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Loam   /loʊm/   Listen
Loam

noun
1.
A rich soil consisting of a mixture of sand and clay and decaying organic materials.



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"Loam" Quotes from Famous Books



... Hastings when the latter, who was driving over to Wyllard's homestead with her one afternoon, pulled up her team while they were still some little distance away from it, and looked about her with evident interest. On the one hand, a vast breadth of torn-up loam ran back across the prairie, which was now faintly flecked with green. On the other, ploughing teams were scattered here and there across the tussocky sod, and long lines of clods that flashed where the sunlight struck their facets trailed out behind them. The great sweep ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... disease, Thou plough'st up flesh and blood, and there sow'st pease; And leav'st such prints on beauty that dost come, As clouted shoon do on a floor of loam. Thou that of faces honey-combs dost make, And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake Thy deadly trade; now thou art rich, give o'er, And let our curses call thee forth ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... at it in another light. Over large areas together, the conditions of air, climate, and rainfall are practically identical. But soil differs greatly from place to place. Here it's black; there it's yellow; here it's rich loam; there it's boggy mould or sandy gravel. And some soils are better adapted to growing certain plants than others. Rich lowlands and oolites suit the cereals; red marl produces wonderful grazing grass; bare uplands are best for gorse and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... of a beautiful satiny-white hue, and perfectly tasteless. He obtained sixty, eighty, and sometimes a hundred layers from the same strip of bark. The best tobacco in Brazil is grown in the neighbourhood of Borba, on the Madeira, where the soil is a rich black loam; but tobacco of very good quality was grown by John Trinidade and his neighbours along this coast, on similar soil. It is made up into slender rolls, an inch and a half in diameter and six feet in length, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... through the nozzle. These bellows require no valve, and are the simplest that can be made: they are in use throughout India. The nozzle or tube to convey the blast may be made of a plaster of clay or loam, mixed with grass, and moulded ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... Mauchline; the farm-servants, male and female, were hired in Ayrshire, a matter of questionable prudence, for the mode of cultivation is different from that of the west, and the cold humid bottom of Mossgiel bears no resemblance to the warm and stony loam of Ellisland." ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... forth: stars all about, perpendicular, horizontal, save in the reddening east, upon their long day's drive to the sawmill. The two teams plodded along steadily, their footfall muffled in the soft prairie loam; the earth elsewhere soundless, with a silence which even yet was a marvel to the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... liquid glue, one part; water, five parts; then stir in enough old plaster of Paris, whitening, or even fine loam to make a soft paste. Build banks of this paste around the pool and higher toward the back sides. Stick the tree, with its stand and its Monkeys, in this, to one side; dust powder or rotten wood over the ground to hide its whiteness; or paint ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... kind of sand, having both fine and coarse grains. These grains need to be sharp, or the cement will not stick to them well. They must also be clean, that is, free from dirt. If you rub sand between your hands, and it soils them, then there is clay or loam with it, and it must not be used in making concrete unless it is thoroughly washed. Another way of testing it is to put it into a glass jar partly full of water and shake it. Then let it settle. If there ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... Ellice and Carlton a sudden and well-defined change occurs in the character of the country; the light soil disappears, and its place is succeeded by a rich dark loam covered deep in grass and vetches. Beautiful hills swell in slopes more or less abrupt on all sides, while lakes fringed with thickets and clumps of good-sized poplar balsam lie lapped ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... remembered some question of enclosing, and thought all waste lands were under the Crown; she knew that the Stoneborough people once had a right to pasture their cattle, because Mr. Southron's cow had tumbled down a loam-pit when her mother was a girl. No, that was on Far-view down, out the other way! Miss Harrison was positive that Sir Henry Walkinghame had some right there, and would not Dr. May apply to him? Mrs. Grey thought it ought to be part of the Drydale ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... nuts in clean, sharp sand, light loam or sawdust and placing them in a cold, moist place, as a well drained and shaded north hillside, where their contact with the soil and protection from the direct rays of the sun will insure complete dormancy and at the same time prevent ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... within view, at the same time of year seemed to have no bees. A great field of clover in flower was silent; there was no hum, nor glistening of wings. Butterflies rarely came along. Swallows were not common. In the rich loam it was curious to note mussel-shells, quite recent, in good preservation, and a geologist might wonder at the layers of them in such an earth; the farmer would smile, and say the mussels were carted ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... at the Warrigal Rocks— On the Wallaby Range she was galloping still— And over the wasteland and under the wood, By down and by dale, and by fell and by flat, She gallop'd, and here in the stirrups I stood To ease her, and there in the saddle I sat To steer her. We suddenly struck the red loam Of the track near the troughs—then she reeled on the rise— From her crest to her croup covered over with foam, And blood-red her nostrils, and bloodshot her eyes, A dip in the dell where the wattle fire bloomed— A bend round a bank that had shut out the view— Large framed in the mild light ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... here. So far as I can make out there is only pottery on this site, and none of it pre-Mohammedan; if a city ever stood here it has been completely entombed, or torn into shreds by the wind, the flying sands, and the heat. Nefta itself, built of soft loam, would crumble away in briefest time if left unrepaired. The acute Guerin was not more successful than myself at Zafrana, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... here gave access to what had yesterday been a sloping paddock where Miss Quiney grazed a couple of cows. To-day the cows had vanished and given way to a small army of labourers. Broad strips of turf had vanished also and the brown loam was moving downhill in scores of wheel-barrows, to build up the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... mechanism of intellect, education and training of any kind prove to be effective as agents for developing hereditary qualities or for suppressing undesirable tendencies. Just as wind-strewn grains of wheat may fall upon rock and stony soil and loam, to grow well or poorly or not at all according to their environmental situations, so children with similar intellectual possibilities would have their growth fostered or hampered or prevented by ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... stood in darkness, living the life of a dog, stripped to the waist, for he was working in a temperature of a hundred degrees. Now the way was blocked by a spring, and he had to work standing in the water; now by a deposit of loam, and he stood almost knee-deep in the mire; the atmosphere was nearly always foul, and many of his fellow-labourers succumbed to it; but new ones were ever ready to take their place. Finally Andrea, too, succumbed, ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... to be cast in a mould of loam, of which an immense quantity was to be pounded in a mortar and sifted through a fine sieve. It was an endless piece of work, and served me for many an hour's exercise; and ALEX. frequently took his turn at it, for we were all eager to do something towards the ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... these obscurities; meanwhile they remain in picturesque contrast to the merciless publicity of our own life, and the scientific annihilation of time and distance. They are as the dark and amorphous loam in which has taken root the Flower of the Ages. If extremes must meet, it was fitting that the least and the most highly developed examples of mankind should dwell side by side, at the close of the nineteenth century, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... is favourable to the growth of hemp, flax, tobacco, and all kinds of grain. The greater portion of the soil is rich loam, black, or mixed with reddish earth, generally to the depth of five or six feet, on a limestone bottom. The produce of corn is about sixty bushels on an average per acre, and of wheat about thirty-five; cotton is partially ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... fondness for lime; whether water of some dozen degrees of hardness is not necessary for their development? are questions which may be fairly asked. Yet is not the true reason this; that the soil on the banks of a chalk or limestone stream is almost always rich—red loam, carrying an abundant vegetation, and therefore an abundant crop of animal life, both in and out of the water? The countless insects which haunt a rich hay meadow, all know who have eyes to see; and if they will look into the stream they will find that the water-world ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... potting may be described as vexed questions in camellia culture. As to the first, some affect pure loam, others peat only, yet more a half and half of both, with a liberal proportion of gritty sand, or a little smashed charcoal or bruised bones as porous or feeding agents, or both. Most growers prefer the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... and Cape May. See those other fine rivers,—the Susquehannah, the Ohio, and the Alleghany. Here is a country but a little less than the size of England; its surface covered with a rich vegetable loam capable of the highest cultivation, and of producing wheat, barley, rye, Indian corn, hemp, oats, flax. Here too are mighty forests supplying woods of every kind, abounding too in wild game and venison, equal to any in England. The rivers are full of fish, oysters, and crabs in abundance. ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... black fat loam into which her ancestors were now resolved, they deposited the body of Mrs. Margaret Bertram; and 'like soldiers returning from a military funeral, the nearest relations who might be interested in the settlements of the lady, urged the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... was very expensive work, amounting to about thirty pounds per acre. The root of a large tree would frequently occupy three men a couple of days in its extraction, which, at the rate of wages, at one shilling per diem, was very costly. The land thus cleared was a light sandy loam, about eighteen inches in depth with a gravel subsoil, and was considered to be far superior to the patina (or natural grass-land) soil, which was, in appearance, black loam on the higher ground and of a peaty ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... dark, when Henley drove his horse into his barn-yard, he saw Dixie over in her own lot milking her cow. She was a brave, erect little figure as she stood in the soft, black loam. "So, so!" she was saying in her sweet, persuasive voice to the restless animal. "Can't you stand still and keep that pesky fly-brush out of my eyes? Them hairs cut like so many knives when they ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... Plains. The only difference between these and the oak openings, is the character of the trees and the evenness of their surface. The soil is a mixture of sand and black loam. They have the appearance of cultivated orchards, or English parks; and on places where the foot of the white man has never trod, a carriage and four could easily pass through. They produce both ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... from it being sent to aid Grant. And thus the year wore away until early summer. Still another consideration with Rosecrans, was the character of the soil in Tennessee from a short distance south of Murfreesboro to the foot of the Cumberland Mountains. This was a light sandy loam, that in winter and spring, during the rains of those seasons, became like quicksand, allowing the artillery and wagon to sink almost to the hub, and rendering the rapid movement of ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist

... ten,— A hale white rose of his countrymen, Transplanted here in the Hoosier loam, And blossomy as his German home— As blossomy and as pure and sweet As the cool green glen of his calm retreat, Far withdrawn from the noisy town Where trade goes clamoring up and down, Whose fret and fever, and stress and strife, May not trouble ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... illustration of this idea is given: "Mr. B. F. Nourse, of Orrington, plowed and planted with corn a piece of his drained and subsoiled land, in a drizzling rain, after a storm of two days. The corn came up and grew well; yet this was a clayey loam, formerly as wet as the adjoining grass-field, upon which oxen and carts could not pass, on the day of this planting, without cutting through the turf and miring deeply. The nearest neighbor said, if he had planted that day, it must have been ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... I reached over and left a smear of loam across the back of his hand, while I brought away a brown circle around my wrist that the responsive grasp of his fingers left. "Do you want me single-handed to ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... England; free from disease; grows well in almost any soil, but prefers a light fertile loam; in open ground retains its lower branches for many years. Good plants, grown from seed, are usually readily obtainable in nurseries; small collected plants from open ground can be moved in ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... the ebb-tide to-day I noticed that there was a dip, and that out of the dip the sea fell without emptying it out; and if our ship has not been damaged, we can put out our boat and tow the ship into it." There was a bottom of loam where they had been riding at anchor, so that not a plank of the ship was damaged. [Sidenote: The Irish] So Olaf and his men tow their boat to the dip, cast anchor there. Now, as day drew on, crowds drifted down to the shore. At last two men rowed a boat out to the ship. They asked what men they ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... them with the rising tide. The tumult of the weather seemed to relieve and console the tumult of his heart. He drank in strength and defiance from the roar of the waters, and climbed to their very edge along the rocks, where every fresh, rush of the waves enveloped him in white swirls of angry loam. The look of the green, rough, hungry sea, harmonised with his feelings, and he sat down and stared into it, to find relief from the torment ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... thickness of a water film held around the soil grains is very minute. King has calculated that a film 275 millionths of an inch thick, clinging around the soil particles, is equivalent to 14.24 per cent of water in a heavy clay; 7.2 per cent in a loam; 5.21 per cent in a sandy loam, and 1.41 per cent in a ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... convenient and very successful method of starting cuttings is to take a six-inch flower-pot, put two inches of fine gravel in the bottom, set a four-inch unglazed flower-pot in the centre, and fill up the space around it with sand and garden-loam, mixed. Put a cork in the hole in the bottom of the small flower-pot, and then fill it with water. Put the cuttings around in the space between the two pots and set in a fairly warm room ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... bush as many sods of the black or green wattle (acacia decurrens or affinis) as you think will suffice. These are platted or intertwined with the upright posts in the manner of hurdles, and afterwards daubed with mortar made of sand or loam, and clay mixed up with a due proportion of the strong wiry grass of the bush chopped into convenient lengths and well beaten up with it, as a ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... drawbacks, the country was not lacking in resources. The soil was almost as fertile as the loam of Egypt, and, like the latter, rewarded a hundredfold the labour of the inhabitants.* Among the wild herbage which spreads over the country in the spring, and clothes it for a brief season with flowers, it was found that some plants, with a little culture, could be rendered useful ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... path came the lad, with head down and steady pace, trundling a barrow full of richer earth, surmounted by a watering-pot. Never stopping for breath he fell to work again, enlarged the hole, flung in the loam, poured in the water, reset the shrub, and when the last stamp and pat were given performed a little dance of triumph about it, at the close of which he pulled off his hat and began to fan his heated face. The action caused the observer to start and look ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... descended into the valley of Hat Greek, a little below where it emerges from the second canon and above its confluence with Pit River. As soon as we reached the fertile soil of the valley, we found Williamson's trail well defined, deeply impressed in the soft loam, and coursing through wild-flowers and luxuriant grass which carpeted the ground on ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... patiently over the same track until the snow was trampled hard and rounded like a turnpike. These roads lasted far into the spring, when the snow had melted from the plains, and wound for miles like threads of silver over the rich black loam of the prairies. After that winter game was never again so plentiful in the State. Much still remained, of course, but it never recovered entirely from the rigors of that season and the stupid enterprise of the pioneer hunters, who, when they came ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... melalema, and gum saplings. After leaving the river, we kept our old course due north, crossing, at a distance of one mile, three creeks with gum trees on their banks. The soil of the flats through which they flow is a red loam of fair quality and well grassed. Beyond the third creek is a large plain, parts of which are very stony, and this is bounded towards the east by a low stony rise, partly composed of decayed and honeycombed quartz rock in situ, and partly of waterworn pebbles and other alluvial deposits. At ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... is flat; the soil is fine sifted loam running to dust, as the air of England runs to fog; the woods are dense and beautiful and full of trees unknown to the parallel of New York; the roads are miserable cart-paths; the cattle are scalawags; so are the horses, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... on in that direction, but had only gone a few yards when the ground became a perfect quagmire of black loam, that looked like coal ground to powder, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... Clifty, Flat Rock, and Salt Creeks,—all mill streams. Surface, level; soil, a rich loam, mixed with sand and gravel; the western part hilly, with clay soil. Minerals; limestone, coal, iron ore, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... employed the "Forty Thieves" in making salt. There were peculiar surface mines within a mile of my little station. These were situated upon a sandy loam on the banks of a brackish lake, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... in so cold a climate, and found that, if it should unfortunately go out, they had no means of lighting it again; for though they had a steel and flints, yet they wanted both match and tinder. In their excursions through the island they had met with a slimy loam, or a kind of clay nearly in the middle of it. Out of this they found means to form a utensil which might serve for a lamp, and they proposed to keep it constantly burning with the fat of the animals they should ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... fathers! What difference is between us and them but that we are dearer fools, coxcombs at a higher rate? They are pleased with cockleshells, whistles, hobby-horses, and such like; we with statues, marble pillars, pictures, gilded roofs, where underneath is lath and lime, perhaps loam. Yet we take pleasure in the lie, and are glad we can cozen ourselves. Nor is it only in our walls and ceilings, but all that we call happiness is mere painting and gilt, and all for money. What a thin membrane of honour that is! and how hath all true reputation ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... Machemba's brother, Chimseia, who gave us food at once. The country is now covered with deeper soil, and many large acacia-trees grow in the rich loam: the holms too are large, and many islands afford convenient maize grounds. One of the Nassiek lads came up and reported his bundle, containing 240 yards of calico, had been stolen; he went aside, leaving it on the path (probably fell asleep), and it was gone when ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... or 4 miles wide. The soil is sandy silt with a considerable admixture of vegetable matter. In some places it is loose, and shifts readily before the winds; here and there are stretches of alluvial clay loam. The sandy areas are often covered with coconut trees, and the alluvial deposits along the rivers frequently become beds of nipa palm as far back as tide water. The plain areas are generally poorly watered except during the rainy season, having only ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... say if we had sandy loam the plant would grow better and it is more easily worked. Too heavy a soil is not ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... devoted to castor-bean culture. The Secretary's address is Topeka, Kansas. 2. Of the Plant Seed Company, St. Louis, and also valuable information—that city being the chief market for the castor beans. 3. The soil best suited to the crop is a light, rich, sandy loam, though any dry and fertile soil will yield good crops. For some reason not clearly understood, the castor bean has been found a powerful and energetic agent in improving some, if not all soils, the experience in Kansas being, that land which previously refused to yield good crops ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... as each quarter ding-dongs, Away the folk roam By the "Hart" and Grey's Bridge into byways and "drongs," Or across the ridged loam; The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs, The old saying, "Would we ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... and the frost is on the loam When the dream goes out in silence and the ebb runs out in foam, Mary, Mary Shepherdess, she ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... soil of the so-termed swamp, or rather marsh, is of the most favourable description for embanking and draining operations, consisting at the part of the line where the work has been commenced, of a good loam for the first spit, and then clay to the depth of eighteen inches or two feet, resting upon a stratum composed for the most part of shells of numberless shapes and sizes, which extends to the bottoms of the drains (four feet), being the level of high water at spring tides, and at about ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... of the Allier is rather light: on the hills it is calcareous; in the vales it is a white calcareous loam, the surface of which is a most fertilizing manure of marl and clay. The hills, therefore, are peculiarly adapted for vines, which they produce in great quantities; and when on favourable sites, that is to say, with respect to the sun, the quality of the wine corresponds with the quantity. In ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... hand, the strata which lie on the surface—loam, sandstone, and clayey sand—make a heavy, impermeable soil, quite infertile, in which it is hard to raise anything, and which is largely given over to woods. Thus, freedom of movement is impeded by deep ravines, ridges ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... the steel to a cherry red, not any more, and burying it in a box of slaked lime, where it is allowed to remain until all the heat is gone. If well done, the metal will be comparatively soft and in a condition to machine easily and rapidly. In lieu of lime, bury in ashes, sand, loam, or any substance not inflammable, but fine enough to closely surround the steel and exclude the air so that ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... short and still rich under foot, although it froze hard every night; but all along the brook's marge there were many small oozy bubbling springlets, which it required a stinging night to congeal; and round these the ground was poached up by the cattle, and laid bare in spots of deep, soft, black loam; and the innumerable chalkings told the experienced eye at half a glance, that, where they laid up for the night soever, here was their feeding ground, and here it had been ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... with a metallic alloy of a whitish hue, but capable of being cut partially with a knife. There were also deposites of bones, but so decayed and fragmentary as to make it impossible to determine their specific character. All these were, geologically, beneath the various strata of sand, loam and vegetable mould, supporting the heavy primitive forest of that valley. At Little Rock, in the valley of the Arkansas, vestiges of art have recently been found in similar beds of denudation, at considerable depths below the surface of the wooded plains. They consisted of a subterraneous ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... gathered; but both here and at Sarawak the best informed and most intelligent Malays assure me it is likewise found in the interior, and brought by the Dyaks from the mountains. The alluvial soil is a rich clay loam. The principal production at present is rice, of which considerable quantities are grown on the banks of the river, which accounts for the clearing of so many miles of the jungle. The mode of cultivation is similar to what is pursued in Sumatra, and so well described by Marsden. A small spot ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... also puts forth its blossoms, but by dexterous management it may be made to flower during most of the year; and this is effected by placing the pea-like tubera or knobs which the root sends forth, and by which the plant is propagated, in pots filled with loam and bog-earth ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... be bluer then, for all the clouds will part, And greener 'll be the grass above the loam, And oh, the happy feeling in one lonely Irish heart When that ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard

... that they were covered with a layer of burnt clay, uneven and broken; immediately below this a layer of ashes 6 inches thick, and below this black loam. On these areas large trees were growing, one a poplar 3 feet in diameter. Below one of these floors were found a skeleton, some pottery, and a pipe. A large oak formerly stood at this point, but ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas

... lay some miles from Bath, in a pleasant wooded valley, through which meandered a placid and slow-flowing stream. On either side of this water stretched broad meadow lands, flat and fertile, as well they might be, seeing they were of rich black loam, and well drained, withal. To the right these meadows were bounded by forest lands, the trees of which grew thickly up and over the ridge, and on the space where wood met fields was placed the manor, a quaint square building of Georgian architecture, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... storm winds come sweepin', Come widowed and weepin', Come rippin' and reapin', The wheat of the loam, And some says, it's sport, boys, It's timbrels and hautboys, And some is the sort, boys, That's ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... decaying of its productions. And so, almost fifty years ago, we left it, but how does it meet us upon our return? Art has touched it with her handy work. It has been drained; the brush cut from its surface, rich loam carted upon it, and now it presents the appearance of a well cultivated garden, is covered with luxuriant grass, and staked out into yards for the accommodation of families who wish to lie down side by side, in the sleep of death. Many, already, are beautified with flowers and shrubbery; and ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... commanding an extensive view of the German Ocean, and we learn that its ruin is owing chiefly to the encroachments of the sea. It is a poor, desolate place, as the cut implies. Mr. Shoberl, in the Beauties of England and Wales, tells us "seated upon a hill composed of loam and sand of a loose texture, on a coast destitute of rocks, it is not surprising that its building shall have successively yielded to the impetuosity of the billows, breaking against, and easily undermining the foot of the precipice." Certainly not, say we; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... violets, or vice versa. Una, Rose, and I were given each a section of a garden-bed for our own; I cultivated mine so assiduously that it became quite a deep hole; but I do not recall that anything ever grew in it. The soil was a very rich loam, and ceaseless diligence must have been required in ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... which was now forward, and sent down red and gray and brown trickles of their own to augment the tawny waters. And then the country of low hills, which had no trees, sent out its sluggish streams also, across the deep loam-lands, to stain still further the once clean stream of Messasebe. And word went abroad that Father Messasebe had rebelled—word that reached the white-topped mountains far in the West; and these mountains, loyal, sent their white waters down until they, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... and Spence mention the small beetle Onthophilus sulcatus as being like the seed of an umbelliferous plant; and another small weevil, which is much persecuted by predatory beetles of the genus Harpalus, is of the exact colour of loamy soil, and was found to be particularly abundant in loam pits. Mr. Bates mentions a small beetle (Chlamys pilula) which was undistinguishable by the eye from the dung of caterpillars, while some of the Cassidae, from their hemispherical forms and pearly gold-colour, resemble ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... salads. In China, the radish may be found growing naturally, without cultivation; and may be occasionally met with in England as a weed, in similar places to where the wild turnip grows; it, however, thrives best in the garden, and the ground it likes best is a deep open loam, or a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... to revert; she sought the soil, but she was determined it should be the soil of her own choosing. She found Morrell coarse, dry, hard, sandy, gritty. What she sought was some dank, rich loam, dark, moist, productive. To be sure, great towering things grew in the sand—pine-trees, for example, with vast trunks and with broad heads that spread out far above the humbler growths below; but on the whole she preferred some lustrous-leaved shrub full of buds ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... Brown, and he ran up the path, shaking leaf loam like dry tobacco dust from the roots of ferns he had brought to Francoise. He knew at once that she and Gougou had left the camp. He sat down on the dog-kennel with his hands on his knees, staring at the dim earth. Puttany went from tent to cabin, calling his daily ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... his strong arms, presently discovering that by working them back and forth he could loosen them: and then a new plan was suggested to him so that he fell to work excavating with his knife at a point above where one of the stakes was imbedded. The loam was soft and easily removed, and it was not long until Tarzan had exposed that part of one of the stakes which was imbedded in the wall of the pit to almost its entire length, leaving only enough imbedded to prevent the stake from falling into the excavation. Then he turned his attention to an ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... land, and the truthful significance of the appellation is amply testified by the rare flowers, green gardens, fertile fields and towering forests in and around it, all of which are the outgrowth of its soil of rich alluvial loam. ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... in order to ascertain the nature of the subsoil, for we were abundantly supplied with water from the lagoons. In every instance, after digging down to the depth of from six to seven feet through a rich loam, we reached a regular sandy sea beach and salt water (it must however be recollected that we dug in the deepest hollows) so that it appeared as if the whole of this flat country was a formation left upon the shoals with which the coast is bounded; and it ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... Canada is generally fertile; about Quebec it is light and sandy in some parts, in others it is a mixture of loam and clay. Above the Richelieu Rapids, where the great valley of the St. Lawrence begins to widen, the low lands consist of a light and loose dark earth, with ten or twelve inches of depth, lying on a stratum of cold clay, all apparently of alluvial ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... restricted strip one may peep and botanise without restraint, discovering that though it does not offer conditions at all favourable to the retention of moisture, plants of varied character crowd each other for space and flourish as if drawing nutriment from rich loam. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... in the fore part of September, three pecks to the acre, after having previously plowed in 200 lbs. of Peruvian guano to the acre, and after the first harrowing sows the clover seed. The land is a yellow clay loam, uneven surface, very much worn; in fact, without the guano, and with all the manure that could be made upon the farm—for no straw no manure—not worth cultivating. Dr. F. had been using guano three years, at the date of our visit, and thought his ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... well-paved and flagged condition of the streets; and I did not have an opportunity to do so till some time afterward, when I got out into the country; and then, indeed, I saw England, and snuffed its immortal loam-but ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... quite a similar manner. All soil and loam was removed from the interior of the building; the whole surface was brought up to the grade with a puddle of gravel and ashes; stakes two and a half by four inches, and thirty inches in length, were driven down; and nailing strips were secured to them. Over this puddled surface ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various

... music charms me like the voice of love, And chains me to this wild, uncultivated grove, Where spring flowers vary their beauty and bloom, And spread their morning and evening perfume. How beautiful the hills and forest land, Where Nature spreads her loam and fertile sand; ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... covering the low foot-hills of the Appalachian Mountains. It contains the densest population of the state, less than 17 per cent. of which is negro. South of this is the broad cotton belt of various rich soils, chiefly deep black loam of the river bottoms, which stretches east and west across the state and includes over 60 per cent. of negroes in its population. This is succeeded by the low, coastal timber belt, marked by a decline in the quality of the soil and the proportion ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... not be long before they hear The bullbat on the hill, And in the valley through the dusk The pastoral whippoorwill. A few more friendly suns will call The bluets through the loam And star the lanes with buttercups Away ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... the south; and beyond that again the Whetstone hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with white grit mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm Valley, under good, well-pastured loam; and here are chalcedonies and ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... necessary. At first glance, indeed, Renwick was inclined to that opinion himself, for the rocks, though fissured and scarred as though by the blasts of winter, though not so high, were scarcely less precipitous than upon the southern side. At his very feet, perhaps already buried for years in the loam and moss, were the huge blocks of stone which had fallen from the northern towers and rolled down the steep slope of the natural counterscarp which the conformation ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... economic life of the people of that part of the country. It is peculiar to north China and it is not found south of the Yangtsze. The loess is a solid but friable earth of brownish-yellow colour, and when triturated with water is not unlike loam, but differs from the latter by its highly porous and tubular structure. The loess soil is extremely favourable to agriculture. (See LOESS ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... dry and compact that rain will not affect it beyond making it dirty, and its component parts so firmly moulded together that the sun cannot convert them into deep dust. Therefore the travelled part of an earth-road should not be composed of loam fertile enough for a corn-field, nor of sand deep enough for a beach. If the road runs through sandy land, it can be greatly and cheaply improved by covering it with a few inches of clayish soil; and if it runs through ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... row of galvanized wire cages sunk four inches into the ground and about four inches free above ground, filled with sandy loam and used for sprouting any nuts which are to be employed in experimental work. Each cage is fitted with a cover of galvanized wire, the purpose of which is to keep out rodents which are so destructive to planted nuts. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... grinding of mighty forces, the noise and rushings of winds—and what avails? Parturiunt montes ...you know the rest. The ridiculous mice squeak and scamper on the granary floor. They may play undisturbed, for the real poets, those great gray felines, are sifting loam under Westminster. Gramercy Park and the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... bounded on the north by Thornton and Martin, on the east by Haltham and Dalderby, on the south by Kirkby-on-Bain, and on the west by Kirkstead, Kirkby, and Woodhall. The area is 1020 acres, rateable value 945 pounds, population 137, entirely agricultural. The soil is loam, on kimeridge clay, with ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... away. It was growing lighter rapidly, and every passing moment was fraught with the weightiest urgency. She concentrated all her energies for a supreme effort, and lashed her mare forward over the muddy cotton-field. The beast's hoofs sank in the loose red loam, as if it were quicksand, and her pace was maddeningly slow. At last Rachel came in sight of a Union camp at the edge of a cedar thicket. The arms were stacked, the men were cooking breakfast, and a battery of cannon standing ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... loam bordered the river on each side. These were occasionally broken by low, gently-rounded hills, composed of the same soil. Freshwater lagoons, frequented by wild-fowl, were found in several places; and during the course of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... me that he saw the following example of letisimulation: One day, while sitting in his front yard, he saw a caterpillar crawling on the ground at his feet. The grub crawled too near the edge of a little pit in the sandy loam, and fell over, dragging with it a miniature avalanche of sand. It immediately essayed to climb up the north side of the pit, and had almost reached the top, when the treacherous soil gave way beneath its feet, and it rolled to the bottom. It then tried the west side, and met with a similar ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... evening on to deepening pools, we learned that the Dundee men had not camped after all, had marched at six, and were coming on all night into Ladysmith. Thirty-two miles without rest, through stinging cataract and spongy loam and glassy slime! ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... 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 loam or a gravelly clay loam, underlaid by a somewhat heavier but fairly open clay subsoil is thought to be the best soil for apples. Broadly considered, medium loams are best. The lighter the soil the better will be the color of the fruit as a rule, and so, also, the ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... none the worse for her fall. The soft loam of the newly made flower bed had received her gently, and not even ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... afternoon and the men were tired of battling with the wind which buffeted their sunburned faces with sharp sand. They were crossing one of the high steppes of the middle prairie toward the belt of pines and muskegs which divides it from the barrens of the North. The broad stretch of fertile loam, where prosperous wooden towns are rising fast among the wheatfields, lay to the south of them, and the arid tract through which they journeyed had so far no attraction for even the ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... about like a beagle, first along the river side, then up the bank. Here they were again, and made by feet that flew and feet that followed. Up the bank they went fifty yards and more, now lost where the turf was sound, now seen in sand or loam, till they led to the bole of a big oak, and were once more mixed together, for here the pursuer had ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... received with wondering incredulity by the simple farmers on the sterile banks of the Yadkin. Accustomed to a sandy soil a few inches in thickness and covered with a scanty growth of slender pines, how could they believe in a yellow loam four feet or more in depth, and supporting dense forests of oak and poplar ten feet in diameter and towering aloft a hundred feet before they broke into branches? The tale was incredible, and it was years before the wonderful story was believed among the rural population ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... which are produced in great abundance, and ample foliage rendering it one of, if not the handsomest tree of our acquaintance. It gives a pleasing shade, and forms an imposing and picturesque object in the landscape, especially where the conditions of soil—a rich free loam—are provided. Ae. Hippocastanum alba flore-pleno (the double white Horse Chestnut), has a decidedly pyramidal habit of growth, and the flowers, which are larger than those of the species, are perfectly double. It is a very distinct ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... ours will wasted be And soon in this gloom, unused, must die. I shall not sleep—from this narrow shell I'll find my way, and out of this night I shall reach right up, until day by day I nearer and nearer approach the light. Already I feel the welcome heat Warming the loam that around me lies, Already I see in my sweetest dreams The genial sun and the azure skies. Oh! slumber then in your slothful ease, By your foolish fancies alone deceived, While the grandest victories ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller

... best adapted to the beet is a deep, light, well-enriched, sandy loam. When grown on thin, gravelly soil, the roots are generally tough and fibrous; and when cultivated in cold, wet, clayey localities, they are often coarse, watery, and insipid, worthless for the table, and comparatively of little value ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... also said: The people is much, see how they grow and multiply, and yet much more shall do if they rested from their labor. Therefore he commanded the same day to the prefects and masters of their works saying: In no wise give no more chaff to the people for to make loam and clay, but let them go and gather stubble, and make them do as much labor as they did tofore, and lessen it nothing. They do now but cry: Let us go and make sacrifice to our God, let them be oppressed by labor and exercised that they attend not to leasings. Then the prefects ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... method of curing consists in putting the material at once into the beds before curing, and mixing in with the manure, as it is placed in the bed, about one part of loam or garden soil to four or five parts of the fresh manure. The material is then left in this condition to cure without changing or turning, the temperature rising perhaps not above 130 deg. F. With some experience in determining the firmness with which the bed should be made to prevent a too high ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... observed, seems to have been the work of the males, as it was certainly of the smaller hornets, and the object was doubtless to examine the ground, and ascertain if the place was suitable for nesting. By digging two or three inches through the hard, gravelly surface of the road, a fine sandy loam was discovered, which seemed to suit exactly, for in a few days the main shafts were all started in the greensward, evidently upon the strength of the favorable report which the surveyors had made. These were dug by the larger hornets or females. There was but one inhabitant in each hole, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... appeared June 14th, where two rows of wheat and two of large millet were planted in alternating pairs, the rows being about twenty-eight inches apart. The wheat was ready to harvest but the straw was unusually short because growing on a light sandy loam in a season of exceptional drought, but little more than two inches of rain having fallen after ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... change are exhausted. Their fields lie fallow, their woodlands are being stripped. Tobacco has tainted the land. It has shouldered out the timber, and is turning forest to prairie. A land of fertile loam is vying with cheap soil that can send almost equal crops to market. There is no more timber to be cut, and when the timber goes the climate changes. In these hills lie the sleeping sources of wealth. Here are virgin forests and almost inexhaustible ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... consists of from 8 to 12 inches of a heavy brown or gray sandy loam, underlain by a heavy yellow or red loam or clay loam. Often the subsoil contains a considerable quantity of coarse sand, making the texture much the same as that of the soil. The sand of the soil and subsoil is composed of very coarse rounded and subangular quartz particles. The surface material ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... almost in the heart of the Chernozem, or black soil country, so called from the rich black loam of which its surface is composed to a depth of two and three yards and more. These vast plains were known to Herodotus, Strabo, and other ancient geographers only in their present Steppe, or flat and woodless condition. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... South Wales possesses every variety of soil, from the sandy heath, and the cold hungry clay, to the fertile loam and the deep vegetable mould. For the distance of five or six miles from the coast, the land is in general extremely barren, being a poor hungry sand, thickly studded with rocks. A few miserable stunted gums, and a dwarf underwood, are the richest productions of the ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth



Words linked to "Loam" :   soil, regur soil, regur, dirt, chernozemic soil



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