"Rainfall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which he describes as a plain at the end of the earth or beneath, with no snow nor rainfall, and the sun never goes down, and Rhadamanthus, the justest of men, rules. Hesiod's heaven is what he calls the islands of the blessed, in the midst of the ocean, three times a year blooming with most exquisite flowers, and the air is tinted with ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... fullness of time, his plan took shape. He went one night to the temple foundations, still in process of digging, and with standing water in them which had collected from the rainfall or otherwise; here he deposited a goose egg, into which, after blowing it, he had inserted some new-born reptile. He made a resting-place deep down in the mud for this, and departed. Early next morning he rushed into ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... slept through a wailing that might have a personal note for her, and as she prepared to leave the room and listen on the landing, she thought she heard a new sound cutting through the swish of the rainfall and the shriek of wind. It was a smaller sound, as though a child were alone and crying in the night, and she leaned from her window to look into the garden. The rain wetted her hair and hands and neck, while she stared into varying depths of blackness—the poplars against the sky, the lawn, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... the content of scarce nutritional minerals drops massively, and the caloric content increases. In short, subsisting on irrigated commercially-grown potatoes, or on those grown on relatively infertile soils receiving abundant rainfall will make you fat and sick. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... temperature is 52 deg.. The climate is healthy, especially in the mountainous districts. Malarial fever prevails in the valley of the Maritza, in the low-lying regions of the Black Sea coast, and even in the upland plain of Sofia, owing to neglect of drainage. The mean annual rainfall is 25-59 in. (Gabrovo, 41-73; Sofia, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... remember with what laughter the sun-spot theory was received? At least I know I laughed when I first heard of it—but here in India, where the rainfall is the prime condition of existence to millions and the sun is much more powerful than with us, the Meteorological Department has just reported that there is apparently a sure connection between the rainfall and its distribution and the spots upon the sun. When these spots ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... foliage-surface, with isothermal zones rigidly marked by their indigenous growths. A tract of country until yesterday bare of surface water for lack of occupation, and lacking occupation for dearth of surface water. Which goes to show that regularity of rainfall is not ensured by copious ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Level includes all that part of the Great Bedford Level situated between Morton's Leam and the river Welland, comprising about 48,000 acres of land. The river Nene, which brings down from the interior the rainfall of almost the entire county of Northampton, flows through nearly the centre of the district. In some places the stream is confined by embankments, in others it flows along artificial outs, until it enters ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... one of those rare mornings in the rainy season when there was a suspicion of spring in the air, and after a night of rainfall the sun broke through fleecy clouds with little islets of blue sky—when Prosper Riggs and his mother drove into Wild Cat camp. An expression of cheerfulness was on the faces of his old comrades. For it had been recognized that, after all, "Prossy" had a perfect right to bring his old mother ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in the sketch herewith. The funnel, A, overlaps and rests on the body, B, and discharges into the tube, C, the area of which is one-tenth that of the top of the funnel. The depth of the water in C is thus ten times the actual rainfall, so that by measuring it with a stick marked off in tenths of an inch, we obtain the result in hundredths ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... even if we could admit the justice of a system of rewards and punishments, good and evil are so inextricably intermixed in this world that it is impossible to distribute benefits on a satisfactory moral scheme. It is impossible to manipulate the rainfall so that the righteous farmer shall have just what he wants at the appropriate seasons, while his wicked neighbour suffers from alternate drought and floods; nor can it be arranged that the midday express shall convey all the good people safely, ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... of four days! Nobody then knew anything about measuring rainfall; but, judging by later experience, I should say we must have had close to seven inches. There was not much we could do, except to get wetter and wetter, although we made shift to double up at night, and to use the extra blankets thus released to ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... was amiss with plumbing, furnace, anything. There was not even a soap factory within smelling distance, as Mrs. Townsend had vaguely surmised. She was sure that she had heard of houses being undesirable for such reasons, but there was no soap factory. They all sniffed and peeked; when the first rainfall came they looked at the ceiling, confidently expecting to see dark spots where the leaks had commenced, but there were none. They were forced to confess that their suspicions were allayed, that the house was perfect, even overshadowed with the mystery of a lower price ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... months on the Pacific coast, looking into a thousand things with unflagging zeal and interest. It was really afflicting to turn his back upon the early Spanish settlers, the Jesuit missions, the grape and olive production, mining interests, earthquake statistics, the Chinese problem, annual rainfall on the great plateau, study of the Sierra Nevada range, and last, most alluring of all, that of the Santa Barbara Islands, described by a companion of Drake as densely populated by a white race with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Bible story speaks only of features to be found in a land like Babylonia. Sir William Willcocks thinks that the word translated "mist" would probably be better rendered "inundation," and that the writer is speaking of a country where inundation rather than rainfall was the support of life to the vegetable world. Genesis ii. 5 and ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... communications of the department are greatly facilitated by the Canal du Berry, which traverses it from east to west, the lateral canal of the Loire, which follows the left bank of that river, and the canal of the Sauldre. The climate is temperate, and the rainfall moderate. Except in the Sologne, the soil is generally fertile, but varies considerably in different localities. The most productive region is that on the east, which belongs to the valley of the Loire; the central districts ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... New Orleans' drainage problem. The city is the bowl of a dish, of which the levees against river and lake are the rim. There is no natural drainage. The rainfall is nearly five feet a year, concentrated at times, upon the thousand miles of streets, into cloudbursts of four inches an hour and ten inches in a day. In the boyhood of men now in their early thirties it was a regular thing for the city ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... anchors by the jetty, with news from the Old World and the commodities which the New World did not yield. It must, then, have been one of the most eventful places in the uncomfortable isthmus; but no place can be very pleasant which has an annual rainfall of 120 inches and a mean annual temperature of about 80 deg.. The country adjacent is indescribably beautiful; the river is clear and brilliant; the woods are gorgeous with many-coloured blossoms, and with birds and butterflies ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... for occasional oases, is a desert, inhabited only by wandering tribes. Along the southern and western coasts, between the mountains and the sea, the soil is generally fertile, the climate temperate, and the rainfall sufficient. Here the chief cities ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... said to me: "It has been raining here for forty days. What is the average rainfall in the United States and in New York?" If there was any subject about which I knew less than another, it was the meteorological conditions in America. He then continued with great glee: "Our friend, Lord Rosebery, has everything and knows everything, so it ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... the name is Beaufort West, nestling amid its trees, a bright patch of colour amid the neutral tints of the hills and surrounding country. Here reside many patients suffering from phthisis, for the air is dry and warm and the rainfall phenomenally small. But after all what a place to die in! Rather a shorter and sweeter life in dear England than a ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... after the funeral a spirit message reached the widow of the dear departed. "Please send down my blankets" it said. But it is the terrible humidity which makes the climate dangerous; a humidity due to the innumerable swamps, the source of pestilence and fever, and to the incredible rainfall, which averages over six and a half feet a year. No wonder that in the Indies Borneo is known as "The ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... looking very much like a river. To the east and north the view was intercepted by long stony rises, apparently covered with spinifex. Large white gum clumps studded the plains in every direction. Evidences of heavy rainfall at certain times to be seen everywhere. Barometer 28.28; thermometer 72 degrees at 5 p.m.; latitude 26 degrees 13 minutes 4 ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... us from all evils of weakness, sickness, incapacity: to endue us with all gifts of spiritual and immortal strength. But, while the limit of what Christ gives is His boundless wealth, the limit of what you possess is your faith. The rainfall comes down in the same copiousness on rock and furrow, but it runs off the one, having stimulated no growth and left no blessing, and it sinks into the other and quickens every dormant germ into life ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Outline of Physiography. By H.R. Mill, D.SC, LL.D., Director of the British Rainfall Organisation. Second Edition. Revised and entirely reset. With 19 coloured Maps and 73 Illustrations in the text. Crown ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... to transplant when the ground is moist, as it is immediately after being dug or plowed. But this cannot always be arranged, neither can one always count upon a shower to moisten the soil just after the plants have been set. If advantage can be taken of an approaching rainfall, it should be done, because this is the ideal time for transplanting. It is much better than immediately after, which is perhaps next best. Transplanting in cloudy weather and toward evening is better than in sunny weather and in ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... The rainfall varies so widely in different parts of the island, and from year to year, that exact information is difficult. Taken as a whole, it is little if at all greater than it is in most places in the United States. We ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... that the poison is produced below the surface by decaying vegetable matter in low and dank parts during the more inactive but still warm and sunny winter season and during the hot months preceding the summer rainfall. Upon the first rains the malarial poison escapes through the then softened crust in the shape of vapoury miasms. This happens during the night, after the surface of the earth has been cooled off. Those ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... through which the big rivers flow is very flat, and is therefore liable to great floods. Australia has the reputation of being a very dry country; as a matter of fact, the rainfall over one-third of its area is greater than that of England. In most places the rainfall is, however, badly distributed. After long spells of very dry weather there will come fierce storms, during which the rain sometimes ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... 1911, at Eton, Bucks, England, the ground was found covered with masses of jelly, the size of peas, after a heavy rainfall. We are not told of nostoc, this time: it is said that the object contained numerous eggs of "some species of Chironomus, from ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... short logs, cleaned away the snow, and with the strength of their shoulders lifted the logs one upon another. With his ax Bill cunningly cut the saddles, carving them down so that the rainfall would drain down the corners rather than lie in the cavities and thus rot the timbers. Planks were cut for the roof, and tree boughs laid down ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... was by no means particular about it. In this part of Burma the rainfall is very small, the inundations being the effect of heavy rains in the distant hill country which, as they come down, raise the level of the rivers, in some cases, as much as eighteen feet, and ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... southern half mostly, while the northern half is made up of lower hills and valleys. Several large lakes nestle among the mountains; one of them, Lake Crescent, is a famous summer resort. Lake Crescent is known as the home of the celebrated Beardslee trout. The eastern and southern parts have a rainfall sometimes nearing 100 inches annually, while in the eastern northerly part it is about ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... season, from May to November, his woods-crew put thirty million feet of logs into the San Hedrin River, while the mill sawed on a reserve supply of logs taken from the last of the old choppings adjacent to Squaw Creek. That year, however, the rainfall in the San Hedrin country was fifty per cent. less than normal, and by the first of May of the following year Cardigan's woods-crew had succeeded in driving slightly less than half of the cut of the preceding ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... from these experiments an estimate of the quantity of the substances actually dissolved, we shall select the results obtained by Way. The average rainfall in Kent, where the waters he examined were obtained, is 25 inches. Now, it appears that about two-fifths of all the rain which falls escapes through the drains, and the rest is got rid of by evaporation. An inch of rain falling on an ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... is usually cultivated in the higher and richer soils, while the Corchorus Olitorius variety is most suited for the lower-lying alluvial soils, and to the districts where the rainfall is irregular; indeed, the C. Olitorius may be grown in certain other districts of India which appear quite unsuitable for ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... lies at the southern end of this miserable street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... who live west of the mountains. Even where it is coldest, spring comes in February, and the country is so divided into districts of greater dryness or greater moisture, that a man can always choose whether to have a rainfall small or great. I hope I am not wearying you in dwelling on these points, for my only excuse in making these observations is, that I have learnt that the interior is to many on the island as much a terra incognita as it was to me. I can partly understand this after seeing the beautifully ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... draft of skilful exploitation, three years of high pressure passed quickly; years named by the promoters the period of development. In the Year One the very heavens smiled and the rainfall broke the record of the oldest inhabitant. Thus the region round about lost the word "arid" as a qualifying adjective, and the picturesque fictions of the prospectus makers were miraculously justified. In Year Two there was ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... persons had been known to care for yellow-fever patients as nurses, or physicians, without contracting the disease; also the fact that the epidemic extension of the disease depends upon external conditions relating to temperature, altitude, rainfall, etc. It was a well-established fact that the disease is arrested by cold weather and does not prevail in northern latitudes or at considerable altitudes. But diseases which are directly transmitted from man ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... reasons for the choice: it derived its volume from the highest known mountains, snow-capped peaks in fact, that reminded the spectator of far northern latitudes, and thus it was to a great extent independent of the variable local rainfall. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... direction. As no surface drainage could be led into them, and as there is no trace on the ground of a raised ditch discharging into them, they must have been filled, if used as reservoirs, from the rain which fell within the line that circumscribes them. The mean annual rainfall (for over seventeen years) at Verde, a few miles farther northward in the same valley, is 11.44 inches, with a maximum annual fall of 27.27 inches and a minimum of 4.80 inches. The mean annual fall (for over twenty-one years) at Fort ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... The rainfall on Mars is almost nil and the immense population (eight times larger than that of your Earth) is entirely dependent on the water supply from the melting Polar caps. Water on Mars is a most precious fluid and there is none to waste. Our oceans evaporated ages ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... of the steppe, on which grows the nutritious plume-grass requisite for the food of the kumys mares, is very fertile, and immense crops of rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, and so forth are raised whenever the rainfall is not too meagre. Unfortunately, the rainfall is frequently insufficient, and the province of Samara often comes to the attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891, because of scarcity of food, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... climate and abundant rainfall," says the Department of Agriculture, "stimulate a luxuriant forest development throughout the country which in turn provides ample fountain heads for rivers. The rivers and streams run in all directions, affording opportunity ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... being cut off from the sea, gradually evaporated, and what is known as Coahuila Valley was the bottom of this ancient upper gulf, and thus the land is now below the level of the sea. Between Coahuila Valley and the river there are many low, ashen-gray mountains standing in short ranges. The rainfall is so little that no perennial streams are formed. When a great rain comes it washes the mountain sides and gathers on its way a deluge of sand, which it spreads over the plain below, for the streams do not carry the sediment to the sea. So ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... steel—the superiority of Swedish razors is due to wood-smelting—but it is so wasteful of wood that the Mediterranean peoples very early in history injured their climate by cutting down their scanty forests, thereby diminishing their rainfall, and allowing the soil to be washed off the hillsides. The coasts of the Mediterranean are, in consequence, far less productive than they were two thousand years ago. But in England, when the start was once made, all circumstances conspired to ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... great part precipitated, dense clouds are formed, their particles coalesce to rain-drops, which descend daily in gushes so profuse that the word "torrential" is used to express the copiousness of the rainfall. I could show you this chilling by expansion, and also the consequent ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... undoubtedly reaches its highest perfection as a member of the vegetable kingdom, in India and Ceylon, in a climate of extreme heat and extreme rainfall and moisture, and in a very rich soil; and the remark is often heard from Indian planters that "tea and malarious fevers flourish together." Experience has shown however that the tea plant possesses a wonderful power of accomodation to adverse conditions. In China and in the United states, it has ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... flats are damp. They lie so low that in places the coast has to be protected by sea walls, and the prevalence of large "rhines" or drains makes for humidity. The sheltered vale of Taunton Dean (for the term cp. Hawthorndean, Rottingdean) is warm and sunny. The rainfall is abundant, but, except in the neighbourhood of Exmoor, cannot be said ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... time yet—fifteen or twenty minutes at the best—before I dared attempt to carry out my plan of escape. In spite of the overspreading cloud, and steady rainfall, daylight lingered in the west, and a spectral glow hung above the ocean. It was a peculiar, almost ghastly light, yet of sufficient intensity to render objects visible for a considerable distance. However, there were preliminaries to be attended to, and I ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... the rules which govern other places. Here is a group of islands whose total superficies is only 12,500 acres, of which little more than one-tenth is capable of cultivation. There is no fresh water whatever, the inhabitants being entirely dependent on the rainfall for their supply; and yet some 22,000 people, white and coloured, live there in great prosperity, and there is no poverty whatever. I almost hesitate before adding that there are no taxes in Bermuda beyond a 10 per cent. ad valorem duty on everything imported into the islands except ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... din, the rattle and bang and dirt and blood, the anguish of men and horses, the distorted and ghastly deaths, will pass them by. The whine of bullets, and the spiteful snarl of exploding shells seems as much an incident as the tin rainfall and the wooden ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... pain it should take us to come hither," pursued Isabel, apparently quite careless about interrupting the spiritual labours of her sister nun, "methinks I had prayed my Lord the King to choose another messenger. By the rainfall of late, divers streams have so bisched [overflowed] their banks, that me verily counted my mule had been swept away, not once ne twice. It waked my laughter to see how our steward, that rade with us, strave and struggled with ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the table in front of Stoner and then hobbled away down a long passage. The drizzle of rain had changed to a furious lashing downpour, which beat violently against door and windows. The wanderer thought with a shudder of what the sea-shore must look like under this drenching rainfall, with night beating down on all sides. He finished the food and beer and sat numbly waiting for the return of his strange host. As the minutes ticked by on the grandfather clock in the corner a new hope ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... miles to the San Juan. In this valley, which has no flowing stream through it at present (and there is no certainty that it ever had), and which is without water, except in springs and pools, and has but a slight rainfall during the year, Mr. Mitchell was successfully cultivating, at the time of our visit, wheat, oats, maize, and the garden vegetables. The valley is uninhabited, except by the family of Mr. Mitchell, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... till the night of the ninth day since their landing on the isle; then a heavy rainfall, filling the concavity of the boat's sail, enables them to replenish the beaker, with other vessels they ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... economical importance of rain has led to various quasi-scientific and magical devices for securing it, and to the rise of professional rain makers. The methods commonly employed are mimic representations of rainfall or of a storm.[274] The Australian Arunta have a rain clan whose function is to bring the desired supply by nonsacred dancing festivals and sacred ceremonies. A more advanced method is to dip a stone, as rain-god, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... old days I find it hard to realize that the localities described are still in existence. I suppose the rivers are yet running in the old channels, but as the rainfall has been steadily decreasing they are not likely to be today the full, impetuous torrents of liquid crystal that I remember. Moreover, the game, that rapidly moving, kaleidoscopic pageant of varied animal life which made their forested banks a wonder and a ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... out the cat and wound the clock and was about to ascend to his chamber (now, alas, reoccupied by Mrs. Daney, upon whom the news of Nan's departure had descended like a gentle rainfall over a hitherto arid district) when he heard slow footsteps on his front veranda. Upon going to the door and peering out, he was amazed to see ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... mountains and make our camps there. The palm and the bamboo grew to the summits of the mountains, and the soil along their sides was deep and soft, while the rains were very heavy, much more so than immediately on the coast —every mile or two inland bringing with it a great increase in the rainfall. We could, with much difficulty, have got our regiments up the mountains, but not half the men could have got up with their belongings; and once there it would have been an impossibility to feed them. It was all that could ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... to financial arrangements with Blizzard he had lived a life free from care, and indeed had grown and developed in many ways, just as a forest tree will, to which air and sunlight has been admitted by removing its nearest neighbors, together with all their claims upon the rainfall and the tree-food locked up in ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... During the whole afternoon rain steadily fell upon the top of this rock-roofed world till the river rose several inches while its colour turned to a dull yellow, then to a red, showing how heavy the rainfall had been in the back country. We had our rubber ponchos on but we were more or less damp and we began to notice that summer had passed for the air was chilly. The river was perfectly smooth making navigation easy and we were able to pull steadily along with no interruption ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... with an area of two hundred thousand square miles, and it lies upon the border-line of hot and cold temperatures. It is subject to heavy storms, and sometimes, in winter, to large accumulations of snow. It is presumable also, the rainfall is greater than the average of the country. When, following great deposits of snow, warm, heavy, and prolonged rains occur, excessive floods must be the result. Add to these coincidents the fact that forests, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... hung along the picket fence that separated the yard from the store enclosure, and rain-barrels sat under the two front gutters with stolid practicability, in contrast to the usual relegation of such store-houses of the rainfall to the back of the house and the planting of ferns and water plants under the front sprouts, as was the custom from the beginning of time in Sweetbriar. Mrs. Rucker in a clean print dress and with glossy and uncompromisingly smoothed hair stood at the newly ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stop in the road four or five miles from town. Our exclamations of disgust were still hovering in the air when the storm struck us. As Sahwah has always described it, "And then the water came down at Lodore." I could devote several pages to the fury of that rainfall, but what is the use of taking up the reader's time when her own imagination will supply the details? Just imagine the worst storm you were ever caught in, or ever saw anyone else caught in, and multiply it by two or three times and ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... Under the blue sky the yellow prairie spread out in endless expanse; across it the horseman might steer for days and weeks through a landscape almost as unbroken as the ocean. It was a region of light rainfall; the rivers ran in great curves through beds of quicksand, which usually contained only trickling pools of water, but in times of freshet would in a moment fill from bank to bank with boiling muddy torrents. Hither and thither across ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... were an animal about to leap or some dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had got near the door, glowered at me sullenly with contracted pupils. 'No,' he said at last, and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room; and I heard his footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... next expedition to this golf ball ought to carry an archeologist—and a philologist, too, as we found out later. But it's a devil of a job to estimate the age of anything here; things weather so slowly that most of the buildings might have been put up yesterday. No rainfall, no earthquakes, no vegetation is here to spread cracks with its roots—nothing. The only aging factors here are the erosion of the wind—and that's negligible in this atmosphere—and the cracks caused by changing ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... that some individuals at least have marked hardiness to cold and heat and have endured temperatures much greater than the English walnut. The best results in growth and fruitfulness have been obtained in those regions of moderate rainfall where the apple and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... rain into the chalk, where any organic impurity which the water may carry in is soon oxidised and rendered harmless. Those who have scampered like myself over the downs of Hants and Wilts will remember the scarcity of water in these regions. In fact, the rainfall, instead of washing the surface and collecting in streams, sinks into the fissured chalk and percolates through it. When this formation is suitably tapped, we obtain water of exceeding briskness and purity. A large glass globe, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... created the illusion of sounding this new charge or else to be the thunder of the onset. It turned the fortune of the battle on the right, for the Confederates were seen to pause, and finally to give back slowly and stubbornly. Then the advancing rainfall began to blot ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... and of 'The Military Soudan' the land becomes more fruitful. The tributaries of the Nile multiply the areas of riparian fertility. A considerable rainfall, increasing as the Equator is approached, enables the intervening spaces to support vegetation and consequently human life. The greater part of the country is feverish and unhealthy, nor can Europeans long sustain the attacks of its climate. Nevertheless ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... magical change for the better is effected. Everywhere a soft, spongy carpet of fallen leaves, ever increasing in thickness, is spread out, moistening and enriching the soil and conserving the waters of the increased rainfall. A thousand living springs of pure, sparkling water make glad the plains and valleys. The evils of flood, erosion and drouth are checked; the climate made more congenial; the value of both hill and mountain, as a source of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... triangular roof of which no example will, ere long, be seen in Paris. This covering, warped by the extremes of the Paris climate, projected three feet over the roadway, as much to protect the threshold from the rainfall as to shelter the wall of a loft and its sill-less dormer-window. This upper story was built of planks, overlapping each other like slates, in order, no doubt, not to overweight ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... we have a warm moist fall the buds burst for the third time and make a third growth. This third growth winter-kills without injury to the tree, however. The significance of the growth presumably relates to the tree being an inhabitant of an arid country, where it has adapted itself to the rainfall of that country. I do not know if the trunk adds a new ring of wood after each resting period, but ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... way, at least, in which the denuding the country of its forests has lessened the rainfall: in certain conditions of the atmosphere every tree is a great condenser of moisture, as I had just observed in the case of the old elm; little showers are generated in their branches, and in the aggregate the amount ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... to think that soil and climate, hill-side or plain, mountain and shore, temperature and rainfall, constitute the sole or the most important elements in human environment. Every one of these elements is doubtless important. Frost, drought, or barrenness of soil may make a region a desert, or dwarf ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... eighty per cent. of the population of China are engaged in agriculture. Rice and tea are the chief products of the south, while wheat and other kinds of grain form the staple crops in the north.[34] The rainfall is very great in the south, but in the north it is only just sufficient to prevent the land from being a desert. When I arrived in China, in the autumn of 1920, a large area in the north, owing to drought, ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... in F. H. King's classic book on Chinese agriculture, "Farmers of Forty Centuries;" but the most extreme case that has come to my attention is furnished by the Berber tribe of the Matmatas, of Tunis. These people live on the edge of a hilly, limestone plateau, where the rainfall is less than 10 inches and in some years as low ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... another bread pellet upon the heap. "The roads of England are mended with pebbles! 'With the first heavy rainfall,' I've told 'em, 'your road will be a swamp.' Again and again my words have proved true. But d'you suppose they listen to me when I tell 'em so, when I point out the consequences, the consequences to the public ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... explained the hunter. "There's been no rainfall since August. If they find the tenaja empty they'll, have barely enough in the canteens they pack to get them to the next water, the Tenaja Poquita, around behind the mountains and across the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ground, are soon trod on and broken in by cattle; in summer they are choked up with dust and rubbish; and, the loose earth having all been thrown up together in a heap on one side, there is no barrier to the water which in eveiy great rainfall flows in and obliterates the kennel, drowning or driving out ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... similar latitude, with the exception of Sweden, enjoys the same immunity from intense cold. This is owing to the Gulf Stream, which also imparts its genial influence to Scandinavia. In summer the heat is never excessive, the rainfall is insignificant, and thunderstorms are rare. July is the warmest, and January the coldest month, but the mean temperature of Helsingfors in mid-winter has never fallen below that of Astrakhan, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... repair; and indeed the custodian said frankly enough, on reappearing, that they were merely built over the prisons on the site of the original towers. The storied stream of the Bacchiglione sweeps through the grounds, and now, swollen by the rainfall, it roared, a yellow torrent, under a corner of the prisons. The towers rise from masses of foliage, and form no unpleasing feature of what must be, in spite of Signor P——, a delightful Italian garden ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... is that on the earth the supply of water by rainfall and snows is abundant, and it only requires the warmth of the sun to cause vegetation to spring up again at the proper season when ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... old sorcerer of my acquaintance was a most interesting study. If he was asked for fine weather (which, by the way, in the Solomons is the usual request, the rainfall being enormous), he used to temporize in a truly masterly manner. First he would hold out for more payment. This policy he could continue for an indefinite length of time, as he would of course require payment in a form which he knew was difficult or impossible for the natives to comply with. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... flock thus freed its coat from the accumulated moisture of a long rainfall; then the huddled heap, in which they had combined to withstand the weather and show tail to the western storm, began to scatter. With coughs and sneezes the beasts wandered forward again, and pursued their ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... coast district there are several large private subdivisions of excellent dairy land. In the tableland districts, where the rainfall averages 30 in. per annum, dairy farming has taken firm hold. Private owners are also cutting up tracts of splendid partially-improved land, and offering it at from $19.20 to $28.80 per acre, on ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... to make his decision before he learned all that it might, or might not, reveal; he was proud to believe that he knew a thorough-bred, without a pedigree for confirmation. And when Sunday morning dawned and the floodlike downpour had subsided to a gray and steady rainfall, even Caleb, none too weatherwise, knew that it had come to "stay fer a spell." He knew that the boy who had come marching down the valley road, two days before, was going to stay, too, if it lay within ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... be seen well into the summer time. The climate is not what one would expect, unless he should look at the map, and note the warm Kuro Siwo (Japan current) sweeping along the southern Alaskan coast. Zero weather is uncommon, and except for the great rainfall the island is a very comfortable place of existence; existence, because that is the limit reached by most of the people. The few connected with the mission and the two fur companies are necessarily busy people, the latter ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... to time to make him shift his couch. Hearing the rain, he was vaguely puzzled because he felt so little of it; for he knew that even the densest of fir thickets were not proof against a prolonged and steady rainfall. He was glad to profit, however, by a phenomenon which he could not comprehend, so he lay close, and restrained his impatient appetite, and kept his white fur dry and warmly fluffy. Had the night been fine, he ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... limbs hurt terribly at first, but grew numb with the circulation shut off. The jolting ride continued endlessly, he had no way of measuring the time. A rainfall soaked him, then he felt his clothes steaming as ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... crossed the river, the stream was still fordable. When he heard his brother's piteous cries for help, he quaked to think what might have happened to Thad if he had not recognized the presence of Satan in the moral shed-room, and summarily ejected him. The rainfall had been sufficient to aggregate considerable water in the gullies about the sink-hole, and these, emptying into the cavity and sending a continuous stream over the boy, had served to chill him through and through, and he had a pretty fair chance of being drowned, or dying from cold and ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... overview: Western Sahara depends on pastoral nomadism, fishing, and phosphate mining as the principal sources of income for the population. The territory lacks sufficient rainfall for sustainable agricultural production, and most of the food for the urban population must be imported. Incomes in Western Sahara are substantially below the Moroccan level. The Moroccan Government controls all trade and other economic activities ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... not be a very severe penance for an island on which the rainfall averages 124 inches per year; but when vegetation suffers from the cruelty of four almost rainless months, promises and slights amount to something more than mere discourtesy. How genuine the thanksgiving to the soft skies after an incense-stimulating shower. Insects whirl in the sunshine. Among ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... for 'the center,' but the 'ends of the town' always voted 'no'. On one occasion, in order to allay suspicion of extravagance, a leading villager moved that, whatever system of sewerage be adopted, the surface water and rainfall be allowed to take their natural course down-hill in the ordinary gutters. The farmers sniffed danger in this wily proposition and voted an overwhelming 'No.' Accordingly by the local law of Amherst, water had to run uphill until the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... cabinet of the President. In the Agricultural Department John Gray, being clever and a hard worker, had risen rapidly, and had finally been appointed assistant to the ranking official whose duty it was to visit certain arid regions of Arizona and there seek by scientific methods to produce a sudden rainfall over parched areas, and so make the desert blossom ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... in creating and controlling climate as long as there was any to control. Sending forth electromagnetic waves it massed and directed the atmospheric pressure, sending heat waves here, cold ones there, thus causing droughts and rainfall at will. But now, as with the case of most of the other machines, Omega needed it no longer. He kept it because it linked him with the joy of the past. Besides, there was the mind-control appliance by whose aid man's mind might visit other worlds. This was ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... 1843, Charles J. Tyers was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands for the district. He endeavoured to make his way overland to the scene of his future labours, but the mountains were discharging the accumulated waters of the winter and spring rainfall, every watercourse was full, and the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... to you as another good technique. In order to help the subject relax, I have been using a phonograph record or tape that I recorded containing the continuous sound of various degrees of rain. One side has a half hour of very soft, light rainfall such as you have experienced in listening to rain falling on grass, canvas or a tent top. The other side or track contains a half hour of rain effects such as one would hear in a heavy downfall with loud splatterings of water on the pavement. The record ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... rare, there is no wind, but on the coasts one may encounter storms in the time of both the northeast and the southwest monsoons. Though Borneo and the central mountains of New Guinea have the greatest rainfall in the Malay Archipelago, there is a distinct dry season, which is mostly felt during April, May, and June, but is less noticeable in the central parts. As regards the distribution of rain and dry weather, some difference was experienced as between ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... stream so low at this time of the year," he remarked, as he followed his companion up the trail. "You might think it was August. But with no snow to melt and no rainfall this spring, it ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... of the glacial period, as if in every way Nature had been making haste to prepare the land for the husbandman. Soil, climate, topographical conditions, all that the most exacting could demand, are present, but one thing, water, is wanting. The present rainfall would be wholly inadequate for agriculture, even if it were advantageously distributed over the lowlands, while in fact the greater portion is poured out on the heights in sudden and violent thundershowers called "cloud-bursts," the waters of which are fruitlessly ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... must have been designed, it answers its purpose so effectually. Nothing but a mind could have so exactly adapted the slopes of the channels, their capacity, and frequency, to the nature of the soil and the quantity of the rainfall. Again, he would see special adaptation to the wants of man, in broad quiet navigable rivers flowing through fertile plains that support a large population, while the rocky streams and mountain torrents, were confined to those sterile regions suitable only for a small ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... means the best in the known world. We are just the right distance from the river to make this the location of the best town in the state, and probably eventually the state capital. Land will increase in value by leaps and bounds. No stumps, no stones, just the right amount of rainfall—the garden spot of the West, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... was evident here. There was, indeed, no lack of water. I could see a storm cloud gathering in the distance. The air I was breathing seemed unwarrantably moist; and all about me on the ground little pools remained from the last rainfall. But here there was no soil, not so much even as a grain of sand seemed to exist. The air was warm, as warm as a midsummer's day in my own land, a peculiarly oppressive, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... observations. He contrasted the present with the past; this fever-stricken and waterless village with the great city which was called the healthiest in the world. In his opinion the physical change had resulted from the destruction of forests, which brought with it a diminution of the rainfall. "At Cotrone," he said, "we have practically no rain. A shower now and then, but never a wholesome downpour." He had no doubt that, in ancient times, all the hills of the coast were wooded, as Sila still is, and all the rivers abundantly ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... desperately. To attempt the plain on foot meant death. What then was I to do? Glancing at the cliff I saw that there was a gully in it worn by thousands of years of rainfall, in which grew scanty bushes. Into this I ran, and finding it practicable though difficult, began to climb upwards, quite unnoticed by the Zulus who were all employed upon the further side. The end of it was that I reached the very crest of the mount, a patch of bare, brown rock, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... as so often happens in the West, was fertile to the very edge of the Frying-pan and young pinons and bushes had taken root there and managed to keep themselves alive with the snow-moisture of winter, in spite of the scanty rainfall the rest of ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... The river was big and dirty, the rain most hearty. The prospects were so poor that H. stuck to Anthony Trollope in the veranda. A thin piece of water on the lower beat to my mind offered a remote chance for a sea trout, and I was rowed down in a particular direct rainfall to it. The boatman shook his head at the small Bulldog I put on; he would have preferred a darker fly, salmon size. In a rough tumble of water over small boulders, which were not a foot beneath the foam-headed waves, a fish fastened, and the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the Mississippi, stretching from Texas to North Dakota, and westward to the Rocky mountains, lies the plains country. This is a region of light rainfall, where the ground is clad with short grass, while cottonwood trees fringe the courses of the winding plains streams; streams that are alternately turbid torrents and mere dwindling threads of water. The great stretches of natural pasture are broken by gray sage-brush ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... into the hall, where the greatest confusion was prevailing among the deputies with regard to the coming vote. There was quite a rainfall of suggested "resolutions," from a very violent one proposed by Mege, to another, which was merely severe, emanating from Vignon. The ministry, however, would only accept the "Order of the day pure and simple," a mere decision, that is, to pass to the next ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it is usually essential to practice trenching if the best results are to be secured; this is especially true when deep-rooted plants, as beets, parsnips, and other root-crops, are to be grown; it prepares the soil to hold moisture; and it allows the water of heavy rainfall to pass to greater depths rather than to be held as puddles and in mud on ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... staff are gathered, glistening wet and plastered with mud, obtrudes on the left the village of Elchingen, now in the hands of the French. Its white- walled monastery, its bridge over the Danube, recently broken by the irresistible NEY, wear a desolated look, and the stream, which is swollen by the rainfall and rasped by the storm, seems ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... rain which visited us the day we crossed the Makata proved the last of the Masika season. As the first rainfall which we had experienced occurred on the 23rd March, and the last on the 30th April, its duration was thirty-nine days. The seers of Bagamoyo had delivered their vaticinations concerning this same Masika with solemnity. "For forty days," said ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... bubble, then a geyser of water shot up into the air in a cloud of moisture and vapor spray. It fell back to the dry river bed, spread once again upon the gravel that had known only the gentle touch of rainfall for three-quarters of a century and then boiled and roiled in a gathering head downstream rolling loose boulders ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... enormously wealthy landowner near Kiev. He loves to tell how he drove through town behind six white horses. Gambling ruined him, and to pay his debts he sold one acre after another to the Jews, who cut down the timber and ruined the land. Of course, where there are no trees the rainfall is scarce. The crops dried up, and finally Pan Tchedesky and his wife and children were forced into the city. There remained enough of his former property to start a pension. The rooms are full of the remains of his splendor—heavy ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... to Graywater Park is destined to live in my memory for ever. The storm, of which the violet rainfall had been a prelude, gathered blackly over the hills. Ebon clouds lowered upon us as we came racing to the gates. Then the big car was spinning around the carriage sweep, amid a deathly stillness of Nature indescribably gloomy and ominous. I have said, a stillness of nature; but, as Kennedy ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... owing to the vast number of then melting glaciers drained by this river. The Rungeet, on the other hand, though it rises amongst the glaciers of Kinchinjunga and its sister peaks, is chiefly supplied by the rainfall of the outer ranges of Sinchul and Singalelah, and hence its waters are clear, except during ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the immediate result of an enormous rainfall, and not, as is often the case in north temperate latitudes, the combined effect of rainfall and the rapid melting of accumulated snows. The records of weather-observation stations in northern ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... ceremony is believed to secure the success of the harvest. Dulha Deo is the god who averts disease and accident, and the offering made to him should consist of a fowl or goat of reddish colour. Bhimsen is the deity of rainfall, and Dharti Mata or Mother Earth is considered to be the wife of Thakur Deo, and must also be propitiated for the success of the crops. The grain itself is worshipped at the threshing floor by sprinkling water and liquor on to it. Certain Hindu deities are also worshipped by the Baigas, but ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... moderated by southeast trade winds; annual rainfall averages 124 inches; rainy season from November to April, dry season from May to October; little ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... ditches to irrigate large tracts of land which would be otherwise worthless. By means of irrigation, the farmer has control of his water supply and is able to get larger returns than are possible where he depends upon the irregular and uncertain rainfall. It is estimated that in the arid regions of western United States there are 150,000 square miles of land which may be made available for agriculture by irrigation. Perhaps in the future the valley of the lower Colorado may become ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... industry have been rewarded. They grow maize, sugar, tobacco, and vegetables, but their cattle seem to be the most thriving and successful part of their business. In some seasons want of water, and in every season the heavy rainfall at the period when the grain is coming to maturity, are serious drawbacks to agriculture in this district. On the whole, it may be said that Queensland is far more adapted to be a pastoral than an ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the sea, the rainfall in the winter is abundant; but the climate of Upper Egypt is all but rainless, only a few slight showers falling throughout the year. This dryness of the Egyptian air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in such wonderful freshness of color and with such sharpness ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... is any temporary accumulation of water (whether caused by rainfall or otherwise) which is not one of the ordinary and recognised hazards ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... the rainfall. In a wet winter the moisture sinks far into the ground, but not so deep that the thirsty little roots cannot find it in the summer. Early rains are needed to soften the ground for November ploughing, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... the place which has the greatest measured rainfall on the globe, became a popular station, and the discovery of coal there, and at several other places in the hills, attracted to it many visitors, some of whom published accounts of the country and people. The first detailed description was apparently that of the Rev. W. Lish, a Baptist ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... mean, 81. There are three well-marked seasons, temperate and dry from November to February, hot and dry from March to May, and temperate and wet from June to October. The rainy season reaches its maximum in July and August, when the rains are constant and very heavy. The total rainfall has been as high as 114 inches ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... in the key agricultural sector and contributed to a stagnant economy in 1999 and 2000. During that time, however, Morocco reported large foreign exchange inflows from the sale of a mobile telephone license and partial privatization of the state-owned telecommunications company. Favorable rainfall in 2001 led to a growth of 6.5%. Good harvest conditions continued to support GDP growth in 2002. Formidable long-term challenges include: servicing the external debt; modernizing the industrial sector; preparing the economy for freer trade with the EU and US; and improving education and ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... into Mary Carmichael's mind a sentence from her physical geography that she had been obliged to commit to heart in her school-days: "A cloud-burst is a sudden, capricious rainfall, as if the whole cloud had been precipitated at once." She wanted to question her companions as to the accuracy of this definition, but before she had time to frame a sentence the real cloud-burst ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... sewers, separate from the sanitary, were almost ready for service. These sewers carry off the rainfall from the gutters, and were needed to remove the water being ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... that where an opposite result is desired, primitive logic enjoins the weather-doctor to observe precisely opposite rules of conduct. In the tropical island of Java, where the rich vegetation attests the abundance of the rainfall, ceremonies for the making of rain are rare, but ceremonies for the prevention of it are not uncommon. When a man is about to give a great feast in the rainy season and has invited many people, he ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... north, continental climate (cold winter and hot, humid summers with well distributed rainfall); central portion, continental and Mediterranean climate; to the south, Adriatic climate along the coast, hot, dry summers and autumns and relatively cold winters ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... surely of land overcharged with water. There is no escape from the fact that Ireland as a country is cursed with defective natural drainage. The fall of the greater rivers is so slight that they meander hither and thither in "S's," as they say here, and only require a little surplus on the average rainfall to overflow the more valuable land. And it is astonishing how quickly good land left untilled reverts to its primeval condition, or, in the expressive language of the country, "goes back to bog." This has been shown ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the earth removed and the other half made up of vegetable matter, ashes, road dirt, and such manure from the barn and stable as you can spare. Having done this make an arrangement about each tree that will retain all the rainfall which comes down to the earth beneath and collect as much more from the open spaces about as possible. 2. Your old and decaying trees may be saved if decay has not gone too far. But the remedy is an heroic one, and rather expensive as you will find. First treat the decaying trees as described ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... trust you will have no occasion to try the experiment," added Sir Modava. "But cyclones are rare here, except from the last of May and into June, and in October, November, and early in December; so that the port is not liable to more than two storms a year. The average rainfall is forty-nine inches, falling on ninety-five days; but in seventy-four years, ending two years ago, it varied from a foot and a half to seven feet and four inches. It is dry here some years, and rather damp when ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... readily. Repeat the experiment with one of the soils, packing the soil tightly in one tube and leaving it loose in another. The water will be found to penetrate the loose soil more rapidly than the packed soil. We see then that the power of the soil to take in rainfall depends on its texture or the size and compactness of ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... national consequence, but it has, at the rate of forty to one hundred sixty miles annually, invaded all of the cotton district except that of the Carolinas and Virginia. The damage it does, varies according to the rainfall and the harshness of the winter, increasing with the former and decreasing with the latter. At times the damage has been to the extent of a loss of 50 per cent. of the crop, estimated at 400,000 bales of cotton annually, about ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... worst sinners are the larger varieties, and in point of filling quality, medium and small-sized varieties will, in nearly all cases, be found to have the greatest range of adaptability. The larger varieties are more likely to succeed on rich lands where the rainfall, particularly during the summer months, ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore them Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the maidens, Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming, Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of the mermen. Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness, Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others, Pitiful, floated in silence ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... it accumulates. When a can of food is emptied toss it on the fire and burn it out, then drop it in a sink hole that you have dug for slops and unburnable trash, and cover it with earth or ashes so no mosquitoes can breed in it after a rainfall. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... conditions of light, air, rainfall and temperature that make possible the maintenance of life in its ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... 1879, and witnessed the injurious effect of an excessive rainfall, in washing out of the soil nitrate of soda and salts of ammonia, which were sown with the wheat in the autumn. It was an exceedingly wet season, and the loss of nitrates on all the different plots ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... river, which flows into Famine Bay, is encumbered with sand-banks; some 1000 feet further on the plain is transformed into a vast marsh, from which rise the trunks of immense trees, and huge bones, bleached by the action of time, which have been brought down by the heavy rainfall, swelling ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne |
