"Humidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... States we have all these types, and in some districts they lie within easy reach of each other. It should be pointed out that sufficient and uniform heat and humidity are essential to the production of good cotton crops, and as the sandy soils are of an open character, it is plain that moisture will readily pass from these, while the heavy clays act just in the opposite direction, viz., prevent the uniform evaporation of the moisture within them; ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... root with earth do most comply, Their leaves with water and humidity, The flowers to air draw near and subtilty, And seeds a kindred fire ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... cloudy, rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast monsoon, December ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... married at eighteen, and lost her husband six years afterward. She had a proposition of marriage which she refused, and was prostrated by the humid touch of the proposer who had kissed her hand, imagining that the humidity was due to semen. She was several times overcome by contact with men in public conveyances, her fear of contamination being so great. Zoophobia, or dread of certain animals, has been mentioned under another chapter under the head of idiosyncrasies. Pantophobia is ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... resort, a wilderness of green with an ornamental fountain in the middle, about which are stone seats among flowering shrubs, orange and other fruit trees. Indeed, the entire surroundings of Orizaba are gardenlike in fertility and bloom. The vegetation, owing to the humidity of the atmosphere rising from the Gulf, is always intensely green. Huge butterflies flitted in clouds about the plaza, many-colored, sunshine-loving creatures, with widespread, yellow wings shot with purple bars, and bearing strongly contrasting dots of inky-black and lily-white. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... state and the diplomats had a loge reserved for them next to the orchestra, and, although there were carpets and rugs under our feet, the humidity and cold penetrated to the marrow of our stateful and ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... well together, seasoning the Composition in due time, with Salt, Nutmeg, Mace, or what else you please, as Rosemary &c. when it is sufficiently boiled, strain the Oat-meal, and press out all the juyce and humidity of the Currants and Herbs, throwing away the insipid husks; and season it with Sugar and Butter; and to each Porrenger-ful two spoonfuls of Rhenish-wine and the yolk ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... waves, were much more impervious to moisture than Rudyerd's edifice; as may naturally be imagined from the difference of material used in the building of the lighthouse, and the well-known quality of granite to resist humidity. In the upper room, therefore, were fixed three cabin-beds to hold one man each, with three drawers and two lockers in each to hold his separate property. In the kitchen, besides the fire-place and sink, were two settles with lockers, a dresser with drawers, two cupboards and ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... the moisture is well dissolved it occasions no humidity: it is only when in a state of imperfect solution and floating in the atmosphere, in the form of watery vapour, that it produces dampness. This happens more frequently in winter than in summer; for the lower the temperature of the atmosphere, the less ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... himself to remote Spots that were supplied with Steam Heat and French Cooking, together with Wines, Liquors, and Cigars, but no matter what the Altitude or the Relative Humidity, he felt discouraged every Morning when he awoke and remembered that presently he would have to rally his Vital Forces and walk all the way ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... six hundred miles of barren hills, swampy kevirs, brier-covered wastes, and salty deserts, with here and there some kanot-fed oases. To the south lay the lifeless desert of Luth, the "Persian Sahara," the humidity of which is the lowest yet recorded on the face of the globe, and compared with which "the Gobi of China and the Kizil-Kum of central Asia are fertile regions." It is our extended and rather unique experience on the former of these two that prompts us to refrain ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... together as possible, and filling the interstices with cut paper or tow, in a way to form a mass that nothing can derange. No space must be left between the last bed and the cover. The box must be tarred to avoid humidity. ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... and they began to unscrew the lid. The humidity of the earth had rusted the screws, and it was not without some difficulty that the coffin was opened. A painful odour arose in spite of the aromatic plants with which it ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... remained at a low altitude camping out was not an unalloyed pleasure, because the tormenting gnats were exasperating, and at night the humidity was great, making the bed and everything else damp. The atmosphere was heavy and filled with the odor of decaying vegetable matter never before disturbed. In the morning at five o'clock, my hour ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... proceeded, it will also appear that cattle are more subject to these diseases than any other species of domesticated animals, and that the pestilence is always most fearful among them. It is also evident that the maladies which proceed from cold or humidity are more frequent in the temperate and southern parts of Europe than those which depend upon drought, or almost any ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... passer, to drive away—rage, or madness, because of its reputed power to expel hydrophobia. "This Garden Cress," said Wm. Coles in his Paradise of Plants, 1650, "being green, and therefore more qualified by reason of its humidity, is eaten by country people, either alone with butter, or with lettice and purslane, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the indispensable role of plants in preparing the way. The dry ground would have proved too inhospitable had not terrestrial plants begun to establish themselves, affording food, shelter, and humidity. There had to be plants before there could be earthworms, which feed on decaying leaves and the like, but how soon was the debt repaid when the earthworms began their worldwide task of forming vegetable mould, opening up the earth with their burrows, circulating the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... quite moist; even when the soil seems a little dryish the relative humidity of the soil air usually approaches 100 percent. Soil animals consequently have not developed the ability to conserve their body moisture and are speedily killed by dry conditions. When faced with desiccation they retreat deeper into the soil if there is oxygen and pore spaces large enough to ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... one that is unfavourable, I do the same. The meteorologist is able to tell with mathematical accuracy in his laboratory, after a glance at his instruments, not only the direction of the prevailing wind, but the atmospheric pressure and the degree of humidity as well. I am able only, however, to say with the pilot: "I sail this way," and then make head as best ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... "The humidity; that's easily understood. But you'll have to put up with it in the future. After nightfall our windows ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... permeating every other interest, is the orange. As to dampness, a physician threatened with consumption, and naturally desirous of finding the driest air, began while at Coronado Beach a simple but sure test for comparative degrees of "humidity" by just hanging a woolen stocking out of his window at night. At that place it was wet all through, quite moist at Los Angeles, very much less so at Pasadena, dry as a bone or red herring or an old-fashioned sermon at Riverside. Stockings will tell! (From ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... that it is on the barometer that I now place my somewhat limited reliance on a hunting morning, and not on the hygrometer, on the weight of the column of air on a given point of the surface of the earth, rather than on the state of the evaporations, the relative humidity, and the dew point. And I have noticed that the best scenting days have been those when the thermometer has given readings from 38 up to 46 Fahrenheit in the shade. A high and steady glass, an almost imperceptible ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and his wife were immediately arrested, and plunged into those dungeons into which they would have allowed the spirit of humanity to enter. The shoes of the queen, saturated with water, soon fell from her feet. Her stockings and her dress, from the humidity of the air, were in tatters. Two soldiers, with drawn swords, were stationed by her side night and day, with the command never, even for one moment, to turn their eyes from her. The daughter of the new jailer, touched with compassion, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to prevent evaporation, thereby also controlling the sap pressure. With the exception of shading, pruning and defoliating, this is about the only method we have of preventing evaporation. Defoliation, of course, interferes with the tree's power of growth. Controlling the humidity is probably not practical on ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... other, she followed the octroi wall, behind which she sometimes heard, during night time, the shrieks of persons being murdered; and she searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark corners, black with humidity and filth, fearing to discern there Lantier's body, stabbed ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the Far East is Hong Kong, likewise an island, and one that might claim the long distance championship as a rain-center. Next to hills, the characterizing feature of Hong Kong is moisture—represented either by rain or humidity. The Briton professes that the climate of this crown colony is good; but for months at a stretch his clothing has to be hung daily in the open air to keep it from becoming water-logged, and everything of leather has to be denuded each morning of green mold. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... give strength and vigour to the interiour parts, to kill the flat wormes of the belly, to remedy venemous mushromes, to preserve flesh over moyst from corruption, consuming the moysture thereof by its heat, and constipating by his astriction the substance of it, and pressing forth the serous humidity. ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... invested with a particular interest and originality. They were in progress for a whole year, in a thick forest of almost impenetrable brushwood, split with numerous deep ravines and abrupt, slippery precipices. The humidity of the forest is excessive, the waters pouring down from high promontories. The soldiers who struggled here practically spent two winters ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... then, so now, are over-grown alders frequently sought after, for such buildings as lie continually under water, where it will harden like a very stone; whereas being kept in any unconstant temper, it rots immediately, because its natural humidity is of so near affinity with its adventitious, as Scaliger assigns the cause. Vitruvius tells us, that the morasses about Ravenna in Italy, were pil'd with this timber, to superstruct upon, and highly commends it. I find also they us'd it under that ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... under the figure of a human heart." The Sun and Moon are not represented as being drawn about in chariots, but as sailing round the world in ships, which shows that they owe their motion, support, and nourishment to the power of humidity.[FN334] Homer and Thales both learned from Egypt that "water was the first principle of all things, and ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... with, and the sweet taste and refreshing coolness of the vegetables had quickly been succeeded by an intolerable burning sensation. Some cases of dysentery had appeared among the men, caused by fatigue, improper food and the persistent humidity of the atmosphere. More than ten times that night did Jean stretch forth his hand to see that Maurice had not uncovered himself in the movements of his slumber, and thus he kept watch and ward over his friend—his back supported by the same tree-trunk, his legs in a pool of water—with ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... appeased, he found a new discomfort. The humidity of the walls, and the wind that crept through the unseen ventilator, chilled him to the bone. To keep walking was ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in the year 708, merry crowds were thronging to Vazon Forest. It was a lovely spot. The other portions of the island were bare and somewhat rugged; here the humidity of the soil favoured the growth of fine, vigorous timber. On the low ground flourished oak and sycamore, torn and bent near the shore where the trees met the force of the Atlantic gales, growing freely and with rich verdure ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... system with the steam shooting out into the room. Look here!" He led Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... months together, the sky remains inexorably blue while the temperature is hot and parching. In winter, clouds are almost as rare; but winds often play violently over the great tracts of unbroken country. When these blow from the south they soon lose their warmth and humidity at the contact of a soil which, but a short while ago, was at the bottom of the sea, and is, therefore, in many places still strongly impregnated with salt which acts as a refrigerant.[19] Again, when the north wind comes ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... autumn marked itself everywhere. The corn, herb of the lowlands, so magnificently green in the Spring, displayed shades of dead straw in the depths of the valleys, and, on all the summits, beeches and oaks shed their leaves. The air was almost cold; an odorous humidity came out of the mossy earth and, at times, there came from above a light shower. One felt it near and anguishing, that season of clouds and of long rains, which returns every time with the same air of bringing the definitive exhaustion ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... throughout the summer, too, the Hunter place had been closed, until that day in late October. It had been a warm week—a week of such unseasonable humidity for the hills that Caleb, rising somewhat before his usual hour, had blamed his sleeplessness, as usual, upon the weather. He was glad to be home again that morning; he had been so lonely away from home that he was warmed unaccountably by the thought that Allison was in the hills, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... lake after leaving the Nascaupee River. The morning was fearfully hot, and we floundered through marshes with heavy packs, bathed in perspiration, and fairly breathing flies and mosquitoes. Not a breath of air stirred, and the humidity and heat were awful. Stanton and Duncan remained to pitch the tent and bring up some of our stuff that had been left at the second lake, while Richards, Easton, Pete and I trudged three miles over the ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... the water swirling round their knees. All the strength went out of their shaggy frames, their knees buckled and down they went, helpless, destroyed by a natural phenomenon to which they were unaccustomed. They had actually been smothered by the humidity! ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... morning was typical of Winnipeg in summer. The fresh northwest breeze that sweeps the Manitoba plains had dropped. Dark thunder-clouds rolled about the sky, but the sun was hot and an enervating humidity brooded over the town. The perspiring crowd in Main Street moved slackly, the saloon bars were full, and the groups of holiday-makers flocking to the station wore ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... of which we speak, standing on the north side of the cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed its chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by the call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... of the disease is comparatively simple: The air on the hot coast lands is highly charged with evaporated water. Heat and humidity have the effect of diverting from the human organism the electricity which, as already shown, constitutes its vital cohesion and the same influences likewise reduce the oxygen in the atmosphere. These are the two primary causes of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... particularly temperate, but the extremes of sensible heat and cold are increased by the humidity. The range of the thermometer is from 45deg Fahr., the lowest known extreme, or 48deg, the ordinary lowest extreme of January, to 82deg, the ordinary, or 86deg, the highest known extreme of July, near the level of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... nights in barns through which the water dripped on to puddled straw, or in holes beneath the carts with dampness oozing through the clay walls, or in boggy beetroot fields under a hail of shrapnel, and their physical discomfort of coldness and humidity was harder to bear than their fear ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... beneath the sky and the stars. [58] The soil, though improper for the olive, the vine, and other productions of warmer climates, is fertile, and suitable for corn. Growth is quick, but maturation slow; both from the same cause, the great humidity of the ground and the atmosphere. [59] The earth yields gold and silver [60] and other metals, the rewards of victory. The ocean produces pearls, [61] but of a cloudy and livid hue; which some impute to unskilfulness in the gatherers; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... conversation. They have found, for instance, that green is restful to the eyes, and the fact goes without saying, in a hint, in a mere word. They are aware that heat is more disagreeable when accompanied by a high degree of humidity, and do not put forth this axiom as a sensational discovery. They have noticed the coincidences known as mental telepathy usual in correspondence, and have long ceased to be more than mildly amused at the occurrence ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... with great satisfaction he allowed the tears to stream down his face; that done, he soon recovered his cheerfulness and his aridity. Glantz the councillor thus saw the prize fished away before his eyes—those very eyes which he had already brought into an Accessit,[19] or inchoate state of humidity; this vexed him: and his mortification was the greater on thinking of his own pathetic exertions, and the abortive appetite for the prize which he had thus uttered in words as ineffectual as his own sermons; and at this moment he was ready to weep for spite—and 'to weep the more because ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the dogs and the sound of the water. The camels were being picketed for the night's repose. The atmosphere was not actually cold, but there was no golden warmth in the air, and the wonderful and exquisitely clean dryness of Upper Egypt was replaced by a sort of rich humidity, now that the sun was gone. The vapour around the moon, the smell of the earth, the distant sound of the dogs and the near sound of the water, the feeling of dew which hung wetly about her, and the gleam of the light from that tent distant among the palm-trees, made Mrs. Armine ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... and on drying they become very hard. In experiments conducted at the U. S. Horticultural Field Station, Meridian, Miss., it was found that the loss in weight of chestnuts ranged from 16.2 to 30.5% when stored for 4 months in open containers at 32 deg.F., and 80% relative humidity. In an experiment in which chestnuts were stored 4-1/2 months at 32 deg.F., they lost 18.8% in weight when stored in burlap sacks, 3.7% when stored in waxed paper cartons with tight-fitting lids, and 2.0% when stored in friction-top cans. Furthermore, chestnuts on drying lose their viability ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... formidable an undertaking—more formidable, as it now appeared to them, than before — were made the subject of long and serious discussion. It was at length decided that Pizarro should remain in his present quarters, inconvenient and even unwholesome as they were rendered by the humidity of the climate, and the pestilent swarms of insects that filled the atmosphere. Almagro would pass over to Panama, lay the case before the governor, and secure, if possible, his good-will towards the prosecution ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... reaches its greatest elevation, it is then on the verge of the great valley, or, as in the case of the Kalahari, the great heated inland plains; there, meeting with the rarefied air of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat gives it greater capacity for retaining all its remaining humidity, and few showers can be given to the middle and western lands in consequence ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... southerly direction, and the sea continued to be encumbered with islands. Some of the ships, which had been scraped by the reefs, had sprung; ropes, sails, and other tackle were rotted, and provisions were spoiled by the humidity. The Admiral was, consequently, obliged to retrace his course.[20] The extreme point of this country reached by him, and which he believed to be a ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... winter, since the heat generated by the inhabitants and the industrial processes would exceed the radiation from the exterior walls and roof of the city. Sunshine and "fresh air" they had not, but our own scientists had taught us for generations that heat and humidity and not lack of oxygen or sunshine was the cause of the depression experienced in indoor quarters. The air of Berlin was cool and the excess of vapor had been frozen out of it. Yes, the "climate" of Berlin should be more salubrious ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... years), I felt love was now a proposition which wouldn't find a crevice in his heart to trickle into and widen until it split him asunder. But with the clever young woman of business, in the rush and turmoil of the down-town hustle, it is such a gentle humidity it seems to work its corrosion unseen in the broad daylight. Thermometer readings don't show it. You have to keep close to the barometer of eyes and sighs to know anything definite of its ups and downs—unless it passes into fog or pours, then everybody can ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... strengthening of the yarn by combining two or more strands and afterward arranging them for weaving or for the purpose for which the yarn is required. It is also the last time that the fibers are mechanically drawn over each other or drafted, and this is invariably done from a single roving. The humidity and temperature of the spinning room must be adjusted to conditions. Each spinner is provided with a wet and dry thermometer so that the best temperature can be ascertained. The most suitable heat and humidity can only be obtained by comparison ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... and wait for daylight. In the darkness preceding dawn, we had no idea of the number of our bunch, except as we could judge from the size and compactness of the milling cattle, which must have covered an acre or more. The humidity of the atmosphere, which had prevailed during the night, by dawn had changed until a heavy fog, cutting off our view on every hand, left us as much at sea as we had been previously. But with the break of day we rode through ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... eggs in from 2 1/2 to 20 days after emerging, the time interval depending to a large extent upon temperature, humidity, and character and abundance of food. The number of eggs laid by an individual fly at one time ranges from 120 to 159 and a single female will usually lay two and sometimes four such batches. Dunn has recently reported that in Panama a fly may deposit ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... sunshine, when the parched vegetables and arid earth seize with avidity, and imbibe the moisture ere it becomes unpleasant to our feelings, there had fallen a drizzling rain throughout the night; the saturated soil returned to the atmosphere the humidity it could no longer absorb; and there it hung, in chilling thickness, between rain and fog. The birds did not sing, and the flowers did not open, for the cold drop was on their cheek, and no sunbeam was there ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... speed, sir," he said. "Atmosphere is rather denser than I had expected. Hendricks reports the air breathable, with a humidity of one hundred. And—tell me, sir, what do you make of the appearance of the ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... smoke more than any other northern nation. The humidity of the climate makes it almost a necessity, and the cheapness of tobacco puts it in everybody's power to satisfy this desire. To show how inveterate is this habit, it will suffice to say that the boatmen of the trekschuit (the stage-coach ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... Atlantic. Hence the latter is known as the hot region (caliente), and the former the cold region (fria). Between the two climates, as the traveler mounts from the sea-level to the great plateau, is the temperate region (templada), an intermediate belt of perpetual humidity, a welcome escape from the heat and deadly malaria of the hot region with its "bilious fevers." Sometimes as he passes along the bases of the volcanic mountains, casting his eye "down some steep slope or almost ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Sara felt it all in her own bosom; and looking round to catch what was passing in the count's mind, she beheld him leaning against the box, with his head inclined to the curtain of the door. "Mr. Constantine!" almost unconsciously escaped her lips. He started, and discovered by the humidity on his eyelashes why he had withdrawn. Her ladyship's tears were gliding down her cheeks. Miss Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed countenance of the count, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... she would have the boat for what it meant to self; for to Katie, too, the sultry day had become more than sultry day. The thing which pressed upon her seemed less humidity than the consciousness of a world she did not know. It was not the heat which was fretting her so much as that growing sense of limitations in ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... being covered with a thick bush or scrub. For the four winter months spent by Mitchell near the Darling, neither rain nor yet dew fell, and the winds from the west and north-west, hot and parching, seemed to blow over a region in which no humidity remained. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... six to eight inches, and corn from two to four feet. There the frequent clouds introduce their fertilizing contents at a modest distance from the fat valley, and send their humid influences from the mountain tops. There the saline atmosphere of Salt Lake mingles in wedlock with the fresh humidity of the same vegetable element which comes over the mountain top, as if the nuptial bonds of rare elements were introduced to exhibit a novel specimen of a perfect vegetable progeny in the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... similar substances.... Or, that in the seede of the male, there is already in act, the substance of flesh, of bone, of sinewes, of veines, and the rest of those severall similar partes which are found in the body of an animall; and that they are but extended to their due magnitude, by the humidity drawne from the mother, without receiving any substantiall mutation from what they were originally in the seede. Lett us then confidently conclude, that all generation is made of a fitting, but remote, homogeneall compounded substance: upon which, outward Agents ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... and a chain of mountains formed along the axis of elevation. By the first of these upheavals, the plants and animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied. These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce additional modifications: varying in different ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... elements within thy sphere inclosed, How kindly Nature plac'd them vnder thee, And in my world, see how they are disposed; My hope is earth, the lowest, cold and dry, The grosser mother of deepe melancholie, Water my teares, coold with humidity, Wan, flegmatick, inclind by nature wholie; My sighs, the ayre, hote, moyst, ascending hier, Subtile of sanguine, dy'de in my harts dolor, My thoughts, they be the element of fire, Hote, dry, and piercing, still inclind to choller, Thine eye the Orbe vnto all these, from whence, Proceeds ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... them, their envelope, or web, a portion of which remains suspended to the trunk of the tree, where it waves to and fro like a streamer, and which becomes more or less white, according as the air and humidity of the season and situation admit. This natural silk paper has been gathered measuring a yard and a half, of an elliptical shape, which is peculiar ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... to throw away others, which we had collected a considerable time before. These sacrifices were not less vexatious than the losses we accidentally sustained. Sad experience taught us but too late, that from the sultry humidity of the climate, and the frequent falls of the beasts of burden, we could preserve neither the skins of animals hastily prepared, nor the fishes and reptiles placed in phials filled with alcohol. I enter ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... should be lined with velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact with the wood. A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will also help to keep out humidity. Most writers recommend that the bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth. These close-grained woods are less easily penetrated ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... the longitude and the latitude, corrected for magnetic variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing —inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision the degree of influence which they would exercise upon the mood and disposition of the assassin at that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but seems to be favored by collections of decaying matter around the base of the tree. Sometimes the digging of ditches around the roots is sufficient to protect it. The other common disease is due to Stilbium flavidum, and is found only in regions of great humidity. It affects both the leaf and the fruit and is known as the spot of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Africa and Europe, I ascribe to two causes: the first is, the number of woods, which, though scattered up and down, cover the face of this country: the second, the great number of rivers. The former prevent the sun from warming the earth; and the latter diffuse a great degree of humidity: not to mention the continuity of this country with those to the northward; from which it follows, that the winds blowing from that quarter are much colder than if they traversed the sea in their course. For it is well known that the air is never so hot, and never ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... who was standing near him, lightly on the shoulder, and pointed out a thin line of vapor which was stealing slowly out of the wilderness of leaves, at a distance of about a mile, and was diffusing itself in almost imperceptible threads of humidity in the quivering atmosphere. The Tuscarora was one of those noble-looking warriors oftener met with among the aborigines of this continent a century since than to-day; and, while he had mingled sufficiently with the colonists to be familiar with their habits and even with their language, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... of some opals and hydrophanes; but these stones, interesting for their hesitating colors, for the evasions of their flames, are too refractory and faithless; the opal has a quite rheumatic sensitiveness; the play of its rays alters according to the humidity, the warmth or cold; as for the hydrophane, it only burns in water and only consents to kindle its embers ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... as the oil had become thick, and it was not until this had been removed by prolonged severe heating (baking in the oven for several days) that it could be set going; but then it had to be used for the thermograph, the mechanism of which was broken, so that no registration was obtained of the humidity of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... complex plaything, nothing more. Allow me to explain. I have a line of very large greenhouses which extends from one end of my smoking-room. These different houses are kept at varying degrees of heat and humidity so as to reproduce the exact climates of Egypt, China, and the rest. You see, our crystal chamber is a tramway running with a minimum of friction along a steel rod. By pulling this or that handle I regulate ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... occupied by the armies was low and swampy, a character which it possessed in ancient times; the marshes on the southern side being supposed to be the same in which Marius concealed himself from his enemies during his proscription. [20] Its natural humidity was greatly increased, at this time, by the excessive rains, which began earlier and with much more violence than usual. The French position was neither so low nor so wet as that of the Spaniards. It had the advantage, moreover, of being supported by a well-peopled and friendly country in the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... which are absolutely essential, and the concurrence of which is indispensable for the production of bad air (malaria). First, a temperature which does not fall below 20 deg.C. (67.5 deg.F.); next, a very moderate degree of permanent humidity of the soil; and finally, the direct action of the oxygen of the air upon the strata of earth which contain the ferment. If a single one of these three conditions be wanting, the development of malaria becomes impossible. This is a point of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... the Great, whose bodies remained several days undecayed;[585] or by means of the art of embalming; or lastly, owing to the nature of the earth in which they are interred, which has the power of drying up the radical humidity and the principles of corruption. I do not stop to prove all these things, which besides are ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the general condition of the trestle. The timber had been exposed to the weather and subjected to heavy train service from the time it was treated until it was tested. The annual rainfall at New Orleans is about 60 in., and the humidity of the air is high. In spite of these conditions, there was no appearance of decay on any of the specimens tested. The specifications under which the timber was treated were ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Tests of Creosoted Timber, Paper No. 1168 • W. B. Gregory
... the first. The Archbishop of Canterbury's seat was covered with ray (striped) silk cloth of gold, and that of the Abbot of Westminster with cloth of Tars. The royal seat at the coronation feast was draped in "golden silk of Turk," and in order to save this costly covering from "the humidity of the walls," 24 ells of canvas were provided. Red and grey sindon hung before the royal table; the King sat on samitelle cushions, and two pieces of velvet "to put under the King" also appear in the account. (Rot. Magnae Gard., ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... weather. By protecting the houses with shutters, this difficulty may be obviated. Crowding the fire, and raising the water in the tanks to a high temperature, is a more objectionable remedy. In this way the bottom heat is too strong. But my most serious difficulty has arisen from excessive humidity. I put three inches of sand over the whole slate surface of the tanks, using a part for cuttings, and the rest, (say 100 running feet of the three feet wide table), for standing pot plants upon the surface ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... can be followed with some precision beneath the present surface. This makes it possible to forecast a quite different depth and distribution of the ores from that which might be inferred from present surface conditions. Present surface conditions, of low relief, considerable humidity, and with the water table usually not more than 100 feet from the surface, do not promise ore deposits at great depth. The erosion which formed the old pre-Cambrian surface, however, started on a country of great relief and semi-arid climate, conditions which favored deep penetration of the ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... are comprised. The combination of water and earth is a unity, but this unity is mixture. If we bring together a base and an acid, we have as the result a crystal; also water; but water which cannot be discerned and which gives no trace of humidity. Here the unity of the water and of this matter is a unity different from the mixture of water and earth. The essential point is the difference of these determinations. The unity of God is always unity, but what is of primary importance is to know the modes and forms ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and I had our wedding breakfast, so long ago, I made for the other end of the room and persistently turned my back. But I saw out of the corner of my eye they were far away above food, and, Mate, believe me, they did n't even know it was hot, though a rain barrel couldn't have measured the humidity. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... difficulty, and ordered to be shot on the spot. Four guides pushed him towards the sea by thrusting their carbines against his back; when close to the water's edge they drew the triggers, but all the four muskets hung fire: a circumstance which was accounted for by the great humidity of the night. The Nablousian threw himself into the water, and, swimming with great agility and rapidity, gained a ridge of rocks so far off that not a shot from the whole troop, which fired as it passed, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... is probably more familiar with the term relative humidity than the term vapor pressure, but as the actual significance of relative humidity is changed at every change in outside temperature, the use of this term for expressing the evaporating power of the air has led to ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... vine is sufficiently well suited to be productive. Outliers of this main region of the Pacific slope run north into Oregon, Washington, Idaho and even into British Columbia, forced more and more eastward the farther north to escape humidity from the ocean which northward passes farther and farther inland. Other outliers of the main region are found eastward in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and even Utah and Colorado, though for the most part in these states grape-growing is still insignificant. Plate ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... most distressing. It had rained all night. The roaring of the overflowing gutters filled the deserted streets, in which the houses, like sponges, absorbed the humidity, which penetrating to the interior, made the walls sweat from cellar to garret. Jeanne had left the convent the day before, free for all time, ready to seize all the joys of life, of which she had dreamed so long. She was afraid her father would not set out for the new home in bad weather, and for ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... but what the interior parts may produce we know not. To judge of the whole garment by the skirts, it cannot produce much; for so much as we saw of it consisted wholly of coral rocks, all over-run with woods and bushes. Not a bit of soil was to be seen; the rocks alone supplying the trees with humidity. If these coral rocks were first formed in the sea by animals, how came they thrown up to such an height? Has this island been raised by an earthquake? Or has the sea receded from it? Some philosophers have attempted to account for the formation ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... the night was very slowly stirring, but where I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying—Jenny, the mother of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... run down the road through the narrow strip of jungle. The Death Ray had cut huge swathes in the tangle of trees and vines, and now areas of heaped debris, livid with the colors of recent decay, exhaled a mephitic humidity altogether alien to the snow that fell in soft, slow flakes. Each hesitated to voice the new fear: had the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of fact, there is exceedingly little evidence to show that pure, fresh, open air at any reasonable temperature and humidity ever did harm when inhaled directly into the lungs. In fact, a considerable proportion of us, when swinging along at a lively gait on the country roads, or playing tennis or football, or engaged in ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... had no suspicion that his melancholy state and the notion of all the happiness he had missed had tinged with sorrow the heart within the frock, and added a dangerous humidity to the glance under the sunshade. It did not occur to him that he was an object of pity, nor that a vast store of knowledge was waiting to be poured into him. The aged, self-satisfied wag-beard imagined that he had conducted his career fairly well. He knew no one with whom he would ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... evidences anywhere of the clustering aphis which is so destructive to plants growing in a damp soil. And yet it was not because the damp had been excluded from the garden; the earth, black as soot, the thick foliage of the trees betrayed its presence; besides, had natural humidity been wanting, it could have been immediately supplied by artificial means, thanks to a tank of water, sunk in one of the corners of the garden, and upon which were stationed a frog and a toad, who, from antipathy, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... readily. Pure wool consists of a horny substance, containing both nitrogen and sulphur, and dissolves in a potash solution. In a clean condition, the wool contains from 0.3 to 0.5 per cent. of ash. It is very hygroscopical, and under ordinary circumstances it contains from 13 to 16 per cent. humidity, in dry air from 7 to 11 per cent., which can be entirely expelled at a temperature of from 226 to 230 degrees Fahrenheit. Wool when ignited does not burn with a bright flame, as vegetable fiber does, but consumes with a feeble smouldering glow, soon extinguishes, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... gentle soft green undulations. A darker fringe marked the stream of the Lora, which hides itself mysteriously under the osiers and thick lines of alder trees. The count, with his head thrown back and his eyes half closed, inhaled with delight the fresh humidity of the afternoon. The road flanked the hill in gentle decline. Before crossing it, and losing sight of the town, he stopped his horse and cast a look back. Lancia was a heap, albeit not large, of red roofs over ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds |
