"Humidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meaning the humidity contained in the air and, as such, spherically surrounding the earth. I had to make up the word 'hygrosphere' (after hygrometer, etc.) to keep clear the distinction from both atmosphere and hydrosphere. Except for this term in the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... sweetness of the liquid. Day after day the end of the stem must be pared as otherwise the sap would cease to exude. A tree will produce daily anywhere from 10 to 30 liters according to the fertility of the soil and the humidity of the atmosphere. The humidity determines the duration of time that the tree produces toddy. This time varies from ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... growth of wheat or barley, but the best imaginable for that of other kinds of productions. So generally available is the structure of the country for the reservation of water by dams, that a small number of these might be made to retain as much of the surface water as might even impart humidity to the atmosphere. This is because the channels of rivers are in general confined by high banks, within which many, or indeed most of them, might be converted by a few dams into canals. To such great purposes convict labour ought to have been applied, had it been possible ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... end of water, month after month! The heat is the same all the year round—not very excessive, seldom 104 deg., but still oppressive and enervating because of the humidity of the air. Yet the voyage was not monotonous. Leaning against the masts and gunwale, or leisurely moving the oars, the soldiers could observe the dolphins leaping in the river, the sudden darts of the alligators as they hunted the fish through the water, or the clumsy ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Unalaska. The rain seldom pours down here, but falls in a steady drizzle from a hopelessly leaden sky, under which a grey and sodden landscape presents a picture of dreary desolation. But this damp cheerlessness has its advantages, for incessant humidity sheds perpetual verdure over the coast-districts, where the thermometer rarely falls as low as zero Fahr. Winter only sets in here about the 1st of December, and snow has vanished by the end of May, while in the interior lakes and rivers are still in the grip of the ice. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... those vagabond children who forsake their natal roof in search of adventures. He remains there, always attentive to the least want of his antique ancestor, the black earth of Kame. If she thirsts, he gives her drink, if she is troubled by too much humidity, he dries it; in order not to wound her, he works her almost without tools, with his hands; his plough merely scratches the telluric skin, which the inundation covers each year with a new epidermis. As you ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... motions, the liveliness of his voice, and the diamond sparkle of his full hazel eyes, reminded one of nothing so much. The month of March was more than usually changeable in its temperature, with disagreeable rains and much humidity, which nearly carried away the heavy amount of snow on the ground. A cold and croup rapidly developed themselves, and no efforts of skill or kindness had power to arrest its fatal progress. He sank under it about eleven o'clock at night. Such was ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... we have all these types, and in some districts they lie within easy reach of each other. It should be pointed out that sufficient and uniform heat and humidity are essential to the production of good cotton crops, and as the sandy soils are of an open character, it is plain that moisture will readily pass from these, while the heavy clays act just in the opposite direction, viz., prevent the uniform evaporation of the moisture within ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... drew a hand from his bosom, touched the male Indian, who was standing near him, lightly on the shoulder, and pointed out a thin line of vapor which was stealing slowly out of the wilderness of leaves, at a distance of about a mile, and was diffusing itself in almost imperceptible threads of humidity in the quivering atmosphere. The Tuscarora was one of those noble-looking warriors oftener met with among the aborigines of this continent a century since than to-day; and, while he had mingled sufficiently ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... exploiter, whether he be the Cossack tribute-gatherer of the lower Lena River, or the factor of the Hudson Bay Company. The assimilation tends to be ethnic as well as economic, because the severity of the climate excludes the white woman. The debilitating effects of heat and humidity, aided by tropical diseases, soon reduce intruding peoples to the dead level of economic inefficiency characteristic of the native races. These, as the fittest, survive and tend to absorb the new-comers, pointing to hybridization as the simplest ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... "tounes," or enclosures. It was also known as Passerage; from passer, to drive away—rage, or madness, because of its reputed power to expel hydrophobia. "This Garden Cress," said Wm. Coles in his Paradise of Plants, 1650, "being green, and therefore more qualified by reason of its humidity, is eaten by country people, either alone with butter, or with lettice and purslane, in ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... most convenient to them, their envelope, or web, a portion of which remains suspended to the trunk of the tree, where it waves to and fro like a streamer, and which becomes more or less white, according as the air and humidity of the season and situation admit. This natural silk paper has been gathered measuring a yard and a half, of an elliptical shape, which is peculiar to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... flour, beef suet and raisins for puddings, sugar, cocoa, tea, rice, lemon-juice, preserved meat, salted beef and pork, pickled cabbage and other vegetables; the kitchen was outside the common rooms, and the men were thus deprived of its heat, but cooking is a constant source of evaporation and humidity. ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... HUMIDITY. Something which comes in through the window and goes out through the pores. A warm proposition any way you take it. A brother-in-law to Torture and a half-sister ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... damp night air, which, passing over the summits of the trees, scarcely appeared to descend as low as the surface of the glassy lake, but kept moving a short distance above it, saturated with the humidity that constantly arose from the woods, and apparently never proceeding far in any one direction. The currents were influenced by the formation of the hills, as a matter of course, a circumstance that rendered even fresh breezes baffling, and which reduced the feebler efforts ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... said. "Atmosphere is rather denser than I had expected. Hendricks reports the air breathable, with a humidity of one hundred. And—tell me, sir, what do you make of the appearance of ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... necessary to direct attention to C.W. Beebe's ("Zoologica: N.Y. Zool. Soc." Vol. I. No. 1, Sept. 25, 1907: "Geographic variation in birds with especial reference to the effects of humidity".) recent discovery that the pigmentation of the plumage of certain birds is increased by confinement in a superhumid atmosphere. In Scardafella inca, on which the most complete series of experiments was made, the changes took place only at the moults, whether ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... deepen in tone; while tempera, if protected from humidity, retain their brilliancy and clearness as long as the material on which they rest endures. The true occupation of the restorer is to put the work given to him in a condition as near as possible to its original state, carefully abstaining from obliterating the legitimate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... belly, to remedy venemous mushromes, to preserve flesh over moyst from corruption, consuming the moysture thereof by its heat, and constipating by his astriction the substance of it, and pressing forth the serous humidity. ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... that the queen, which has left the hive for impregnation, is the same that returns to deposit her eggs, you will find it necessary to paint the thorax with some varnish that resists humidity. It will also be right to paint the thorax of a considerable number of workers in order to discover the duration of their life. This is a more secure method ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... easterly trade winds, relatively low humidity, little seasonal temperature variation; rainy season ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Death concomitants of the Vegetal Faculties.] Necessary concomitants or affections of this vegetal faculty are life and his privation, death. To the preservation of life the natural heat is most requisite, though siccity and humidity, and those first qualities, be not excluded. This heat is likewise in plants, as appears by their increasing, fructifying, &c., though not so easily perceived. In all bodies it must have radical [981]moisture to preserve it, that it be not ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... wherein she and Mrs. Addix were sitting. Maria regarded her father with a sort of contemptuous wonder, tinctured with unwilling admiration. Her father, on his return from his evenings spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years younger than Maria had ever seen him. There was the humidity of youth in his eyes, the flush of youth on his cheeks, the triumph of youth in his expression. Harry Edgham, in spite of lines on his face, in spite, even, of a shimmer of gray and thinness of hair on the temples, looked as young as youth itself, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... preparation known as "acetylithe," which is carbide treated specially with mineral oil, glucose and sugar. The object of using this treated carbide is to avoid the effects of the attack of atmospheric humidity or water vapour, which, with ordinary carbide, give rise to the phenomena of after-generation. The generator comprises a water-tank A with conical base, a basket C containing the treated carbide inserted within a cylindrical ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... to rise; it becomes thinner, and yields to the penetrating rays of the sun. In April the horizon begins to resume the misty veil. The mornings are cool and overcast, but the middle of the day is clear. In a few weeks after, the brightness of noon also disappears. The great humidity gives rise to many diseases, particularly fevers, and the alternations from heat to damp cause dysentery. On an average, the victims to this disease are very numerous. It is endemic, and becomes, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... would be a perfect paradise, if it was not, like Wales, cursed with a weeping climate, owing to the same cause in both, the neighbourhood of high mountains, and a westerly situation, exposed to the vapours of the Atlantic ocean. This air, however, notwithstanding its humidity, is so healthy, that the natives are scarce ever visited by any other disease than the smallpox, and certain cutaneous evils, which are the effects of dirty living, the great and general reproach of the commonalty of this kingdom. Here are a great many ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... has been carried on with a vigor and enthusiasm that are thrilling in their inspiration. An improved instrument was added that recorded temperatures on a self-registering roll, all fluctuations, and the highest and lowest temperatures, wind-pressures, all variations in humidity, temperature, and air pressure as well as the directions and the velocity of the wind for periods of seventy days and more. This instrument was the achievement of Professor S.P. Fergusson, for many years a pioneer worker ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... attracted each other, while the softness of the air was beyond expression. When we contemplate a fine view in the north, the climate in some degree disturbs the pleasure which it inspires: those slight sensations of cold and humidity are like a false note in a concert, and more or less distract your attention from what you behold; but in approaching Naples you experience the friendly smiles of nature, so perfectly and without alloy, that nothing abates the agreeable sensations which they cause ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... Philosophers, touching which he had read in Basilius, as he thought. I, and many other honest Men, did behold this Star supernatant on the Spirit of Salt, the lead in the mean while remaining in the bottom of an ash colour, and swollen like a Sponge. But in the space of seven or nine dayes, that humidity of the Spirit of Salt, being absumed by the exceeding heat of the Aire, in July, did vanish; but the Star settled down, and still stood above that Earthly Spongeous Lead. That was a thing worthy of admiration, and beheld by not a few Spectators. At ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... herb of the lowlands, so magnificently green in the Spring, displayed shades of dead straw in the depths of the valleys, and, on all the summits, beeches and oaks shed their leaves. The air was almost cold; an odorous humidity came out of the mossy earth and, at times, there came from above a light shower. One felt it near and anguishing, that season of clouds and of long rains, which returns every time with the same air of bringing the definitive exhaustion of saps and irremediable death,—but which passes like all things ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... nearly as quick as my Indians, who, like me, hastened to get clear of the insupportable humidity in which we had existed for ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... like me to do that. That place is under full temperature and humidity control, and every time an outsider barges in the whole ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... conquest of the dry land by animals, we must recognise the indispensable role of plants in preparing the way. The dry ground would have proved too inhospitable had not terrestrial plants begun to establish themselves, affording food, shelter, and humidity. There had to be plants before there could be earthworms, which feed on decaying leaves and the like, but how soon was the debt repaid when the earthworms began their worldwide task of forming vegetable mould, opening up ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... by continual digging and delving into their own proper ground shall have hit upon a kind of potter's earth, which is called ceramite, and there had found no source or drop of water; for that sort of earth, by reason of its substance, which is fat, strong, firm, and close, so retaineth its humidity, that it doth not easily evaporate it by any ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sphere of the Notion many unities are comprised. The combination of water and earth is a unity, but this unity is mixture. If we bring together a base and an acid, we have as the result a crystal; also water; but water which cannot be discerned and which gives no trace of humidity. Here the unity of the water and of this matter is a unity different from the mixture of water and earth. The essential point is the difference of these determinations. The unity of God is always unity, but what is of primary importance is to know the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... with fatigue. We should be looking like ghosts ourselves, and despair would be seizing on our hearts. We should be in continual squabbles with our guides and porters, and completely exposed to their unbridled brutality. During the daytime, a damp, penetrating, unendurable humidity! At night, a cold frequently intolerable, and the stings of a kind of fly whose bite pierces the thickest cloth, and drives the victim crazy! All this, too, without saying any thing about wild beasts and ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... lead-color and broadened out until it merged into the clouds above; and at last, as Wunpost lingered, the storm disappeared and the canyon took on the hush of heavy waiting. The sun blazed out as before, the fig-leaves hung down wilted; but the humidity was gone and the dry, oven-heat almost created the ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... It had rained all night. The roaring of the overflowing gutters filled the deserted streets, in which the houses, like sponges, absorbed the humidity, which penetrating to the interior, made the walls sweat from cellar to garret. Jeanne had left the convent the day before, free for all time, ready to seize all the joys of life, of which she had dreamed so long. She was afraid ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... difficulty may be obviated. Crowding the fire, and raising the water in the tanks to a high temperature, is a more objectionable remedy. In this way the bottom heat is too strong. But my most serious difficulty has arisen from excessive humidity. I put three inches of sand over the whole slate surface of the tanks, using a part for cuttings, and the rest, (say 100 running feet of the three feet wide table), for standing pot plants upon the surface of the sand. The plants dried rapidly, and required watering every morning. ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... holes in the wall. The waste water trickled through them and dripped continually as though from the wet locks of the forest. Inside, in the greenish, dripping darkness, sat curiously marked toads, like little water-nymphs, each in her grotto, shining with unwholesome humidity. And up among the timbers of the third story hung Hanne's canary, singing quite preposterously, its beak pointing up toward the spot of fiery light overhead. Across the floor of the courtyard went an endless procession of people, light-shy creatures who emerged from the womb ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... moments are more than usually painful, and wiping his brow.] It's not so much the heat as the humidity. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... as every other single in the city—or any city. The walls are the shade of green that's best for the eyes. Furniture and fixtures are always the same colors. Every compartment has a servoconsole to condition the air, control the temperature and humidity, bring you food or any other standard service, provide teleview shows, music or requests. You could live your life inside this square hole. Everybody has everything and nothing means anything—can't you ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... add, "but we never have known it in our day." In the cities and near the swamps, the yellow fever, that scourge of all hot climates, prevails from the middle of June to the last of October; but in the interior of the island, where the visitor is at a wholesome distance from humidity and stagnant water, it is no more unhealthy than our own cities in summer. It is doubtful if Havana, even in the fever season, is any more unhealthy than New Orleans at the same period of the year. Fevers of different degrees ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... soil, it is, perhaps, the extreme limit of its range. The snake-wood, a sort of slender bush, is found here, with very many other rare Canadian plants, which are no doubt fostered by the continual humidity of the place; and, if you wish to sup full of horrors,[4] Mr. Barnett has plenty ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... go to the mills to do their day's labour; and, when they return home, "wearily fling themselves on their beds, too tired to take off their clothes." Many children work all night—"in the maddening racket of the machinery, in an atmosphere insanitary and clouded with humidity and lint." ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... weather-prophet whom every housewife consults before the day's work begins. Thus, when the telegraph operator receives the mysterious message, "Francisco Emily alone barge churning did frosty guarding hungry," how is he to know that it means "San Francisco Evening. Rep. Barom. 29.40, Ther. 61, Humidity 18 per cent., Velocity of wind 41 miles per hour, 840 pounds pressure, Cirro-stratus. N.W. 1/4 to 2/4, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... again. The product is stated to be workable like hardwood, and to be capable of taking a fine polish after being tooled. It is fireproof and inpermeable to water, and weak acid or alkaline solutions, and not affected by the humidity of the atmosphere, being well suited to decorative purposes, as it will not warp and fly like wood, but ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... A mild and bracing climate results from these physical features. The rapidity with which the streams rise and their swiftness, together with almost constant breezes in the mountains, reduce the humidity so prevalent in the southern lowlands. Although the rainfall is greater than anywhere else in the United States, except Florida, the sudden fall in the topography of the watercourses brings quick drainage. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the first of these upheavals, the plants and animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied. These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce additional modifications: varying in different species, and also in different members ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... minute of the day and dreamed of kites at night. His father had to forbid the mention of the word "kite" at meal-times. The lad made fliers of every shape and pattern, and his kites were usually so stable that it was upon his model that the meteorograph was fastened which registered the pressure, humidity and temperature of the air and the velocity of the wind, according to the request of the young fellow who had sent the League the two first kites. The Issaquena County Weather Review was compelled to run a regular weekly feature of "Kite Records" and few ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... therefore in order to insure the perfection of sacramental signification it was necessary to determine the signification of the sensible things by means of certain words. For water may signify both a cleansing by reason of its humidity, and refreshment by reason of its being cool: but when we say, "I baptize thee," it is clear that we use water in baptism in order to signify a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... eight thousand feet above the sea, on the middle ridges of the Cordillera range. In this lower region, as nature exhibits the riches, so she has spread the pestilence, of tropical climates. The humidity of the atmosphere, and the damp heats which are nourished amidst its intricate thickets, produce violent fevers, which often prove extremely destructive, especially to European constitutions. But if the patient survives the first attack, the remedy is at hand; a journey to the temperate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... well as for water, they will sometimes stretch themselves and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island, the relative humidity being about seventy on the Hygrodeik scale. If stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed to run over one's person with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... be found, a charnel-house reeking with foul smells and putrefaction. He slackened his steps, and rested in that kitchen garden, as after a long perambulation amidst deafening noises and repulsive odours. The uproar and the sickening humidity of the fish market had departed from him; and he felt as though he were being born anew in the pure fresh air. Claude was right, he thought. The markets were a sphere of death. The soil was the life, the eternal cradle, the health ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... our large streams, especially on the northern and western sides, where the vines are sheltered from the north and west winds, and fully exposed to the warm southern winds of our summer days, and where the fogs arising from the water yet give sufficient humidity to the atmosphere, even in the hottest summer days, to refresh the leaf during the night and morning hours; where the soil on the southern and eastern slopes is a mixture of decomposed stone and ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... and heat. Between these two regions of extreme heat and cold there would, in every place, be found two streams of air following in opposite directions. If those streams of air, therefore, shall be supposed as both sufficiently saturated with humidity, then, as they are of different temperatures, there would be formed a continual condensation of aqueous vapor, in some middle region of the atmosphere, by the commixtion of part of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Father Thames himself; and the river approximating closer to "the gay resorts" of the beau monde, they are more felt. The want of draining, and the vapours that stagnate over the turbid waters of the ruisseaux that intersect the streets at Paris, add to the humidity of the atmosphere; while the sewers in London convey away unseen and unfelt, if not always unsmelt, the rain which purifies, while it deluges, our streets. Heaven defend me, however, from uttering this ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... catkins forced in a warm, dry room (about 75 deg. F.), and in a cool, humid greenhouse (60 deg. F.) gave pollen germinating 36% and 69% respectively, which indicated that the air temperature and humidity surrounding the developing catkins may have considerable effect on the viability ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... passageway was untenanted. Evidently its coolness and dryness made it untenable for most of Inra's humidity and heat loving life. Yet the floor was so smooth that it must have been artificially leveled. Faint illumination was provided by the rocks themselves. They appeared to be covered by some ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... all in her own bosom; and looking round to catch what was passing in the count's mind, she beheld him leaning against the box, with his head inclined to the curtain of the door. "Mr. Constantine!" almost unconsciously escaped her lips. He started, and discovered by the humidity on his eyelashes why he had withdrawn. Her ladyship's tears were gliding down her cheeks. Miss Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... ordered to the Department of the Gulf. Since then we have heard that it is to go directly to Holly Springs, Mississippi, for the summer, where a large camp is to be established. Just imagine what the suffering will be, to go from this dry climate to the humidity of the South, and from cool, thick-walled adobe buildings to hot, glary tents in the midst of summer heat! We will reach Holly Springs about the Fourth of July. Faye's allowance for baggage hardly carries more than trunks and a few chests of house linen and silver, so we are taking ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Magnolia told him, sighing with such intensity that he could feel the humidity rise. "I know how you've been looking forward to her arrival. ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... occupies southern part of United States from Chesapeake Bay to the great interior valley of California. Is interrupted by the continental divide in eastern Arizona and west New Mexico and divided according to conditions of humidity into an eastern or Austroriparian and western or lower ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... With what a soft sweet light every star glowed! No matter what its magnitude, the stream that flowed from it looked calm and holy. No twinkling, no scintillation, no nictitation, disturbed their pure and lambent gleam. No atmosphere here interposed its layers of humidity or of unequal density to interrupt the stately majesty of their effulgence. The longer he gazed upon them, the more absorbing became their attraction. He felt that they were great kindly eyes looking down even yet with benevolence and protection on himself and his ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... typical of Winnipeg in summer. The fresh northwest breeze that sweeps the Manitoba plains had dropped. Dark thunder-clouds rolled about the sky, but the sun was hot and an enervating humidity brooded over the town. The perspiring crowd in Main Street moved slackly, the saloon bars were full, and the groups of holiday-makers flocking to the ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... Together they press into higher latitudes the annual isothermal lines. If in Europe there are no deserts, there are none of those impenetrable forests seen in tropical countries. From the westerly shores of Portugal, France, and Ireland, the humidity diminishes as we pass to the east, and, indeed, if we advance into Asia, it disappears in the desert of Gobi. There are no vast homogeneous areas as in Asia, and therefore there is no widespread uniformity ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of undue humidity—and the Eagle Mountains were pyramids of blue smoke. Closer at hand the roofs of Glosterville shone in the fierce sun and between the village and the mountains the open fields shimmered with rising heat waves. A hardy landscape meant only ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... moisture; moistness &c adj.; humidity, humectation^; madefaction^, dew; serein^; marsh &c 345; hygrometry, hygrometer. V. moisten, wet; humect^, humectate^; sponge, damp, bedew; imbue, imbrue, infiltrate, saturate; soak, drench &c (water) 337. be moist &c adj.; not have ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... which we speak, standing on the north side of the cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed its chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by the call of the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... well last night. It was close in my room, and this morning the humidity's oppressive. You know what that does to us of the ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... although their flesh is not savory, because of the humidity of the country. These animals sicken and die for that reason, and because they eat certain poisonous herbs. Ewes and rams, although often brought from Nueva Espana, never multiply. Consequently there are none of these animals, for the climate and pasturage has not as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... is a delightful resort, a wilderness of green with an ornamental fountain in the middle, about which are stone seats among flowering shrubs, orange and other fruit trees. Indeed, the entire surroundings of Orizaba are gardenlike in fertility and bloom. The vegetation, owing to the humidity of the atmosphere rising from the Gulf, is always intensely green. Huge butterflies flitted in clouds about the plaza, many-colored, sunshine-loving creatures, with widespread, yellow wings shot with purple bars, and bearing strongly ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... the home returning party, he passed by the spot where this animal had fallen; and, in elucidation of what I have stated, I will here give the extract of a letter I subsequently received from him from India. Speaking of the humidity of the climate of Bengal, he says: "It appears to me that heat alone is rather a preservative from decomposition; of which I recollect an instance, in the bullock that died in the march through the Pine scrub on the 1st of January, 1845. When I passed by the spot in the following July, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... a fine day for the operation, as the glass should be perfectly dry, and unaffected by the humidity of the atmosphere. Of course, if you have a choice, it is more convenient to work on your glass before it is fixed in the frame. If you are working on a piece of unattached glass, lay it on a flat table (a marble slab is preferable), over which you must previously ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the air was observed both by August's psychrometer and Saussure's hygrometer. But I do not believe that these instruments give trustworthy results at a temperature considerably under the freezing-point. Moreover the degree of humidity at the place where there can be a question of setting up a psychrometer and hygrometer during a wintering in the high north, has not the meteorological importance which has often been ascribed ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... next station in the Far East is Hong Kong, likewise an island, and one that might claim the long distance championship as a rain-center. Next to hills, the characterizing feature of Hong Kong is moisture—represented either by rain or humidity. The Briton professes that the climate of this crown colony is good; but for months at a stretch his clothing has to be hung daily in the open air to keep it from becoming water-logged, and everything of leather has to be denuded each ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... banks everywhere were either covered with timber or waving with wild grass five feet in height; and the luxuriant growth in many places of flowers and weeds testified to the richness of the soil and the warm humidity of the climate. Primroses, cowslips, marsh violets, buttercups, wild-roses, cinquefoil, iris, and azure larkspur grow everywhere throughout the valley in the greatest abundance; and a peculiar species of umbelliferae, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast monsoon, December ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a rubber doll in a red woollen jacket—a combination to make the perspiration run right off one with the humidity at 98—looks wistfully down from the second-story balcony of the smallpox pavilion, as the doctor goes past with the last ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... tell you," asked Rhodopis, "what conclusions various hints from Pythagoras and Onuphis have led me to draw, as to the meaning of this drama? Isis seems to me to represent the bountiful earth; Osiris, humidity or the Nile, which makes the earth fruitful; Horus, the young spring; Typhon, the scorching drought. The bounteous earth, robbed of her productive power, seeks this beloved husband with lamentations in the cooler regions ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of oak, and they began to unscrew the lid. The humidity of the earth had rusted the screws, and it was not without some difficulty that the coffin was opened. A painful odour arose in spite of the aromatic plants with which ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... persons who reside in those distant parts, pay little attention to the comfort of their dwellings, or to the raising of more grain than their establishments may require; but there can be no doubt this part of the interior ought to be the granary of New South Wales; its climate and greater humidity being more favourable than that of Sydney for ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... ascended, the air became purer and less impregnated with the humidity of its lower currents; changing, by a process as fine as that wrought by a chemical application, the hues and aspect of every object in the view. A vast hill-side lay basking in the sun, which illuminated ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... superjacent atmosphere, there are three which are absolutely essential, and the concurrence of which is indispensable for the production of bad air (malaria). First, a temperature which does not fall below 20 deg.C. (67.5 deg.F.); next, a very moderate degree of permanent humidity of the soil; and finally, the direct action of the oxygen of the air upon the strata of earth which contain the ferment. If a single one of these three conditions be wanting, the development of malaria becomes impossible. This is a point of prime importance in the natural history of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... longitude and the latitude, corrected for magnetic variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing—inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision the degree of influence which they would exercise upon the mood and disposition of the assassin at that time of ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... was thus awaiting her in the village. The eternal smile of the Californian summer had begun to waver and grow less fixed; dust lay thick on leaf and blade; the dry hills were clothed in russet leather; the trade winds were shifting to the south with an ominous warm humidity; a few days longer and the rains would be here. It so chanced that this afternoon my seclusion on the roadside was accidentally invaded by a village belle—a Western young lady somewhat older than myself, and of flirtatious reputation. As she persistently and—as I now have reason to believe—mischievously ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... true, that many of the surrounding objects in nature are constantly tending to man's destruction. The excess of heat and cold, humidity and dryness, noxious exhalations from the earth, the floating atoms in the atmosphere, the poisonous vapors from decomposed animal and vegetable matter, with many other invisible agents, are exerting their deadly influence; and were it not that every part of his system is endowed with a self-preserving ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... suffers from drought. This sort of thing has occurred wherever man has been sufficiently civilised and enterprising to commit the folly of destroying forests. Forests have an immense effect on climate, causing humidity of both the air and the soil, and give rise to moderate and persistent instead of torrential streams. Spain has been irretrievably injured by the cutting down of her forests in the course of a few hundred years. The same ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... to throw away others, which we had collected a considerable time before. These sacrifices were not less vexatious than the losses we accidentally sustained. Sad experience taught us but too late, that from the sultry humidity of the climate, and the frequent falls of the beasts of burden, we could preserve neither the skins of animals hastily prepared, nor the fishes and reptiles placed in phials filled with alcohol. I enter into these details, because, though little interesting in themselves, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... you but to mount or descend; and with the hill, which is very short, terminate the gardens. The violence everywhere done to nature repels and wearies us despite ourselves. The abundance of water, forced up and gathered together from all parts, is rendered green, thick, muddy; it disseminates humidity, unhealthy and evident; and an odour still more so. I might never finish upon the monstrous defects of a palace so immense and so immensely dear, with its accompaniments, which are ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... with a particular interest and originality. They were in progress for a whole year, in a thick forest of almost impenetrable brushwood, split with numerous deep ravines and abrupt, slippery precipices. The humidity of the forest is excessive, the waters pouring down from high promontories. The soldiers who struggled here practically spent two winters ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the great disadvantage of the art of painting that, while other productions of genius may survive the revolution of ages, the creations of the pencil are intrusted to perishable wood or canvas. From the effect of heat, humidity, various exhalations to which they may be carelessly exposed, and even an unperceived neglect in the priming of the pannel or cloth, master-pieces are in danger of disappearing for ever. Happy, then, is it for the arts that this invaluable discovery ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... end of the horizon to the other, she followed the octroi wall, behind which she sometimes heard, during night time, the shrieks of persons being murdered; and she searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark corners, black with humidity and filth, fearing to discern there Lantier's ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... tracts of woods must be yearly consumed to affect nearly the whole of the continent of North America: besides, it takes place at that season of the year when the fire is least likely to run freely, owing to the humidity of the ground from the autumnal rains. I should rather attribute the peculiar warmth and hazy appearance of the air that marks this season, to the fermentation going on of so great a mass of vegetable matter that is undergoing a state of decomposition during the latter part of October ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... the humidity and temperature controls," I told her. She nodded in quick comprehension, but I went on for Muller's benefit. "Trying to give the plants the best growing atmosphere. We'll feel just as hot and sticky when the ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... indifferent lumber will cause trouble through "running"—that is, leakage of wind from one pipe to another. In poor chests of this description the slides are apt to stick when the atmosphere is excessively damp, and to become too loose on days when little or no humidity is present. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... popular sanatorium for this disease, is a complete delusion. Instead of the climate being essentially dry, it is saturated with humidity during a great part of the year; and the peculiar sirocco of the place is of a hot, dry, irritating nature. An intelligent medical author, who had resorted to Madeira for change of air, remarks, that 'very frequent and remarkable variations in a given ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... felting readily. Pure wool consists of a horny substance, containing both nitrogen and sulphur, and dissolves in a potash solution. In a clean condition, the wool contains from 0.3 to 0.5 per cent. of ash. It is very hygroscopical, and under ordinary circumstances it contains from 13 to 16 per cent. humidity, in dry air from 7 to 11 per cent., which can be entirely expelled at a temperature of from 226 to 230 degrees Fahrenheit. Wool when ignited does not burn with a bright flame, as vegetable fiber does, but consumes with a feeble smouldering glow, soon extinguishes, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... the day had grown steadily more oppressive. It was one of those airless, stifling afternoons which afflict New York in the summer. He remembered seeing something about a record in the evening paper which he had bought on his way to the studio, a whole column about heat and humidity. It certainly felt unusually warm even for ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... and the diplomats had a loge reserved for them next to the orchestra, and, although there were carpets and rugs under our feet, the humidity and cold penetrated to the marrow of our ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... and wait for daylight. In the darkness preceding dawn, we had no idea of the number of our bunch, except as we could judge from the size and compactness of the milling cattle, which must have covered an acre or more. The humidity of the atmosphere, which had prevailed during the night, by dawn had changed until a heavy fog, cutting off our view on every hand, left us as much at sea as we had been previously. But with the break of day we rode through our holding a number of times, splitting and scattering the milling ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... wild birds and quadrupeds found themselves beset by climatic conditions of various degrees and kinds of rigor and destructive power. In the torrid zone it took the form of excessive rain and humidity, excessive heat, or excessive dryness and aridity. In the temperate and frigid zones, life was a seasonal battle with bitter cold, torrents of cold rain in early winter or spring, devastating sleet, and deep snow and ice that ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... whereby it acquireth no new form, but rather a consistence or determination of its defluency, and amitteth not its essence, but condition of fluidity. Neither doth there any thing properly conglaciate but water, or watery humidity, for the determination of quicksilver is properly fixation, that of milk coagulation, and that of oil and unctuous bodies only incrassation."—Is this ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... time, [b] warme well your garments at the fire, and warm the linings of the same, for it helpeth concoction, and remoueth all humidity and moysture. But my father did not allow of this custome, warning men of strength, and those that are borne for the Common-wealth, not to accustom themselves to such kind of softnesse, which doe weaken our bodies. Also [c] when you put off your garments ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... the road through the narrow strip of jungle. The Death Ray had cut huge swathes in the tangle of trees and vines, and now areas of heaped debris, livid with the colors of recent decay, exhaled a mephitic humidity altogether alien to the snow that fell in soft, slow flakes. Each hesitated to voice the new fear: ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... This heavy humidity also tends to prevent radiation of heat, and the temperature at night does not drop exceedingly low, although frost is not uncommon even in summer. As our vegetation is acclimated and adapted to our ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... Humidity hasn't shirked his job a minute to-day," Bob Strahan told Miss Carter as they left the car and walked up the block ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... increases in size, and as the roots of course pierce deeper; for if the trenches are left at a depth of three feet, while the roots are six feet in the earth, it follows that the lower part of the cacao plant is in a situation of too great humidity, and rots at the level of the water. This precaution contributes not only to make the plantation more durable, but also to render the crop more productive. It is necessary, also, to abstain from cutting any branch from cacao ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... heat of summer, in northern Arizona, are as frigid or as torrid as the readings of the thermometer may seem to indicate. The cold or heat is not felt to such an extreme as in the East. A minimum of humidity is the basic reason for this wide difference between, for example, the July or January climate of New York, and the July or January climate of the Grand Canyon. Extremes that in New York drive people to the cool seashore or To California's winter warmth, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little horticulture: plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... that the excess of humidity which caused the remarkable mirage of the afternoon helped to continue the "black hour," as the Arabs term it, far beyond its ordinary limits. Hence it was nearly ten o'clock when Royson quitted the camp on his self-imposed ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... fields of slaughter "somewhere in Flanders," sported boisterously with their factory-girl sweethearts or spooned in the shadows. Everywhere grubby children in scant clothing shrilled and scampered and got in the way. Humidity enveloped the town like a sodden cloak and its humanity stewed in moist ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... unwilling to spend his time this way in spite of the discomfort imposed by any kind of activity. Humidity was a physical factor which seemed to have gone undiscovered by the inhabitants of the planet they were on. He was sure it was constantly maintained within a fractional per cent of one hundred as he donned a clean ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... stars. [58] The soil, though improper for the olive, the vine, and other productions of warmer climates, is fertile, and suitable for corn. Growth is quick, but maturation slow; both from the same cause, the great humidity of the ground and the atmosphere. [59] The earth yields gold and silver [60] and other metals, the rewards of victory. The ocean produces pearls, [61] but of a cloudy and livid hue; which some impute to unskilfulness in the gatherers; for in the Red Sea the fish are plucked from ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus |
