"Subsoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sovereignty of a coastal state extends beyond its land territory and internal waters to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea in the UNCLOS (Part II); this sovereignty extends to the air space over the territorial sea as well as its underlying seabed and subsoil; every state has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles; the normal baseline for measuring the breadth of the territorial sea is the mean low-water line along the coast ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of unprecedented faith, God's faith, Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd, The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid bare, Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... to Sam's questions, they informed him there was first-rate bottom-land fifteen miles up the river on the other side. This was the famous Spirit River land, eighteen inches of black loam on a sandy subsoil. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... believe that Salisbury Plain is known for it, and I hear that all the ground that troops are now occupying is to be ploughed up when we leave. As far as that goes we have ploughed it up a bit already, but a systematic ploughing will make it more regular. The subsoil is only four inches, then you come to chalky clay. The tent-pegs when they are taken from the ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... was hurled upward, carrying with it the artillery-men, with their four guns, and three companies of soldiers. As the huge mass fell backwards it buried the startled men under immense clods—tons of dirt. Some of the artillery was thrown forty yards towards the enemy's line. The clay subsoil was broken and piled in large pieces, often several yards in diameter, which afterwards protected scores of Federals when surrounded in the crater. The early hour, the unexpected explosion, the concentrated fire of the enemy's batteries, startled and wrought confusion among brave men accustomed ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... and clay, and the subsoil, which you see in the cliffs, is yellow sandstone—the loveliest, goldenest soil in the world," ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... inside, interior; interspace^, subsoil, substratum; intrados. contents &c 190; substance, pith, marrow; backbone &c (center) 222; heart, bosom, breast; abdomen; vitals, viscera, entrails, bowels, belly, intestines, guts, chitterings^, womb, lap; penetralia [Lat.], recesses, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... facility of cleansing will be greatly increased. A smooth surface, between which and the subsoil is interposed a thick concrete—which grows as hard and impermeable as iron—will not generate mud and filth to one-fiftieth of the extent of either granite roads or Macadam. It is probable that if there were no importations of dirt from the wheels of carriages ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... to endow the birth-stock of a New World. For feudalism, caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from political institutions, still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in this country, entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the very subsoil, of education, and of social ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... had been made to dig a tank in the garden, but the subsoil water proving too low, it had been abandoned, unfinished, with the excavated earth left piled up into a hillock. On the top of this height my father used to sit for his morning prayer, and as he sat the sun would rise at the edge of the undulating expanse which stretched away to the eastern ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... decay. Thus on the surface, where the waste has weathered longest, it is gradually made fine enough to support the growth of plants, and is then known as soil. The coarser waste beneath is sometimes spoken of as subsoil. Soil usually contains more or less dark, carbonaceous, decaying organic matter, called humus, and is then often termed the humus layer. Soil forms not only on waste produced in place from the rock beneath, but also on materials which have been transported, such as sheets of ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... dry. For this reason porous soil, covered with stout turf and underlaid by a sandy or gravelly subsoil, is best. A site on clay soil, or where the ground water approaches the surface, is damp, ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... detective and the volcanologist joined him in the cavern. The top surface of the ground was rolled up into waves like the sea. The sides of the hole were almost sheer. The naked rock was exposed for thirty feet. Above the rock could be seen the subsoil, and then the layer of top soil and vegetation. Dr. Bird was carefully examining the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... to undertake this task is a proof of the complexity of education, of the bewildering tanglement of its root-system, of the depths to which some of its roots descend into the subsoil of human-life. The defect in our system of education which I am trying to diagnose is one which the "business man," who may have had reason to complain of the output of our elementary schools, will probably account for in one sentence and propound a remedy for in another. But ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... cultivation of turnips, which kept the land at once employed and in good heart, and afforded a supply of excellent fodder. Farmers, too, began to learn the profit to be derived from marling, manuring, and subsoil drainage, and to use better implements which did their work more thoroughly and with less labour of man and beast. The increased demand for meat caused sheep no longer to be valued chiefly for their wool, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... questions, but finds no answer to them. To discover the false seed of poesy which lies in those heads and fructifies in those lives, it is necessary to dig into them; and when we do that we soon come to a thin subsoil beneath the surface. The Parisian shopkeeper nurtures his soul on some hope or other, more or less attainable, without which he would doubtless perish. One dreams of building or managing a theatre; another longs for the honors of mayoralty; this one desires a country-house, ten miles from ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... habits of the two plants, and in the conditions of their cultivation accordingly. In the British Isles wheat is, as a rule, sown in the autumn on a heavier soil, and has four or five months in which to distribute its roots, and so it gets possession of a wide range of soil and subsoil before barley is sown in the spring. Barley, on the other hand, is sown in a lighter surface soil, and, with its short period for root-development, relies in a much greater degree on the stores of plant-food within the surface soil. Accordingly it is more ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... stood awhile to note the peculiarities of the place and its position. The soil is a loose clay, deep-red or brown, impregnated with iron and, where unclothed with humus, cold and infertile, as the spontaneous aloe shows. The subsoil is laterite, also highly ferruginous. Soft and working well with the axe while it retains the quarry-water, it soon hardens by exposure; and, thus weathered, it forms the best and ugliest of the local building materials. Embedded in the earth's surface are blocks and boulders apparently erratic, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the Nitrifying Organism in the Soil.—Three series of experiments have been made on the distribution of the nitrifying organism in the clay soil and subsoil at Rothamsted. Advantage was taken of the fact that deep pits had been dug in one of the experimental fields for the purpose of obtaining samples of the soil and subsoil. Small quantities of soil were taken from freshly-cut surfaces on the sides of these pits at depths ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... within the area he has himself traversed, but perhaps for a hundred miles around it. His acute observation enables him to detect the slightest undulations of the surface, the various changes of subsoil and alterations in the character of the vegetation that would be quite imperceptible to a stranger. His eye is always open to the direction in which he is going; the mossy side of trees, the presence ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... enemy's line, the stillness of what one sees is in marked contrast to the turmoil of shells passing overhead. The only movement is the cloud of smoke and earth that marks the burst of a shell. Here and there long white lines are visible, when a trench has brought the chalky subsoil up to the top, but the number of trenches seen is very small compared to the number that exist, for one cannot see into the valleys, and the top of the ground is an unhealthy place to choose for seating a trench. The woods are pointed out, with the names given them by the soldiers, but it ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... drainage is not a modern invention; the Italian monks understood it as well as, and even better than, we do. In deep and loose soils they used sometimes, just as we do now, porous clay pipes; but when the subsoil was formed of compact and nearly impermeable matters, they employed a system of drainage, the extent and grandeur of which astonishes us. It is that of drainage by cavities, applied by the Etruscans, Latins, and Volsci to all the Roman hills formed of volcanic tufa, the tradition of which I have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... unequal breadth, backed by an escarpment of varied height and character, which is known to geologists as the old coast-line. On this flat terrace most of the seaport towns of the empire are built. The subsoil which underlies its covering of vegetable mould consists usually of stratified sands and gravels, arranged after the same fashion as on the neighboring beach, and interspersed in the same manner with sea shells. The escarpment behind, when formed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... prefers a rather strong soil, neither very heavy nor very light. Subsoil is rather more important than surface soil, although the latter should be friable and easily worked. The apple follows good timber successfully. Heavy clay soils are apt to be too cold, compact, and wet; light sandy soils too loose and dry. A medium clay ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... burning the candle at both ends, or expecting the whip to be an efficient substitute for corn when the horse has extra work to do. Dig deep always: if the soil be shallow it is advisable to turn the top spit in the usual manner, and break up the subsoil thoroughly for another twelve or fifteen inches. Where the soil is deep and the staple good, trench a piece every year two spits deep, the autumn being the best time for this work, because of the immense benefit which results from the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... corn is to subsoil it with a hatchet, though a little judicious paring is good; soft corn sometimes does the pairing itself, though not judiciously. Soft corn is sometimes called sweet corn, on the principle, "sweet are the uses of adversity." The variety of this vegetable cultivated by roosters ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... constantly damp: the saltpetre which the waters had dissolved in their passage, crystallising on the limestone, would corrode and undermine everything, if precautions were not taken. When the inundation was over, the subsidence of the water which impregnated the subsoil caused in course of time settlements in the most solid foundations: the walls, disturbed by the unequal sinking of the ground, got out of the perpendicular and cracked; this shifting displaced the architraves which held the columns together, and the stone slabs which formed the roof. These disturbances, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... in sandy loam soil with a porous yellow subsoil in a field of medium elevation which has excellent air drainage so I have had little damage from cold injury. The soil is of fair fertility for the Upper Costal Plain area. Of the trees sent me, fourteen of the ML selection, originating, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... example was taken was twelve inches deep; it abounded to the eye in vegetable matter, and was siliceous to the touch. There were no traces of phosphates or of animal matter, and doubtful traces of lime and potash. The subsoil of clay gave only 5.7 per cent. of water, and 5.55 of organic matter. The above analysis was conducted during the rainy month of September, and the sample is an average one of the surface-soil at 6000 to 10,000 feet. There is, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of abundant rainfall, a great distinction exists between the soil and the subsoil. The soil is represented by the upper few inches which are filled with the remnants of decayed vegetable matter and modified by plowing, harrowing, and other cultural operations. The subsoil has been profoundly ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... ceasing nightly noises, if I had been obliged to use an upstairs chamber. But to this subterranean room no murmur from the upper world ever penetrated. When I had entered it and closed the door, I was surrounded by the silence of the tomb. In order to prevent the dampness of the subsoil from penetrating the chamber, the walls had been laid in hydraulic cement and were very thick, and the floor was likewise protected. In order that the room might serve also as a vault equally proof against violence and flames, for the storage of valuables, I had roofed it with stone slabs ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... except on the farms which yield Constantia. The latter have an eastern exposure, and are sheltered from the south-west, the only injurious blast. The soil being a deposit from the neighbouring mountains, is light, but enriched by manure. The subsoil, which is even more important, is still lighter, being mixed with sand and broken stone; on the contrary, in Drachenstein, where the chief vineyards are at present, the subsoil being clay, the wine receives an unpleasant flavour, the idea of which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... to Capt. Back's Expedition, by Dr. Richardson. He says, "The subsoil north of latitude 56 degs. is perpetually frozen, the thaw on the coast not penetrating above three feet, and at Bear Lake, in latitude 64 degs., not more than twenty inches. The frozen substratum does not of itself destroy vegetation, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... by week a conscientious minister has to do an immense amount of miscellaneous reading in commentaries, dictionaries, etc., in connection with the discourses in hand; but, in addition to this, he should be enriching the subsoil of his mind by larger efforts in wider fields. It is far from easy to carry this on in a busy pastorate; and it is almost impossible unless the foundation has ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... features which could not fail to mislead an unthinking or superficial mind. Her mother had early taught her the trick of agreeable talk which appears to imply superiority, replying to arguments by clever jests, and attracting by the graceful volubility beneath which a woman hides the subsoil of her mind, as Nature disguises her barren strata beneath a wealth of ephemeral vegetation. Natalie had the charm of children who have never known what it is to suffer. She charmed by her frankness, ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... down to the ground with the crop; thirty shillings on every tree one with another; and so on for the next year, and the next; sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the year. Trees were old and wanted a change. His letting in the air to them, and turning the subsoil up to the frost and sun, had renewed their youth. So by that he learned that tillage is the way to get treasure from the earth. Men are ungrateful at times, but the soil is never ungrateful, it always makes a return for the pains we ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... that go to do great work for God and for souls in America at the present time. Those qualities, assuredly, were not lacking in him which are the necessary elements of character of the good priest and the great man in any time and place. Those are the subsoil of priestly culture, and with the absence of them no one will succeed in America any more than elsewhere. But suffice they do not. There must be added, over and above, the practical intelligence and the pliability of will to understand one's surroundings, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... be laid deep enough in the ground to be secure from frost; but to be most effective it should not be over fourteen to sixteen inches below the surface, hence sub-irrigation cannot be used very successfully in the Northern states. In a sandy loam soil with a clay subsoil it works best at sixteen ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... reason that the earth is refreshed by the decay of the pebbles which they contain. Moreover, while the tillable earth of other regions usually has a limited depth, verging downward into the semisoil or subsoil which represent the little changed bed rocks, glacial deposits can generally be ploughed as deeply as may ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... not until about 1830 that the subsoil-plough of Mr. Smith of Deanston was first contrived for special work upon the lands of Perthshire. Notwithstanding all the brilliant successes of Bakewell, long-legged, raw-boned cattle were admired by the majority of British ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... rainfall and temperature, and only secondarily on soil. A desert is a tract with a dry substratum and dry air, great heat during some part of the year, and bright sunshine. The soil may be loam or sand, and as regards vegetation a sandy desert is the worst owing to the rapid drying up of the subsoil after rain. In the third of the maps appended to Schimper's Plant Geography by far the greater part of the area dealt with in this book is shown as part of the vast desert extending from the Sahara to Manchuria. Seeing that the monsoon penetrates into the province and that it is traversed by ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... scenery is varied by forests of some size—the [v.04 p.0561] chief being the Foret de Senart, the Foret de Crecy and the Foret d'Armainvilliers. The surface soil is clay in which are embedded fragments of siliceous sandstone, used for millstones and constructional purposes; the subsoil is limestone. The Yeres, a tributary of the Seine, and the Grand Morin and Petit Morin, tributaries of the Marne, are the chief rivers, but the region is not abundantly watered and the rainfall is only between 20 and 24 in. The Brie is famous for its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Nash of Columbia is probably the foremost Negro in the State. He has made many speeches, which, homely in manner, have, nevertheless, a subsoil of strong common sense. He has been employed by the Military authorities from time to time in aiding, by "moral suasion" to preserve peace; is about 45 years of age; was formerly a hotel servant in Columbia where ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... a wide range of soils, that it is really easier to list those on which it should not be set than it is to enumerate those on which it may be planted. Of the soils not adapted to it, deep sandy lands, soils underlaid with quicksand close to the surface, soils with hardpan subsoil, wet, sour, poorly-drained lands, and stiff, pasty clays, may ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... field. Examine the soil in the holes dug for the root lessons, noticing the difference between the upper or surface soil and the under or subsoil. Examine as many kinds of surface soils and subsoils as possible, also decayed leaf mould, the black soil of the woods, etc. If there are in the neighborhood any exposed embankments where a road has been ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... injurious to health, not only in a general way, but particularly if around, and worse still, under our dwellings. However healthy a district is considered to be, it is never safe to leave the top soil inclosed within the walls of our houses; and in many cases the subsoil should be covered with a layer of cement concrete, and at times with asphalt on the concrete. For if the subsoil be damp, moisture will rise; if it be porous, offensive matter may percolate through. It is my belief that much of the cold dampness felt ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... harder task than had been anticipated. Captain Smithers had expected to find the subsoil of the island all soft alluvial earth, in which, from the neighbourhood of the river, there would be an abundance of water. It had never occurred to him that if the island had been of soft earth it would long before have been washed away. It was found to be rock at a short distance down, composed ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... treasure, yet, if we cultivated our present from our past, homage to it might be as much to the purpose at least as the Gheber's worship of the sun. The past is an atmosphere weighing over each man's life. The skilful farmer with his subsoil-plough lets down the wealthy air of the actual atmosphere into his furrows, deeper than it ever went before; the greedy loam sucks in the nitrogen there, and one day he finds his mould stored with ammonia, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... attributable to, the kennel. According to the early opinion of Mr. Asheton Smith, who is a good authority, it was referable to some peculiarity in the breed or management of the hounds; but, agreeably to a later opinion, it is dependent on situation and subsoil, and may be aggravated or increased by circumstances over which we have no control. Some kennels are in low and damp situations, yet the hounds are free from all complaint: and others, with the stanchest dogs and under the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... glance revealed no sign of the emergency we were facing. The Lower Brule was a broad expanse of green grass and grain, rippling gently in the breeze like water on a quiet sea. Sufficient moisture from the snow and early rain had been retained in the subsoil for vegetation. But we needed water. With the hot weather the dams were going dry. There had been increased demands for water this summer, and there had not been the late torrential rains to fill the dams as there had been the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... so that the roots will strike far into it, and be enabled thereby to withstand droughts and cold winters. The best means of deepening the soil, as explained in Chapter IV, is by tile-draining; but it can also be accomplished to some extent by the use of the subsoil plow and by trenching. Since the lawn cannot be refitted, however, the subsoil is likely to fall back into a hard-pan in a few years if it has been subsoiled or trenched, whereas a good tile-drain affords a permanent amelioration ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... human works, it is because the concept of the human mind so often fails of realization; that it is one thing to design, and another to accomplish. The grandest design for a palace may fail to stand because some peculiarity of the stone has been forgotten, or some character of foundation and subsoil has been misunderstood. The noblest form of turret-ship may prove useless because the strength of some material will not correspond to the ideal, or some curve of stability has been miscalculated. Not only this: man may create, as a sculptor, the ideal form for his to-be statue, or ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... climate and regular rainfall made Bengal the predestined breeding-ground of mankind; the seat of an ancient and complex civilisation. But subsistence is too easily secured in those fertile plains. Malaria, due to the absence of subsoil drainage, is ubiquitous, and the standard of vitality extremely low. Bengal has always been at the mercy of invaders. The earliest inroad was prompted by economic necessity. About 2000 B.C. a congeries of ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... semblance of civilization; hence we cannot excuse man's peccadillos on that broad plea that it's "the nature of the brute." Joseph and St. Anthony, Gautama and Sir Galahad are ideals toward which man must ever strive with all his strength if he would purge the subsoil out of his system— would mount above the gutter where wallow the dumb beasts and take his place among the gods. The custom of thousands of years to the contrary notwithstanding, it is damnable that a wife should be compelled to share ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to Venezuela embraces a considerable portion of the Dominican Republic. Near Puerto Plata, during rains, one of the streams flowing down from the mountains in the Mameyes section, is covered with greasy spots thought to be petroleum that has oozed from the subsoil. Traces of petroleum have also been discovered near Neiba, and in the provinces of Pacificador ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... incorrect and inadequate, impress them much more than do the able and correct drawing of adults. For although theirs are incomplete they add to them a thousand things of their own seeing and imagining; and they add to them also the thousand things that grow in the deep subsoil of their consciousness—the things which no brush ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... exalted or seemingly improved condition, whether of plant or animal, induced by human interference, is not the true and artistical ideal of it.[35] It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert,[36] that many plants are found alone on a certain soil or subsoil in a wild state, not because such soil is favorable to them, but because they alone are capable of existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its inhospitality removed. Now if we withdraw the plant from ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... regularity. To him Mrs. Quiverful had before now appealed in some of her more pressing family troubles, and had not appealed in vain. At his door she now presented herself, and, having explained to his wife that most urgent business required her to go at once to Barchester, begged that Farmer Subsoil would take her thither in his tax-cart. The farmer did not reject her plan, and, as soon as Prince could be got into his collar, they started on ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... be, the grandest renovating and enriching crop commonly grown on our farms. It owes its great value, not to any power it may or may not possess of getting nitrogen from the atmosphere, or phosphoric acid and potash from the subsoil, but principally, if not entirely, to the fact that the roots can drink up such a large amount of water, and live and thrive on ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... Malaria and miasms offer to the unpractised eye of the military officer no perceptible signs of their presence. The camp is liable to be pitched and the men required to sleep in malarious spots, or on the damp earth, or over a wet subsoil, exposed to noisome and dangerous exhalations from which disease may arise. Pringle says, that, in 1798, the regiment which had 52 per cent, sick in two months, and 94 per cent, sick in one season, "were cantoned on marshes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... often in a single night. At one time, centuries ago, this part of Flanders, which is now so bare, was, it is pretty clear, covered by forests, the remains of which are still sometimes found beneath the subsoil inland and under the sea. When the great change came is unknown, but the process was probably gradual. At an early period, here, as in Holland, the fight against the invasions of the sea began, and the first dykes are said to have been constructed in the tenth century. The first was known ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... drop off, after which the fruit, although it may attain full size, will not ripen nor become sweet, but wither and drop off prematurely. In seasons when the weather is dry and the air pure, it will not appear. It is most prevalent in locations which have a tenacious subsoil, and under-draining will very likely prove a partial preventive, as excess of moisture about the roots is no doubt one of ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... perennial legume mainly grown as animal feed. On favorable soil it develops a deep root system, sometimes exceeding ten feet. Alfalfa draws heavily on subsoil minerals so it will be as rich or poor in nutrients as the subsoil it grew in. Its average C/N is around 12:1 making alfalfa useful to compensate for larger quantities of less potent material. Sacked alfalfa meal or pellets are usually less expensive (and being ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... subsoil.—In countries of abundant rainfall, a great distinction exists between the soil and the subsoil. The soil is represented by the upper few inches which are filled with the remnants of decayed vegetable matter and modified by plowing, harrowing, and other cultural operations. ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... the composition and density of the soil, the presence or absence of perforations by worms and small burrowing quadrupeds—upon which the permeability of the ground by water and its power of absorbing and retaining or transmitting moisture depend—its temperature, the dryness or saturation of the subsoil, vary at comparatively short distances; and though the precipitation upon very small geographical basins and the superficial flow from them may be estimated with an approach to precision, yet even here we ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... bounds of each lot on the survey map, and to enter in his field book the value thereof, with all the special circumstances specially stated. The examination was to include digging to ascertain the depth of the soil and the nature of the subsoil. All land was to be valued at its agricultural worth, supposing it liberally set, leaving out the value of timber, turf, etc. Reductions were to be made for elevation above the sea, steepness, exposure to bad winds, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... would be impracticable. Even the farmer has awakened to the value of this concentrated source of power, and he uses it for the cheap and effective uprooting of large stumps over extended areas in Oregon, while an entire acre of subsoil in South Carolina, too refractory for the plow, is broken up and made available for successful cultivation by one explosion of a series of well-placed charges of dynamite. It has also been found by experience ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... acre of ground. When the mine exploded at 5.45 p. m. on March 2, 1916, a thing like a great black mushroom rose from the earth. Beneath it appeared, with the ponderous momentum of these big upheavals, a white growth like the mushroom's gills. It was the chalk subsoil following in the wake of the black loam. With this black and white upheaval went up, Heaven knows, how many bodies and limbs of Germans, scattered everywhere with the rest of the debris. And the explosion sent up many graves as well as the bodies of the living. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... by trenches—trenches every few feet, and between them tangled masses of barbed wire still clinging to the "knife rests" and corkscrew stanchions to which it had been strung. The huge shell-holes, revealing the chalk subsoil, were half-filled with water. And even though the field had been cleaned by those East Indians I had seen on the road, and the thousands who had died here buried, bits of uniform, shoes, and accoutrements ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... teams were at work turning up the other, which had already been cropped once or twice. One of two horses went first, and, with a common English plough, turned an ordinary furrow. Then the other followed, of twice the force of the first, in the same furrow, with a subsoil plough held to the work beam-deep. The iron-stones and ferruginous clods turned up by this "deep tillage" would make a prairie farmer of Illinois wonder, if not shudder, at the plucky and ingenious industry which competes with his easy ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... economical point of view, the extraordinary expenses that attend it. In three years, even oaks and other usually slow growing forest trees have covered the land, making shoots by three feet in a season, and throwing out roots well qualified, by their number and length, to derive from the subsoil abundant nourishment, in proportion as the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... simpler explanation, getting through the sections one by one with slow precision, repeating his elucidation of black lines, red lines, and green lines, of the length, breadth, and numbers of the piles, of the soil, subsoil, and sub-subsoil, that received them; all this in the manner of one who is instructing a child in the rudiments of engineering science, for he had made up his mind that Garstin would want a ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... of cruelty; it required in addition petty victims. Its appetite for extermination extended to the poor and to the obscure, its anger and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Kit, happily. "I don't think that's so at all, Uncle Cassius, and I'll tell you why. You take it on the farm down home. Dad says that our land in Gilead is no good because it's been worked over and over, and it's all worn out, but if you plow deep and strike a brand new subsoil you get wonderful crops. Just think what a lovely time you'll have planting crops in ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... conformation of the surface as will prevent water from standing on the footway when the ground is frozen. At all other times it sinks naturally away into the earth. It is much more often the case that the character of the soil or subsoil prevents a settling away of water, or that subterranean oozing from higher ground keeps the earth throughout the spring and autumn, and after heavy rains in summer, damp, and often sloppy. Wherever the ground is of such a character as to ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... misty distance, the whale came near us. It was almost calm and we could see him without glasses. He rose and disappeared at intervals of a minute, and as he moved along he rippled the surface like a subsoil plough on a gigantic scale. After ten or twelve small dives, he threw his tail in air and went down for ten minutes or more. When he reappeared he was two or three hundred yards from his ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... in mind, we are not prepared to assert that, though man has as a rule neither the gills of a fish nor the nose of a mole, he may not enjoy a drive at the bottom of the sea, or a morning ramble under the subsoil. But with the exception of Peter Wilkins' Flying Islanders-whose existence we vehemently dispute-and some similar creatures whom it suits our purpose to ignore, there is no record of any person to whom the ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... nature of the sub-soil on which the house stands—for example, a gravel or chalk subsoil is better than a subsoil of clay, because the former admits of a speedy escape of the surplus water in time of heavy and continuous rain, while the latter does not. Avoid the neighbourhood of graveyards, and of factories giving forth unhealthy vapours. Avoid low and damp districts, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... origin and meaning of the present name of the town have always been a matter of conjecture. There seems reason to believe that it refers to the time when the site, or a portion of it, formed an island, as sea-sand is the subsoil even of the oldest quarters. Another derivation is from Gaelic words meaning "the island beyond the bend." With Dysart, Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy, it unites in returning one member ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... an exhaustive study of them all; but sermons and parish calls and funerals, and that little affair of Mrs. Samuel Nute, have forced him, by a process of which we all know something, to forego his projected subsoil ploughing and make such hasty ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... are to be seen through the thin and gaping walls of the streets, and there, overturned and defaced by shell-bursts and the crude subsoil thrown out from dug-outs, a few ragged shrubs survive. A rustic bower is lumbered with empty bottles, meat tins, a bird-cage, and ugly litter and fragments. It is the flies which find these gardens pleasant. Theirs is now ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... claimed a 12-mile contiguous zone in addition to its 12-mile territorial sea) continental shelf - the LOS Convention (Article 76) defines the continental shelf of a coastal State as comprising the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... nautical stories which charmed one in the long-past days of youth. A steamer is very much the reverse. "Sam Slick," with his usual force and aptitude of illustration, says that "she goes through the water like a subsoil-plough with an eight-horse team." There is so much noise and groaning, and smoke and dirt, so much mystery also, and the ship leaves so much commotion in the water behind her. There do not seem to be any regular sailors, and in their stead a collection of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... speaking about following the plans exactly, Mr. Burnit," he said when they were alone upon the street. "I find on an examination of the subsoil that there will be a few minor changes required. The runway, for instance, which goes down to the river northward from the power-house for the purpose of unloading coal barges, would be much better placed on the south side, ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... that a selection be possible, a light sandy loam, underlaid by a porous subsoil so as to be well drained, should be given the preference, since it is warmed quickly, easily worked, and may be stirred early in the season and after a rain. Clay loams are less desirable upon every one of the points mentioned, and very sandy soils also. But ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... are really doing, when one thinks of it, are Soap, Tooth-brushes, Subsoil Pipes, Wall Papers, Razors, Mattresses, Suspenders, Tiles, Shoes, Pots, and Kettles. Of course the first thing that happened to us, to Lim and to me (as any one might guess, in a little quiet job like making over the earth), was that we found we ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and heard their individual narratives of escapes from death until my imagination was saturated with the spirit of their conflict of body and soul. I saw a green, downy countryside, beautiful in its summer life, ravaged by gun-fire so that the white chalk of its subsoil was flung above the earth and grass in a wide, sterile stretch of desolation pitted with shell-craters, ditched by deep trenches, whose walls were hideously upheaved by explosive fire, and littered yard after yard, mile after ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the enormous number of impressions ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... condition of immediate removal. They serve for the retention of excremental and other matters. In a porous soil it endangers the purity of the wells. The Indian cities afford numerous examples of subsoil pollution. The Delhi ulcer was traced to the pollution of the wells from the contaminated subsoil; and the soil in many cities and villages is loaded with niter and salt, the chemical results of animal and vegetable refuse left to decay for many generations, from the presence of which the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... such a way that it will hold all the water it needs. It must be level, or some of the rice plants will have only their feet wet while others will be up to their necks. The ordinary procedure in making a paddy is to remove the top soil, beat down the subsoil beneath, and then restore the top soil—there may be from 5 to 10 in. of it. But the best efforts of the paddy-field builder may be brought to naught by springs or by a gravelly bottom. Then the farmer must make the best ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... a reasoned and assimilated way of life; by no means had that superficial miscellany been rubbed into the warp and woof of her being. The Parisian top-dressing would be removed and the essential subsoil ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... the surface-soil to the depth of about three feet, a work of no small labour, until the subsoil, or "pay-dirt," was reached. Of this they dug out a small quantity, and washed it; put the produce of black sand and gold into leathern bags, and then, digging out another panful, washed it as before. Thus they laboured till noon, when they rested for an hour and dined. Then they worked ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... assure me that it is! But, nonsense apart and begged pardon for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place. "The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay, with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation; adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover—requiring, however, a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc." This is not an unpleasing style on agricultural ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... covered with snow, in some places piled in drifts, and everywhere sodden with rain; while each hollow and depression was full of that half-liquid, lead-colored mixture of snow and water which new England schoolboys call "slush," for all drainage was stopped by the frozen subsoil. The troops had with them two howitzers and twenty field-pieces, which had been captured when Quebec surrendered, and had formed a part of that very battery which Ramesay refused to Montcalm at the battle of the autumn before. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... had promised a second five hundred pounds, if the hospital was built on high ground with a subsoil of gravel." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... we went down to a subsoil we did not know, and have found there is a Concord under old Concord, which we are now getting the best crops from; a Middlesex under Middlesex; and, in fine, that Massachusetts has a basement story more valuable and that promises to pay a better rent ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Let it not be forgotten that Mr. Smith has found a translator abroad, two, perhaps three, followers at home, and—most surprising of all—a real mathematician to try to set him right. And this mathematician did not discover the character of the subsoil of the land he was trying to cultivate until a goodly octavo volume of letters had passed and repassed. I have noticed, in more quarters than one, an apparent want of perception of the full amount of Mr. Smith's ignorance: persons ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... mummified Ibises and Crocodiles of Egypt. A remarkable case is to be found in your own country, in the neighbourhood of the falls of Niagara. In the immediate vicinity of the whirlpool, and again upon Goat Island, in the superficial deposits which cover the surface of the rocky subsoil in those regions, there are found remains of animals in perfect preservation, and among them, shells belonging to exactly the same species as those which at present inhabit the still waters of Lake Erie. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... artist who is living the evil life which he expresses, there can be even less danger in expression, than to the spectator. For the expression is not the cause of his life, but only its efflorescence. The roots of evil lie deep below in the subsoil of instinct. Without expression, life would be much the same, only secret instead of articulate. The puritan shows a shocking naivete in thinking that he can reform life by destroying its utterance. Moreover, to express life implies a certain mastery over it, a power of detachment and reflection, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... that any waste or abandoned land may be converted into successful walnut orchards, though such lands may in due time produce trees that will bear nuts. A first-class walnut orchard can only be produced upon first-class land, deep, fertile soil, a low water table, an open subsoil, with choice varieties, grafted upon the most suitable stock and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... across the entrance, which Milton removed without dismounting, for it consisted of only two rails, within his reach. Life rode through the opening, and started his horse into a gallop again. The subsoil was of gravel, with a thin coating of loam on it, not more than three inches deep, so that the animals ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it.—The explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the enormous number of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... upon the plains. The pioneers, like Boone, are not romantic; their life is a hard toil and struggle; they are ignorant, rude, and even repulsive. This is natural, because their real work is that of the subsoil plough and the harrow. They lay the strong foundations. Without them, no soft waving field of golden harvest, no velvet lawn, no Palladian villa, no flower of art and culture—in a word, no progress, as we call it—however the shade of Thoreau may ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... power. The parallel of this vast plateau was almost confounded with tropical latitudes, and, during certain months in summer, the sun, in passing to the zenith, darted its perpendicular rays there. There was, therefore, an enormous quantity of imprisoned heat in this earth, of which the subsoil preserved the damp. Also, nothing could be more magnificent than this succession of forests, or rather this ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... to Malison, another fact must be mentioned, which, although inconsistent with the one just recorded, was in perfect consistency with the theological subsoil whence both sprang. After about a week, during which they had been whipt almost every day, the orphans came to school with a cold and a terrible cough. Then his observant pupils saw the man who was both cruel judge and cruel executioner, feeding ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... fully three feet long, and terminal erect clusters of not very showy greenish-white flowers that exhale a rather disagreeable odour. It is one of the most distinct and imposing of pinnate-leaved trees, and forms a neat specimen for the lawn or park. Light loam or a gravelly subsoil ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... a wonderful leader on potatoes yesterday. We must dig up the garden. Do you know what the subsoil is?" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the island was merely the home of farmers and fishermen, a shipowner in need of easily handled ballast found that the subsoil contained just the thing he wanted. By turning up the thin surface he came upon a stratum of small, square slabs of rock rather like cakes of soap. These were easily lifted and easily ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... assure me that it is. But, nonsense apart and begged-pardon-for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place. 'The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover—requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc.' This is not an unpleasing style on Agricultural subjects—nor ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... white spots, a certain sign of its bad quality. The injury is all the greater the nearer the tobacco is to its ripening period; the leaves hanging down to the ground then decay, and must be removed. If the subsoil is not deep enough, a carefully tended plant will turn yellow, and nearly wither away. In wet seasons this does not occur so generally, as the roots in insufficient depth are enabled to find ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... gripping the bare cliff with roots that looked like crippled hands. Crab-apple trees, sloe-bushes and wild rose-briars made an impenetrable jungle, which already bore traces of Lasse's exertions. And in the midst of this luxuriant growth the rocky subsoil protruded its grim features, or came so near the surface that the sun had scorched the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... states, had been there from time immemorial. He continues: "One of the wildest glades of the wood at Misdon, perforated by galleries and cells, out of which came and went a mysterious society, was called 'The Great City.' The gloomy Breton forests were servants and accomplices of rebellion. The subsoil of every forest was a sort of sponge, pierced and traversed in all directions by a secret highway of mines, cells and galleries. Each of these blind cells could shelter five or six men. Usually the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... from a child he not only knew the Holy Scriptures, but was "wise unto salvation"—but it strengthened and clarified, quickened and gave permanent direction to, his sense of God as revealed in His Word. He took as it were to subsoil ploughing; he got a new and adamantine point to the instrument with which he bored, and with a fresh power—with his whole might, he sunk it right down into the living rock, to the virgin gold. His entire nature had got a shock, and his blood was drawn inwards, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... it was with infinitely greater effort that the two sections of the canals were forced ahead each day. The surface of the ground was like stone, only by repeated attempts pierced by plows and torn apart; while the subsoil immediately froze if left unworked. The weaker labourers began to break: the scrawny Mexicans, the debilitated white men, the drifters and the dissatisfied; and they left the camps. These the labour agencies found it harder and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd |
