"Friable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and friable soil, such as sand and sandstone, a vapour, more or less dense, is continually exhaling and causing a perpetual damp, which produces that fearful rheumatism which goes by the name of kennel lameness, while the kennels that are built on a clay soil, a soil of an impervious ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... at 8 A.M., and I biked. It is not such interesting country here as what we came through in the train—rolling, stoney, with friable red soil, and hard to ride on. Many dusty roads meet at all angles; along these you meet herds of buffalo and cows driven leisurely by boys or men. Some cows, of errant natures, have logs dangling by a rope from their necks amongst their feet; they can't go off very fast or far with the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... or black limestone above described (Chap. x. Sec. 4), formed into a number of thin layers or leaves, commonly separated by filmy spreadings of calcareous sand, hard when dry, but easily softened by moisture; the whole, considered as a mass, easily friable, though particular beds may be very thick and hard. Imagine a layer of such substance, three or four thousand feet thick, broken with a sharp crash through the middle, and one piece of it thrown up as in Fig. 11. It is evident that the first ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... antimony, the hydrogen evolved at the negative pole combines with the reduced substances, forming hydrogen, selenide, or telluride, which remain in part in solution in the liquid. The reduced metal separates out at the anode in a friable condition.—Zeitschrift fur Analytische Chemie, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... ingredient of the nerves, glands, and even the brain itself. And in all these developmental stages, its tendency is to coagulate rather than precipitate. In its coagulated condition, it dries to a hard, partially translucent and friable state, and is more or less insoluble in water, and entirely so at a temperature from 140A deg. ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... instance magnificent fruit was grown in a garden where the soil was originally made up chiefly of sawdust mixed with sand, drawn on a foundation of sawmill edgings so as to raise it above the water of a swamp. Where one has to contend with such conditions he should make an effort to create a friable soil with a supply of humus by adding the material needed. A very few loads, sometimes even a single load, of clay or sand will greatly change the character of the soil of a sufficient area to grow the one or two ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... very different from what it was in Paris. For the phase I am going through is the very contrary to that in which I previously lived; in Paris my soul was not dry and friable, but dank and soft; it was saponaceous; the foot sank in it. In short, I was melting away, in a state of langour, more painful perhaps than this state of drought which is toughening me to horniness. Still on close examination, though the symptoms have changed, the evil persists; softness or dryness, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... quality of brick was yellow, approaching to our Stourbridge or fire-brick; another very hard kind was blue, approaching to black; the commoner and coarser sorts were pink or red, and these were sometimes, though rarely, but half-baked, in which case they were weak and friable. The shape was always square; and the dimensions varied between twelve and fourteen inches for the length and breadth, and between three and four inches for the thickness. [PLATE XVII., Fig. 1.] At the corners of buildings, half-bricks were used in the alternate rows, since otherwise the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... kind of criticism that Whistler hurled his impatient epigram about pigeon-holes. And if it is absurd in regard to painting, how much more absurd is it in regard to the more various and less friable substances of literature. By the old ten-o'clock rule (I do not refer to Whistler's lecture), once observed in Board schools, no scripture could be taught after that hour. Once a teacher asked his class who was the wisest man. 'Solomon,' said a little boy. 'Right; go up top,' said the teacher. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... capillaries. All of the circulatory vessels, especially the smaller ones, become enlarged, varicose; and an aggregation of varicosed vessels forms a tumor called a pile or hemorrhoid. Inflammation interferes with nutrition of the anal and rectal tissues, rendering them friable or weak and easily broken; whence the bleeding and painful fissure or the anal ulcer, which so often are the outcome of proctitis and an ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... wick running into the reservoir. I have used both clock oil and ordinary gas-engine oil as lubricants, with equally satisfactory results. As to the speed of cutting, in the experiment quoted a bit of rather friable "gabbro," measuring three-quarters of an inch on the face by five-eighths of an inch thick, was cut clean through in six minutes, or by 3000 turns of the wheel. The travel of the edge was thus between 5000 and 6000 feet, or say 9000 feet, ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... required will soon produce a turf that yields to the foot like a Persian rug. Any one who has walked over the plain at West Point can understand the value of these regular autumnal top-dressings. If the stable-manure can be composted and left till thoroughly decayed, fine and friable, all the better. If stable-manure can not be obtained, Mr. Parsons recommends Mapes's fertilizer ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... saddle of a hussar, and who turned round at every discharge of canister and tried to hide behind Napoleon: "Fool, it is shameful! You'll get yourself killed with a ball in the back." He who writes these lines has himself found, in the friable soil of this knoll, on turning over the sand, the remains of the neck of a bomb, disintegrated, by the oxidization of six and forty years, and old fragments of iron which parted like ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... It rests on ancient volcanic rocks, and has been covered by a stream of basalt, which must have entered the sea when the white shelly bed was lying at the bottom. It is interesting to trace the changes produced by the heat of the overlying lava, on the friable mass, which in parts has been converted into a crystalline limestone, and in other parts into a compact spotted stone Where the lime has been caught up by the scoriaceous fragments of the lower surface of the stream, it is converted into groups ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... You friable shore with trails of debris, You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot, What is ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... competition with lead, but it leaked at 100 lb. and failed under a sustained pressure of 300 lb. It is a friable material, and cannot be caulked successfully. Its principal ingredient appears to be sulphur. The failure was by slow creeping out of the joints. It is melted and poured, but not caulked. It has attractive features for low pressures and for lines not ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... and gold were weaving into lovely lines, Etruscan bowls were lifted to luxurious and lovely lips at sumptuous feasts, in a gorgeous ritual, before the natives of a certain foggy island had advanced to blue-woad decoration! Her people's tombs lie calm and contemptuous under the loose, friable soil of that tragic land that has suffered Roman, Persian and Goth alike (wilt thou ever rise up again, O Mater Dolorosa? Is the circle nearly complete? Would that I might see thee in the rising!) they lie, too, under the angular and reclining forms of many ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Italian ancestors, to rivalry with its own species; nothing checks the growth; it may absorb all the juices of the ground, all the air and sunshine of the region, and become the Colossus which the ancient plants, equally deep-rooted and certainly as absorbent, but born in a less friable soil and more ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a compartment of their own in a wagon, consisting of such kettles, long-handled frying-pans and sheet-iron coffee pots as could be used on a camp-fire, with table articles almost all of tin. Those who attempted to carry the more friable articles, owing to the thumps and falls to which these were subjected, found themselves short in supply of utensils long before the journey ended. I have seen a man and wife drinking coffee from one small tin pan, their china and delftware having been left in fragments ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... square miles in area, was a fruitful field, "50 Villages upon it, one Town, several Monasteries and 50,000 souls:" till on Christmas midnight A.D. 1277, the winds and the storm-rains having got to their height, Ocean and Ems did, "about midnight," undermine the place, folded it over like a friable bedquilt or monstrous doomed griddle-cake, and swallowed it all away. Most of it, they say, that night, the whole of it within ten years coming; [Busching,—Erdbeschreibung,—v. 845, 846; Preuss, i. 308, 309.]—and there it has hung, like an unlovely GOITRE at the throat of Embden, ever ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... what is called the black cotton soil by the English, for what reason I know not. [W. H. S.] The reason is that cotton is very largely grown in the Nerbudda Valley, both on the black soil and other soils. In Bundelkhand the black, friable soil, often with a high proportion of organic matter, is called 'mar', and is chiefly devoted to raising crops of wheat, gram, or chick-pea (Cicer arietinum), linseed, and joar (Holcus sorghum). Cotton is also sown in it, but not very generally. This ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... without leaving it pasty and sticky a few days after a rain; "light" enough, as it is called, so that a handful, under ordinary conditions, will crumble and fall apart readily after being pressed in the hand. It is not necessary that the soil be sandy in appearance, but it should be friable. ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... salt region of Usdum is a low range of hills near the southwest corner of the Dead Sea, extending in a southeasterly direction for about five miles, and made up mainly of salt rock. This rock is soft and friable, and, under the influence of the heavy winter rains, it has been, without doubt, from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially into pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance to the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... on, looking for a spring, sometimes walking on firm ground, sometimes sinking to the ankle in a friable soil like black sand. The ground looked, indeed, as if it had been burnt, but there were no charred stumps of timber such as he had seen on the sites of forest fires. The extreme dreariness seemed to oppress ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... ultimately turned it and descended southwards to the river; but as we were cut off from it we encamped on a lagoon of great length, backed by hills of a yellow and white colour, the rock being a soft and friable sandstone, slightly encrusted with salt. We had, shortly before we halted, passed a salt lagoon in the centre of one of the grassy flats, but such anomalies are not uncommon in the valley of the Murray. That part of the river which I have ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... which are woven bands of brilliant colour, abound. Often these ape the cut and purple edge that distinguishes the samurai. In Utopian London the air is as clear and less dusty than it is among high mountains; the roads are made of unbroken surfaces, and not of friable earth; all heating is done by electricity, and no coal ever enters the town; there are no horses or dogs, and so there is not a suspicion of smoke and scarcely a particle of any sort of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... noticed the magical effect of rain upon the deep friable soil, formed by the denuded limestone rock. Almost instantaneously fresh life springs up. Within but a short time the dry and withered stalks of grass assume a deep rich green, the soft broad leaves and joints ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... The volcanic rocks are the Tufa litoide, very hard, and used for paving and other such purposes; difficult to be quarried, and unfit for graves on account of this difficulty. The Tufi granulare, a soft, friable, coarse-grained rock, easily cut,—fitted for excavation. It is in this that the catacombs are made. It is used for very few purposes in Rome. One may now and then see some coarse filling-up of walls done with it, or its square-cut blocks piled up as a fence. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... climate like that of Chaldaea the soil when dried in the sun was well fitted for certain uses. Among the debris left by the earliest pioneers of civilization we find the remains of vases which seem to have been dried only in the sun. But porous and friable pottery like this could only be used for a few purposes, and it was finally renounced as soon as the art of firing the earth, first in the hot ashes of the domestic hearth, and afterwards in the searching flames of the close ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... bright, and the air so pure and bracing that it did the lungs good to breathe. So I made my way out of counting-house and street for a walk. I ascended the dry, crumbling hills which with long, deep gullies and breaks in them, and friable soil, looked as if they were ready to tumble into pieces at the first shake of one of those earthquakes so frequent in the country. On the road, chained gangs of surly convicts were at work, and some smart-looking ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... underlying masonry. It is noticeable that much more attention has been paid to protective devices at Zui than at Tusayan. This is undoubtedly due to the prevalent use of adobe in the former. This friable material must be protected at all vulnerable points with slabs of stone in order quickly to divert the water and preserve the roofs and ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... not of the soft and friable stuff to be found at Bridlington, but of hard and slippery sandstone, with bulky ribs oversaling here and there, and threatening to cast the climber back. At such spots nicks for the feet had been cut, or broken with a hammer, but scarcely wider than a stirrup-iron, and far less inviting. To surmount ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Mississippi receives into its waters a large amount of suspended earthy matter. This, however, does not very strikingly appear on the upper river, its own banks and those of its tributaries being more of a gravelly character and less friable than lower down. The gravity of particles, therefore, worn from the bed and sides of the channel above, unless the current be exceedingly strong, is greater than the buoyant capacity of the water, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... no very unusual weight for these blocks of smooth, water worn quartzite. Every one, no matter how large, had to be shifted, the reason being that whatever gold there was lay on the bedrock, and thus beneath all the wash. The bedrock was granite, but was so decomposed and friable that one could dig it ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... a gesture; brayed By hoarse camp-phrase what argument Dared interpose to waken spleen In him whose vision grasped the unseen, Whose counsellor was the ready blade, Whose argument the cannonade. He loathed his land's divergent parties, loth To grant them speech, they were such idle troops; The friable and the grumous, dizzards both. Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops; Some serviceable, none credible on oath. The silly preference they nursed to die In beds he scorned, and led where they should lie. If magic made them pliable for his use, Magician he could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that in a colliery near Newcastle, no less than thirty sigillaria trees were standing in their natural position in an area of fifty yards square, the interior in each case being sandstone, which was surrounded by a bark of friable coal. ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... found on removing boxing that the portion adjacent to the wood was frequently friable and of poor quality, owing to the fact just stated. It is usual to face or plaster concrete work after removing the boxing. On breakwater work, where the writer was engaged, the wall was faced with cement and flint grit, and this was found to form a particularly hard and lasting protection ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... fine white limestone of Turah, or the compact siliceous limestone of Sakkarah; for ordinary tombs, the marly limestone of the Libyan hills. This last, impregnated with salt and veined with crystalline gypsum, is a friable material, and unsuited for ornamentation. The bricks are of two kinds, both being merely sun-dried. The most ancient kind, which ceased to be used about the time of the Sixth Dynasty, is small (8.7 X 4.3 X 5.5 inches), yellowish, and made of nothing but sand, mixed with ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... interior and rescue Pele. Here again he failed, for a strong draft blowing from the cave carried the smoke into his own face. Then he ordered a hole to be cut in the cavern roof, for this appeared to be not more than fifteen or twenty feet thick, and being friable was easily worked by the stone drills and axes of his men. The workers plied their tools industriously, while Kamapua shouted threats and defiance through the chinks in the wall before the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... rise in apparently inseparable confusion from the grassy ground; but, with a little observation, the cruciform outline of the church can be traced, and then its disjointed masses reduce themselves into connected details. The dark-red stone of which the building was constructed is friable, and peculiarly apt to crumble under the moist atmosphere and dreary winds of the northeast coast. The mouldings and tracery are thus wofully obliterated, and the facings are so much decayed as to leave the original surface distinguishable only ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... should be to us an example of the utmost possible stability of precipitousness attained with materials of imperfect and variable character; and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which do not display alternations between compact and friable conditions of their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes when the bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they are harder. And, although we are not hence to conclude that it is well to introduce courses of bad materials when we can get perfect material, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... tent of boughs I saw him closely wrapped in his grey cloak, His head upon a pile of caked thin leaves Whose life had dried up full two years ago. Their flakes shook in the breath from those moist lips; The vow his kiss would seal must prove, I knew As friable as that pale ashen fritter; It had more body than reason dare expect From that so beautiful creature's best intent. He waking found me no more there; and wanders Through tna's woods to-day Calling at times, or questioning ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the apple prefers a rather strong soil, neither very heavy nor very light. Subsoil is rather more important than surface soil, although the latter should be friable and easily worked. The apple follows good timber successfully. Heavy clay soils are apt to be too cold, compact, and wet; light sandy soils too loose and dry. A medium clay loam or a gravelly clay loam, underlaid by a somewhat heavier but fairly open ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... grey; about a foot below it is brown, which passes, as you proceed, into deeper yellow; about four feet deep, it passes into sand. No ravines exist, and mounds only do about a few of the larger trees. The soil as usual is light, friable, easily reduced to powder, and has a ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... 1858, under the title "Deep-sea Soundings in the North Atlantic.") I think you said that some one was investigating the soundings. I earnestly hope that you will ask the some one to carefully observe whether any considerable number of the calcareous organisms are more or less friable, or corroded, or scaling; so that one might form some crude notion whether the deposition is so rapid that the foraminifera are preserved from decay and thus are forming strata at this profound depth. This is a subject which seems ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... granit dur degages et sortis entierement des masses qui forment les montagnes, posent immediatement sur le granit friable ou sur d'autres blocs durs qui eux-memes sont sur le ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... a volcano upon so gigantic a scale could but be accepted, it looked very much as though Earle's explanation might be correct; for the soil of the valley—a belt of flat land some two miles wide, extending all round the lake—was light and friable, but extraordinarily rich, as is apt to be the case with volcanic soil, while the vertical cliffs which hemmed it in all round bore a striking resemblance to the interior of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... are truly and to the perceiving mind, a masterpiece of nature. The dust of Richebourg, which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis of the dust! Not man himself can seem a stranger child of that brown, friable powder, than the blood and sun in that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plant, always needs great care and attention in its cultivation, but much less care is necessary in this country than in Europe. The soil most suitable is a rich friable loam, such as occurs in the black soil of the Duccan, the alluvial tracts in the basin of the Ganges or Nerbudda. Thorough working of the soil is necessary, and in stations where the market price of cauliflower is usually over four annas per head, as is ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... vegetation into coal. Other deposits settled over the coal. At last this vast lake found an outlet in the Missouri. The wear and wash of the waters cut in time through the clay, the coal, and the friable limestone of succeeding deposits, creating ten thousand watercourses bordered by precipitous bluffs and buttes, which every storm gashed and furrowed anew. On the tops of the flat buttes was rich soil and in countless pleasant valleys were green pastures, but there were ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... abundantly until it forms the wonderful stretches of waving green where the buffalo once grew fat. Moreover the fine glacial soil of the prairies is so clayey and compact that the roots of trees cannot easily penetrate it. Since grasses send their roots only into the more friable upper layers of soil, they possess another great ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... her sanity. She died a few weeks ago in the County Asylum. I hear that her husband attended the funeral. When she lost her belief in the supernal wisdom and power of her god, her world must have fallen about her. The thing she had imagined to be solid, real, everlasting, had proved to be friable and destructible like all other ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... resembling that formed in the cavities of the thorax. The liver and the spleen were large; the former peculiarly yellow and oily. Several very large veins, containing inky-looking blood, were seen ramifying its substance. The spleen was very friable. The kidneys were small, ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... more languidly than they do upon the Atlantic coast. It justifies its name. The passion and fury of the Eastern seas I got no hint of, even in winter. Its rocks, all that I saw of them, are soft and friable. The languid waves rapidly wear them down. They are non-strenuous rocks, lifted up out of a non-strenuous sea. The mountains that tower four or five thousand feet along the coast are of the same character. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the exterior of the aisle walls was recased with the same friable sandstone. In 1860 the reredos was erected, the subjects of the panels being the sacrifices of Abel, Noah, Melchisedec, and Abraham, and the Last Supper. To the latest restoration, which included entire recasing of tower and spire, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... considerable decomposing vegetable matter and a clay subsoil. The latter, however, must not come too close to the surface. Some of the best vineyard lands in the country are very stony, the stones hindering only in making the land difficult to till. Nearly all grapes require a friable soil, compactness being a serious defect. Virgil, writing in Christ's time, gave good advice as ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... country explored by the parties of Professor Renwick. Everywhere the streams were found cutting through rocks of slate. On the summits of many of the hills were found weathered masses of angular quartz rocks, showing that while the slate had yielded to the action of the elements, the harder and less friable rock had kept its place. The ridges which intervene between the St. Lawrence at the river Du Loup and Lake Temiscouata have the character, so well described by Elie de Beaumont, of mountains elevated ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... tropical and semi-tropical conditions. Of such soils, the first to be considered are those of basaltic origin. They are usually of a chocolate or rich red colour, are of great depth, in parts more or less covered with basaltic boulders, in others entirely free from stones. The surface soil is friable and easily worked, and the subsoil, which is usually of a rich red colour, is easily penetrated by the roots of trees and plants grown thereon. Occasionally the subsoil is more compact, in which case it is not so good for fruit-tree growth, ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... divisions, layers, cuttings, and by its seeds, which germinate fairly well even when four years old. Owing to its small size, the seed should be planted in a seedpan or flat in a greenhouse or hotbed, where all conditions can be controlled. The soil should be made very fine and friable, the thinly scattered seeds merely pressed upon the surface with a block or a brick, and water applied preferably through the bottom of the seedpan, which may be set in a shallow dish of water until the surface of the soil begins to ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... caught with forceps as near to its cut end as possible, a ligature of catgut or silk is tied round it. When there is difficulty in applying a ligature securely, for example in a dense tissue like the scalp or periosteum, or in a friable tissue like the thyreoid gland or the mesentery, a stitch should be passed so as to surround the bleeding vessel a short distance from its end, in this way ensuring a better hold and preventing the ligature ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... I turned towards the east. The road, having been cut in the side of the cliff, exposed layers of brown argillaceous schist, like rotten wood, and so friable that it crumbled between the fingers; but what was more remarkable was that the layers, scarcely thicker than slate, instead of being on their natural plane, were turned up quite vertically. I was now ascending to the barren uplands. Near the brow of a hill I passed a very ancient crucifix ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... tree on the top of a rock, clasping it with a network of roots and getting its nourishment, goodness knows how, for these are by no means tender, digestible sandstones, but uncommon hard gneiss and quartz which has no idea of breaking up into friable small stuff, and which only takes on a high polish when it is vigorously sanded and canvassed by the Ogowe. While I was engaged in climbing across these promontories, the crew would be busy shouting and hauling the canoe round the point by means of the strong chain provided for such emergencies ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... when served out to us was perfectly clean and fresh, but it did not retain this attractiveness for a very long time. The soil in the vicinity of Ruhleben is friable, the surface being a thick layer of fine sand in dry, and an evil-looking slush in wet, weather. As the prisoners when entering the barracks were unable to clean their boots, the mud was transferred to the straw. Not only did the straw thus become extremely dirty but the mud, upon drying, charged ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... be too sudden, as is well enough shown by our hot sands and gravels; but I apprehend no one will ever fear rendering strong clays too porous and manageable. The object of draining is to impart to such soils the mellowness and dark color of self drained, rich and friable soil. That perfect drainage and cultivation will do this, is a well known fact. I know it in the case of my own garden. How it does so I am not chemist enough to explain in detail; but it is evident ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... The storm waters of the city doubtless carry some fertilizing material also, although sewage, as such, never finds its way into the canals. The washing would be very likely to have a decided flocculating effect and so render this material more friable when applied ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... covering, was, as we have seen, often strewed with recent marine shells. The sandy covering sometimes fills up furrows in the gravel, as does the gravel in the underlying tertiary formations. The pebbles are frequently whitewashed and even cemented together by a peculiar, white, friable, aluminous, fusible substance, which I believe is decomposed feldspar. At Port Desire, the gravel rested sometimes on the basal formation of porphyry, and sometimes on the upper or the lower denuded tertiary strata. It is remarkable that most of the porphyritic ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... consequence of respiratory processes like those in malting. It seems fairly established that when the preliminary heating process of fermentation is drawing to a close, the cotton, hay, &c., having been converted into a highly porous friable and combustible mass, may then ignite in certain circumstances by the occlusion of oxygen, just as ignition is induced by finely divided metals. A remarkable point in this connexion has always been the necessary conclusion that the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... intervals from among the trees. Valleys and plains, even in some places the slopes of the hills, are sparsely covered with those delicate aromatic herbs which affect a stony soil. Their life is a perpetual struggle against the sun: scorched, dried up, to all appearance dead, and so friable that they crumble to pieces in the fingers when one attempts to gather them, the spring rains annually infuse into them new life, and bestow upon them, almost before one's eyes, a green and perfumed youth of some days' duration. The summits of the hills remain always naked, and no vegetation ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... which in upland districts may make cultivation successful when it was previously almost impossible. The removal of moisture by drainage affects the physical characters of the soil in another manner; it makes it lighter, more friable, and more easily worked; and this change is occasioned by the downward flow of the water carrying with it to the lower part of the soil the finer argillaceous particles, leaving the coarser and sandy matters above, and in this way a marked improvement is produced on heavy and retentive ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... damage was very clearly marked. Other conditions being the same, houses built on alluvial ground suffered most of all; and the destruction was also great in those standing on soft sedimentary rocks such as clays and friable limestones. On the other hand, when compact limestones or ancient schists formed the foundation-rock, the amount of damage was conspicuously less than ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... nerve, tendon; stalk, leaf, corolla, stamen, pistil; plinth, frieze, etc. (ii) A name for every metaphysical part or abstract quality of an object, and for its degrees and modes; as extension, figure, solidity, weight; rough, smooth, elastic, friable; the various colours, red, blue, yellow, in all their shades and combinations and so with sounds, smells, tastes, temperatures. The terms of Geometry are employed to describe the modes of figure, as angular, curved, square, elliptical; and the terms of Arithmetic ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... adapted to the culture of cacao, still less are all exposures; but an analysis of the soil destined to this culture never furnishes indications on which reliance can be placed. No regard should be had to color or composition; it is only requisite that it should be friable to a certain depth, which is ascertained by the size of the trees with which it is covered; this sign determines the land ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... he remembers, above two pound of Grayish Earth, which when he had washed with more of the same Dew out of all his Basons into one, and vapoured to siccity, lay in leaves one above another, not unlike to some kind of brown Paper, but very friable. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... of the overhanging boughs, and he watched her gloomily until her figure disappeared at the end of the avenue. He stood for a minute or two with a vacant mind, digging his walking-cane into the dry, friable earth at his feet, and scoring the thin, scum-like growth of moss upon it with unmeaning lines. Then he lit a cigar, and, avoiding the crowded vestibule, skirted the dark western wall of the hotel, and so walked homeward. The thing was done now, and, whether it ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... greater experience of the crew, more regularity was obtained. The nature of the conglomerate was essentially variable, sometimes hard and tenacious, like malleable iron, then suddenly changing into friable masses surrounded by portions more ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... expensive as Parmesan, although it is as friable, sharp and tangy for flavoring, especially for soups such as onion and minestrone. It is brittle and ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the Missisippi. After carefully examining those which my discoverer brought me, I found they were a gypsum. I took home some pieces, and on my return examined them more attentively; found them to be very clear, transparent, and friable; when calcined, they turned extremely white, and with them I made some factitious marble. This gave me hopes that this country, producing Plaster of Paris, might, besides, have ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... that Chopin idealised the fugitive poesy inspired by fugitive apparitions like "La Fee aux Miettes," "Le Lutin d'Argail," &c., to such an extent as to render its fibres so thin and friable that they seemed no longer to belong to our nature, but to reveal to us the indiscreet confidences of the Undines, Titanias, Ariels, Queen Mabs, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... friable, and below lay a bed of silicious tufa; therefore, even without tools, the aperture deepened quickly. It soon became evident that a man, or men, clinging to the sides of the "pah," were cutting a passage ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the 10th to the 20th of March, and a rich loam is the most favorable soil. The plants are dressed with a mixture of ashes, plaster, soot, salt, sulphur, soil, and manure." After they are transplanted, we are told that "the soil best adapted to the growth of tobacco is a light, friable one, or what is commonly called a sandy loam; not too flat, but rolling, undulating land." Long processes of hand-weeding must be gone through, and equal parts of plaster and ashes are put on each plant. "Worms are the worst enemy," ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... our northern coast for the small coves and bays formed by the waves on the more friable parts ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Cosmo, "that even the rocks of a mountain will be sufficiently friable after their submergence to be readily reduced to the state of soil, especially with the aid of the chemical agents which I have brought along, and I have no fear that I could not, in a few weeks, make even the top of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... each other's society been less, the general din of the night would have prevented much talking; as it was, they sat in a rigid reticence that was almost a third personality. The roads were laid hereabouts with a light sandy gravel, which, though not clogging, was soft and friable. It speedily became saturated, and the wheels ground heavily and deeply into ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... bigarreau tribe and generally setting better; nevertheless a few of the larger kinds, such as bigarreau Napoleon, black tartarian and St Margaret's, should be forced for variety. The trees may be either planted out in tolerably rich soil, or grown in large pots of good turfy friable calcareous loam mixed with rotten dung. If the plants are small, they may be put into 12-in. pots in the first instance, and after a year shifted into 15-in. pots early in autumn, and plunged in some loose or even very slightly fermenting material. The soil of the pots should be protected ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... in any way, which is a feature of some value in connection with the bleaching of cotton, where the material has to be treated at two points in the process with weak acids. Boiling dilute hydrochloric acid of 10 deg. Tw. disintegrates cellulose very rapidly. The product is a white very friable powder, which if viewed under the microscope appears to be fragments of the fibre that has been used to prepare it. The product has the composition C{12}H{22}O{11}, and is therefore a hydrate of cellulose, the latter having undergone hydrolysis by taking up the elements of water according to the ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... He journeyed for several hours over arid sands, and under ranges of precipices inscribed by mysterious characters, that tell, haply, of the wanderings of Israel under Moses. And reaching, about noon, the base of the musical fountain, he found it composed of a white friable sandstone, and presenting on two of its sides sandy declivities. He watched beside it for an hour and a quarter, and then heard, for the first time, a low undulating sound, somewhat resembling that of a humming top, which rose and fell, and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... a mixture of the phosphate of lime and triple phosphate of magnesia-and-ammonia, or the fusible calculus, is commonly whiter and more friable than any other species, resembling sometimes a mass of chalk, and leaving a white dust on the fingers. This species is generally not laminated. Occasionally, however, it separates readily into laminae, the interstices of which are often studded with sparkling ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... near the tip the oozing is efficiently arrested by sutures, but in deeper wounds a ligature must be applied to the bleeding vessel. Secondary haemorrhage is much more difficult to arrest on account of the friable state of the tissues, and it may be necessary to ligate the lingual or even the external carotid in ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... action of the bath in which the stone is treated has a particularly disintegrating effect on many of the specimens. Some, which before immersion were of a particularly flinty texture, became in a few weeks so friable that they could be broken up by the fingers. So far as my experiments have extended they have proved this, that it was not essential that the silica and gold should have been deposited at the one time in auriferous lodes. A non-auriferous siliceous ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... rash attempt to silence Dempsey. By what she had done in her bewilderment and fear, in order to escape the penalty of frankness, she might only—as she was now beginning to perceive—have stumbled into fresh dangers. It was as though she stood on the friable edge of some great crater, some gulf of destruction, on which her feet were perpetually slipping and sinking, and only Ellesborough's hold ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... land-springs from all parts of the walls of the valley, wash down the more soluble portions of earth, and continually waste away the soil. Landslips occur daily during the rainy season; streams of rich mud pour down the valley's slopes, and as the river flows beneath in a swollen torrent, the friable banks topple down into the stream and dissolve. The Atbara becomes the thickness of peasoup, as its muddy waters steadily perform the duty they have fulfilled from age to age. Thus was the great river at work upon our arrival on its bank at the bottom of the valley. The Arab name, "Bahr el ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... struck the ground and rolled flat on his back. He got up, grinding his teeth. His hands were tied behind him. He turned his back on the broken rock and sawed the ropes against it. To his dismay he felt the rock edge crumble away. It was some chalky, friable stuff, and it gave ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... the early summer months when patches of vivid green indicate the fields of growing wheat, the landscape is of a uniform shade which is best described as khaki. Owing to the friable nature of the soil formation known as loess, the traveller, whether journeying from north or south, finds himself in ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... cover-slips which show much adherent dirty matter, and rub them between thumb and forefinger under the water tap. The dirt usually rubs off easily, as it has become friable from contact with ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... After the vines have been hoed around their roots they are secured to the stakes, and the tops are broken off at a shoot to prevent them from growing above the regulation height, which is ordinarily from 30 to 33 inches. They are liberally manured with a kind of compost formed of the loose friable soil dug out from the sides of the mountain, and of supposed volcanic origin, mixed with animal and vegetable refuse. The vines are shortened back while in flower, and in the course of the summer the ground is hoed a second ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... took it in my hand, and the matter was made clear in an instant. The stone was not our hard Onondaga gray limestone, but soft, easily marked with the finger-nail, and, on testing it with an acid, I found it, not hard carbonate of lime, but a soft, friable sulphate of lime—a form of gypsum, which must have been brought from some other part of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... feet. Of these they could not drink, therefore they halted at Tegulata, where they again reached the river, and where there was a bridge; they there encamped on the three tofts already mentioned, the surfaces of which are of hard, dry, yellow sandstone, superposed on beds of friable red sand. Here the river flowed sparkling and clear, and supplied them with what water they required. Everything points to this spot as their camp. It is one day's march from Aix. It is the first ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... inconsequent and so illogical is our poor human nature, that she, the virtuous woman, had completely lacked the courage to break with the man who loved her, even in those, the early friable days of their passion. Nay more, whatever Peggy might believe, Vanderlyn was well aware that the good, knowing all, would have called them wicked, even if the wicked, equally well-informed, would have sneered at them as ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... once. But suppose [Page 253] one had tried to put all that force into the watch at once: it would have pulverized it to atoms. But supposing the universe had been dowered with power at first to run its enormous rounds for twenty millions of years. It is inconceivable; steel would be as friable as sand, and strengthless as ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... bank and the waters spill far and wide over the fields. Sudden spates sometimes sweep away men and cattle before they can get across. If, as in Hoshyarpur, the chos flow into a rich plain from hills composed of friable sandstone and largely denuded of tree-growth, they are in their second stage most destructive. After long delay an Act was passed in 1900, which gives the government large powers for the protection ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... That was all I saw at first—a great black hole in the dark brown earth of the mountain-side, from which ran down a still darker streak into the waste places far below it. But as I looked longer I saw that it was faced by a ledge cut out of the friable soil, on which I was now able to descry the pronounced white of two or three tent-tops and some other signs of life, encouraging enough to the eye of one whose lot it was to crawl like a fly ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... mingling of such diverse elements. No scenery better deserves the name of romantic. And even in the tamer parts, where instead of mountains there are only low hills, or "kopjes" (as they are called in South Africa), the slightly more friable rock found in these hills decomposes under the influence of the weather into curiously picturesque and fantastic forms, with crags riven to their base, and detached pillars supporting loose blocks and tabular masses, among or upon which the timid Mashonas have built their huts ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew were his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich dark brown of humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would almost melt by gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the corn—and sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, in the due course of his rotation, were knee-high in barley; and still ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... he examined it. "Colorless, friable, and cleaving in irregular planes. What in thunder can it be? Have you ever seen anything like this in a ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... was more friable originally? Well, there is a great deal to be said for that. The experience of every countryman tells him that bare or fallow land is more easily washed away than land under vegetation. And no doubt, when these gravels and sands rose from the sea, they were barren for ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... employed in great number, and are found to be even more effective here than on the Carso, the friable rock breaking into millions ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... thicker in proportion to the wide lines than is the case with the pen-drawn letter, especially as the section is likely to be less deeply and sharply cut nowadays than in the ancient examples, for the workmanship of to-day seems to be less perfect and the materials used more friable. A slight direct sinkage before beginning to cut the V-sunk section is a useful method of [11] partially atoning for modern shallow cutting, as shadows more directly defining the outlines are thus obtained. The student should, however, be warned at the outset that ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... so friable and poor that the Greek burglar was known as a "Wall-digger." It did not pay him to pick a lock; it was simpler for him to quarry his way through the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... of the wheat grain consists of an external tegument of a hard, woody nature, so coherent that it appears in the form of scales or bran when the wheat is ground, and an inner portion, more soft and friable, consisting of several cellular layers. The layer nearest the outer husk contains vegetable fibrin and fatty matter. The second layer is largely composed of gluten cells; while the center comprising the bulk of the grain, is chiefly made up of starch ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... A linen cloth, with no selvedge edge. It has been dyed red, probably ferum, a dye which I find uniformly associated with friable ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... shells and marine productions, and having a somewhat saline taste: parts of it exactly resembled the formation that I had found up to the north, among the fragments of table-land; the chalk was soft and friable at the surface, and easily cut out with a tomahawk, it was traversed horizontally by strata of flint, ranging in depth from six to eighteen inches, and having varying thicknesses of chalk between the several strata. The chalk had worn away from beneath ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... overburnt exterior and an underburnt core or center portion; but it issues from the cylindrical furnace in a condition resembling in appearance coarse gunpowder, with occasional agglutinations of small friable particles readily reduced to fine powder in an ordinary mill, requiring but small power to work, and producing but little wear and tear upon the millstones. The operation is continuous. The revolver or furnace, once started, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... will be seen that these soils, while possessing a large amount of matter available for plant growth, are exceedingly friable, and would be very easily worked. They would absorb heat quickly, and from their porosity would require little drainage, and so would be both warm and dry soils, and form fertile land suitable for almost all kinds ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... the small drills that run into the sea are great rivers; and the gullies, which are dry for 3 or 4 months before, now discharge an impetuous torrent. The low land by the seaside is for the most part friable, loose, sandy soil; yet indifferently fertile and clothed with woods. The mountains are chequered with woods and some spots of savannahs: some of the hills are wholly covered with tall, flourishing trees; others but thinly; and these few trees that are on them, look very small, ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... to be graveyard bones. The collection was too complete. It is very rare to find a graveyard skeleton of which many of the small bones are not missing. And such bones are usually more or less weathered and friable. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... runs in the line of the Piazza, east to west, the upper in the line of the Piazzetta, north to south. Each beam is square and a little over 4 in. thick. This oak platform appears to be in bad condition; the timbers are blackened and friable. While the excavation was in progress sea-water burst through the interstices, which had ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... ground should be stirred to the depth of twelve or fifteen inches, incorporating a liberal application of well-digested compost, and well pulverizing the soil in the operation. The surface should next be levelled, cleared as much as possible of stones and hard lumps of earth, and made mellow and friable; in which state, if the ground contains sufficient moisture to color the surface when it is stirred, it will be ready for the seed. This may be sown from the first of April to the 20th of May; but early sowings succeed best. The drills should be made an inch in depth; and for the ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... of making heavy applications of fresh burned lime to stiff limestone soils to make them friable, and to make their plant food available, led to disuse of all lime in some sections on account of the exhaustion that followed dependence upon these large amounts as a manure. Queerly enough, these original ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... satisfactory instruments is the glass pen, which gives an absolutely uniform line. The point being really the end of a thin tube, the stroke may be made in any direction, a most unique characteristic in a pen. It has, however, the disadvantages of being friable and expensive; and, as it needs to be kept clean, the patent water-proof ink should not be used with it unless absolutely necessary. A flat piece of cork or rubber should be placed inside the ink-bottle when this pen is used, otherwise it is ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... been, widely used for striking sparks. Two pieces struck together, or one piece struck with a steel, gives a good spark; but it is a very friable mineral, and therefore not nearly so ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... lovingly, yet with a certain pretty trouble in the brow, and such a searching, pleading inquiry in her glance, that the captain kissed her at once. Then came the final embrace, performed by the captain in a half-perfunctory, quiet manner, with a due regard for the friable nature of part of his provisions. Satisfying himself of the integrity of the eggs by feeling for them in his pocket, he waved a military salute with the other hand to Miss Thankful, and was gone. A few minutes later the sound of his ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... mildness by day, though perhaps sharper by night. We were now but a few miles from the last obstruction, the Pelican Rapids, and pushed on in the morning along banks of a coal-like blackness, loose and friable, with thin cracks and fissures running in all directions, the forest behind being the usual mixture of spruce and poplar. By midday we were at the rapids, by no means formidable, but with a ticklish place or two, and got to Pelican Portage in the evening, where were several shanties ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... consisted of concrete 1:3:3, moulded in situ and covered by the tide within twenty-four hours of being laid. The concrete moulded in situ hardened a little at first, and then became soft when damp, and friable when dry, and white efflorescence appeared on the surface. In a short time the waves broke this concrete away, and exposed the reinforcement, which rusted and disappeared, with the result that in less than four years holes ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... four to eight inches high, solid, becoming stuffed when old, bulbous, rooting deep in the soil, very scaly, ventricose sometimes in young plants, white, very mealy. Volva friable. Ring, large, lacerated, usually hanging to the margin of the cap, but in Figure 19 it adheres to ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... Nutt. (BITTERNUT. SWAMP-HICKORY.) Leaflets 7 to 11, lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, serrate with deep teeth. Fruit roundish-ovate, regularly separable only half-way, but friable at maturity. Nut small, white, subglobose, with a very thin shell and an extremely bitter kernel. Large tree with orange-yellow winter buds, and firm, not scaly, bark. Wild throughout, ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... is very soluble in water. The solution redens litmus and is an astringent. When heated to nearly a red heat it gives a porous friable mass which is known as "burnt alum.'' It fuses at 92 deg. C. in its own water of crystallization. "Neutral alum'' is obtained by the addition of as much sodium carbonate to a solution of alum as will begin ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... peninsulas. Black masses of rock, large and small, are crouching out among the waves, tortured by storms into misshapen forms and anguished attitudes, patted and petted into fantastic humps and contortions. The strata dip at an angle of about twenty-five degrees, and the stone is friable and defenceless. Soothingly now the water is running over and around these rocks, or whitens their outlines with foam; granting their piteous torsos, in merciful caprice, a day's brief respite from the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... for a time bid fair to ruin every miller who undertook to solve it. The wheat raised in this State was, from the climatic conditions, a spring wheat, hard in structure and having a thin, tender, and friable bran. In milling this wheat, if an attempt was made to grind it as fine as was then customary to grind winter wheat, the bran was ground almost as fine as the flour, and passed as readily through the meshes of the bolting reels or sieves, rendering the flour dark, specky, and altogether unfit ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... stretched myself on two chairs, with my feet towards the fire. I gradually got warmer, and at the same time somewhat melancholy. What a curious Christmas Eve! Certainly I had never passed one in such a place. The walls were made of a greyish, friable earth, which still showed the marks of the pick that had been used for the excavation. The furniture was simple and not very comfortable. At the back was the bed, made out of a little straw already well tossed over by a number ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... cleaned as thoroughly as possible to remove all extraneous impurities. In the cleaning operations care should be taken to scratch or abrade the bran as little as possible, for this reason: The outer coating of the bran is hard and more or less friable. Wherever it is scratched a portion is liable to become finely comminuted in the subsequent reductions, so finely that it is impossible to separate it from the flour by bolting, and consequently the grade of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... Beans were embedded in friable peat with the hilum downwards, and after their radicles had grown perpendicularly down for a length of from to 1 inch, sixteen were selected which [page 526] were perfectly straight, and these were placed horizontally ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... is better than the heavy soil for vegetables and berries, if moisture is kept right, because it can be more easily cultivated and takes water without losing the friable condition which is so desirable. A heavier soil can, however, be improved by the free use of stable manure or by the addition of sand, or by the use of one or more applications of lime at the rate of 500 pounds to the acre, as may be required - all these operations ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... be wasted, and then renew the kilns with fresh ore and coal, in the same manner as before. This is done without fusion of the metal, and serves to consume the more drossy parts of the ore and to make it friable." The writer then describes the process of smelting the ore mixed with cinder in the furnaces, where, he says, the fuel is "always of charcoal." "Several attempts," he adds, "have been made to introduce the use of sea-coal ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of tools, as it happened, presented no serious impediment to the execution of their design. The grave was a shallow one, the freshly turned mould loose and friable. Digging with their hands, they soon uncovered the coffin, which they then contrived to raise and hoist over the cemetery gates into the roadway, where they sat upon it to conceal it from chance ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... ALBA, Bull. Plasmodium white, amplectant. AEthalium variable in form and size, resting upon a white, membranaceous hypothallus, and usually covered by a white, friable, common cortex composed of minute crystals of lime. The component sporangia elongated, irregular, more or less branched, the branches rude, deformed, compressed, laterally confluent, obtuse or pointed at the apex; the walls of the sporangia thin and ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... conviction of having unearthed his fortune, the miner sprang to his saddle and hurried back to the spot whence the tree had been rived. It was dusk by the time he reached the spot, but he could detect gold in the friable rock which lined the cavity left by the uprooted sapling. With a mind too excited to sleep he determined to stay with his find till morning. To leave it involved no real risk of losing it, and yet he could not bring himself ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... non-conducting incrustation to the keen atmosphere; then the snow becomes a warm garment till the April sun softens the air above; the latent heat of the earth begins to be developed; the snow melts, and penetrates the ground through every pore, rendering friable the stiffest soil. For a month or more before the visible termination of the Canadian winter, vegetation is in active progress on the surface of the earth, even under ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... to chalk in rolling downs, except where bitten into by the sea, but elsewhere it is riven, and presents cliffs, and these cliffs are not at all like that of Shakespeare at Dover, but overhang, where hard beds alternate with others that are friable. These latter are corroded by the weather, and leave the more compact projecting like the roofs of penthouses. They are furrowed horizontally, licked smooth by the wind and rain. Not only so, but the chalk cliffs are riddled with caves, that are ancient water-courses. The rain falling on the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... sides of the chamber to a certain distance, and then a second chamber is excavated, and more loculi are formed; and the process is repeated as often as necessary. But chambers thus excavated were apt to collapse, especially if the rock was of the soft and friable nature so common in Phoenicia Proper and in Cyprus; on which account, in such soils, the second kind of tomb was preferred, sepulchural chambers being solidly built,[656] either singly or in groups, each made to hold a certain number of sarcophagi. The most remarkable tombs of this class are ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... musk ox, which may have been the mountain goat above referred to. He noted, in the cliffs or banks of the lower Mackenzie, pieces of "petroleum" which bore a resemblance to yellow wax but was more friable. His Indian guide informed him that rocks of a similar kind were scattered about the country at the back of the Slave Lake, near where the Chipewayans collected copper. If so, there may be a great oilfield yet to be discovered in ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... grass, with here and there a rough spongy rock cropping out, of volcanic origin, and called trachyte, of which the variety found here, and almost here alone, has been named domite. It is grayish-white, fine grained, compact, earthy, often friable, and with flakes of brown mica. It appears to be a decomposed trachyte, in which the feldspar has been affected, but not the mica. The most perfect craters here are the Puy-de-Pariou, 3970 ft. high, and the Nid de la Poule. On the top of the Puy-de-Dome is an observatory, connected ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... declivity, a slope of laterite and diluvium washed down from the higher levels. The ground is good for drainage, but the soft and friable soil readily absorbs the deluging torrents of rain, and as readily returns them to the air in the shape of noxious vapours. The shape is triangular. The apex is 'Tower Hill,' so named from a ruined martello, supposed to have been built by the Dutch, and till lately used for ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... procured but at considerable expense. Among the blue rags turn up some blocks tinged with a stain of yellow or rust colour, which seem to be nearly as lasting as the blue; and every now and then balls of a friable substance, like rust ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... under the trees and the lamps. I can still see many of their faces: English, German, Italian, French. And it seemed here, here in this holiday-place, was the quick of the disintegration, the dry-rot, in this dry, friable flux of people backwards and forwards on the edge of the lake, men and women from the big hotels, in evening dress, curiously sinister, and ordinary visitors, and tourists, and workmen, youths, men of the town, laughing, jeering. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... to the soft colouring of the silver-grey stone, honeycombed and crumbled, on the south and west especially, where sun and wind and rain beat on it, giving it the appearance of indefinite antiquity; an appearance due, alas! also to the fact that stone from Headington is very friable, and little able to resist the ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... perfection of existence is not to be reached very often; but when properly approached it may be won. It is a different mind that one uncovers then, a spirit which is lucid and hopeful, to which (for a few serene hours) time exists not. The friable resolutions of the day are brought out again and recemented and chiselled anew. Surprising schemes are started and carried through to happy conclusion, lifetimes of amazement are lived in a few passing ticks. There is one who at such moments resolves, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... where was a great grassy dome. The mother had made a note of this dome some time before. It takes a number of such domes to raise a brood of partridges. For this was an ant's nest. The old one stepped on top, looked about a moment, then gave half a dozen vigorous rakes with her daws, The friable ant-hill was broken open, and the earthen galleries scattered in ruins down the slope. The ants swarmed out and quarreled with each other for lack of a better plan. Some ran around the hill with vast ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the drainage which it received from the subsoiling on each side of it, I found, when the field was ploughed up this autumn, that whilst the unsubsoiled portion was stiff and heavy, the subsoiled part was comparatively friable and loose, like a garden, and will, I expect, show its superiority in the succeeding crops. It must be borne in mind, in reading these experiments, that we have here one of the most unfavourable climates in the kingdom for growing wheat, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... the road improved, the rocks were more friable, and were often streaked with pink and yellow colour; indicating, I suppose, the existence of copper mineral, (see Deut. viii. 9,) "out of whose hills thou ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn |
