving the largest shares. I have to acknowledge much help received both in Egypt and England. To Mr. Clarke, besides the financial support mentioned already, we owe thanks for help in the work of excavation, in plan-making, drawing, etc., and for his untiring hospitality. To Miss A. A. Pirie, who was with us for the later two-thirds of the season, we are indebted for several coloured drawings of tombs, etc., now at University ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... reluctance that I suffered myself to be called away from this spectacle, which I could have wished to examine more closely. The postilion, when questioned, said that he knew nothing about such a phenomenon, but that there was in the neighborhood an old stone-quarry, the excavation of which was filled with water. Now, whether this was a pandemonium of will-o'-the-wisps, or a company of luminous creatures, I will ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... having the honor of seeing your excellency shortly at York, I limit, for the present, the works of the military artificers at this place, to preparing a temporary magazine for the reception of the spare powder at Fort George and Kingston, and the excavation of the ditch for the proposed fortifications of the spot on ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... earth on the shelf, and I shoveling it up from that point. Later, as he descended still farther into the hole we were making, he shoveled the earth into buckets and passed them up to me, I passing them on to my sister, who was now pressed into service. When the excavation was deep enough we made the wall of slabs of wood, roughly joined together. I recall that well with calm content. It was not a thing of beauty, but it was a thoroughly practical well, and it remained the only one we had during ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... holes close to buildings having a cellar, one generally has to remove entirely all the soil, as that present usually consists of the deeper soil from the cellar excavation, mixed with bricks and mortar—few flowers root well ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... a bit," agreed Dolores. Then she let the strip of canvas fall into place against the excavation in the wall, fastened it and drew up the bed before it. El Bizco unbolted the door. In a few moments there ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... [122] small copper knives, but no iron utensils; and several broad flat stones bored through the middle; [123] besides a wedge of petrified wood, embedded in a cleft branch of a tree. The place, which to this day may be easily recognized in a hollow, might, by excavation systematically carried on, yield many more interesting results. What was not immediately useful was then and there destroyed, and the remainder dispersed. In spite of every endeavor, I could obtain, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... organization the Egyptians never advanced. Neither effective military occupation nor effective administration of Syria by an Egyptian military or civil staff was so much as thought of. Traces of the cultural influence of Egypt on the Syrian civilization of the time (so far as excavation has revealed its remains) are few and far between; and we must conclude that the number of genuine Egyptians who resided in, or even passed through, the Asiatic province was very small. Unadventurous ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... had ever seen upon Barsoom, was built in a large excavation. Only the highest seats, which formed the low wall surrounding the pit, were above the level of the ground. The arena itself ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... favourable circumstances, obtained in the summer of 1801, access to the Acropolis of Athens for general purposes, with a concession to "make excavations and to take away any stones that might appear interesting to himself." The result (shortly stated) was the excavation of the once celebrated "Elgin marbles," about which, if we are to credit the report from which we glean this information, his lordship would seem to have expended (including the interest of capital) some L74,000. The committee recommend the House, under these ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... settled and doing good work, the Captain congratulating himself audibly on his bright thought in selecting this spot, when his congratulations were cut short by a shell smashing the periscope glass, followed by a minenwerfer striking the bottom of the slag heap, making another huge excavation and causing the slag at the top to roll down from under us, taking us with it. But the Cap was not to be driven away so easily. "Come on, Grant, let's try it again," and up we went again, and again another large shell at the bottom of the pile caused a cave-in, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... rose beds, but met with no success. After that he tried two or three shrubberies without avail, and then embarked on a frantic but thorough excavation of the tennis lawn. We were taking tea on the lawn at the time, and our attention was first drawn to Excalibur's bereavement by a temporary but unshakable conviction on his part that the bone was buried immediately underneath ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... carbonaceous matter, following the course of the bronchial ramifications. Thirdly, Where the ulcerative process has advanced to such an extent, as to destroy the cellular texture, and produce extensive excavation of one ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... roots in the soil will be well repaid, for plants merely thrust into the ground cannot develop that robust root growth on which the future of the crop largely depends. When preparing the positions it is an excellent plan to build in the centre of each excavation a mound of earth over which to spread the fibrous roots. Then return the soil and firmly tread down. As a finish give each plant a copious watering. On no account should the plant be deeply buried, but the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... in the distance. The Mongol carefully examined his construction; he seemed nervous. A man with the appearance of a peasant standing near him on the edge of the excavation and close beside the capstan watched all his movements. It was Elias, well disguised by ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... piles of powder kegs was an excavation in the ground, but, alas! no powder was left. All had gone to cause that great explosion that had borne such a near approach to an earthquake. Of course, Big Tom and his men were a humiliated lot, as there is a great deal of ambition among these hardy boatmen to deliver their cargoes in as ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... battle-field how to use his rifle has a good chance of being dead before he has mastered the mysteries of firing. And Christian people that have their Christian principles to dig out of the Bible when the necessity comes, will likely find that the necessity is past before they have completed the excavation. The actual battle-field is no place to learn drill. If a soldier does not know how his sword hangs, and cannot get at it in a moment, he will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the schools turn'd out to join in the welcome. An edifice for a free public library for youths was just then commencing, and Lafayette consented to stop on his way and lay the corner-stone. Numerous children arriving on the ground, where a huge irregular excavation for the building was already dug, surrounded with heaps of rough stone, several gentlemen assisted in lifting the children to safe or convenient spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, Lafayette, also helping ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to account for sunrise and sunset, storm-winds and thunder, the origin of the earth and of mankind. The tales men told in the face of these mysteries were naturally inspired by awe and fear. The universal myth of a great flood is perhaps the earliest tale of terror. During the excavation of Nineveh in 1872, a Babylonian version of the story, which forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, was discovered in the library of King Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.C.); and there are records of a much earlier version, belonging to the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... creatures were at work perforating the wooden columns which supported the verandah. They poised themselves on their shining purple wings, as they made the first lodgment in the wood, enlivening the work with an uninterrupted hum of delight, which was audible to a considerable distance. When the excavation had proceeded so far that the insect could descend into it, the music was suspended, but renewed from time to time, as the little creature came to the orifice to throw out the chips, to rest, or to enjoy the fresh air. By degrees, a mound of saw-dust was formed at the base of the pillar, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... boughs of apples, just beginning to assume their various tinges of red, yellow, or russet, offered a strong temptation to the cattle in the adjoining pasture. Incidentally I inquired regarding an old excavation which I had noticed on the hill near an unfrequented road. This excavation had apparently once served for a cellar, although most of the stones had been removed, and the sheep easily ran down its now sloping ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... instead of columns, three of the porticoes; besides three of the columns in the north hexastyle with the roof over these last columns, the rest of the roof of this graceful portico fell during the siege of Athens, in 1827. Lately, much has been done in the way of excavation; the buried base of this tripartite temple has been cleared; the walls, which had been built to make it habitable, have been removed; the abducted Caryatid replaced by a modern copy, the gift of Lord Guildford, and the whole prepared for a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... scrutinized and old existing landmarks studied. Seventeenth-century buildings and objects still surviving in England, America, and elsewhere have been viewed as well as museum collections. A key part of the search has been the systematic excavation of the townsite itself, in order to bring to light the information and objects long buried there. This is the aspect of the broad Jamestown study that is told in this publication, particularly as its relates to ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... pebbly, the shape is modified according to the exigencies of the digging. In the second case, the lair is often a rough, winding cave, at intervals along whose inner wall stick blocks of stone avoided in the process of excavation. Whether regular or irregular, the house is plastered to a certain depth with a coat of silk, which prevents earth-slips and facilitates scaling when a ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Beneath these planks, which were taken up and put down as required, the rock was excavated to a depth of 9 feet, and the balks supported upon stout props. Then from the driftway or rough boring beneath well holes were bored to the upper excavation, and through them the strong upright iron pillars designed to support the roof of the new tunnel station were passed, bedded and securely fixed in position. No sooner were they in situ than the most troublesome part of the task was entered upon, for the balks ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... says of the cave-dwellings may be illustrated by Burnes's account of the excavations at Bamian, in a neighbouring district. These "still form the residence of the greater part of the population.... The hills at Bamian are formed of indurated clay and pebbles, which renders this excavation a matter of little difficulty." Similar occupied excavations are noticed by Moorcroft at Heibak and other ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... story of all was the following. The rector, as an archaeologist, did a little excavation on his own on the flat place at the very top of the hill—a place in which there were what looked like rough foundations. He used to take with him a local labourer to do some of the spade-work. One day they dug up a Quern. The labourer asked ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... be sacrificed to the ungrounded idea that it occupies a level as high, or even nearly as high, as 'the preaching of the word.' To that peculiar scheme of visitation advocated by Chalmers as a first process in his work of excavation, we of course do not refer. In those special cases to which he so vigorously directed himself, visitation was an inevitable preliminary, without which the appliances of the pulpit could not be brought to bear. Philip had to open ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... forth flew a score or two of bats, extinguishing the flambeau, and leaving us in darkness, like Belzoni deserted by his Arabs in the heart of a pyramid. The torch at last relumed, we entered a tomb-like excavation, at every step raising clouds of dust; and at last stood before long rows of musty, mummyish parcels, so dingy-red, and so rolled upon sticks, that they looked like stiff sausages of Bologna; but smelt like some fine ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... The excavation was quite large, the entrance covered and camouflaged neatly to give the very impression that he had gotten from the air. Under the camouflage the space was crowded, stacked with crates, boxes, materials, stacked all along the walls of the tunnel. He followed ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... hatch swing softly down, he lowered the heavy articles by the silk rope, as he had Master Gibbs, though not so suddenly, going down himself as nimbly as a rat after them. In the vault beneath, Captain Brand struck a light and set fire to a torch, which blazed out luridly, and illumined the dark excavation and passages like day. Going slowly on, with his burden in his arms, by the path by which we traced the padre, he came to the outer door, which opened into the fissure in the crag; and, after a ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... descends about fifteen inches. It is cylindrical, slightly twisted, according to the exigencies of the soil, and always approaches the vertical, or the direction of the shortest passage. It is perfectly free along its entire length. We shall search in vain for the rubbish which such an excavation must apparently produce; we shall find nothing of the sort. The burrow terminates in a cul-de-sac, in a fairly roomy chamber with unbroken walls, which shows not the least vestige of communication with any other burrow ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... ago some natives in Southern India were engaged in making an excavation under the superintendence of an English officer, when they discovered the remains of one of the largest fossil turtles ever found. They had penetrated the soil for several feet, when their implements struck against a hard substance which was at first supposed to be solid rock, but a bar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... excavation large enough for the body was no difficult task;— the earth being soft, and easily removed from the trunks, roots, and branches of buried trees, which seemed to run all through the interior of the bank. ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... Street, where a bridge loaded with heavy traffic now swung. There were all sorts of complications. In the first place, the consent of the War Department at Washington had to be secured in order to tunnel under the river at all. Secondly, the excavation, if directly under the bridge, might prove an intolerable nuisance, necessitating the closing or removal of the bridge. Owing to the critical, not to say hostile, attitude of the newspapers which, since the La Salle and Washington tunnel grants, were following his every move with a searchlight, Cowperwood ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... without a resort to ether and chloroform. These agents had been known so short a time that no one was specially familiar with their action. Without knowing whether I could take chloroform administered by myself, and at the same time perform with skill the excavation of extremely sensitive dentine or tooth-bone, as if no anaesthetic had been taken, and not be conscious of pain, was more than the experience of medical men at that time could assure me. But, having a love for investigation of the unknown, I prepared myself for the ordeal. By degrees ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... the cook at work beyond the reef. My musket and pistols were again examined and found in order. With these precautions, I began to remove the stones, taking care to mark their relative positions so that I might replace them exactly; and, in about ten minutes work at excavation, I came upon two barrels, one of which was filled with bundles of silk, linens, and handkerchiefs, while the other contained a chronometer, several pieces of valuable lace, and a beautifully bound, gilt, and ornamented Bible. One bundle, tied in a Madras handkerchief, particularly ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... to the forest on the east, and is called Beb El Kibla.[20] The gates are hung on very large hinges, and when shut at night, are locked, as in Barbary; and are farther secured by a large prop of wood placed in the inside slopingly against them. There is a dry ditch, or excavation, which circumscribes the town, (except at those places which are opposite the gates,) about twelve feet deep, and too wide 10 for any man to leap it. The three gates of the town are shut every evening soon after sun-set: they are made of folding doors, of which there is only one pair. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... school-houses being rather curious, I will describe it. The usual spot selected for their erection is a ditch in the road-side; in some situation where there will be as little damp as possible. From such a spot an excavation is made equal to the size of the building, so that, when this is scooped out, the back side-wall, and the two gables are already formed, the banks being dug perpendicularly. The front side-wall, with a window in each side of the ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... peculiarly rich in colour. There is, however, more to be seen for the money at Gough's, a little higher up, where a similar charge is made. A long natural gallery, rendered in places more accessible by excavation, runs for a quarter of a mile into the heart of the rock and opens up a series of vast chambers elaborately hung with stalactites. When the electric light is thrown on these pendants an almost pantomimic effect is produced. The scientific interest ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Antilochus, and of Telamonian Ajax. Marathon he had already visited, and marked "the perpendicular cut" which at Fauvel's instigation had been recently driven into the large barrow; and he had, perhaps, read of the real or pretended excavation by Signor Ghormezano (1787) of a tumulus at the Sigean promontory. The "mind's eye," which had conjured up "the shattered heaps," images a skull of one who "kept the world in awe," and, after moralizing in Hamlet's vein on the humorous ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... last of the column had halted, there came to the ears of Henri and his friend the dull blow of picks, the scrape of spades against flints and stones, and the rattle of earth as it was thrown out of an excavation. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... here, and the ironmasters are standing out in the street (where they always hold high change), making such an iron hum and buzz, that they confuse me horribly. In addition, there is a bellman announcing something—not the readings, I beg to say—and there is an excavation being made in the centre of the open place, for a statue, or a pump, or a lamp-post, or something or other, round which all the Wolverhampton boys ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... sailors and some of the scientists, with the two invalids, Rickenson and Blackborrow, found head-cover at least. Shelter from the weather and warmth to dry their clothes was imperative, so Wild hastened the excavation of the ice-cave in the slope which had been started before ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... I crept stealthily to the top and as the great excavation lay far from the plaza and in an untenanted portion of the great dead city I had little trouble ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the last works executed by the firm during Mr. Maudslay's lifetime was the famous Shield employed by his friend Brunel in carrying forward the excavation of the Thames Tunnel. He also supplied the pumping-engines for the same great work, the completion of which he did ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... they to pierce the wall the Rebu could at once overwhelm the small working parties; they, therefore, after penetrating a considerable distance into the embankment, drove right and left, making an excavation of considerable size, the roof being supported by beams and planks ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... into the outside world. By diligent economy of his working moments, he succeeded in covering almost two weeks in the labor of putting his house into order. His bedroom was next to the barricade that separated the long stone excavation from the bottomless abyss. Divided from the bedroom by an imaginary line, was the store-room of provisions. The cans and boxes were arranged along the floor with methodical exactitude. Different varieties of fruit and preserves were interspersed in such fashion that none was repeated ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... hotbed also on top of the ground without any excavation. Spread a layer of manure evenly one foot in depth and large enough to extend around the frame three feet each way. Pack this down well, especially around the edge, put on a second and third layer until you have a well-trodden and compact bed of manure at least two and one half ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... great Desague was begun in 1607, when the Marquis of Salinas was viceroy of Mexico; and the operations were commenced with great pomp, the viceroy assisting in person, mass being said on a portable altar, and fifteen hundred workmen assembled, while the marquis himself began the excavation by giving the first stroke with a spade. From 1607 to 1830, eight millions of dollars were expended, and yet this great work was not brought to a conclusion. However, the limits of the two lakes of Zumpango and San Cristobal, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... me too balmy not to see through the way you deceive your wife, Moss,' I said. 'I'll bet she would think me sane enough if I were to tell her all I know. But I'll spare you if you will take me into your cellar and help me to do a bit of excavation there. But promise, mind you, that we will go shares in what ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... with creek sand and the whole rammed hard. On this a solid platform of two-inch planks had been laid by the sawyers and at intervals of three feet long, thin stakes, sharpened at the top, had been driven deeply into the ground just at the ends of the excavation. Thus all had been prepared for the erection of the ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... an excavation more than a foot in depth and several yards in circumference. Whatever it was the strange girl had been after she was not quite sure of its ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... other two in yonder church-yard, until the pile of earth grew so high that it half-concealed them. Two or three times the man seemed to offer to take the spade from Mr. Axtell, but he kept it and worked away. At last the excavation grew so deep that one must needs go down into it to make it deeper. Would Mr. Axtell go? We watched to see. Sophie said "Yes" to the question; I thought "No." There grew a pause. Mr. Axtell stopped in his work, looked at the man, and must have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... right-hand corner from door," murmured Jimmie Dale. He was kneeling on the floor now. "Yes, here it was!" His flashlight was boring down into a little excavation beneath the piece of flooring he had removed. He stared into this for a moment, his lips twitching grimly; then, with a whimsical shrug of his shoulders, he replaced the board, and stood up. He had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... thinking "of that" as deeply as his somewhat disorganized mental state would permit. For Transley had announced, with his usual directness, that he wanted so many men and teams for a house excavation in the most exclusive part of the city. So far they had been building in the cheaper districts a cheap type of house for those who, having little capital, are the easier deprived of what they have. The shift in operations caused Linder to lift ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... snapped back; "then I suppose it was mine! I suppose I fell down the elevator shaft just to please mother, eh? Maybe you think I dropped into the excavation just to pass the time away? Have you an idea that I dove down into the earth because I wanted to get back to the mines? Wasn't your fault, indeed! Maybe you think I fell in the well simply because I wanted to give an imitation of the ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... volume of Hyperides, it seems that it has fallen into two pieces at the place where it had most usually been opened, and where, alas! it would have been most desirable to have kept it whole; and that the smaller fragments have been lost amid the dust and rubbish of the excavation, while the two extremities have been made distinct properties, which have been sold, as we have seen, to separate collectors. So, at all events, such matters are ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... entrance to the excavation is, without exception, at or very near the surface of the ground, and is invariably beneath the layer of dead and decaying leaves that everywhere covers the soil in our Northern deciduous forests. Each burrow consists of a primary, more or less horizontal, circular canal, that passes completely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... great excavation, not very recent, for the sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. In this were the shaft of a pick broken in two and the boards of several packing-cases strewn around. On one of these boards I saw, branded with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... current amongst the natives that an Englishman some years ago attempted to cut a tunnel from the base to the centre of the volcanic mountain, probably to extract some metallic product or sulphur. It is said that during the work the excavation partially fell in upon the Englishman, who perished there. The cave-like entrance is pointed out to travellers as the Cueva ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... lied.'"[FN224] Then he caused rear him among the wet-nurses and the noble matrons;[FN225] but withal he ceased not to ponder the prediction of the astrophils and verily his life was troubled. So he betook himself to the top of a high mountain and hollowed there a deep excavation[FN226] and made in it many dwelling-places and rooms and filled it with all that was needful of rations and raiment and what not else and laid in it pipe-conduits of water from the mountain and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... corresponding sulci of man. The surface of the brain of a monkey exhibits a sort of skeleton map of man's, and in the man-like apes the details become more and more filled in, until it is only in minor characters, such as the greater excavation of the anterior lobes, the constant presence of fissures usually absent in man, and the different disposition and proportions of some convolutions, that the Chimpanzee's or the Orang's brain can be structurally distinguished ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... inscriptions of Cyrus and of Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, make it certain that Cyrus was the real conqueror. These inscriptions are preserved on cylinders of baked clay, of the type made familiar by the excavation of the past fifty years, and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... walk of some distance on a sandy road through the thick shrubs, we arrived at some huts built of a frame-work of poles thatched with the radiated leaves of the dwarf palmetto, which had a very picturesque appearance. Here we found a circular hollow in the earth, the place of an old excavation, now shaded with red-cedars, and the palmetto-royal bristling with long pointed leaves, which bent over and embowered it, and at the bottom was a spring within a square curb of stone, where we refreshed ourselves with a draught of cold water. The quarries were at a little distance ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... fathers had tools of iron and steel in common use, a war canoe was the labour of three generations. It was hollowed out by means of fire, cautiously applied, or by stone hatchets; but so slowly did the work proceed, that years were passed in its excavation. When completed, it was regarded as a great achievement, and its launching on the waters of the lake or river was celebrated by feasting and dancing. The artizans were venerated as great patriots. Possibly the birch-bark canoe was of ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... place where the gaseous fuel was to be used, and it was concluded that the most convenient situation would be immediately in front of its own set of eight retorts, and with its top on a level with the working floor of the retort house. To place it in such a position meant a good deal of excavation, which was also required, however, for the regenerator flues. The excavation was carried down to a depth of 10 ft. below the level of the retort house floor, and as a matter of course the operation of underpinning had to be resorted to for the purpose of carrying down the foundations of the division ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... of clearing a regular space with a sharp pointed knife. The walls of the space or opening should be as clean in line as possible, also quite vertical. A small keen-edged chisel may be found advantageous, as, by its aid, using it with the angular or sharpened side downwards, the floor of the excavation can be reduced to a fair level. This hollowing-out should not be too deep, leaving as much as possible of the bare wood uncut, only enough being removed for a good holding surface. If this is done neatly, the opening will be like that of ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... Arabic word conveys the idea of being "hidden underground," because the house is exposed by excavation.] ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... country mansion so called, but a stone edifice with battlements and a round tower at one corner, and a gate which looked as if it might have had a portcullis, and narrow windows in a portion of it, and a cannon mounted upon a low roof, and an excavation called the moat,—but which was now a fantastic and somewhat picturesque garden,—running round two sides of it. In very truth, though a portion of the castle was undoubtedly old, and had been built when strength was needed for defence and probably for ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... explained the circumstances, the excavation, the money, the assault, to his deliverers; but the resurrection of the Grinstun man was a mystery which he could not explain. Without being told, Timotheus, whose arrival had been so opportune, ran all the way to Richards, and brought ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... laying the foundations may be judged from the following facts: The depth of excavation over the entire plot was over thirty feet, and the material to be removed was entirely loose sand, while the traffic in Broadway and Park Row, including railroad cars and omnibuses, was enormous, involving the danger of a caving-in of both streets! The ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... probably a copy, because Pliny says that the original was made of one block, and that of the Vatican is composed of six pieces. Pliny also tells us that the Laocoon was the work of three sculptors, AGESANDER, POLYDORUS, and ATHENODORUS. The Vatican group was found in 1506 in the excavation of the Baths of Titus, in Rome, and was placed in its present position by Pope Julius II. (Fig. 51). The right arm of Laocoon was missing, and Michael Angelo attempted to restore it, but left it incomplete; Montorsoli made an unsatisfactory attempt for its restoration, and the arm as it ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... semi-darkness, Anna, who was more robust and the taller of the two, folding her arms around Mrs. Carleton to support her, and both of them feeling their way lest they should fall into any other well or excavation. Arrived at the corner they saw a gleam of light, which came in a slanting direction through a large hole in the wall. They still heard the little voice and determined to follow it. The hole would only admit of their crawling in on their hands and knees. This they ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... have known how to read and write. This doubt really rests on a misconception of the Empire. It is, indeed, akin to the surprise which tourists often exhibit when confronted with Roman remains in an excavation or a museum—a surprise that 'the Romans' had boots, or beds, or waterpipes, or fireplaces, or roofs over their heads. There are, in truth, abundant evidences that the labouring man in Roman days knew how to read and write at need, and there is much truth in the remark that in the lands ruled ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... lonely spot, walled in by the mountains, and frequented only by the deer that were wont to come to lick salt from the briny margin of a great salt spring far down the ravine. Their hoofs had worn a deep excavation around it in the countless years and generations that they had herded here. The "lick," as such places are called in Tennessee, was nearly two acres in extent, and in the centre of the depression the brackish water stood to the depth of six feet or ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... to obtain from Philip all such tools as would be needful for the task of excavation. Although the young man himself had small hopes of Cuthbert's success, he was interested in spite of himself in the proposed plan, and would have been more so had he known how much had been already discovered. But Cuthbert kept much of that to himself, not willing that tattling tongues ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in the character of this water; all the herbs around it were grey, as if encrusted with marble; a few buffaloes were slaking their thirst in it, which ran wildly away on our approach, and appeared to retire into a rocky excavation or quarry at the end of the lake; there were a number of birds, which, on examination, I found were sea swallows, flitting on the surface and busily employed with the libella or dragon- fly in destroying ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... would nearly, if not quite, recoup them for their outlay in machinery, they having started without the terribly expensive task of sinking the mine through the rock. All that they had had to do was to pump out the first excavation, and then begin raising rich tin ore ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... in the process of excavation remained, and round it was a portion of the chain so old and rusty as to be worthless for any purpose whatever. Lengths had from time to time been broken off by boys, who would unwind a portion, and then, three or four pull together until the rust-eaten links ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... had also splashed his face and hands; for since the work was risky he had helped the men. Now he was rather highly-strung. Below him, the water spirited [Transcriber's note: spurted?] through the joints in a wall of thick planks and ran into the excavation, where a few men, sunk nearly to the knees in mud, were working. A forge stood on the top of the bank and the smith leaned on the crank of the blower. He was a short, strongly-built man, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... there have been heavy landslides. The whole side of a mountain has slipped down, covering the place where, on the map, there is the little cross which spells treasure. It will take money, much money, for the excavation. And Marc and Captain Sefton and I have no money. We may dig for months, but at last ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... Blanca in the months of September and October, the eggs, in extraordinary numbers, were found all over the country. They lie either scattered and single, in which case they are never hatched, and are called by the Spaniards huachos; or they are collected together into a shallow excavation, which forms the nest. Out of the four nests which I saw, three contained twenty-two eggs each, and the fourth twenty-seven. In one day's hunting on horseback sixty-four eggs were found; forty-four of these were in two nests, and the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the earth. Thus a whole army of gnomes were noiselessly at work to destroy and defend the beleaguered city. The mine advanced towards the gate; the besieged delved deeper, and intersected it with a transverse excavation, and the contending forces met daily, in deadly encounter, within these sepulchral gangways. Many stratagems were, mutually employed. The citizens secretly constructed a dam across the Spanish ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and then proceed to work gradually downwards, extracting the chalk, whenever practicable, in blocks suitable for building purposes, which being worth from three to four shillings the square yard help to reduce the cost of the excavation. When any serious flaws present themselves in the sides or roof of the galleries, they are invariably made ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... such an ethical snarl reduced him to inanity. He stayed to dinner. Charity had not expected him to stop. She had planned an evening's excavation into her correspondence and had not changed her street dress. She was surprised and childishly delighted to have him with her—then childishly unhappy as ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... awful about this stupendous excavation that impressed me with solemn thoughtfulness; it lies about sixty feet from the surface of the earth, and is divided into three apartments with arched roofs, the farthest of which is designated the Barons' Chamber. Time flowed back upon my memory as I sat in ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the center of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation.... Around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... of 1852 Layard, assisted by H. Rassam, continued the excavation of the "South West Palace" at Kuynjik. In one part of the building he found two small chambers, opening into each other, which he called the "chamber of records," or "the house of the rolls." He gave them ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... as Sir Carnaby Haggerstone's workmen were digging in Flodden Field, they came to a pit filled with human bones, and which seemed of great extent; but, alarmed at the sight, they immediately filled up the excavation, and proceeded no farther. ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... off at a run for the future temple. Arrived at the excavation and the already completed sacred fount, he got down into the water, chanted in a loud voice hymns to Asclepius and Apollo, and invited the God to come, a welcome guest, to the city. He next demanded a bowl, and when this ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... snow; if we did so, we should soon find that dogs' teeth are just as sharp as knives; besides which, they would be draughty and cold for the animals. To counteract this, the floor of each tent was sunk 6 feet below the surface of the Barrier. A great part of this excavation had to be done with axes, as we soon came to the bare ice. One of these dog tents, when finished, had quite an important appearance, when one stood at the bottom and looked up. It measured 18 feet from the floor to the peak of the tent, and the diameter of the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... from the leeward, flying in the eye of the wind, and dropped heavily on the sand, ready to make one of the busy crowd. I selected as subject of my observations the largest, a fellow of prodigious proportions and exemplary industry. He had commenced the excavation of a mass of the pilulary, making a circular cut downwards, and was half buried in the fosse which was to isolate a sufficient fragment. Round and round he went in a perfect arc, cutting deeper and deeper until he reached the sand below and the separation was complete. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... of the main pit, which was some 6 or 7 feet deep. Pillars of cobble stones about 10 inches in diameter occupied the corners of the pit, and probably served in a measure to support the paving. In the bottom of this excavation a second pit was dug, the mouth of which was also covered by a paving 2-1/2 by upwards of 3 feet in horizontal dimensions. This lower pit consisted of a shaft several feet in depth, by which descent was made into a chamber of inverted pyramidal shape. ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes |
