"Porous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two fluid porous cell battery. The negative plate is carbon, the positive plate, amalgamated zinc. The depolarizer is nitric acid or electropoion fluid, q.v., in which the carbon is immersed. The last named depolarizer or some ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... around it. Whenever rock was visible it was either sandstone in thin layers, dipping south, or a pebbly conglomerate. Sometimes there was a little coralline limestone, but no volcanic rocks. The forest had a dense luxuriance and loftiness seldom found on the dry and porous lavas and raised coral reefs of Ternate and Gilolo; and hoping for a corresponding richness in the birds and insects, it was with much satisfaction and with considerable expectation that I began my explorations in the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... large, though his lips are thin and bloodless; and his big, prominent, pale brown eyes inspire anything but confidence. His nose, however, is his redeeming feature: it is pronounced straight and well-formed; though I myself should have liked it better if it did not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of a ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... rectangular shape, and from 10 to 20 inches in length by 6 to 12 in width, and are composed of various kinds of rock, the harder, coarse-grained kinds being preferable, though in some instances sandstone is employed; the most desirable stone is porous lava. These stones are sometimes carried with families of the Pueblos moving short distances to the valleys of streams in which they have farms in cultivation. In the permanent villages they are arranged in small rectangular bins (see Fig. 508), each about 20 inches wide and deep, ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... 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
... peculiar to north China and it is not found south of the Yangtsze. The loess is a solid but friable earth of brownish-yellow colour, and when triturated with water is not unlike loam, but differs from the latter by its highly porous and tubular structure. The loess soil is extremely favourable to agriculture. (See LOESS and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... for nine months of the year it is subject to heavy tropical rains, it is comparatively healthy, and freer from fever than many places that appear at first sight better situated. Much is due to the porous sandy soil, but more I believe to what appears at first sight an element of danger, the perfect flatness of the ground. Where there are hills there must be hollows, and in these the air stagnates; whilst here, where the land is quite level, the trade winds that blow pretty constantly ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... damage done by time and weather on an old farmhouse. The ordinary man under these conditions is helpless, but some are inspired by novel ideas, as, for instance, the man who mended the leaking roof with porous plasters. ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... full of it, and then fill the bottle with fine sand, which serves to preserve a low temperature; then place the bottle in a porous cup, same as used in the battery; fill this also with sand, and close the end with plaster of Paris. Place this in a coating-box, and it will be found to act with great uniformity ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... called a plant growth as are the great oaks which shade our houses. The rusts and mildews and blights which destroy our fruit all have their beauty of growth and fruition when we examine them through a lens, and the yeast by which flour and water is made to rise into the porous, spongy dough is just as truly a plant as is the geranium blossoming at ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... more, if your hands are not soiled (as they almost always are by the usages of life), if you put your finger into a little warm water, the water will creep a little way up the finger, though you may not stop to examine it. I have here a substance which is rather porous—a column of salt—and I will pour into the plate at the bottom, not water, as it appears, but a saturated solution of salt which cannot absorb more; so that the action which you see will not be due to its dissolving anything. We may consider the plate to be the candle, ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... like a 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 ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... courts, and the atmosphere within the dwellings was always foul, owing largely to the saturated condition of the walls and ceilings, which for so many years had absorbed the exhalations of the occupants into their porous material. Singular testimony to the absence of sunlight in these courts was furnished by the action of the Parks and Gardens Committee, who desired to brighten the homes of the poorest class by gifts of growing flowers and window-boxes; but these gifts could not be made in courts ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... soils, are unfit for coffee. But I do not mean by "stony soils" land on which many stones are lying, for on that very account it may be most suitable; but I mean land which shows a pebbly stratum just below the surface, or such as is of a porous, stony nature. In the choice of situation care must be taken to select that which is as much as possible protected against the south-east wind, because its dry influence is very injurious to the coffee plant, and also prevents the growth of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the houses in Havana are built of "mamposteria" or rubble masonry, a porous material which freely absorbs atmospheric as well as ground moisture. The mark of this can often be seen high on the walls, which varies from 2 to 7 feet in the houses generally. The roofs are excellent, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... just the word," chimed in Francesca delightedly; "when you care for a place you grow porous, as it were, until after a time you are precisely like blotting-paper. Now, there was Italy, for example. After eight weeks in Venice, you were completely Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wherein the big beaver lay down to recover himself was not spacious nor particularly well ventilated, but in every other respect it was very admirably adapted to the needs of its occupants. Through the somewhat porous ceiling, a three-foot thickness of turf and sticks, came a little air, but no light. This, however, did not matter to the beavers, whose ears and noses were of more significance to them than their eyes. In floor area the chamber was something like five ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... become a loaf of raised bread that was lighter and, of course, more digestible. It was this discovery that led up to the modern bread-making processes, in which substances known as leavening agents, or ferments, are used to make bread light, or porous. Chief among the substances is yeast, a microscopic plant that produces ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... were large, far beyond the supposable wants of a single Indian family. They were constructed of adobe brick and of stone, and plastered over in both cases with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white; and some were constructed of a red porous stone. In cutting and dressing this stone flint implements were ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... equivocate, who would not be silent and who would be heard." Then came the stage when men tried legislative palliatives; when all manner of political medicaments and poultices were tried as cures, which were about as effective in destroying the poison as a porous plaster would be to draw out the fire from a volcano. For more than sixty years a veil had hung before men's minds, and it was as if they saw slaves as trees walking, in an unreal world. The sea captain fears a fog more than ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... streets near the water-side, are, for the most part, lofty, and built close together. The bricks are of a peculiar nature, being porous, and capable of resisting weather better than the firm, close, and red bricks of the northern states. They are of a dark brown colour, which gives to the buildings a gloomy appearance. The roofs are tiled ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... humid climates on humid soils, somewhat shallow, and underlain by a more or less infertile subsoil. In fact, they were obtained under conditions really unfavorable to plant growth. It has been explained in Chapter V that soils formed under arid or semiarid conditions are uniformly deep and porous and that the fertility of the subsoil is, in most cases, practically as great as of the topsoil. There is, therefore, in arid soils, an excellent opportunity for a comparatively easy penetration of the roots to great ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... all, must eat it hot, or soaked in butter. No wonder such persons do not like plain bread, and say it is tasteless. But it must not be denied that bakers often suffer this kind of bread to be over-risen, in order to make it sufficiently light and porous. This renders it less tasteful, and from the saleratus ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... level of the 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 appearance, ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... lost to the view of the prince and nobles, a dull splash alone testifying to his arrival at the bottom. Fortunately for Jung there was plenty of water—a fact of which most probably he was well aware—and there were, moreover, many chinks and crannies in the porous stone of which the well was built; so, having learnt his lesson, Jung clung dextrously to the side of the well until midnight, when his friends, who had been previously apprized of the part they were to perform, came and rescued him ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... and when they are as light 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 bake them about ten minutes; taking out one to try when you think ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... went a river large, Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown That mountain as his garden mould, high raised Upon the rapid current, which through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Water'd the garden; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome passage now appears; And now, divided into four ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... 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 ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... for flim-flamming the generous public, but my meal ticket was punched so full of holes that it looked like a porous plaster, and I consented. Merritt spent most of the night decorating that python, and in the morning it looked like the pennant of a man-o'-war. I had to sit up and watch him, for he had the artistic temperament, and he was so carried away by his enthusiasm that if I hadn't restrained him he would ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... hyperaemia of the tissues in relation to a callous ulcer of the leg often leads to changes in the underlying bones. The periosteum is abnormally thick and vascular, the superficial layers of the bone become injected and porous, and the bones, as a whole, are thickened. In the macerated bone "the surface is covered with irregular, stalactite-like processes or foliaceous masses, which, to a certain extent, follow the line of attachment ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... while as individuals the threads are so minute as to be scarcely or not at all visible to the naked eye. Similar thread-fungi may often be found in the woods among damp leaves, under rotten logs, and on those porous fungi which project, shelf-like, from the trunks of trees. At present there is no way known for destroying the "flock," except to take up and destroy every clump of mushrooms attacked by it. Fortunately the disease is not very serious if proper precautions ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... the 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 ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the rigging as it fell. At this time we were in the latitude of 64 deg. 41' south, longitude 155 deg. 44' west. The ice we took up proved to be none of the best, being chiefly composed of frozen snow; on which account it was porous, and had imbibed a good deal of salt water; but this drained off, after lying a while on deck, and the water then yielded was fresh. We continued to stretch to the east, with a piercing cold northerly wind, attended with a thick fog, snow, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... to me: 'Have 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, holy Elizabeth ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... vaulted—viz. in 1242, in the time of Henry Foliot. This work was done by the monks themselves, who thought, as Professor Willis suggests, that they could do it better than common workmen. Their work is made of a light and porous kind of stone, treated with plaster on the under-side, and it was rendered necessary by the previous roof, which was of wood, having been destroyed by fire in 1190. Of this fire the piers certainly show the traces to this day, all having become reddened and slightly calcined. To make the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... is porous, easy to cultivate, and exceedingly productive. A strong team is required to break up the prairies, on account of the firm, grassy sward which covers them. But when subdued, they become ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... suggested the need of care, but, whatever the explanation of the animal's 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 ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... 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, ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... Mrs. Fontage's rescue. No one would give a thousand dollars for the Rembrandt; but to tell Mrs. Fontage so had become as unthinkable as murder. I had, in fact, on returning from my first inspection of the picture, refrained from imparting to Eleanor my opinion of its value. Eleanor is porous, and I knew that sooner or later the unnecessary truth would exude through the loose texture of her dissimulation. Not infrequently she thus creates the misery she alleviates; and I have sometimes suspected her of paining people in order that ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... slender twigs of the weeping willow, it is made much deeper, so that when swayed about violently by the wind the young may not tumble out. It has been observed also, that the nests built in the warm Southern States are much slighter and more porous in texture than those in the colder regions of the north. Our own house-sparrow equally well adapts himself to circumstances. When he builds in trees, as he, no doubt, always did originally, he constructs a well-made domed nest, perfectly fitted to protect his young ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... generally preferred. Often a shovel or plate of iron is used. Three pounds of amalgam, from which the liquid metal has been carefully pressed out, will yield one pound of gold. The gold remaining after the quicksilver has been driven off by heat from the amalgam, is a porous mass, somewhat resembling ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... dangers, water and heat. The vein was porous and water was constantly trickling out of it. Then, too, there were "water pockets," or natural reservoirs in the rock, and any moment the stroke of a pick might let out a torrent and force the miners to ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... in the mill-stone quarry of Nieder-Mendig, quoting Karsten's Archiv fuer Bergbau.[167] The ice is found in the hottest days of summer, although the interior of the quarry is connected with the outer air by many side shafts. The porous nature of the stone is assigned as the cause of the phenomenon. Daubeny (On Volcanoes) describes the remarkable basaltic deposits at Niedermennig—as he spells it—but says nothing of ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... as millet, Indian corn, and broom seed, from which a coarse description of bread is made. The Lichnitza, which runs through it, is a mere stream. It takes its rise near the Austro-Bosnian frontier, and loses itself in the hills which surround Blato. The plain is porous and full of holes, from which, in the late autumnal months, the waters bubble up. This continues until the river itself overflows, covering the entire plain to a considerable depth, in some parts as much as thirty-six feet. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... crystals they are called spars, some of which possess a double refraction, as observed by Sir Isaac Newton. When these crystals are jumbled together or mixed with some colouring impurities it is termed marble, if its texture be equable and firm; if its texture be coarse and porous yet hard, it is called lime-stone; if its texture be very loose and porous it is termed chalk. In some rocks the shells remain almost unchanged and only covered, or bedded with lime-stone, which seems to have been dissolved and sunk down ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... treated with the least haughtiness, will generally, like the Frenchman, melt at once at a touch of 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 ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... newcomer in the shape of an old man with a grey head adorned with a faded velvet skull-cap, a pointed beard, a lean, withered frame, prominent cheekbones, a red, porous-looking, cunningly hooked nose, and the eyes ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... glowing colour of all three is splendidly relieved against green vegetation and blue mountain-flanks. Their material is travertine—a calcareous stone formed by the deposit of petrifying waters, which contains fragments of reeds, spiral shells, and other substances, embedded in the porous limestone. In the flourishing period of old Poseidonia these travertine columns were coated with stucco, worked to a smooth surface, and brilliantly tinted to harmonise with the gay costumes of a Greek festival. Even now this coating of fine sand, mingled with slaked lime ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... substitutes. His flumes were knock-kneed and bow-legged, and in places they had no legs at all. Their sides were warped and bulged with the alternate damp and drouth, heat and cold. The lumber was bleached white, and porous with decay. It was with difficulty they could be persuaded to remain at their water-carrying capacity. The ditches were choked with willows and maples to such an extent that they were abandoned only in spots where ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... a very small proportion of fine ore in their mixtures, particularly when the ore is magnetic, not easily reduced. The problem to be solved was to market an agglomerated material so as to avoid the drawbacks of fine ore. The agglomerated product must be porous so as to afford access of the furnace-reducing gases to the ore. It must be hard enough to bear transportation, and to carry the furnace burden without crumbling to pieces. It must be waterproof, to a certain ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of the phenomenon is easily 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 surrounding hills ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... 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 which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... arms Yield earth a welcome. For the rest, whate'er The sets thou plantest in thy fields, thereon Strew refuse rich, and with abundant earth Take heed to hide them, and dig in withal Rough shells or porous stone, for therebetween Will water trickle and fine vapour creep, And so the plants their drooping spirits raise. Aye, and there have been, who with weight of stone Or heavy potsherd press them from above; This ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... immensely quickened rate and can even be carried out as a continuous operation. The only substance which possesses sufficiently strong catalytic properties for the reaction is cupric chloride. If pieces of porous clay are soaked in a solution of this salt and dried and kept at a temperature of 450 deg. C. (in practice it is necessary to go to a rather higher temperature), it is possible continuously to convert a united stream of hydrochloric ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "Garden of Cyrus." It is so big that there are endless "episodes" of garden beauty I think all Italy 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, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... All kinds of articles fell out in the aisle. I remember seeing a chest-protector and a linen coat, a slab of seal-brown gingerbread and a pair of stoga boots, a hairbrush and a bologna sausage, a plug of tobacco and a porous plaster. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... afterwards saw this dreadful place, also a legacy from the prehistoric people who lived in Kor. The only objects in the cave itself were slabs of rock arranged in various positions to facilitate the operations of the torturers. Many of these slabs, which were of a porous stone, were stained quite dark with the blood of ancient victims that had soaked into them. Also in the centre of the room was a place for a furnace, with a cavity wherein to heat the historic pot. But the most dreadful ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... rivers which feed the lake, there is no apparent means by which the water is carried off. The only conclusion that can be arrived at is, that when the lake rises above a certain height, as the soil around is sandy and porous, the surplus waters find their way through it; and such I believe to ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... 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 ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... beginner some time to master these branch joints, for not only must they be wiped symmetrically for the sake of appearances, but they must be wiped while the solder is hot to secure a tight joint. A joint that is wiped with solder that is too cold will be porous and will leak when put under pressure. With care the same pipe can be used throughout for all the positions ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... a breaking down of the barrier between literary and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is that neologisms should be judged on their merits, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... 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 ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... supply of Egyptian earthenware, and dishes of pewter and brass. The retainers, if they required a plate, found one in the large flat barley cake with which each was supplied. For the principal guests there was no want of coarse goblets of Bohemian glass; delicious water abounded in vases of porous pottery, which might be blended, if necessary, with the red or white wine of the mountain. The rice, which had been dressed with a savoury sauce, was eaten with wooden spoons by those who were supplied with these instruments; but in general the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... had not become general then, and the frail, brightly painted desert town was shaded by the light-reflecting, wind-loving trees of the desert, whose roots are always seeking water and whose leaves are always talking about it, making the sound of rain. The long porous roots of the cottonwood are irrepressible. They break into the wells as rats do into granaries, and thieve ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... they were the impressions of the joints of a backbone and of the armour of a great reptile, twelve or more feet long. This great beast had died and got buried in the sand; the sand had gradually hardened over the bones, but remained porous. Water had trickled through it, and that water being probably charged with a superfluity of carbonic acid, had dissolved all the phosphate and carbonate of lime, and the bones themselves had thus decayed and entirely disappeared; but as the sandstone happened to have consolidated ...
— The Past Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... as for frying egg-plant, or beat up eggs for the same purpose; cut the puff-balls into slices half an inch thick, and fry in boiling fat or on a buttered griddle. Puff-balls are also very good stewed with the Coprinus, or with the ordinary mushroom, as their porous substance absorbs ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... rooms must be of brickwork, iron columns being inadmissible. Masonry, too, must be discarded throughout, or used with caution. Some stones—such as red Mansfield—become black with exposure to the heat, and others fare still worse. The employment of porous and absorbent materials must be guarded against throughout this portion of the bath, as it should be remembered that effete matters, particles of waste tissue, and possibly the germs of disease, are continually being given off by the perspiring bathers, and must be prevented from finding ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... in a most dilapidated condition; but in the forecastle it looked like the hollow of an old tree going to decay. In every direction the wood was damp and discoloured, and here and there soft and porous. Moreover, it was hacked and hewed without mercy, the cook frequently helping himself to splinters for kindling-wood from the bitts and beams. Overhead, every carline was sooty, and here and there deep holes were burned in them, a freak of some drunken ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... becomes a layer of fine leaf mold, which in turn offers rich food for the sustenance of millions of tiny feeding rootlets from the trees of the forest. The closely interwoven fibre of these rootlets, everywhere forms a strong web for the carpet, which firmly holds in place the soft, porous, underlying soil, safely protecting it from the destructive erosion which, especially on the steeper slopes, swiftly follows the dashing violence of heavy rain storms. Gradually this leafy carpet grows in strength and thickness; like some great sponge it sucks up and retains ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... 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
... entrance, and here she could discharge her cargo of movables upon the projecting bluff, and again proceed to sea inside of three hours. The live stock thus landed could be marched a short distance across the main island, over a porous soil which refuses to retain the recent foot-prints, until they were again placed in boats, and were concealed upon some of the innumerable little islands which thicken on the waters of the Laguna in the rear. These islands, being covered with a thick growth of bushes and grass, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... thought of substituting in the Bunsen battery a solution of bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid for nitric acid, and of thus making a single liquid pile of it, in suppressing the porous vessel, his idea has been taken up a considerable number of times. Some rediscovered it simply, while others, who were better posted in regard to the work of their predecessors, took Poggendorff's pile as he conceived it, and, considering the future that was in store for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... tobacco was classified into two main varieties, Oronoco and sweet-scented. Oronoco had a large porous pointed leaf and was strong in taste. Sweet-scented was milder, the leaf was rounder and the fibers were finer. We are also told that sweet-scented grew mostly in the lower parts of Virginia, along the York and James rivers, and later on the ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... maker has been at an entire loss to understand these irregularities, nor has he possessed any means of removing them. The abnormal ripening that occurs takes on various types. Sometimes the cheese will become extraordinarily porous, filled with large holes which cause the cheese to swell out of proper shape and become worthless. At other times various spots of red or blue appear in the manufactured cheese; while again unpleasant tastes and flavours develop which render ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... 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
... rivers now dried up gold would more naturally be found than in younger streams, and especially that where round pebbles indicated a strong eddy ten times as much gold might be expected as in the level parts. Gravel and shingle were cleared away without examination, then a bed of gray clay, as too porous to hold gold; but when a stratum of pipeclay was reached the diggers knew that not an ounce of gold would be found beneath, and their search was confined to a little streak of brownish clay, about an inch in thickness, just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... years well and usefully spent, still vigorous and productive. We met specimens afterward even taller and larger than this, and they are said sometimes to reach the height of a hundred feet. The timber is light and porous, and is in great demand for boats. Lower down, the various palms, especially the cocoa-nut and cabbage, were all about us. The former is found in nearly every tropical clime, and is of all trees the one most indispensable to the East Indian, furnishing him with meat, drink, medicine, clothing, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... opening it, I found it to contain a cake of virgin silver, moulded on purpose to fill the box, weighing 200 dollars; and on examining the rest, we found five more of the same kind. These cakes of silver, being very porous, were nearly of the some weight with so much marmalade, and were evidently contrived for the purpose of defrauding the king of Spain of his fifths, which he exacts from all silver procured in the mines of Peru. We doubtless left many such cakes behind ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... to preserve the shape, as it is very easily stretched and pulled out of shape while sewing on the edge wire. The same method is used in covering a neteen frame as with the buckram frame. The velvet, if velvet is used, can be glued on, but the material is so porous that it is not very satisfactory. Neteen and crinoline make excellent foundations for braid hats, as these materials are light in weight, soft, and pliable. They are also very satisfactory for ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... 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
... we leave the trenches may we cheer?" officers have been asked in the dead of winter, when water stood deep over the porous mud and morning found a scale of ice ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the chamber 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 great accuracy and its changes in weight obtained, ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... which is broken or screened, is best for grates, and the nut-coal, for small stoves. Three tons are sufficient, in the Middle States, and four tons in the Northern, to keep one fire through the Winter. That which is bright, hard, and clean, is best; and that which is soft, porous, and covered with damp dust, is poor. It will be well to provide two barrels of charcoal, for kindling, to every ton of anthracite coal. Grates, for bituminous coal, should have a flue nearly as deep as the grate; and the bars should be round, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... except in English,—that is, in that compound of Teutonic and Romanic which derives its heartiness and strength from the one and its canorous elegance from the other. The Saxon language does not sing, and, though its tough mortar serve to hold together the less compact Latin words, porous with vowels, it is to the Latin that our verse owes majesty, harmony, variety, and the capacity for rhyme. A quotation of six lines from Wither ends at the top of the very page on which Mr. Parr lays down his extraordinary dictum, and we will let this answer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... 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
... gang that they swill patent medicines instead of lettin' that Jones up the street give' em a quick finish over the prescription counter. That pill-wrangler couldn't tell the difference between an auger-hole riffle-board and a porous plaster if there wasn't a label on the box. Jeeminnetticus!' says Hadds, 'when he mixes coffin varnish for a man you'd think he was scramblin' eggs. Come on, Washy,' he says, 'while you got the ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... building. The kennel is generally built on a sand-bed, or on a sandstone rock, while the healthiest grounds in England are on a stiff clay, and they are the healthiest because they are the least porous. Although this may be contrary to the opinion and prejudice of the majority of sportsmen, it is a ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... luxurious 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 known ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... all 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 Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... be centered on the island. The rain fell on the fields, converting them, into marshes; it rushed down the declivities of the roadways, overflowing like rivers; it soaked the mountains like great sponges through the porous soil of the pine forest and thickets. The flare of the lightning gave hasty glimpses, like visions in a dream, of the blackish sea, the fretting foam, and flooded fields, which seemed filled with fiery fish, the trees glistening beneath ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... volcanic. In the neighbourhood of Kriservick Madame Pfeiffer saw a long, wide valley, traversed by a current of lava, half a mile in length; a current consisting not merely of isolated blocks and stones, but of large masses of porous rock, ten or twelve feet high, frequently broken up by fissures ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... been cut down four years. To the different qualities of the wood of Norfolk Island and New South Wales, perhaps the difference of soil may in some measure be traced. That of Norfolk Island is light and porous: it rots and turns into mould in two years. Besides its hardness that of Port Jackson abounds with red corrosive gum, which contributes ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... large stretches of rock. Here wild vines and lupines were growing in patches where the lava had decayed into soil. Then came bare slopes with dark hollow and sharp ridges. We walked on old stiff lava-streams. Sometimes we had to plod through piles of coarse, porous cinders. Sometimes we climbed over tangled, lumpy beds of twisted, shiny rock. Sometimes we looked into dark arched tunnels. Red streams had once flowed out of them. A few times we passed near fresh cracks in the mountain. Here steam ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... takes the prize at the county fair. It looks like pound-cake. I don't want you girls to make flabby, porous bread, full of air-holes. I want you to learn how to knead it till it is just ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... among them—they came down and drew their drinking-water from the river, either beside the camels or down-stream of them, with complete indifference. It is true this water percolates drop by drop through large, porous clay pots before it is drunk, but even so, it would have seemed that they would have preferred its coming from up-stream of the derelict "ships of the desert." On the third day, to their mild surprise, we managed with infinite difficulty to tow the camels out through the shallow ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... better proof of this—at least I should have in every gravel-pit at Eversley—in a few pieces of a stone which is not chalk-flint at all; flattish and oblong, not more than two or three inches in diameter; of a grayish colour, and a porous worm-eaten surface, which no chalk-flint ever has. They are chert, which abound in the greensand formation; and insignificant as they look, are a great token of a most important fact; that the currents which formed our sands and gravels set from the south during a long series of ages, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... river is as much his own as if it belonged to him; he gets all he wants by giving himself very little trouble, and has no cares. We needed this man's boat for our expedition, and we found it drawn into a little cove beside the ruined mill, long since abandoned. It was a somewhat porous old punt, with small fish swimming about in the bottom; but it was well enough for our purpose. In the warm sunshine of the October afternoon we glided gently down the quiet stream, which is very deep, but so clear that you can see all the water-plants which revel in it, down to the sand and pebbles. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... each man from eighteen to twenty inches space in which to lie down, and just room enough to stretch his legs well. With our sleeping bags they were entirely comfortable, no matter what the weather outside. The snow is porous enough to admit of air circulation, but even a gale of wind without would not affect the temperature within. It is claimed by the natives that when the wind blows, a snow house is warmer than in a period ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... is. Well, patent kid, as we call it, is not only light weight and elastic, but it is also porous. In fact, it is the only patent leather made that is not air-tight. It is the air-tightness of patent leather, you know, which makes it so hot ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... baking to the cold air inclosed in the mixture? With what material did the flour combine during baking? Into what form was a part of the water changed during baking? Explain fully how the mixture was made porous. ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... taken up, and put into the tin pannikin—a quart measure—one being marked with a spot of red—by blood drawn from Striker's own arm, which he has purposely punctured. Soon absorbed by the porous substance of the shell, it cannot be ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the solid separate from each other and disappear from view. (Shown in dropping salt in water.) At the same time they mix with the solvent, forming a solution, from which they separate only with great difficulty. For this reason solids in solution can diffuse through porous partitions along with the solvents in which they are ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... of oxide, and resulting in the insoluble, undecomposable, pliant, and tough material known to the commercial world as leather. The first step in the oil dressing, after the skins have been duly soaked to render them porous and absorptive, is to cover them with fish oil and place them in the stocks or fulling machines—huge wooden hammers with notched faces working in iron cases—where they are beaten and turned, and subjected to a uniform pressure until the oil is gradually ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... Congo; southern Sudan provides shelter to Ugandans seeking periodic protection from soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army; Sudan accuses Eritrea of supporting Sudanese rebel groups; efforts to demarcate the porous boundary with Ethiopia have been delayed by civil and ethnic fighting in Sudan; Kenya's administrative boundary extends into the southern Sudan, creating the "Ilemi Triangle"; Egypt and Sudan retain claims to administer triangular areas ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... gazed at the house, which was, as it were, a type of the wretched buildings of the neighborhood. The tottering hovel, built of porous stone in rough blocks, was coated with yellow plaster much cracked, and looked ready to fall before a gust of wind. The roof, of brown tiles covered with moss, had sunk in several places, and gave ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... how to do it. In that tank is a porous asbestos packing saturated with acetone, under pressure. Thus they carry acetylene safely, for it is dissolved and the possibility of explosion ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... used 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 sponge, which are cut off before the merchants ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... Mobile, New Orleans, the West Indies, or Central America, adds to their chances of gain. These people neither plant nor sow; their isle is a low barren spot, surrounded by a beach of white sand, formed of disintegrated porous limestone, and a covering of the same sand, spread thinly over the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... is known that the rich alluvial soils of the West are remarkable for retaining water in winter. On level, and even high prairie land, water will stand in winter, and thoroughly saturate the soil and freeze up. This is very destructive to the tender, porous root of the cherry-tree. How shall such locations be made dry, and these evils prevented? By carting on gravel and sand. Put two or three loads of sand or gravel, or both, in the shape of a slight mound, for each cherry-tree. There should first be a slight excavation, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... 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 of ice thus obtained are broken into small pieces, a little ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... hard granite at every road-section between Galle, Colombo, and Ratnapoora, with the difference that the granite and gneiss here crumbled down to a coarse sand, which was again bound together by newly-formed hydrated peroxide of iron to a peculiar porous sandstone, called by the natives cabook. This sandstone forms the layer lying next the rock in nearly all the hills on that part of the island which we visited. It evidently belongs to an earlier geological period than the Quaternary, for it is older than the recent formation of valleys ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;—the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,—its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... high to the ridge, and held twelve men. Each sleeper had 8-1/3 square feet of floor to rest upon, and 25 cubic feet of air to breathe through the night, with no ventilation, except what air passed in through the door-way, when left open, and through the porous cloth that covered the tent. Some of the tents of one of the regiments encamped at Worcester had 56 feet of floor-surface, and 160 feet of air, which was divided among six men, giving each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... dozen different grains cultivated for human consumption, the demand should concentrate upon wheat? One might almost say that the progress of civilization is marked by raised bread. And wheat has, beyond all other grains, the unique properties that make possible a light, porous yet somewhat tenacious loaf. We like the taste of it, mild but sweet; the feel of it, soft yet firm; the comfort of it, almost perfect digestion of every particle. We have been brought up on it and it is a hardship to change our food habits. It takes courage and resolution. It takes visions ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... porous, and therefore allows easily fusible substances (such as alkalies and fluxes) to pass into it, while other substances less fusible, such as metals, to ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... set to and ransacked the lockers, where, amongst a vast variety of miscellaneous matters, I was not long in finding a bottle of very tolerable rum, some salt junk, some biscuit, and a goglet or porous earthen jar of water, with some capital cigars. By this time I was like to faint with the heat and smell; so I filled a tumbler with good half—and—half and swigged it off. The effect was speedy; I thought I could ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... explanation of this freezing at the bottom of rivers is to be found in the fact that water when kept still may be cooled down below the freezing- point without being congealed; but if the vessel in which it is kept be shaken, a portion of it will be converted into a porous, spongy ice, and the temperature immediately rises to 32 degrees. In the deeps of rivers the same cooling below the freezing-point takes place without congelation, but as soon as this water reaches the stream below, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... be of a light and porous character, easily permeable by water, and free from the decomposing remains of excretions of man or animals. There is much reason for the belief also that the level of the ground-water plays a somewhat important part in the ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... necessary, and that 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 of underwear is one to be determined largely by individual ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... forming the point at Luders bay consist of a porous trap, or basalt—a volcanic product of a modern period. The rocks belong to agglomerated masses, which form the immediate ground of the cascades, and have been already mentioned as constituting a bed of cemented conglomerate rocks, appearing at various places along the river. Here they are ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... 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
... by cutting down a few inches into the solid white coral—or a good many feet, where a hill intrudes itself—and smoothing off the surface of the road-bed. It is a simple and easy process. The grain of the coral is coarse and porous; the road-bed has the look of being made of coarse white sugar. Its excessive cleanness and whiteness are a trouble in one way: the sun is reflected into your eyes with such energy as you walk along that you want to sneeze all the time. Old Captain Tom Bowling found another difficulty. He joined ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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; ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and what you were going to do, and what was happening to you. (She had really known, in Dresden, what was happening to Nicky when Desmond made him marry her.) It was as if in her the walls that divide every soul from every other soul were made of some thin and porous stuff that let things through. And in this life of yours, for the moments that she shared it, she lived intensely, with uncanny delight and pain that were her own and ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair |
