"Porous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take place in any kind of waterways—in open fissures, in incipient fissures, joints, cracks, and even in porous sandstone, but especially in great open fissures, because these are the main highways of ascending waters from ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... Graciosa are not in columns, but are divided into strata ten or fifteen inches thick. These strata are inclined at an angle of 80 degrees to the north-west. The compact basalt alternates with the strata of porous basalt and marl. The rock does not contain hornblende, but great crystals of foliated olivine, which have a triple cleavage.* (* Blaettriger olivin.) This substance is decomposed with great difficulty. M. Hauy considers it a variety of the pyroxene. The porous basalt, which passes ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... diameter of the retorts beyond which the results become less satisfactory. This limit is probably somewhat under 8 in. Each retort is closely packed with baryta in lumps about the size of a walnut. The baryta is a heavy grayish porous substance prepared by carefully igniting the nitrate of barium; and of this each retort having the above dimensions holds about 125 lb. The retorts so charged are closed at each end by a gun metal lid riveted on so as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... and better behaved than the children. They stand and deliver the quantity demanded. There is neither chance for nor great economy in adulteration—water is too scarce. It is brought to the city mule-back in porous jars. You can have your milk from the black, white or brown nanny as desired. A goat is a respected member of the family and his ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... author of Hobson Jobson says he never saw a drunken Bheestee. And as a servant he is laborious and faithful, rarely shirking his work, seeking it out rather. For example, we had a bottle-shaped filter of porous stoneware, standing in a bucket of water, which it was his duty to fill daily; but the good man, not content with doing his bare duty, took the plug out of the filter and filled it too! And all the station knows how assiduously he fills the rain gauge. But ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... you visited Florence? I am told that recently new and handsome shops have been opened which are lighted at night.' She said also 'We have a good chemist here. The Austrian chemists are not better. He placed on my leg, six months ago, a porous plaster which has not yet come off.' Such are the words that Maria Therese deigned to address to me. O simple grandeur! O Christian virtue! O daughter of Saint Louis! O marvellous echo of your voice, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and all appliances are constructed of metal except the chair in which the subject sits. This is of hard wood, well shellacked, and consequently non-porous. With this calorimeter it is desired to make studies regarding the moisture elimination, and consequently it is necessary to avoid the use of all material of a hygroscopic nature. Although the chair can be weighed from time to time with ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... not strike me as particularly grand. An uneven wall of lava suddenly rose fifteen paces in advance of us, with whole strata of pure sulphur and other beautifully-coloured substances depending from its projecting angles. One of these substances was of a snowy-white colour, light, and very porous. I took a piece with me, but the next day on proceeding to pack it carefully, I found that above half had melted and become quite soft and damp, so that I was compelled to throw the whole away. The same thing happened to a mass of a red colour that ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... we have the grace of humility. "I am not worthy!" Our pride always blocks "the way of the Lord." Our humility makes us porous to the Divine. The "poor in spirit" are already in the kingdom, and the gracious powers of the kingdom are commanded to ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... Who lived when the world was all porous; But he fainted with shame When he first heard his name, And departed a ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... succulent green stems. After trimming off all but a few of the upper leaves, which should be clipped to reduce transpiration, the cuttings—never more than 4 or 5 inches long—should be plunged nearly full depth in well-shaded, rather light, porous, well-drained loam where they should remain undisturbed until they show evidences of growth. Then they may be transplanted. While in the cutting bed they must never be allowed to become dry. This is especially ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... coat of white plaster. On the right of this casement hung a cage, containing a quail: on the left another cage, of minute dimensions, decorated with red and yellow beads, served as palace to a cricket. A jar of porous earth, suspended by the ears to a string, and covered with a pearly moisture, held water cooling in the evening breeze, and from time to time allowed a few drops to fall upon two pots of sweet basil that stood beneath it. The window ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... into water, the fluid gradually insinuates itself into their pores, and the pieces of wood are augmented both in weight and magnitude: But each species of wood will imbibe a different quantity of water; the lighter and more porous woods will admit a larger, the compact and closer grained will admit of a lesser quantity; for the proportional quantities of water imbibed by the pieces will depend upon the nature of the constituent particles of the wood, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... they certainly are; many of them perfect in form, and light and porous to the eye, but all hard and heavy as stone to the touch. Teeth, which are considered the most valuable of all the remains, are sometimes found as wide as a man's hand, and weighing several pounds; but Mysie was quite content with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... a fine sibilant chorus audible in the sod, and in the dust of the road, and in the porous plowed fields. Every grain of soil and every root and rootlet purrs in satisfaction, Because something more than water comes down when it rains; you cannot produce this effect by simple water; the good-will of the elements, the consent and approbation of all the skyey influences, come down; ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... are extinguished) but is still able to separate and melt the substances with which it comes in contact, it follows that the oily part of the earth is melted by it, whereas the hard and what I might call the bony part of it is left as it was. Hence the masses of earth necessarily become porous and when exposed to the dry air crumble into dust, but when they are placed in a swirl of water and sand grow into a solid piece; as much of them as is in the liquid hardens and petrifies. The reason for this is that the brittle element in them is disintegrated and broken up by the fire, which ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... "Perpetual porous plasters! They would if they only knew what a reputation we have achieved!" exclaimed Nat, as the train rolled in. "Hello, there's some ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... he set to chisel out the gems from the porous ore, and as the chisel won the luscious plums, held them up, glutting his gaze, scratched his name on a fragment of window-pane, and was enchanted that the adamant rim ripped the glass like rag: the whim, meanwhile, working in him to purchase Colmoor, to turn ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... a solid mass, the courses of bricks are still visible, identifying them with the standing pile above, but so hardened by the power of heat, that it is almost impossible to break off the smallest piece; and, though porous in texture, and full of air-holes and cavities, like other bricks, they require, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the same machinery as is used to ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... discontinued and the product taken out. This consisted of a dross, or, rather, of the collected pieces of ore themselves, which, on account of the flinty contents of the stones composing the funnel, were transformed by the decomposition of the sulphurous metal into a porous mass, and which could not be converted into dross nor form combinations with silicious acid, being deficient in the base as well as in the requisite heat; and also of a very impure "stone," of from four to five kilograms ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... quackery; but he said, "Why, no, it does a great deal of good; it cures the patients." I replied that I had no doubt of that. So does skunk oil and Omega oil; so does the magic handkerchief which Francis Truth has touched; so does the magic ring, the electric belt, and the porous plaster. They all cure, but they all deceive people, in so far as one supposes that something is going on which is not revealed, something like imaginary electricity in the ring, something like the supposed medical activity in the porous plaster. In another great hospital in this ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... propagation have been had recourse to. It is said that, in some parts of Italy, a species of stone is used for this purpose, which is described as being of two different kinds; the one is found in the chalk hills near Naples, and has a white, porous, stalactical appearance; the other is a hardened turf from some volcanic mountains near Florence. These stones are kept in cellars, and occasionally moistened with water which has been used in the washing of mushrooms, and are thus supplied ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... dia], through, [Greek: luein], to loosen), in chemistry, a process invented by Thomas Graham for separating colloidal and crystalline substances. He found that solutions could be divided into two classes according to their action upon a porous diaphragm such as parchment. If a solution, say of salt, be placed in a drum provided with a parchment bottom, termed a "dialyser," and the drum and its contents placed in a larger vessel of water, the salt will pass through the membrane. If the salt solution be replaced by one ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... line some miles in length. The German artillery had caused the woodland ruin around the visitors, in their return of the French fire. The circular pools were the hollows dug by the German shells in the limy, non-porous soil which preserved all the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... insinuating tones, 'I ask you, my dear colleague, to observe.' But no one would listen. And the 'first collector in France' was perfectly aware of it. See what a savage look he casts at his dear colleague in the pauses of his scientific harangue! What venom is in every deeply graven hollow of his porous, pumice-stone face! ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... had dried up, but four of the largest kept fairly well filled with brackish water, evidently supplied by some underground communication with the sea, possibly merely by slow filtration through the porous coral rock, sufficient, however, to keep them fit habitations ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... 211 ff., s. v. Fermentum): "Ferment is elixir, leaven, or yeast as it is called; it makes porous the body that swells up and the spirit finds a place in it so that it becomes fit to bake. As now the meal is not yeast, but meal and water [mill water] and the whole dough is thoroughly leavened and real yeast, so also the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... whizzing up and down that river till Jonadab and me kind of got over our variousness. We could manage to get along without spreading out like porous plasters, and could set up for a minute or so on a stretch. And twa'n't necessary for us to hold a special religious service every time the flat-iron come about. Altogether, we was in that condition where the doctor might ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... before the great world knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and wade and push the ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... the soul, for the reason given above, might perceive it in the surface of the eye. Likewise, with regard to the sense of hearing, it would have been sufficient if the voice had sounded only in the porous cavity of the indurated bone which lies within the ear, without making any further transit from this bone to the brain, which is its destination and where it discourses with common judgement. The sense of smell, too, is likewise compelled by necessity to ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... Cruces he met Porous Johnson and Silent Somes, who were thirsty and who proclaimed that fact, whereupon he relieved them of their torment and, looking forward to more treatment of a similar nature, they gladly accompanied him without asking why ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... understood. The secondary and tertiary geological formations often present the appearance of immense basins, the boundary or rim of the basin having been formed by an upheaval of adjacent strata. In these formations it often happens that a porous stratum, consisting of sand, sandstone, chalk or other calcareous matter, is included between two impermeable layers of clay, so as to form a flat [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'porus'] porous U tube, continuous from side to side of the valley, the outcrop on the ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... force us to adopt the greater economy of the allegory. So great is the multitude of things that we cannot keep them vividly in mind. Usually, then, we name them, and let the name stand for the whole impression. But a name is porous. Old meanings slip out and new ones slip in, and the attempt to retain the full meaning of the name is almost as fatiguing as trying to recall the original impressions. Yet names are a poor currency for thought. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... consisting of highly crystalline gneiss, granite and syenite, are almost impervious, while the overlying Potsdam sandstone is very porous, and capable of holding large quantities of water. In this rock the mineral springs of Saratoga probably have their origin. The surface waters of the Laurentian hills, flowing down over the exposed edges of the Potsdam beds, penetrate the porous sandstones, become ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... white dust; the reddish, molded stone, the hewn, yellowish, porous tuff; the dark, polished porphyry, gleaming with moisture, and the living, tiny, silvery jet of water: material and colors harmonize ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... burrow, tunnel, stave in. Adj. depressed &c v.; alveolate^, calathiform^, cup-shaped, dishing; favaginous^, faveolate^, favose^; scyphiform^, scyphose^; concave, hollow, stove in; retiring; retreating; cavernous; porous &c (with holes) 260; infundibul^, infundibular^, infundibuliform^; funnel shaped, bell shaped; campaniform^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... should be of a type to permit easy access of air to the skin. For this reason the character of one's underwear is important. Wool is undoubtedly warmer and more or less suitable for exceptionally cold weather; yet for most purposes linen is to be preferred because of its more porous character. Linen permits of free circulation of the air, and when the underwear is woven with an open mesh it is especially satisfactory. Next to linen cotton is to be preferred, being likewise porous. The question ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... degree your stifled hopes of sublimity as you pass beyond the palace and take your choice of either curving slope to descend into the Forum. Then you see that the little stuccoed edifice is but a modern excrescence on the mighty cliff of a primitive construction, whose great squares of porous tufa, as they underlie each other, seem to resolve themselves back into the colossal cohesion of unhewn rock. There are prodigious strangenesses in the union of this airy and comparatively fresh- faced superstructure and these deep-plunging, hoary foundations; and few things in ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... hops, etc., applied hot and frequently changed to keep them hot are beneficial in some cases. I have found in some cases that an adhesive plaster put over the sore parts relieves the severe pain. Porous plasters are also good. Tincture of ranunculus bulbosus (buttercup) is a good remedy. Put ten drops in a glass half full of water, and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... as possible, beat into them gradually and very hard the sugar, adding the lemon, and beating the whole for a long time. Then by degrees, stir in the flour slowly and lightly; for if the flour is stirred hard and fast into sponge cake, it will make it porous and tough. Have ready buttered, a sufficient number of little square tins, (the thinner they are the better,) half fill them with the mixture; grate loaf-sugar over the top of each; put them immediately into a quick oven, and ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... called gilding by immersion. There is another process in which galvanism—But let us admit that M. Larinski's heart is real gold. In the purest gold there is usually some alloy, to dispense with which resort must be had to the cupel. Do you not know what a cupel is? It is a small capsule or cup of a porous substance, used in the refining process, and possessing the property of absorbing the fused oxides and retaining the refined metal. What is the proportion of lead or of gold ore in M. Larinski's heart? Neither you ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... tiny tributaries are beautiful in their garb of green, while the areas that are not thus refreshed are as gray as the arid portions of the plains themselves. And that is the case everywhere among the Rockies—where no water flows over the surface the porous, sandy soil is dry and parched. The altitude of Georgetown is eight thousand four hundred and seventy-six feet. We were therefore three thousand feet higher than we had been in the morning, and had a right to expect a somewhat different avi-fauna, an expectation in which ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... liquids by filtration is effected by passing them through a cylindrical vessel, closed at one end like a test-tube, and made either of porous "biscuit" porcelain, hard-burnt and unglazed (Chamberland system), or of Kieselguhr, a fine diatomaceous earth (Berkefeld system), and termed a "bougie" or ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... that at first an attempt was made to construct balloons of fine, light paper; but this material being permeable, and the gas being inflammable, balloons thus made did not succeed. It was necessary to seek a material less porous, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... The porous clay cracked like an egg-shell, the top coming off in one piece, with a few flying splinters; and I pressed the bouquet deep ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... done to the artist's satisfaction, the most usual method is to treat the stone with a solution of gum-arabic and a little nitric acid. After this is dry, the gum is washed off as far as may be with water; some of the gum is left in the porous stone, but it is rejected where the greasy lines and tones of the drawing come. Prints may now be obtained by rolling up the stone with an inked roller. The ink is composed of a varnish of boiled linseed oil and any of the lithographic colours ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... nothing that can be called pus is present, merely a little transparent fluid, while at the same time there is an entire absence of the unpleasant odour invariably perceived when water dressing is changed. Here the clean metallic surface presents no recesses like those of porous lint for the septic germs to develope in, the fluid exuding from the surface of the granulations has flowed away undecomposed, and the result is the absence of suppuration. This simple experiment illustrates ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... for the moldy floor was porous. And in front of the fireplace was no vestige of the giant doubled-up form traced in niter. I looked at the cot, the chairs, the instruments, my neglected hat, and the yellowed straw hat of my uncle. Dazedness was uppermost, and I could scarcely recall what was dream ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... dimensions than the one last mentioned. The columns of this were also fluted, but no part of the edifice is standing, except a solitary pilaster, which was probably a portion of the cella. These temples were built of a hard but porous stone, of a light color, and were probably covered with a thin coat of cement. They command an extensive view both of sea and land, and in their primal days must, with their tower-like columns, their sculptured entablatures and pediments, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... ground at length entirely bare. We could now perceive the snow beginning to leave the stones from day to day, as early as the last week in April. Towards the end of May a great deal of snow was dissolved daily; but, owing to the porous nature of the ground, which absorbed it as fast as it was formed, it was not easy to procure water for drinking on shore, even as late as the 10th of June. In the ravines, however, it could be heard trickling under stones before that time; and about the 18th, many considerable streams were formed, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... practice is almost entirely neglected."[7] But in many countries, particularly in the east, bathing is as much resorted to as ever; and its really powerful effects in invigorating the frame and promoting the porous secretions, (without which life itself cannot be long continued,) require only to be once ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... hands into the dish and flicked them into our mouths in what cannot but be the true Oriental manner. I asked for lamb and pistachio-nuts, and cream- tarts au poivre; but J.'s cook did not furnish us with either of those historic dishes. And for drink, we had water freshened in the porous little pots of grey clay, at whose spout every traveller in the East has sucked delighted. Also, it must be confessed, we drank certain sherbets, prepared by the two great rivals, Hadji Hodson and Bass Bey—the bitterest and most delicious of draughts! ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... triodia or spinifex, and timbered with the casuarina or black oak trees. We had scarcely gone two miles when our old thunderstorm came upon us—it had evidently missed us at first, and had now come to look for us—and it rained heavily. The country was so sandy and porous that no water remained on the surface. We travelled on and the storm travelled with us—the ground sucking up every drop that fell. Continuing our course, which was north 67 degrees west, we travelled twenty-five miles. At this distance we came in sight of the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... "alcohol for burning" in his best Italian. The assistant seemed mystified, but suddenly a light flooded his intelligent face, he flew to a series of neat little drawers behind the counter, rummaged about, and in much triumph produced an "Alcock's porous plaster," which he vehemently assured Vincent would be sure to burn, and was a real English medicine, imported with great trouble and expense, and certain to cure the ailment from which he was suffering. How Vincent would have got out of the tangle, or convinced the chemist's ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... could almost have fancied myself transported back again to the barren valleys of the island of St. Jago. Among the basaltic cliffs I found some plants which I had seen nowhere else, but others I recognised as being wanderers from Tierra del Fuego. These porous rocks serve as a reservoir for the scanty rain-water; and consequently on the line where the igneous and sedimentary formations unite, some small springs (most rare occurrences in Patagonia) burst forth; and they could be distinguished at a distance ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... private sinner flaunting for one of the righteous? And she, the mother, a lady—quite a lady; having really a sense of duty, sense of honour! That she must be a lady, Dudley was convinced. He beheld through a porous crape, woven of formal respectfulness, with threads of personal disgust, the scene, striking him drearly like a distant great mansion's conflagration across moorland at midnight, of a lady's breach of bonds and plunge of all for love. How had it been concealed? In Dudley's upper ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... persons of the present day to be told that the "backlog" of which we read so much in old-time stories was a large stone, a porous stone being preferred if possible. This stone was buried in the ashes, and on top was placed the "back stick." The back stone in those primitive times played a very important part in the economy of early ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... When we arrived there were sixteen, three of which were uninhabited. They all face the sea; and run east and west. On account of the very high winds the walls are built about four feet thick at the gable ends, and about two feet at the sides. Most of the stone they are built of is porous, in consequence of which the walls on the south side are very damp and are often covered on the inside with a green slime. The houses are thatched with a reed-like grass called tussock, which is grown in the gardens or on a piece of ground near. The thatch will ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... very old manor house, deserted long ago. The wall round it, of porous white stone, was mouldering and had fallen away in places, and the lodge, the blank wall of which looked out on the open country, had a rusty roof with patches of tin-plate gleaming here and there on it. Within the gates could be seen a spacious courtyard overgrown with rough weeds, and ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the white was pretty whitish neer the yelk, but more duskie towards the shell; some of them I could plainly perceive to be shot or radiated like a Pyrites or fire-stone; the yelk in some I saw hollow, in others fill'd with a duskie brown and porous substance like ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... giant broom. Then it puts forth gouty fingers, generally five, standing stiffly up and still capped by the thick yucca-like tufts. Lastly the digitations grow to enormous arms, sometimes eighteen feet in girth, of light and porous, soft and spongy wood. The tree then resembles the baobab or calabash, the elephant or hippopotamus of the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... miles. The men flaunt about in gaudy-coloured lambas of many folded kilts—the women work hardest—the potters slap and ring their earthenware all round, to show that there is not a single flaw in them. I bought two finely shaped earthen bottles of porous earthenware, to hold a gallon each, for one string of beads, the women carry huge loads of them in their funnels above the baskets, strapped to the shoulders and forehead, and their hands are full besides; the roundness ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... been unable to save it. I picked up a considerable-sized stone that had been washed on to the Chinamen's ground; it was a piece of lava thrown from one of the volcanic hills which bound the plain,—how many thousands of years ago! These volcanic stones are so light and porous that they swim like corks, and they abound in ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... out through his quietness in innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl, Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and moulding figures,—hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely beautiful: even the mill-men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... porous like blotting-paper and shaped like birch leaves, hung on waxen red stems. "Yes, I think I did. Are ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... the Grand Bassin consists partly of stones thrown loosely together; though porous, the stone is heavy and hard, of a dark grey colour, and contains numerous specks of what seemed to be feldtspath, with sometimes particles of mica and olivine; it is more or less ferruginous, gives a bell-like sound when struck, and in some parts appeared to have run ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... for a mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced round ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... absorbed in something else, and we were overlooked in the hurry to get away. Since the quarrying of the rock had commenced, my work had been overseeing the native help, of which we had some fifteen cutting and hauling. In numerous places within a mile of headquarters, a soft porous rock cropped out. By using a crowbar with a tempered chisel point, the Mexicans easily channeled the rock into blocks, eighteen by thirty inches, splitting each stone a foot in thickness, so that when hauled to the place of use, each piece was ready to lay up in the wall. The ranch ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... luster might make one suppose, and in addition, being an opaque stone, slight dulling or scratching hardly lessens its beauty. It may therefore be used in ring mountings. However, it should be suggested that most turquoise is sufficiently porous to absorb grease, oil, or other liquids, and its color is frequently ruined thereby. Of course, such a change is far more likely to occur to a ring stone than to a turquoise mounted in some more ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... the morning before sun-rise, are so cold, that small quantities of water are covered with a thin sheet of ice. For this purpose, either shallow pits are dug in earth rich in saltpetre, {212b} and small shallow dishes of burnt porous clay are filled with water, and placed in these pits, or when the soil does not contain any saltpetre, the highest terraces on the houses are covered with straw, and the little dishes of water are placed up there. The thin crusts ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... must have been ransacked in old times for garden stone-work of exceptional beauty; and these treasures have been put together by some master-hand. Even the formal borders of the walks are of old porous stone, which takes the weather-staining so beautifully, and are carved in endless variety. Now that the gardens have been so long neglected or left in abeyance, the green staining has become perfect. Though the stone-work is itself intact, it has all ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... from 4 feet to 5 feet high, with oblong leaflets, in number from twenty to thirty-five, which are Pea-green above and downy on the under sides. Flowers bright red, and produced in axillary racemes. It is perfectly hardy, and grows freely in porous decomposed leaf-soil. ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... comes from the surface of the land or out of its porous underlayers, then flows seaward through its creases and folds, affecting the land and the land's creatures along the way and being affected by them. Thus, as we have already noted in more than one way, the management of land and the management of water are closely intertwined, ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... worth a dime, and to make matters worse all the money is paper, coins having gone out of circulation since the beginning of the mix-up. A kopec is the size of a postage stamp, a rouble looks like a United Cigar Store's Certificate, a 25-rouble note resembles a porous plaster and a 100-rouble note the Declaration ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... on a stone may seem as difficult as it is curious, I shall describe how I have seen it done. They take a sprout of the tree when it is already covered with roots, and a stone which must not be too hard, or smooth, but not very solid, and somewhat porous or hollow. These stones are found there in abundance among the reefs and shoals of the sea. They tie the little tree or sprout to this stone, covering the latter so far as possible on all sides with the fibres and roots; and to make it grow, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... fukka'a," i.e. thin and slightly porous earthenware jars used for Fukka'a, a fermented drink, made of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... a well-patched, padded, and porous one; and in a dark night, gleaming white as the White ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... that, doubtless, He who tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb had made that flinty couch soft to the holy sufferer as a bed of down. His limbs were clothed in a garb of horsehair of the coarsest fabric; his drink was the dank drops that oozed from the porous walls of his cell; and his sustenance, such morsels as were bestowed upon him by the poor—the only strangers permitted to approach him. No fire was suffered, where perpetual winter reigned. None were admitted ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... often seen in its own land. The flora of the Cape Colony is exceptionally varied and beautiful, but one peculiarity incidentally alluded to by my charming guide struck me as very noticeable. It is that in this dry climate and porous soil all the efforts of uncultivated nature are devoted to the stems of the vegetation: on their sap-retaining power depends the life of the plant, so blossom and leaf, though exquisitely indicated, are fragile and incomplete compared to the solidity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... parallel mountain ranges and broad intervening troughs that are filled to great depths with rock waste washed from the mountains. These great deposits of rock waste were in large part laid down by torrential streams and are relatively coarse and porous. Because these deposits are porous the rain that falls upon them and the run-off that reaches them from the mountains sinks into them, and the valleys in which they lie are exceptionally arid. These deposits, however, form huge reservoirs ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... tribe are normally hollow, although a core extends well into the horn. This, however, is merely a prolongation of a porous bone of the head which affords a point for the horns' attachment, consequently when a cow is sick and the temperature is elevated, the horns are naturally hot, it being the symptom of a disease and not a disease of itself, and which should be treated under ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... microscope, we can see the hole or perforation up the centre, forming the axis of the tube (see Fig. 2). Mr. H. de Mosenthal, in an extremely interesting and valuable paper (see J.S.C.I.,[1] 1904, vol. xxiii. p. 292), has recently shown that the cuticle of the cotton fibre is extremely porous, having, in addition to pores, what appear to be minute stomata, the latter being frequently arranged in oblique rows, as if they led into oblique lateral channels. A cotton fibre varies from 2.5 to 6 centimetres in length, and in breadth from 0.017 ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... mostly light in color, as the paste is now quite uniformly so. The baking was effected apparently without a very high degree of temperature and by methods that left few marks or discolorations upon the vessels. In hardness and durability the paste corresponds pretty closely with that of our red porous earthenware. The softer pieces can be scratched or even carved with a knife. Water will penetrate any of these vessels in a few minutes, but decay has probably tended to make the ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... wall. The obliquity of the latter is more marked than in the previous condition, and progression, to a large extent, takes place upon the heels. In addition to its deformity, the horn is greatly altered in quality, and, as the name 'pumice' indicates, is more or less porous in ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... substance, intensely local in its action; formed by impregnating a porous siliceous earth or other substance with some ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... made with toads which have been imprisoned in porous rock where they could get the necessary air. They have lived for months in a stupor. In impervious rock they have died. Frozen fish can revive; bears and other animals hibernate. There are all gradations from ordinary sleep to the torpor of death. Science ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... on the upper reaches, but the chasms widened and water dripping from lateral crevasses made the vague trail slippery and the occasional earth sodden and treacherous. For a quarter of a mile their way lay over a kind of porous gravel into which their feet sank, and beyond at the summit of a ridge Jarvo halted and threw back to them a summary warning to prepare for "a long leap." A sharp angle of rock, jutting out, had been split down the middle by some ancient force—very ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... collecting water, larger ones for keeping grain, flour and vegetables, and surahis or amphoras for drinking-water. In the manufacture of these last salt and saltpetre are mixed with the clay to make them more porous and so increase their cooling capacity. A very useful thing is the small saucer which serves as a lamp, being filled with oil on which a lighted wick is floated. These saucers resemble those found in the excavations of Roman remains. Earthen vessels ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... air space, and by having the outer clothes of a good non-conductor of heat. The cloth, of course, should be as light in weight as possible, but it is more important to have it a good non-conductor of heat and of porous weave. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... hopes had been entertained, were found to be unfit for large masts or yards, being shakey or rotten at thirty or forty feet from the butt; the wood was so brittle that it would not make a good oar, and so porous that the water soaked through the planks of a boat which had been built of it. Mr. King also lamented their ignorance of the proper mode of preparing the flax plant, which rendered it useless to them. A single ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... bend suddenly back under the glacier, and in some places to be quite vertical. On the opposite side of the glacier, below the Chapeau, the dip of the limestone under the gneiss, with the intermediate bed, seven or eight feet thick, of the grey porous rock which the French call cargneule, is highly interesting; but it is so concealed by debris and the soil of the pine forests, as to be difficult to examine to any extent. On the whole, the best position for getting the angle of the beds accurately, is the top of the Tapia, a little below the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... excellent behavior, they reached the broken-down carriage without accident. The driver had gone off with his pair of ponies, but Abdullah, ruefully making the best of a perplexing situation, searched under the box seat for the porous earthenware jar of water which is often carried there in the East. By good hap, he found one, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... family, being of easy culture, free blooming and remarkably showy, the colour of the flowers ranging from rich crimson, through rose-pink to creamy white. Cuttings strike readily in spring before growth has commenced; they should be potted in 3-in. or 4-in. pots, well drained, in loamy soil made very porous by the admixture of finely broken crocks and sand, and placed in a temperature of 60 deg.; when these pots are filled with roots they are to be shifted into larger ones, but overpotting must be avoided. During the summer they need considerable heat, all the light possible and plenty of air; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... schoolboys don't tell tales of each other. They agree not to choose to know who has made the noise, who has broken the window, who has eaten up the pigeons, who has picked all the plovers'-eggs out of the aspic, how it is that liqueur brandy of Gledstane's is in such porous glass bottles—-and so forth. Suppose Brutus had a footman, who came and told him that the butler drank the Curacoa, which of these servants would you dismiss?—the butler, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is too hot; open the damper ten minutes. Your bread, after it is in the tins, will rise much more quickly than the first time. Let it get light, but not too light—twice its bulk is a good rule; but if it is light before your oven is ready, and thus in danger of getting too porous, work it down with your hand, it will not harm it, although it is better so to manage that the oven waits for the bread rather than the bread for the oven. A small loaf—and by all means make them small until you have gained experience—will not ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... curiosity to know something about this Christian Science, and read Science and Health. The more I read, the more interested I became, and finally said to myself, "I will try it." I took a large porous plaster and four thicknesses of flannel off my stomach, and threw them in the corner, saying, "Now it shall be Mind over matter; no more matter over Mind." I filled a large basket full of bottles containing medicine, and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... glass, and be slightly sprinkled overhead daily till rooted. Seeds, which sometimes ripen on cultivated plants, should be gathered as soon as the fleshy fruits have turned to a purplish colour, dried for a day or so, then sown in a light, porous soil, and placed in a warm frame ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... the loose sand and scoriae, leaving only the harder and more solid materials. By this erosion, and by earthquakes, their internal structure has occasionally been laid open to view, in fissures and ravines; and we then behold not only many successive beds and masses of porous lava, sand, and scoriae, but also perpendicular walls, or DIKES, as they are called, of volcanic rock, which have burst through the other materials. Such dikes are also observed in the structure of Vesuvius, Etna, and other active volcanoes. They have been formed by the pouring ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... can alone be conceived as producing this evident deplacement of bodies formed horizontally at the bottom of the sea, but we have also found that this same cause has operated every where upon those strata, in consolidating by means of fusion the porous texture of their masses. Now when the evidence of those two facts are united, we cannot refuse to admit, as a part of the general system of the earth, that which is every where to be observed, although not every ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... infancy. The discoveries of Galileo, Pascal, and Torricelli incited him to solve the problem of the creation of a vacuum—a desideratum since before the days of Aristotle. His first experiments were with a wooden pump and a barrel of water, but he soon found that with such porous material as wood a vacuum could not be created or maintained. He therefore made use of a globe of copper, with pump and stop-cock; and with this he was able to pump out air almost as easily as water. Thus, in 1650, the air-pump was invented. Continuing his experiments upon vacuums and atmospheric ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Nanahboozhoo took him up, and as he did so he noticed that there was earth in his mouth and on his paws. He carefully collected this in his hand, and then placed the body of the muskrat beside the otter and the beaver. He then blew upon the earth and thus made it dry and porous, so that when it was placed in the water it would not sink but float. He then put a lively little mouse upon it, which by running round and round upon the earth made it grow larger and larger. Nanahboozhoo ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... something of a shock to her; they did not, somehow, "go with the house," and they dressed even more carelessly than Peter Erwin. This was particularly true of Joshua, whose low, turned-down collar revealed a porous, brick-red, and extremely virile neck, and whose clothes were creased at the knees ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pitched in the filthy morass known as 'Scottish Lines,' saw its labour of three weeks thrown away in a couple of nights. For the human beings there were a few tents and huts, but in face of the searching wind canvas seemed quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings to the bitter air. But up at the Bluff conditions were terrible. The trenches had disappeared under repeated bombardments, and had become mere chains of shell holes in which the men stood up to their thighs in liquid mud. When the C.O. ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... this work, and all the gardeners round about came to him to provide themselves with these light, porous pots, of a beautiful red hue, round and slender, wherein the raspberries could be heaped without crushing them, and where they slept under the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... to hide in, into which trickled a cool thread of water from a huge dripping-stone, while above these a shelf held native waterpots whose yellow and crimson surfaces were constantly pearled with dew oozing through the porous ware. On a low press near by was piled the remnant of father's library, and on the ancient sideboard were silver candlesticks, snuffers, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... Mexican architecture, they were astonished by the magnificence of the buildings that bordered the great streets along which they marched. Here were the mansions of the nobles, built of a red porous stone and covering a large space of ground. The flat roofs were protected by stone parapets, and many of them were laid out as gardens. Between these mansions were broad terraces, which presented a mass of flowers. Here and there were great marketplaces, surrounded by porticoes of stone; and ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... partially protected from rain by a covering of large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the chain is lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though well preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly obliterated to the northward, but then material ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... soil is very porous, and the water soaks along it," he answered; adding that "where necessary it was assisted by porous ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... two apartments, and scarce more than nominally even of two; for the half-plastered wicker and straw partition, which professed to cut off a sleeping-nook from the whole area inclosed by the clay walls, was little higher than a tall man, and moreover chinky and porous in many places. Let the assumed distinction be here allowed to stand, however, while the reader casts his eyes around what was sometimes called the kitchen, sometimes the tap-room, sometimes the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mouth, at the same time exhibiting three fingers of his left hand; and the steward, nodding and grinning his comprehension of the mute order, withdrew, to reappear next moment with a case-bottle of rum, three glasses, and a water-monkey, or porous earthen jar, full of what proved, on our pouring it out, to be a very ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... if made with a non-porous aggregate is impervious to moisture, and yet at the same time, if not hydraulically compressed, will take up a sufficient quantity of moisture from the air to prevent condensation upon the surface of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... contraction, but weakening of the muscles of support. The back curves from the action of gravity, the strength of the support of the muscles at the back not counteracting the pull of the weight of the abdominal viscera in front. The bones become more porous and more brittle. ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... were set in sandy loam soil with a porous yellow subsoil in a field of medium elevation which has excellent air drainage so I have had little damage from cold injury. The soil is of fair fertility for the Upper Costal Plain area. Of the trees sent me, fourteen of the ML selection, originating, I am informed by Mr. Gravatt, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... change has been produced by rain. First, mechanically, by rain in the shape of ice. The winter rain gets into the ground, and does by the rock what it has done by the stones of many an old building. It sinks into the porous stone, freezes there, expands in freezing, and splits and peels the stone with a force which is slowly but surely crumbling the whole of Northern Europe and ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... thence, they say, or more probably from its hardness, it is called dammar batu; by which name it is distinguished from the dammar kruyen. This is another species of turpentine, yielded by a tree growing in Lampong, called kruyen, the wood of which is white and porous. It differs from the common sort, or dammar batu, in being soft and whitish, having the consistence and somewhat the appearance of putty. It is in much estimation for paying the bottoms of vessels, for which use, to give it firmness and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... by filling the smelling-bottles with any porous absorbent material, such as asbestos, or, what is better, sponge cuttings, that have been well beaten, washed, and dried. These cuttings can be procured at a nominal price from any of the sponge-dealers, being the trimming or roots of the Turkey ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... compelled to bend in the working of the bellows, you will have to use some kind of rubber or leather cement, preferably the latter. This can be made by dissolving gutta-percha in bisulphide of carbon, but a good leather cement may be had at almost any shoe store. If the bellows are porous, it may be well to give them a coat of cement, but never paint them; the paint cracks and the ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... in an equable degree. It is an easier matter for it to ooze many miles, along a layer of gravel, than to penetrate six inches into a layer of clay that may bound the gravel. Therefore, whenever a porous earth or a fissured rock crops out to the light of day, there is, in ignorance of all other facts, some chance of a spring being discovered in the lowest part of the outcrop. A favourable condition for the existence of a large and permanent fountain, is where ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... sadly in need of a painter's gun. She would groan and squeal, Chet knew, when the fans lifted her from the hold-down clutch; and she couldn't fly at over twenty thousand without leaking her internal pressure through a thousand cracks that made her porous as an old balloon—but to Chet's eyes the old relic of the years was a thing of ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... Its Wood is porous, and very light; the Bark is pretty firm, and of the Colour of Cinnamon, more or less dark, according to the Age of the Tree. The Leaves are about nine Inches long, and four in breadth, where they are broadest; for they grow less towards the two Extremities, where ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... the hat, and an appeal to 'Laissez passer Mademoiselle.' On shore we got, through be-coaled Negroes, men and women, safe and not very much be-coaled ourselves; and were driven up steep streets of black porous lava, between lava houses and walls, and past lava gardens, in which jutted up everywhere, amid the loveliest vegetation, black knots and lumps scorched by the nether fires. The situation of the house—the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... it was clear that he must have been conscious of life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was the tumult within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... smokes of the sugar- camps were no longer seen issuing from the woods of maple. The lake had lost the beauty of a field of ice, but still a dark and gloomy covering concealed its waters, for the absence of currents left them yet hidden under a porous crust, which, saturated with the fluid, barely retained enough strength to preserve the continuity of its parts. Large flocks of wild geese were seen passing over the country, which hovered, for a time, around the hidden sheet of water, apparently searching for a resting-place; and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... gradually round off the sharp angles and topple down the spires that characterised them in the land of their birth. The process of dissolution, too, is carried on internally; for rain and melted water on the surface percolates through the mass, rendering it porous. As the waves cut away the base, the centre of gravity is thrown out, and the whole berg turns over with a terrible crash. Sometimes loud reports like cannon-shots are heard, and the huge mountain splits asunder; while, not unfrequently, the whole berg falls into a heap of chaotic ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Seaford, not as now at Newhaven; the other was the Cuckmere river, which has cut itself a deep glen in the chalk hills just beneath the high cliffs of Beachy Head. Beyond the Downs again, to the north, the country descended abruptly to the deep trough of the Weald, whose cold and sticky clays or porous sandstones are never of any use for purposes of tillage. Hence, as its very name tells us, the Weald has always been a wild and wood-clad region. The Romans knew it as the Silva Anderida, or forest of Pevensey; the early English as ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... even this, and the most refractory vessels are of calcium oxide or of graphite. Pottery is clay, molded, baked, and either glazed, like crockery, or unglazed, like flower-pots. Jugs and coarse earthenware are glazed by volatilizing NaCl in an oven which holds the porous material. This coats the ware with sodium silicate. To glaze china, it is dipped into a powder of feldspar and SiO2 suspended in water and vinegar, and then fused. If the ware and glaze expand uniformly with heat, the latter does ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... the shore entirely, runs to different breadths into the sea, where it ends all at once, and becomes like a high, steep wall. It is nearly even with the surface of the water, and of a brown or brick colour; but the texture is rather porous, yet sufficient to withstand the washing of the surf ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... doctrine, and it is probable that, after listening to Dissenting eloquence for thirty years, she might safely have re-entered the Establishment without performing any spiritual quarantine. Her mind, apparently, was of that non-porous flinty character which is not in the least danger from surrounding damp. But on the question of getting start of the sun on the day's business, and clearing her conscience of the necessary sum of meals and the consequent ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... striking features of the case; for this parallelism shows how equably the worms must have worked; the result being, partly the effect of the washing down of the fresh castings by rain. The specific gravity of the objects does not affect their rate of sinking, as could be seen by porous cinders, burnt marl, chalk and quartz pebbles, having all sunk to the same depth within the same time. Considering the nature of the sub-stratum, which at Leith Hill Place was sandy soil including ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various |
