"Spongy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... explanation given by the Professor of this phenomenon is, that the blocks of basalt, that being an excellent conductor of heat, pass so much warmth through to their under surfaces—which form the roof of small chambers filled with a spongy mass of decaying leaves—that the rapid evaporation thereby caused produces the cold air and the ice. He omits to explain why there should be anything exceptional in the winter phenomenon of the crevices among ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... said, that in other respects it was not a good wood for the purpose, being very light. The small canoes are nothing more than the hollow trunk of the bread-fruit tree, which is still more light and spongy. The trunk of the bread-fruit tree is six feet in girth, and about twenty feet ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... volatile from the fixed parts of a compound by fire; accordingly, in several processes, we are directed to add to the fusible compound some porous substance which is incapable of fusion, and will retain the whole in a spongy form, thereby to facilitate the ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... a wire pocket made of an ox-muzzle flattened on one side; or make something of the kind with stiff wire. Line this with a sheet of close moss, which appears green behind the wire net-work. Then you fill it with loose, spongy moss, such as you find in swamps, and plant therein great plumes of fern and various swamp-grasses; they will continue to grow there, and hang gracefully over. When watering, set a pail under for it to drip into. It needs only to keep ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... abundant and low in temperature, in basins secure from flood-washing, handsome bogs are formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow sphagnum picturesquely ruined with patches of kalmia and ledum which ripen masses of beautiful color in the autumn. Between these cool, spongy bogs and the dry, flowery meadows there are many interesting varieties which are graduated into one another by the varied conditions already alluded to, forming ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... and spongy, the scarce-green grass plot Dents into pools where a foot has been. Puddles lie spilt in the road a mass, not Of water, but steel, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... the case in connection with the autopsy it is quite evident that the different suppurating surfaces, and especially the fractured, spongy tissue of the vertebrae, furnish a sufficient explanation of ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... Our march ended at sunset, without our seeing a single native. We had passed through the country which the discoverers of Botany Bay extol as 'some of the finest meadows in the world*.' These meadows, instead of grass, are covered with high coarse rushes, growing in a rotten spongy bog, into which we were plunged knee-deep ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... the laboratory and thereby disclosed a globular jar of glass and metal, connected by wires to a dynamo. Above the jar was a Life Ray projector. Lilith slid aside a metal portion of the jar, disclosing through the glass underneath the squirming, kicking body of a baby, resting on a bed of soft, spongy substance, to which it was connected by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... plaintive note of a hermit thrush—a bird so shy that he leaves his mate, seeking his hermitage among forgotten places. The place was inanimate—dead like the trees—their skeletons rising weirdly from the spongy moss. ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... we halted for an hour. The Oneida ate calmly; Lyn Montour tasted the parched corn, and drank at an unseen spring that bubbled a drear lament amid the rocks. Then we descended into the Drowned Lands, feeling our spongy trail between osier, alder, and willow. Once, very far away, I saw a light, pale as a star, low shining on the marsh. It was the Fish House, and we were near our journey's end—perhaps the end of all journeys, save that last swift trail upward among ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... proof that a spirit is his ruling love is that every spirit seizes and appropriates all things that are in harmony with his love, and rejects and repudiates all that are not. Everyone's love is like a spongy or porous wood, which imbibes such fluids as promote its growth, and repels others. It is also like animals of every kind, which know their proper food and seek the things that agree with their nature, and avoid what disagrees; for every ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... enjoyable to go out snowballing, when you can leave it off and go indoors to a jolly fire when you like, it was a very different matter to us now to experience all the discomforts of those dreadful, icy, spongy, little feathery nuisances penetrating beneath every loophole they could find entrance to, in the apology for a tent that we had, and to have our clothing sodden by it, our fire put out, and our blood congealed. Perhaps ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... which had fallen only about a hundred feet from the edge of the forest; he next proceeded adroitly to cut off the trunk, which might have been two feet in diameter at the base; of this he selected the most delicate portion, and then took with it one of the animal's spongy feet. In fact, these are the finest morsels, like the hump of the bison, the paws of the bear, and the head ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... dark nights our engineers had to build new roads across spongy, shell-torn areas, repair broken roads beyond No Man's Land, and build bridges. Our gunners, with no thought of sleep, put their shoulders to wheels and drag-ropes to bring their guns through the mire in support of the infantry, now under the increasing ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... to him or the forest. His eyes probed the mist that slithered through the ancient mossy trees and hanging vines. He listened, looked, but found nothing. Birds chittered, but that was all. He sat down, his back against a spongy tree trunk, ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... supply of powder is scant. They take careful aim, fire slowly, and make almost every shot tell. The twenty-six-pound balls {44} splinter the masts, and make sad havoc on the decks. Crash! crash! strike the enemy's cannon balls against the palmetto logs. The wood is soft and spongy, and the huge shot either bury themselves without making splinters, or else bound off ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... space you know. Seems they are the result of violent concentrations of energy that cause the birth of atoms. Thrygis doped out a collector of these rays that takes 'em from their paths and concentrates 'em in a retort where there's a spongy metal catalyst that never deteriorates. Here there is a reaction to the original action out in space and new atoms are born, simple ones of hydrogen. But what could be sweeter for use in one of our regular atomic motors? The energy of disintegration is ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... found in the sea, fresh water, or on damp ground; of a membranous or horny byaline substance, filled with green or colorless granular matter. Fronds consisting of continuous tubular filaments, either free or collected into spongy masses of various shapes. Crustaceous, globular, cylindrical, or flat. Fructification: by zoospores, either single or very numerous, and by resting spores formed in sporangial cells after the contents have been impregnated by the contents of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... half an inch thick, peel and remove the spongy portion; fry in hot dripping or butter, pepper and salt; also nice to make a light batter and dip the slices in, afterwards frying ...
— My Pet Recipes, Tried and True - Contributed by the Ladies and Friends of St. Andrew's Church, Quebec • Various
... high, through sumac, willow, elder, buttonbush, gold-yellow and blood-red osiers, past northern holly, over spongy moss carpet of palest silvery green up-piled for ages, over red- veined pitcher plants spilling their fullness, among scraggy, odorous tamaracks, beneath which cranberries and rosemary were blooming; through ethereal pale ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... with beds apt to be defiled, but more necessary implements, stools, table, and a chamber-pot. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this musick above is answered with the clinking below. The drawers are the civilest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem of them, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... current from a separate source of electricity by electrolysis. On disconnection the battery is ready to yield a current, in the reverse direction of that of the charging current. The usual type has lead plates on one of which lead binoxide and on the other of which spongy lead is formed. The lead binoxide seems to be the negative element, and it also acts as the depolarizer. The spongy lead is the positive electrode. The solution is dilute sulphuric acid of specific gravity 1.17. The action consists first in ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... at her, with such a still, watchful, almost dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and change her place, as persons do whose breath some cunning orator had been sucking out of them with his spongy eloquence, so that, when he stops, they must get some air and stir about, or they feel as if they should ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pileus spongy, deformed, thin, soft, expanded, edge incurved, sooty-gray; gills smoky; stem excentric, ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... wanted; by abusing him you will only frighten him into obstinacy. When you have got the animal under perfect subjection, examine the foot carefully, and you will find the heels, at the back part of the frog, entirely free from that member, which is soft and spongy. When the foot is down, resting on the ground, grasp the heels in your strong hand, press them inwards towards the frog, and you will immediately find that they will yield. You will then see that what yields so easily to the mere pressure of the hand will expand and spread ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... are long, stout and spongy below, ascending from a creeping and rooting or floating root-stock; the lower internodes are often 1/2 inch or more in thickness, with nodes bearing in fascicles long stout roots clothed with fine lateral roots; and the upper internodes ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... water. Luckily they were able to clutch at the hazel bushes above, and, by swinging themselves along the branches, to arrive at a firmer foothold, though even there the ground felt very insecure and spongy, and little dark pools came oozing up with ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... Africa, Brazil, and the Philippines. The best of the Copals is said to be the Kauri gum, originally exuded from the Kauri pine tree of New Zealand. The tree is still existent and produces a soft, spongy sap, but the resin used in varnish is dug up from a few feet under ground in regions where there are now no trees. A commercially important copal and one noted for its hardness is the Zanzibar or East African Copal. It is found imbedded in the earth at a depth not greater than four ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... and more rough. Its face was torn and barren, and what timber there was grew low down almost at its foot. The valley was narrowing, and the rich prairie grass was changing to a lank tangle of weedy tufts. There was a suspicion of moisture, too, in the spongy tread. The sun further lost power here, between these narrowing crags, and, although summer was well advanced, the ground still bore the moist traces of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... discomfort displayed by the pair was that the lady's hand worked somewhat fretfully to keep her dress from ballooning and puffing out of all proportion round about her person, while the vicar, who stood without his hat, employed a spongy handkerchief from time to time in tempering the ardours of a vertical sun. If you will consent to imagine a bald blackbird, his neck being shrunk in apprehensively, as you may see him in the first rolling of the thunder, you will gather an image ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and that gardening was a craft which, like others, required great study, long practice, and early experience. Unable to supply themselves, the majority became the victims of quack traders. They sickened of spongy apricots, and foxy pears, and withered plums, and blighted apples, and tasteless berries. They at length suspected that a nation might fare better if its race of fruiterers were overseen and supported by the State, if their skill and their market were alike secured. Although, no longer being ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... of a bunch of horses across the valley flat. In this country there were no horses except such as the goldseeker owned, and this bunch of horses meant a camp of trailers. Leaping to my saddle, I galloped across the spongy marsh ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... cliff. As they halted once more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... connective tissue, the periosteum. In addition to this compact bone, there is a lighter and looser variety in which spicules and bars of bony tissue are loosely interwoven. Many flat bones, the bones of the skull, for instance, consist of this spongy bone, plated (as an electro spoon ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... (Fig. 64) are large pale-green mosses, growing often in enormous masses, forming the foundation of peat-bogs. They are of a peculiar spongy texture, very light when dry, and capable of absorbing a great amount of water. They branch (Fig. 64, A), the branches being closely crowded at the top, where the stems continue to ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... moment my eye caught in the spongy bottom a thin mark cut clearly crescent-wise upon the turf. There was something strangely familiar about the horseshoe curve. Then I remembered the unshod roan of ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... sometimes, they had serious difficulties to encounter, for the ground in many places was moist and spongy, causing the feet of the men hauling to sink deeply into the soil as they tugged at the towing- rope of the jolly-boat's carriage; but, as frequently Mr Meldrum remarked, to rouse the seamen's energies, "difficulties ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... down torrents, but they were no richer Until they found a ragged piece of sheet, Which served them as a sort of spongy pitcher, And when they deemed its moisture was complete, They wrung it out, and though a thirsty ditcher[133] Might not have thought the scanty draught so sweet As a full pot of porter, to their thinking They ne'er till now had known the joys ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... on a long hair-like stalk and covered with long downy hairs, which render the fruits very light and readily carried by the wind. The name bulrush is more correctly applied to Scirpus lacustris, a member of a different family (Cyperaceae), a common plant in wet places, with tall spongy, usually leafless stems, bearing a tuft of many-flowered spikelets. The stems are used for matting, &c. The bulrush of Scripture, associated with the hiding of Moses, was the Papyrus (q.v.), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... beautiful and very curious. They were going so fast that all the reds and greens and yellows of the autumn trees melted into one variegated band. A moment later they came out on the ocean. And now on the water side were two other streaks of color, one a spongy blue that was sky, another a clear shining blue that was sea. Maida half-shut her eyes and the whole world seemed to ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... tell you very much about the storage battery but you ought to know a little about it if you are to own and run one with your radio set. When it is all charged and ready to work, the negative plate is a lot of soft spongy lead held in place by a frame of harder lead. The positive plate is a lead frame with small squares which are filled with lead peroxide, as it is called. This is a substance with molecules formed of one lead atom and two oxygen atoms. Why the chemists call it lead peroxide instead of just ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... course of time Kagh came to the edge of a tamarack swamp. Here the ground was soft and spongy. The prostrate trunks of a number of great trees lay half submerged in lily-choked pools, beside which stalks of the brilliant cardinal flower flamed by day in the green dimness. Scrambling upon one of these decaying logs the porcupine made his way, almost eagerly for him, far out among ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... and the lightning so vivid that it seemed for a while as if another mighty combat were raging. Then the rain came in a deluge, and the hoofs of horses and the wheels of cannon sank so deep in the spongy soil of the Wilderness that it became practically ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... chinampas, far-famed of Mexico, are encountered upon this canal. But, alas! the "floating gardens" do not float, nor is it possible to prove that they ever did, in plain, prosaic fact. They consist of areas of spongy soil intersected by numerous irrigation ditches, where the traveller may observe the Indian owners industrially watering them and tending their profuse array of flowers and vegetables. New "floating gardens" are sometimes made by the method of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Spongy meads, that soughed under the feet and grew steeper as one rose, took up the first few hundred feet. Little rivulets of mere dampness ran in among the under moss, and such very small hidden flowers as there were drooped with the surfeit of moisture. The rain ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... always in cold water—hot water spoils the flavor. Remove all sand, also the sand-bag between the eyes, the apron, and the spongy growths under the side points. Rinse well again in cold water, and dry thoroughly with a clean towel. Season a pint of rich milk well with pepper and salt. Season the crabs also, lay them in the milk, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... the disease supposedly caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted upon boarding the carcass. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth so great a sum to ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... periosteum. Usually the central part of the long bones is hollow, being filled with a fatty substance known as the yellow marrow. Around the marrow cavity the bone is very dense and compact, but most of the material forming the ends is porous and spongy. These materials are usually referred to as the compact substance and the cancellous, or spongy, substance ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... were common vegetables planted near every peasant's house. The Trapa or water-caltrops grew in the ditches, the nuts of which, with the seeds and the roots of the Nelumbium, generally furnished out our desert; to which, indeed, sometimes were added tolerably good peaches, dry spongy apples not unlike quinces in appearance, and pears of an immense size but of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... western extremity of the town is swampy, the grass, even on the declivities, being of a rank, spongy nature, and quite unfit for any thing. Here the Government built barracks, in which a detachment of Her Majesty's 55th regiment was for some time quartered: its ranks were decimated by fever, which latterly became so virulent, that the ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... full-grown but still green; in which state, after it is properly prepared by being roasted in the embers, its taste has some distant resemblance to that of an artichoke's bottom, and its texture is not very different, for it is soft and spongy. ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... of formation crowd and push out from the center, thus constituting the growth of the tree in all directions from center to circumference. Consequently this new growth of wood, being composed principally of albumen, is of a soft, spongy nature, and under the proper conditions will decay very rapidly, which can be easily ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... stricken had not been out of their berths for six weeks. The fearful depression and weakness, that forewarn scurvy, had been followed by the pains, the swollen limbs, the blue spots that presage death. A spongy excrescence covered the gums. The teeth loosened. The slightest noise was enough to throw the patient into a paroxysm of anguished fright; and some died on the decks immediately on contact with the cuttingly cold air. Others ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... pasty condition, in order that it may be mixed with fulminate of mercury. The solvent used is acetone, and the quantity of fulminate is between 75 to 85 per cent. of the entire compound. If desired, the compound can be made less sensitive to shocks by giving it a spongy consistency by agitating it with air while it is still in a syrupy condition. The nitro-glycerine, especially in this latter case, may be omitted. In some cases, when it is desirable to add a deterring medium, nitro-benzene or some ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... growing season, fail of fruit. Dipping over banks in the inlets of the creeks, the fortunate find the rosy apples of the miniature manzanita, barely, but always quite sufficiently, borne above the spongy sod. It does not do to be anything but humble in the alpine regions, but not fearful. I have pawed about for hours in the chill sward of meadows where one might properly expect to get one's death, and got no harm from ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Just at this spot the banks of the creek were high, there was an unusual blackness about the soil, and it gave out a faint but unrecognizable odor, that, in the bright mountain air, was quite pleasant. For several hundred yards the ground of this flat was rankly spongy, with an oozy surface. Then, beyond, lay a black greasy-looking marsh, and further on again the hills rose abruptly with the facets of auriferous-looking soil, such as the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... custard-apple, there was a species of the monkey-bread tree, which struck us as very curious. This tree was about sixty feet high and forty feet in circumference; the bark was smooth, and of a greyish colour, and the boughs were entirely destitute of leaves. This fruit hung thickly at the end of twisted, spongy stalks, from one to two feet long. The fruit is of an oval form, about six inches in length, and three or four inches in diameter; and the outer shell being broken, it contains a farinaceous substance, enveloping dark brown seeds of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... ancients did, according to Virgil. When the tide is rising, and advancing on land, it is not prudent to bring the vessels too close inshore, for, if the wind is fresh, the prows are buried in the sand; and the sand of that coast is spongy; it receives easily, but does not yield so well. It was on this account, no doubt, that a boat was detached from the bark as soon as the latter had cast anchor, and came with eight sailors, amidst whom was to be seen an object of an oblong form, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rapidly destroyed the tubes or retorts, and also as soon as fusion took place, the mass became so dense that it had little or no action on the air passing over it. Now, however, this difficulty has been partly overcome by so preparing the manganate as to prevent fusion, and to keep it in a spongy state, which gives very high results, and the substance being practically everlasting, the cost ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... ground is perhaps peaty: little black pools appear between tufts of grass, some of them streaked with a reddish or yellowish slime that glistens on the surface of the dark water; and as you step there is a hissing sound as the spongy earth yields, and a tiny spout is forced forth several yards distant. Some of the drier part of the soil the moucher takes to sell for use in ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... the seats Vandeloup espied a little figure in white, and seeing that it was Kitty, he strolled up to her in a leisurely manner. She was looking at the ground when he came up, and was prodding holes in the spongy turf with her umbrella, but glanced up carelessly as he came near. Then she sprang up with a cry of joy, and throwing her arms around his ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... is put on each side over the slips, and the book knocked up squarely at the back and head. Then it is lowered into the lying press and screwed up, leaving the back with the protecting boards projecting about three-quarters of an inch. If the back has too much swelling in it or is spongy, it is better to leave the slips on one side free and to pull them as tight as possible while the book is held in the press, or a knocking-down iron may be placed on one side of the projecting back ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... and bloodless; and his big, prominent, pale brown eyes inspire anything but confidence. His nose, however, is his redeeming feature: it is pronounced straight and well-formed; though I myself should have liked it better if it did not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... prodigious. A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass—each slender stalk crowned with a tuft. Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid the darker mass of spongy moss which gave them sustenance. Amid the numberless shafts thus raised toward heaven a thousand paths crisscrossed, each full of obstacles-chips of bark, juniper-berries, beech-nuts, tangled roots, hills raised by burrowing insects, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the channels, fastened the painter, and peered over the rail. There was no one in sight, and they sprang down, finding themselves on a deck that was soft and spongy with ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... like a thread of course Canvass, that has been newly unwreath'd, it being all wav'd or bended to and fro, much after that manner, but through the Microscope, it appears all perforated from side to side, and Spongie, like a small kind of spongy Coral, which is often found upon the English shores; but though I cut it transversly, I could not perceive that it had any pores that ran the long-way of the hair: the long hairs of Horses CC and D, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the ground, and green at the top; the flesh is white, tender, and sugary. Early, very productive, and remarkable for its regular form and good quality. As a field-turnip, it is one of the best; and, when pulled young, good for table use. During winter, the roots often become dry and spongy. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... people. He talked high, and his splotchy face lighted itself up with all the shifting tints and signs of evil pleasure and promised triumph—purple, yellow, red, green—they were all there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great passion ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time dates my father's possession and use of the German Exegetics. After my mother's death I slept with him; his bed was in his study, a small room,[13] with a very small grate; and I remember well his getting those fat, shapeless, spongy German books, as if one would sink in them, and be bogged in their bibulous, unsized paper; and watching him as he impatiently cut them up, and dived into them in his rapid, eclectic way, tasting them, and dropping for my play such a lot of soft, large, curled bits from the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... which are of a spongy black loam, grow a heavy crop of coarse meadow grass, interspersed in the late summer with the umbrella- like ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Opposite him, sitting formally upright, was a negro in a carefully brushed gray suit, with a crimson satin necktie surcharged by vivid green lightning. His bony face, the deep pits of his temples, were the dry spongy black of charcoal, and behind steel-rimmed glasses his eyes rolled like yellow agates. He glanced about, furtive and startled, when Elim Meikeljohn entered, but he was immediately reassured by Elim's disordered uniform. He made a ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dysentery which had broken out was probably due to the 'green' water of the Nile; for during the early period of the flood what is known as 'the false rise' washes the filth and sewage off the foreshore all along the river, and brings down the green and rotting vegetation from the spongy swamps of Equatoria. The water is then dangerous and impure. There was nothing else for the army to drink; but it was undesirable to aggravate the evil by keeping the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the natives display is in the construction and balancing of their canoes. These are formed from the trunk of the cotton tree ('Cochlospermum') hollowed out. The wood is soft and spongy, and becomes very light when dry. The canoes are sometimes more than fifty feet in length, and are each capable of containing twelve or fifteen natives. The hull is balanced and steadied in the water by two outrigger poles, laid athwart, having a float of ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the wigwam and knelt beneath the smoke-hole. And while he arranged the sticks carefully upon a twist of grass, the aged crone hovered, hawk-like, over him, ready with fist or foot for any lack of haste, or failure with the fire. Not until, with flint and steel, he lighted a strip of spongy wood and thrust it under the dry hay, and a flame leaped up and caught the soot on a hanging kettle, did she leave him and go on a quest ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... other hand, he would urge that the spirit of geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry against any clearly defined opinion; not in the least based on a scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought—a spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one thing he is staunch for is, the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... I saw that the ground on its farther side was damp and marshy, overgrown with rank grass and dismal willows. The water, which was clear enough on the open sandy side, where the sun shone, looked black and poisonous opposite to me, where it lay deeper under the shade of the spongy banks, and the rank overhanging thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... an ingenious device which practically floated the road-bed upon its spongy surface. Tunnels were driven through the hills, deep cuttings were made wherever needed, a ravine was crossed by a viaduct of brick and stone, and more than threescore bridges were thrown across the streams. All the plans for ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... salty scent blended with it from the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance, suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a lightning flash of vivid ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... consistency to the addition of isinglass, and, as this substance is not allowed in vegetarian cookery, we shall be able to dispense with cream served in this form, nor are we losers by so doing. The ordinary mould of cream is too apt to taste like spongy liver, and, so far as palate is concerned, is incomparably inferior to the more delicate whipped creams. Just in the same way a good rich custard made with yolks of eggs is spoilt by being turned into a solid custard by the addition of gelatine. In order to have good whipped ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... aquarium of phantom fish, Goggling in on me through the misty panes; My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains; My few clear quiet ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... Whatever solace to my feelings reaching the outside of the coach might have been attended with at night, the pleasure I experienced on awaking, was really not unalloyed. More dead than alive, I sat a mass of wet clothes, like nothing under heaven except it be that morsel of black and spongy wet cotton at the bottom of a schoolboy's ink bottle, saturated with rain, and the black dye of my coat. My hat too had contributed its share of colouring matter, and several long black streaks coursed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... injure the snake-bearing head with the bare sand, he softens the ground with leaves; and strews some weeds produced beneath the sea, and lays upon them the face of Medusa, the daughter of Phorcys. The fresh weeds, being still alive, imbibed the poison of the monster in their spongy pith, and hardened by its touch; and felt an unwonted stiffness in their branches and their leaves. But the Nymphs of the sea attempt the wondrous feat on many {other} weeds, and are pleased at the same result; and raise seed again from them scattered on ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... were upon last night were only a branch. In the larger channel, there were many fine pools of water, connected by a strongly running stream in a deep narrow bed, and which wound at a course of E. 25 degrees S. through a valley of soft, spongy, peaty formation, and over which we had much trouble in getting our horses, one having sunk very deep, and being with difficulty extricated. After travelling two miles and a half, we obtained a view of Bald ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... then?" rejoined a large, spongy object on the floor, whose forehead perspired while he looked up through the chalky-white sockets of sightless eyes. "Why, he's a sixth part of all that's drunk at the springs. Here, I'll call him up. Come Magnesia! come Potash! come Lime, Soda, Lithia, and Baryta! ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... will,—said I.—First, I like its mechanical consistency; brittle externally,—that is for the teeth, which want resistance to be overcome; soft, spongy, well tempered and flavored internally, that is for the organ of taste; wholesome, nutritious,—that is for the internal surfaces ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... constitution the body is pale, spongy and bloated, the nose and lips are thick, the abdomen swelled, there is plenty of fat and but weak muscles. Such children are indolent, at times peevish and indifferent, they do not sleep quietly, have no appetite or may be voracious and suffer ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... by, was the rocky plain on which he had landed the ship: Smooth and shiny as obsidian in places, again it was spongy gray, the color of volcanic rock, bubbling with imprisoned gases at the instant of hardening. It stretched out and down, that gently rolling plain, for a thousand yards or more, then ended in a welter of nightmare forms done in stone. ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... used for writing. med'dle, to interfere. pen'sile, hanging. mi'nor, one under age. pet'ty, small; little. mi'ner, a worker in mines. pet'it', a term in law. mit'y, full of mites. pom'ace, ground apples. might'y, powerful. pum'ice, a spongy stone. na'val, of ships. rig'or, severity; stiffness. na'vel, the central part. rig'ger, one who rigs. cen'sor, one who censures. suck'er, a kind of fish. cens'er, a pan for incense. suc'cor, help; assistance. pan'nel, a kind ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Major-General Wolcott.] and he adds that "two hundred men might hold the battery against five thousand without cannon." The English landed their cannon near Flat Point; and before they could be turned against the Grand Battery, they must be dragged four miles over hills and rocks, through spongy marshes and jungles of matted evergreens. This would have required a week or more. The alternative was an escalade, in which the undisciplined assailants would no doubt have met a bloody rebuff. Thus this Grand Battery, which, says Wolcott, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... Her feet disappeared in the spongy turf that oozed with water after the long rain. Her large dark eyes were fixed on him ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... with the projected voyage of Nearchus. It is certain, however, that by his directions the principal canal was much improved; indeed it was in reality cut in a more convenient and suitable place; for the soil where it had been originally cut was soft and spongy, so that much labour and time were required to restore the waters to their course, and secure its mouth in a safe and firm manner. A little lower down, the soil was much more suitable, being strong and rocky; here then ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of this freezing at the bottom of rivers is to be found in the fact that water when kept still may be cooled down below the freezing- point without being congealed; but if the vessel in which it is kept be shaken, a portion of it will be converted into a porous, spongy ice, and the temperature immediately rises to 32 degrees. In the deeps of rivers the same cooling below the freezing-point takes place without congelation, but as soon as this water reaches the stream below, the agitation immediately converts a portion of it into ice, which collects round ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... revealed the top of the chasm through which the torrent made its way. At its extremity, a mile or more distant, rose a light cloud of vapour, seeming close at hand in the thin mountain air. The thick, spongy soil, not more than two feet deep, rests on a solid bed of rock,—the entire Hardanger Fjeld, in fact, is but a single rock,—and is therefore always swampy. Whortleberries were abundant, as well ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... bulk. The orchestration is heavy and noisy; and the brass dominates and roughly gilds the rather sombre colouring of the great edifice. The underlying idea of the composition is neo-classic, and rather spongy and diffuse. Its harmonic structure is composite: we get the style of Bach, Schubert, and Mendelssohn fighting that of Wagner and Bruckner; and, by a decided liking for canon form, it even recalls some of Franck's work. The whole is like a showy and ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Major Morris, who was in temporary command of the regiment, and away they went once more, to suddenly find themselves on spongy soil which speedily let them down to their ankles. In the meantime the insurgents' fire became thicker than ever, and it looked as if they ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... of human feet in a stone quarry on the coast of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. The footprints are remarkably sharp and distinct; one seems that of a little child. The stone in which they are impressed is a spongy volcanic tuff, and the layer superimposed upon them in the quarry was of similar material. These prehistoric footprints were doubtless accidentally impressed upon the volcanic stone, and would seem ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... sir," said Dick, who was very wet and spongy, "but your knife's littler than mine, and if you'd pick a few o' these here small shot outer ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... almost despaired of escaping from this tangle of spongy banks, and of hazy creeks, and reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh of a fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon which the other, having lost its rider, came up and pricked his ears at us, and gazed through the fog very steadfastly. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... a little on the right, to which side his head also inclined. His short legs were out of proportion to the long upper body. His whole appearance was a little unsoldier-like. The man looked too soft—I might say too spongy—for the uniform ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... battery of Gaston Plante was made of sheet lead plates or electrodes, kept apart by linen cloth soaked in dilute sulphuric acid, after the manner of Volta's pile. It was "charged" by connecting the plates to a primary battery, and peroxide of lead (PbO2) was formed on one plate and spongy lead (Pb) on the other. When the charging current was cut off the peroxide plate became the positive and the spongy plate the negative pole of the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... wheezed over through the soggy atmosphere, seeming to leave an unseen arc in the darkness above. It would terminate with a sullen thump in some spongy, water-soaked mound behind us. Then an answering missive of steel would whine away into the populated invisibility in front ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... often an intenser being than the home product. Alien surroundings awaken fresh and unexpected notes in his nature. His fibres seem to lie more exposed; you have glimpses into the man's anatomy. There is something hostile in this sunlight to the hazy or spongy quality which saturates the domestic Anglo-Saxon, blurring the sharpness of his moral outline. No doubt you will also meet with dull persons; Rome is full of them, but, the type being easier to detect among a foreign ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... something, and the men toiled with five canoes, Our provisions, beds, tent, &c. The path was one of the most intricate and tangled that I ever knew. Tornadoes appeared to have cast down the trees in every direction. A soft spongy mass, that gave way under the tread, covered the interstices between the fallen timber. The toil and fatigue were incessant. At length we ascended the first height. It was an arid eminence of the pebble and erratic block era, bearing small gray pines and shrubbery. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... slope on the other side of the valley we left the road and made our way across a spongy field, Ukridge explaining that this was a short cut. We climbed through a hedge, crossed a stream and another field, and after negotiating a difficult bank, topped with barbed wire, found ourselves ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... you can do, Josiah Allen, is to foller his tracks. The ground is kinder soft and spongy, and you can do it," says I. "Where did he ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... soluble in alkaline waters, especially when these are hot. Hot springs rising through alkaline siliceous rocks, such as lavas, often deposit silica in a white spongy formation known as SILICEOUS SINTER, both by evaporation and by the action of algae which secrete silica from the waters. It is in this way that the cones and mounds of the geysers in the Yellowstone National Park and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... bring only clear, pure water, because, as they filter for miles through the dense jungle of reeds, ferns, and shrubs which grow round the marsh, all the earth is sifted out and left behind. In this way the spongy mass of dead plants remains free from earthy grains, while the water and the shade of the thick forest of trees prevent the leaves, stems, etc., from being decomposed by the air and sun. And so year after ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... morning, by daylight, he continued his journey, not forgetting to blaze with his axe the trees to the right and left as he went along. The ground was so spongy and wet that at every step he plunged up to his knees in water, but he seemed no nearer the end of the swamp than he had been the day before. He saw several deer, a raccoon, and a ground-hog, during his walk, but was unmolested by bears or wolves. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... vision of the water-but had often flashed upon his inner eye, and it had not been the bliss of his solitude. He deserted his post in the hope of finding something to eat, and had not had a mouthful of anything but spongy turnip, and dried-up mangel-wurzel, or want-root. If he had been minding his work, he would have had a piece of good bread—so good that he would have wanted more of it, whereas, when he had eaten the turnip and the beetroot, he had cause to ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... liquor apt to penetrate everywhere, and to thicken into flesh in the extreme parts, in order to repair in all the members what they lose continually both by transpiration and the waste of spirits. The lungs are like great covers, which being spongy, easily dilate and contract themselves, and as they incessantly take in and blow out a great deal of air, they form a kind of bellows that are in perpetual motion. The stomach has a dissolvent that causes hunger, and puts man in mind of ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... notice it was complicated with the symptoms of a previous debilitating disease, the diagnosis was difficult. During the patient’s recovery from one of the abdominal attacks above mentioned, the gums were observed to be spongy, separated from the teeth and reverted, bleeding, and in various parts presenting the livid appearance of scorbutic gums. At the same period arose pains of an anomalous description, and of considerable severity about the shoulders and thorax. These gradually ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... roads over which this movement was to be made as soft and spongy as a swamp, into which the wagons cut to the hubs, and even horses could only pass over with the greatest exertion. The troops on the 30th were compelled to drag along the artillery through the mud into position. While the orders for the movements of the troops were being executed on the ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... this notice well remembers meeting, a few years since, the (at that time) parliamentary logician, with his trousers turned up out of the mud, and armed with the tin insignia of his craft, busily occupied in the search after a marsh-loving rarity in a typical spongy wood on the clay to ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... after that, and so Bill Cowan sang "Billy of the Wild Wood," and Terence McCann wailed an Irish jig, stamping the water out of the spongy ground amidst storms of mirth. As he desisted, breathless and panting, he flung me up in the firelight before the eyes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wood is soft, and used by the aborigines for making their 'heilamans,' or shields. It is exceedingly light and spongy, and of the greatest difficulty to work up to get anything like a surface ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... thing is to find some dry spot," answered Snap. "To me all the ground around here looks spongy and wet." ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... I couldn't find anything to wrap him in. And the baby didn't have a stitch on him except a sort of spongy paper diaper, wet as sin. So I finally lifted up the lady, who had a long cape thing around her, and I took the cape off her real gentle. I knew she was dead and she wouldn't be needin' it, and that boy baby would catch his death if ...
— Year of the Big Thaw • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... was a winding string of wagons, a dozen perhaps, one right behind another. We watched until we could make out our own white horse, Bob, and then we slid down the hickory pole that leaned against the stack, and made our way across the spongy sod to the burying-ground that stood on a knoll half ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the pumps below must be poisoned. But this winter of 1833-4 was particularly wet and rainy, and there were an unusual number of deaths in the village. A dreary season it was to the family in the parsonage: their usual walks obstructed by the spongy state of the moors—the passing and funeral bells so frequently tolling, and filling the heavy air with their mournful sound—and, when they were still, the "chip, chip," of the mason, as he cut the grave-stones in a shed close by. In many, living, as it were, in a churchyard, and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... led us at first through a natural meadow, overgrown with waist-high grass, and very spongy to the tread. Hornet-haunted also was this meadow, and therefore no place for idle dalliance or unwary digression, for the sting of the hornet is one of the saddest and most humiliating ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... frowned across By brows of rugged mountains; From hillsides where, through spongy moss, Gush out the river fountains; From quiet farm-fields, green and low, And bright with blooming clover; From vales of corn the wandering crow ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hidden nook of the mountain-forest she made her home. With branches and stones and turf she walled in the open hollow of the rock. In marshy places she gathered the thick spongy mosses, yellow and red, and dried them in the sun for warmth at night in the cold weather. She lived on roots and berries, acorns and nuts and wild fruit, and these in their time of plenty she stored against ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... with these moderate results, changed his tactics. He wound his trunk round the fallen tree and lifted. The tree stirred, but fortunately the broken branches embedded in the spongy soil, and some roots, which still held, prevented it from being turned over, though he lifted it so much that, had it occurred to him, he could now easily have drawn me out with his trunk. Again he ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... kindled by means of a blunt arrow, and a piece of well-seasoned wood of a soft spongy kind, such ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... of brush, with some few small gum trees, and a species of fir, that grows tall and straight to the height of 20 or 25 feet. There are within the body of the brush several clear spots, where the ground is partly rocky or sandy, partly wet and spongy. These are somewhat enlivened by beautiful flowering heath, and low shrubs, but have upon the whole a dark sombrous aspect, too much resembling the barren heaths ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... hollow stub; and, cat-like, he almost immediately began to climb the circular wall that surrounded the damp, evil-smelling hole into which he had fallen. But the wood was decayed; it was so soft and spongy it would not support his weight. As fast as his claws dug into the sides of the stub flakes broke off so that he could not draw his body off the ground. He tried again and again; but always the result was the same. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... bad day. A heavy rain had made the moor so spongy that it fairly sprang beneath the feet. Whether or not the grouse had haunts of their own, wherein they were immune from rheumatism, the bag had been small. The women, too, were an unusually dull lot, with the exception ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... the camels, their soft spongy feet making a noise as they trod the ground. The camel-drivers laughed, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... had several times surprised the gaze of her blue eyes, frankly, tranquilly bold, fixed upon him. She was attended by a fat, spongy woman with rouged cheeks, a traveling companion dressed in black with a red straw hat and a broad belt of the same color, which divided the bulky hemispheres of her breast and abdomen. Young and graceful, Mary Gordon resembled a flower of gold and nacre in her white ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the 'cat-fishes'—the Aspredo (fig. 3)—the mother carries the eggs about with her, and this is managed in a very remarkable way. Just at the time she lays her eggs, the skin of the under surface of her body becomes swollen and spongy, and into this she presses her eggs by lying on them. Here, snugly sheltered, they remain till hatched! The curious 'sea-horse' has adopted a yet stranger contrivance, the fins and certain special folds of the skin of the under sides of the body forming a pouch, into ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... ensuing night the rain descended in torrents, rendering the spongy ground on which we had bivouacked very much the reverse of a desirable resting-place. In vain I waited for an improvement in the weather, which only became worse and worse; and eventually I started in pursuit of that portion of the troops ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... hundred and twenty musicians. Paganini was born with muscles in his wrists like whipcords. What was unique in Socrates was first unique in Sophroniscus. John ran before Jesus, but Zacharias foretold John. No electricity along rope wires, and no vital living truths along rope nerves to spongy brain. There are millions in our world who have been rendered physical and moral paupers by the sins of their ancestors. Their forefathers doomed them to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. A century must pass before one of their children ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... destructive power. Again, where also the river basin is covered by a dense mantle of forests, the ground beneath which is coated, as is the case in primeval woods, with a layer of decomposing vegetation a foot or more in depth, this spongy mass retains the water even more effectively than the open-textured glacial deposits above referred to. When the woods, however, are removed from such an area, the rain may descend to the streams almost ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... leaves is as manure on which to grow a minute species of fungus; these ants are, in reality, mushroom growers and eaters. Belt several times exposed the underground chambers to observation and found that they were always about three parts filled with "a speckled, brown, flocculent, spongy-looking mass of a light and loosely-connected substance." Scattered throughout these masses were the pupae and larvae, together with the smallest division of workers who do not engage in leaf-carrying, but whose ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... pedunculate, lanceolate, unilocular, with many ovules in 2 series, inserted on the parietal placent. Fruit a pod terminating in a beak, 3-valved. Seeds numerous, very large, winged, embedded in a spongy substance. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... (For so I can distinguish by mine art) Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, And to my wily trains: I shall ere long Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl My dazzling spells into the spongy air, Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, And give it false presentments, lest the place And my quaint habits breed astonishment, And put the damsel to suspicious flight; Which must not be, for that's against my course. I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton |
