"Humus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not contain as much humus (leaf-mould or peat) as that for most other house plants. Good rich garden loam, with sharp sand added, and bone meal worked through ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... the country is rarely less than three to four feet in depth, is easily turned, and, as already stated, it is usually a dark argillo-siliceous earth, which is so greatly charged with humus (decaying organic matter) that manure is rarely found necessary. The rotation of crops is largely practised, usually maize, wheat, then fallow; but very poor soil, capable of producing only rye, is ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... 15-1/2 acres just west of Toronto, is in a small valley containing sandy, gravelly and clay soils, while the creek bottom land is rich black humus. My efforts are purely experimental and the losses do not worry me as I simply wish to know what will succeed in this district. Peaches and grapes grow ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... plantation. The soil having lain fallow for centuries, and being rich in humus, had produced more sugar cane than he could grind. In addition to this, he had bananas, coffee trees, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and peanuts. Instead of being "a very powerful chief having many Indians under his control"—a kind of "Pooh-Bah"—he ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... on, sweeping the distorter back and forth until all that remained was a large pool of slime which thinned, then oozed into the humus. At last, he tucked the rod back under his arm and examined ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... working in a wide open stretch of forest, they were brought to a stand by the report of a rifle. At the same instant the shock of a bullet threw a shower of dead pine needles and humus over Elliott. Another and another followed, until six had thudded into the soft earth at the young man's feet. He stood quite motionless, and though he went a little pale, his coolness did not desert him. After the sixth shot ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... be accepted as true of the largest proportion of terrestrial species, that if they do not spring directly from rotten leaves, and vegetable debris in the last stage of decay, the soil will be rich in vegetable humus. A few only occur on sandy spots. The genus Marasmius is much addicted to dead leaves; Russula, to open places in woods, springing immediately from the soil. Lactarius prefers trees, and when found in exposed situations, occurs mostly under the shadow of trees.[A] Cantharellus, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... soil by any means, but a good, sandy loam in which there is a considerable amount of humus. A subsoil containing a very considerable amount of clay is to be preferred, by all means, for such a soil, with intelligent management, ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... Micrococcus nitrificans, that belongs to the group of Bacteriacae. In fact, the vapors of chloroform, which anesthetize plants, also prevent nitrification, since they anaesthetize the nitric ferment. So, too, when we heat vegetable humus to 100 deg., nitrification is arrested, because the ferment is killed. Finally, we may sow the nitric ferment in calcined earth and cause nitrification to occur therein as surely as we can bring about a fermentation in wine by sowing Mycoderma aceti ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... discovered that the work might easily be executed, and that water-furrows would suffice, such was the disposition and nature of the ground. This, indeed, was his real discovery, not to mention the layer of humus which he felt certain would be found amassed on the plateau, and the wondrous fertility which it would display as soon as a ploughshare had passed through it. And so with his pick he now began to open the trench which was to drain the damp soil above, and fertilize the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... igneous, sedimentary, and "metamorphic" by processes of weathering, and by the mixing of the altered mineral products with decayed plant remains or humus. The humus averages perhaps 3 or 4 per cent of the soil mass and sometimes constitutes as much as 75 per cent. Not all weathered rock is soil in the agricultural sense. For this purpose the term is mainly restricted to the upper few inches or feet penetrated ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... having but narrowly escaped from being swallowed up and buried beneath one of those smiling plains which he could hear cracking at each step he took. The giant grass, nourished by all the collected humus, concealed pestiferous marshes, depths of liquid mud; and amongst the expanses of verdure spread over the glaucous immensity to the very horizon there were only narrow stretches of firm ground with which the traveller must ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... rivulets at last reaches some main stream which carries it toward the sea. In the deep forest, however, the melting of this snow is very gradual, and the water is given forth slowly and gradually to the stream, and does not cause great floods. Moreover, the large portion of it which is held by the humus, or forest floor, drains off still more gradually and keeps the springs and sources of the brook full all through ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... soft mud, covered over on the top with most deceiving soft green moss which looked solid, but which quaked to every step and gave to the slightest weight. Many muskegs west of Edmonton have been formed by beavers damming the natural drainage of a small river for so many centuries that the silt and humus washed down from the mountains have formed a surface ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... ad praesaepe iuvenci: cum tepido vestrum vere redibit opus. rusticus emeritum palo suspendit aratrum: omne reformidat frigida volnus humus. vilice, da requiem terrae, semente peracta: da requiem terram qui coluere viris. pagus agat festum: pagum lustrate, coloni, et date paganis annua liba focis. placentur frugum matres Tellusque Ceresque, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... where he thought the ground had been blackened, but Dave thought the blackened appearance due to humus soil, and so nothing came ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... food, and expanding their leathery primary leaves—even growing to the extent of several inches—while yet owing no attachment to the soil. If it were not capable of surviving and flourishing under conditions fatal to most plants it could not contribute its quota to the formation of humus favourable to the progress of the advancing hosts of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of one character, it seldom is so on any one farm in this country, but it is all good class. Most of it is a rich black humus, resting on clay and mountain limestone. In configuration it is of the roughest, like the country generally, being an abrupt succession of ranges, gullies, and basins, in every variety of form ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... adversity. The old-time trunk rots away, but sprouts from below the graft spring up and the tree reverts to the primitive in habit as well as surroundings. Or seeds, planted by bird or squirrel grow up in rich, modest humus among rough rocks where never a plough could pass and we have some new variety, a veritable wild apple with no semblance of the original fruit about it but often a delectable, wild tang, a flavor and perfume such as no cultivated variety ever had. No ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... quia cuncta dedit, quae capimus dominante manu, quae polus aut humus aut pelagus aere, gurgite, rure creant, haec mihi subdidit et sibi ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... specialties, many items of preparation are identical. Land must be well drained, it must contain a sufficient amount of humus, or decaying vegetable matter, to make it loose and porous; it must be free from sticks and stones or any foreign matter likely to impede cultivation or obstruct growth. The proper formation of a seed bed ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... to produce a profitable crop, the first thing nature does is to produce a growth of weeds, bushes, briers, or aught else of which the soil chances to have the seeds. It is nature's effort to restore some organic matter—some humus-making material—to the nearly helpless land. Vegetable matter, rotting on and in the soil, is the life-giving principle. It unlocks a bit of the great store of inert mineral plant-food during its growth and its decay. It is a solvent. The mulch it provides favors the holding of moisture in the ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... tamen e nobis aliquid nisi nomen et umbra Restat, in Elysia valle Tibullus erit. . . . . . Ossa quieta, precor, tuta requiescite in urna, Et sit humus ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce |
