"Vegetable matter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a morass extending from the limits of the savannah to the foot of the hills—I should think that the fever so prevalent in these districts must be in a great degree attributable to the absolute want of drainage and the decomposition of vegetable matter. Its position was most insalubrious, for the marshy swamps commenced at the very base of hills, and thus as it were encircled the savannahs ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... from it, during its passage, the various elements of fertility he requires for the support of his life. This is what makes him so particularly fond of garden soil, because it is richer in animal and vegetable matter than common earth, and proves therefore more nourishing food. The worm, then, feeds on the fat of the earth, which he converts into azotic aliment for the use of moles, hens and Chinese. It only figures, it is true, for want of something better, in ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... This wool is medium in length but coarse of fiber, and has a tendency to hang in loose, open locks. It is generally sound, but likely to contain vegetable matter. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... individually to moisten soil to the consistency of mortar for the formation of galleries, which, in their way of working, is done by night (so that they are screened from the observation of birds by day in passing and repassing toward any vegetable matter they may wish to devour), but, when their inner chambers were laid open, these were also surprisingly humid. Yet there was no dew, and, the house being placed on a rock, they could have no subterranean passage to the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... In one thousand parts of a Carrot there are ninety-five of sugar, and (according to some chemists) only three of starch. In country districts raw Carrots are sometimes given to children for expelling worms, probably because the vegetable matter passes mechanically through the body unchanged, and scours it. "Remember, William," says Sir Hugh Evans in the Merry Wives of Windsor, "Focative is Caret," "and that" replies Mrs. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... by the sea, and the particles of shells and rock, which have been triturated by the wave, or decomposed by the alternate action of the elements; but there is no vegetable matter, without which there can be no vegetable produce. Observe, Willy,—the skeleton of this earth is framed of rocks and mountains, which have been proudly rearing their heads into the clouds, or lying in dark majesty ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... said that among the Cochiti, Santa Clara, and some other Pueblos a vegetable matter is employed to produce some of their decorative designs; this, however, I was unable to verify, though some of the Indians assured me of the fact, and furnished me a bunch of the plant, which Dr. Vasey, of the Agricultural Department, found to be Cleome integrifolia, a plant common throughout ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... Needless to say that the patented remedies most in request are those that profess a secret and unscientific origin. Those most "purely vegetable" seem most suitable to the wooden-heads who believe in them, but if one were sufficiently advertised as not containing a single trace of vegetable matter, avoiding thus all possible conflict of one organic life with another organic life, it would be just as popular. The favorites are those that have been secretly used by an East Indian fakir, or accidentally discovered as the natural remedy, dug out of the ground by an American ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wave on which she had been swept along, having done its work, receded, leaving too little water for the Fiala's draft of thirty-seven feet. Four launches sent out in different directions to the south and east reported no sign of land, but immense quantities of floating vegetable matter, yellow dust, and the bodies of jackals, camels, zebras, and lions. The fifth launch after great hardships reached the seacoast through the new channel and arrived at Sfax ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... coal, salt, and siliceous sand or grit-stone. Thus there seem to be three divisions of the globe distinctly marked; the first I suppose to have been the original nucleus of the earth, or lava projected from the sun; 2. over this lie the recrements of animal and vegetable matter produced in the ocean; and, 3. over these the recrements of animal and vegetable matter produced upon the land. Besides these there are bodies which owe their origin to a combination of those already mentioned, as siliceous sand, fluor, alabaster; ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Doctor, "had not been seen before since entering Smith's Strait. It is well known to the polar traveller as a migratory bird of the American continent. Like the others of the same family, it feeds upon vegetable matter, generally on marine plants, with their adherent molluscan life. It is rarely or never seen in the interior; and from its habits may be regarded as singularly indicative of open water. The flocks of this bird, easily ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... an English naturalist,—Needham,—and afterwards in France by the learned Buffon. They said that these things were absolutely begotten in the water of the decaying substances out of which the infusion was made. It did not matter whether you took animal or vegetable matter, you had only to steep it in water and expose it, and you would soon have plenty of animalcules. They made an hypothesis about this which was a very fair one. They said, this matter of the animal world, or of the higher plants, appears to be dead, but in reality ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... be manufactured from the refuse animal and vegetable matter of the City of Philadelphia in case of emergency? What quantity could be prepared by elixating or washing the rubbish of old buildings, the earth of stables, cellars, etc., and the soil of certain tracts of the ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... slowly through many years. Limestone rock is very hard and durable, but chemistry teaches us that water charged with carbonic acid gas will readily dissolve it. Rain-water falling from the clouds is sure to come in contact with masses of decaying vegetable matter, which we know is constantly giving off quantities of this gas. Laden with this the water sinks into the ground, and, if it comes in contact with limestone, readily washes some of it away in solution. But beds of limestone rock are noted for containing great fissures through which ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... fossil fishes intermingled with the plant remains in the shales; moreover, some of the coal deposits are covered by beds of limestone containing marine shells which lived in the sea at a very great depth. The alternation of these beds, the great mass of vegetable matter which lived at small distances from the soil which conceals them, and the occurrence of these beds so high up, show that at this time Europe was almost wholly covered by the sea, the summits of the Alps and the Pyrenees being ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... for, in reality, in every direction it was covered thickly with logs in all stages of decay, some only lately fallen, others which could be knocked to pieces with a kick, while the feet sank at almost every step in decomposed vegetable matter. Still this was the region through which, somehow or other, ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... to the beginning of operations, I clambered up on to the ledge. Ferns grew among decaying vegetable matter in masses difficult to push through. Polypodiums with brown, oak-leaf like, infantile fronds clung tightly to the rocks with furry fingers, and the birds'-nests were big enough to conceal a man. A broad and comfortable path it was, leading directly under the crystal, and with ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... many centuries afterward, no one knew that the earth was once the place of immense trees and ferns and rank vegetable growth which had since been buried beneath the surface. But one day, some of this old, buried vegetable matter was found and brought to the surface of the earth. By that time it was not green any longer. It was hard and compact and looked very much like black stone. Someone seemed to think it would burn if fire were applied to it. And, strange ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... which is generally the rainy season, the wind blows from the south for five months, and the other seven months it blows from the north-west over six thousand miles of ocean, and, consequently, is not impregnated with any decayed vegetable matter, and is as pure as air can be. In San Francisco the sun would rise in a clear sky every morning and there would be a perfect calm; by 11 A.M. there would be a little breeze; by 2 or 3 o'clock, a gale. When the sun set the wind would ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... breed in filth, human waste, animal droppings, decayed animal or vegetable matter, and are so made that they carry filth wherever they go. Since the fly alights wherever it pleases, it carries dirt from outside and distributes it wherever ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... almost incalculably numerous order of plants growing on dead vegetable matter, and often produced on a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... is the effect on the process of oxidation of blood under the influence of cold. We all are aware that if a portion of dead animal or vegetable matter be placed at a low temperature, it keeps for a considerable time; and we have evidence of dead animals which, clothed in thick ribbed ice, have been retained from putrefaction for centuries. Hence we say that cold is an antiseptic as alcohol is, and chloroform, and ammonia, and other similar bodies. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... The strength of the fugitives began to fail, and no refuge, no hope, seemed near. Alas! to some the race was lost. The blinding effect of the dense smoke that filled the atmosphere, the suffocating smell of the burning mass of vegetable matter, and the lurid glare of the red flames that came on so rapidly, overpowered alike the horses and their riders: while the roaring of the fire—which sounded like a mighty rushing cataract—and the oppressive heat, seemed to confuse the senses, and destroy the vital powers of the more feeble ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... not touch vegetable matter. Thus they are in reality very useful, as well as dangerous, to the natives, who have their huts cleaned of all the abounding vermin, such as immense cockroaches and centipedes, at ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... working them with the utmost possible rapidity. Presently a large chestnut, not fifty yards from Fitz Hugh, was struck by a shot. The solid trunk, nearly three feet in diameter, parted asunder as if it were the brittlest of vegetable matter. The upper portion started aside with a monstrous groan, dropped in a standing posture to the earth, and then toppled slowly, sublimely prostrate, its branches crashing and all its leaves wailing. Ere long, a little further to the front, another Anak of the forest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... accidental element may play its part in Nature without negativing design in the theist's view. He believes that the earth's surface has been very gradually prepared for man and the existing animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long series of generations imparted fertility to the soil in order that it may support its present occupants, that even beds of coal have been stored up for man's benefit Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... very scanty vegetation of the desert; the chief plants being Kureel, which is a Capparis; Phoke —— and Bheir. Mr. E. also says that the material of which the tope of Manikyalah is built, resembles petrified vegetable matter, an observation to be kept in view. The mottled kingfisher occurs throughout, but is commoner in southern latitudes ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... sufficient quantity of vegetable life is required to furnish oxygen for the fish. In a well balanced aquarium the water requires renewal only two or three times a year. It is well to have an excess of plants and a number of snails, as the snails will devour all the decaying vegetable matter which would otherwise poison the water and kill ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... was not an unalloyed pleasure, because the tormenting gnats were exasperating, and at night the humidity was great, making the bed and everything else damp. The atmosphere was heavy and filled with the odor of decaying vegetable matter never before disturbed. In the morning at five o'clock, my hour for rising, there was considerable chill in the air. It was difficult to see a star here and there through the tall trees and dense undergrowth that surrounded us as closely as the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... substratum from which there arises afterward a spore-bearing growth known as the sporocarp or young mushroom. This vegetative part of the fungus is usually hidden in the soil, or in decayed wood, or vegetable matter. In Figure 3 is a representation of the mycelium of the small pear-shaped puff-ball with a number of small white knobs marking the beginning of the puff-ball. The mycelium exposed here is very similar to the mycelium ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... our felt hats, a proceeding the horse soon came to understand and appreciate. The white and gray Laurentian boulders lay along the roadside. The soil seemed as if made up of decayed and pulverized rock, and doubtless contained very little vegetable matter. It is so barren that it will ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... that, if afterward, the snake gapes, as he is apt to do, a frog has been seen to leap out again. The processes of life are so slow in reptiles, that one meal will not be digested by the snake for many days. He is unable to digest vegetable matter. Our snake is very harmless, and if kept and fed, will quickly learn to recognize its patron, will feed out of his hand, and nestle up his sleeve; but he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... this, Old Mother Nature looked from one to another, and each in turn shook his head. "It is to mix the dead vegetable matter thoroughly with the earth so that the roots of the plants may get it easily," explained Old Mother Nature. "By making those tunnels in every direction and bringing up the earth below to the surface, Grubby Gopher does the same thing. That is ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the location of the house with reference to its surroundings, let us now more carefully examine the character of the soil or earth foundation on which the house shall be built. All soil is made up of varying proportions of mineral and vegetable matter in the interstices of which there are usually to be found more or less air, water, and watery vapor. The mineral substances of soil include almost all of the known minerals, although many of them are found in exceedingly small quantities. ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden |
