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Porous  adj.  Full of pores; having interstices in the skin or in the substance of the body; having spiracles or passages for fluids; permeable by liquids; as, a porous skin; porous wood. "The veins of porous earth."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Porous" Quotes from Famous Books



... buy Steuer-Scheine, and has promised to get him made Court-Jeweller!' [Voltaire,—OEuvres,—lxxiv. 314 ("Letter to Friedrich, February, 1751,"—AFTER Catastrophe).], So; within a week, and before Hirsch is even gone! For men are very porous; weighty secrets oozing out of them, like quicksilver through clay jars. I could guess, Hirsch, by way of galling insolent Ephraim, had blabbed something: and in the course of five days, it has got to the very King,—this Kammerherr Voltaire being such a favorite and famous man as never was; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... in Cuba, but extremely simple in its interior arrangements; and so, indeed, are all the churches on the island. As to the exterior, the facade resembles the cathedral of Havana, being of the same porous stone, which always presents a crumbled and mottled surface. The inside decorations are childish and fanciful, consisting mostly of artificial flowers of colored paper, crudely formed by inexperienced hands into stars, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... fine sibilant chorus audible in the sod, and in the dust of the road, and in the porous plowed fields. Every grain of soil and every root and rootlet purrs in satisfaction, Because something more than water comes down when it rains; you cannot produce this effect by simple water; the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... arrived there were sixteen, three of which were uninhabited. They all face the sea; and run east and west. On account of the very high winds the walls are built about four feet thick at the gable ends, and about two feet at the sides. Most of the stone they are built of is porous, in consequence of which the walls on the south side are very damp and are often covered on the inside with a green slime. The houses are thatched with a reed-like grass called tussock, which is grown in the gardens or on a piece of ground near. The ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... Uncle Bat's appearance was included in his nose. It had always been a generous, weighty, self-confident nose, inviting to itself more observation than any of its brother features demanded. But in latter years it had spread itself out in soft, porous, red excrescences, to such an extent as to make it really deserving of considerable attention. No stranger ever passed Captain Cuttwater in the streets of Devonport without asking who he was, or, at any rate, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... at the White Pass, gives us a little insight into the problem of keeping warm in rather porous canvas tents by remarking that wood cost as high as $110.00 a cord. It was a case of supply and demand. And so in the manner recorded in this chapter did these pioneer policemen in the Yukon possess the land in gallantry ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... power is called Sky-rallic, and is communicated throughout the whole Tube Line by Brosis, a porous metal ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... comparatively short life of several of the most useful of the varieties of clover, no attempt is usually made to renew them when they fail, unless when growing in pasture somewhat permanent in character. To this, however, there may be some exceptions. On certain porous soils it has been found possible to maintain medium red clover and also the mammoth and alsike varieties for several years by simply allowing some of the seed to ripen in the autumn, and in this way to re-seed the land, a result made possible through moderate grazing ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... are not soiled (as they almost always are by the usages of life), if you put your finger into a little warm water, the water will creep a little way up the finger, though you may not stop to examine it. I have here a substance which is rather porous—a column of salt—and I will pour into the plate at the bottom, not water, as it appears, but a saturated solution of salt which cannot absorb more; so that the action which you see will not be due to its dissolving ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... The river is as much his own as if it belonged to him; he gets all he wants by giving himself very little trouble, and has no cares. We needed this man's boat for our expedition, and we found it drawn into a little cove beside the ruined mill, long since abandoned. It was a somewhat porous old punt, with small fish swimming about in the bottom; but it was well enough for our purpose. In the warm sunshine of the October afternoon we glided gently down the quiet stream, which is very deep, but so clear that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... or three of the rivers which feed the lake, there is no apparent means by which the water is carried off. The only conclusion that can be arrived at is, that when the lake rises above a certain height, as the soil around is sandy and porous, the surplus waters find their way through it; and such I believe to be ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... the nature of the gods? "When the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the air for the stomach. The stomach, which is wonderfully arranged, consists chiefly of nerves. * * * The lungs are light and porous, and like a sponge—just fit for drawing in the breath. They blow themselves out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that sustenance ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness in innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl, Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and moulding figures,—hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... commenced their experiments which we have already described, Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian chemist, succeeded in making, with hydrogen gas, soap-bubbles which rose in the air. Previous to this he had experimented with bladders and paper bags; but the bladders he found too heavy, and the paper too porous. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... left the direction of the Soudan military railways—which under the Sirdar he built—to join the Board of the Egyptian lines, we should, I believe, have had better provision made for passengers. Ziehs, or porous native clay-jars to hold cool drinking water, and various other little accessories to lighten the hardships of the trip would surely have been provided. Later on, the officials took care to have ziehs and plenty of cool drinking water in the carriages and trucks of all trains carrying troops, so ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... wishes to remedy this excessive perspiration she must get a hot towel-bath daily (all over),[14] wearing porous linen-mesh underclothing next the skin. She should also discontinue the soft sugary and starchy foods, and not mix fruit with other foods (it is best taken by itself, say, for breakfast). She needs more of the cooling salad vegetables. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... refraction, as observed by Sir Isaac Newton. When these crystals are jumbled together or mixed with some colouring impurities it is termed marble, if its texture be equable and firm; if its texture be coarse and porous yet hard, it is called lime-stone; if its texture be very loose and porous it is termed chalk. In some rocks the shells remain almost unchanged and only covered, or bedded with lime-stone, which seems to have been dissolved and sunk down amongst ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... may take place in any kind of waterways—in open fissures, in incipient fissures, joints, cracks, and even in porous sandstone, but especially in great open fissures, because these are the main highways of ascending waters from ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... near was bare of snow, and very well sprinkled with bunch-grass, sufficient to pasture the animals two or three days; and this was to be their main point of support. This ridge is composed of a compact trap, or basalt of a columnar structure; over the surface are scattered large boulders of porous trap. The hills are in many places entirely covered with small ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... whatever the explanation of the animal's excellent behavior, they reached the broken-down carriage without accident. The driver had gone off with his pair of ponies, but Abdullah, ruefully making the best of a perplexing situation, searched under the box seat for the porous earthenware jar of water which is often carried there in the East. By good hap, he found one, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... water. Hence, when water has sunk into the earth, it does not by any means soak through it in an equable degree. It is an easier matter for it to ooze many miles, along a layer of gravel, than to penetrate six inches into a layer of clay that may bound the gravel. Therefore, whenever a porous earth or a fissured rock crops out to the light of day, there is, in ignorance of all other facts, some chance of a spring being discovered in the lowest part of the outcrop. A favourable condition for the existence of a large and permanent fountain, is where a porous stratum ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... growth of the common branching madrepore is not over one and a half inches a year. As the branches are open, this would not be equivalent to more than half an inch in height of solid coral for the whole surface covered by the madrepore; and, as they are also porous, to not over three-eighths of an inch of solid limestone. But a coral plantation has large bare patches without corals, and the coral sands are widely distributed by currents, part of them to depths over one hundred ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... pursuits. They are generally of rectangular shape, and from 10 to 20 inches in length by 6 to 12 in width, and are composed of various kinds of rock, the harder, coarse-grained kinds being preferable, though in some instances sandstone is employed; the most desirable stone is porous lava. These stones are sometimes carried with families of the Pueblos moving short distances to the valleys of streams in which they have farms in cultivation. In the permanent villages they are arranged in small rectangular bins (see Fig. 508), each about ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... zinc, as it escapes with the fumes and gases from roasting zinc, or zinc ore. Hitherto the oxyde of zinc has been caught and retained by forcing the fumes and gases from the roasting ore into a large bag or receptacle composed of cotton cloth or other porous material, which will admit of the gases and air passing it, but not the oxyde, the latter being retained within the bag, and, by its superior gravity, falling to the bottom thereof and settling in teats or pendent receptacles at the bottom ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... this work, and all the gardeners round about came to him to provide themselves with these light, porous pots, of a beautiful red hue, round and slender, wherein the raspberries could be heaped without crushing them, and where they slept under the shelter of a ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... cheese fresh from the press is, to a considerable extent, dependent upon the acid produced in the curds. If the curds are put to press in a relatively sweet condition the texture is open and porous. The curd particles do not mat closely together and "mechanical holes," rough and irregular in outline, occur. Very often, at relatively high temperatures, such cheese begin to "huff," soon after being taken from the press, a condition due to the development of gas, produced by gas-generating ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... 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 of a ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... gold, or of silver or at least of tin. But it is not to be made of brass, or copper, because the action of the wine thereon produces verdigris, and provokes vomiting. But no one is to presume to sing mass with a chalice of wood or of glass," because as the wood is porous, the consecrated blood would remain in it; while glass is brittle and there might arise danger of breakage; and the same applies to stone. Consequently, out of reverence for the sacrament, it was enacted that the chalice should be made ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Submaxillary gland is circular in form, and situated midway between the angle of the lower jaw and the middle of the chin. The Sublingual is a long flattened gland, and, as its name indicates, is located below the tongue, which when elevated, discloses the saliva issuing from its porous openings. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... comes from the top of the neighboring range of mountains, but it is rarely seen except in bar-rooms, the retail price being ten cents a pound. In order to obtain a cool temperature for their drinking water, the people keep it in porous earthen jars made by the native Indians. Rapid evaporation from the outside of the vessels renders the water highly refreshing, indeed, cool enough, the dry atmosphere is so very active an absorbent. The ice is brought ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... liquids by filtration is effected by passing them through a cylindrical vessel, closed at one end like a test-tube, and made either of porous "biscuit" porcelain, hard-burnt and unglazed (Chamberland system), or of Kieselguhr, a fine diatomaceous earth (Berkefeld system), and termed a ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... made in the town of Alabastron, on the east of the Nile, and thence received their name. These were long in shape, without a foot, and had a narrow mouth. They were meant never to be opened, but to let the scent escape slowly and sparingly through the porous stone. In these Egyptian jars scented ointment was carried by trade to the banks of the Tigris and to ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... i.e. thin and slightly porous earthenware jars used for Fukka'a, a fermented drink, made of barley ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... truck, but they had taken a fancy to break up the crust of that part of the crater where the grass was showing itself, and to this inroad upon his meadows, Mark had no disposition to submit. He had now ascertained that the surface of the plain, though of a rocky appearance, was so far shelly and porous that the seeds had taken very generally; and as soon as their roots worked their way into the minute crevices, he felt certain they would of themselves convert the whole surface into a soil sufficiently rich to nourish the plants he wished to produce ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... arms Yield earth a welcome. For the rest, whate'er The sets thou plantest in thy fields, thereon Strew refuse rich, and with abundant earth Take heed to hide them, and dig in withal Rough shells or porous stone, for therebetween Will water trickle and fine vapour creep, And so the plants their drooping spirits raise. Aye, and there have been, who with weight of stone Or heavy potsherd press them from above; This serves for shield in pelting showers, and this When the hot dog-star chaps the fields ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... sepsis stimulates the bone-forming tissues and new bone is formed in considerable amount, especially on the surface of the shaft in the vicinity of the fracture; in macerated specimens it presents a porous, crumbling texture. Sometimes the new bone—which corresponds to the involucrum of an osteomyelitis—imprisons a sequestrum and prevents its extrusion, in which case one or more sinuses may persist indefinitely. Cases ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... Saint-Denis. Instead of the ancient stone, instead of the antique architecture, haughty and royal even in the sewer, with pavement and string courses of granite and mortar costing eight hundred livres the fathom, he would have felt under his hand contemporary cheapness, economical expedients, porous stone filled with mortar on a concrete foundation, which costs two hundred francs the metre, and the bourgeoise masonry known as a petits materiaux—small stuff; but of all this ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... piers in these rooms must be of brickwork, iron columns being inadmissible. Masonry, too, must be discarded throughout, or used with caution. Some stones—such as red Mansfield—become black with exposure to the heat, and others fare still worse. The employment of porous and absorbent materials must be guarded against throughout this portion of the bath, as it should be remembered that effete matters, particles of waste tissue, and possibly the germs of disease, are continually being given ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop

... fresh state contain a small percentage of volatile ingredients, which after a while make it hard and friable upon the roof; but, by reason of its greater percentage of resinous components, it will always preserve a superior degree of durability and become far less porous. One hundred parts by weight absorb 140 or 150 parts by weight of coal tar. A factory which distilled a good standard tar for roofing paper recovered, besides benzole and naphtha, also about ten per cent. of creosote oil, used for one hundred ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... least haughtiness, will generally, like the Frenchman, melt at once at a touch of the hat, and an appeal to 'Laissez passer Mademoiselle.' On shore we got, through be-coaled Negroes, men and women, safe and not very much be-coaled ourselves; and were driven up steep streets of black porous lava, between lava houses and walls, and past lava gardens, in which jutted up everywhere, amid the loveliest vegetation, black knots and lumps scorched by the nether fires. The situation of the house—the principal one of the island—to which we drove, is beautiful beyond description. It ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... tissues in relation to a callous ulcer of the leg often leads to changes in the underlying bones. The periosteum is abnormally thick and vascular, the superficial layers of the bone become injected and porous, and the bones, as a whole, are thickened. In the macerated bone "the surface is covered with irregular, stalactite-like processes or foliaceous masses, which, to a certain extent, follow the line of attachment of the interosseous membrane and of the intermuscular ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... down that river till Jonadab and me kind of got over our variousness. We could manage to get along without spreading out like porous plasters, and could set up for a minute or so on a stretch. And twa'n't necessary for us to hold a special religious service every time the flat-iron come about. Altogether, we was in that condition where the doctor might have held ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... compact, destitute of fibres or other traces of the vegetation from which they have been derived, and on drying, shrink greatly and yield tough dense masses which burn readily, and make an excellent fuel. Others again are light and porous, and remain so on drying; these contain intermixed vegetable matter that is but little advanced in the peaty decomposition. Some peats are almost entirely free from mineral matters, and on burning, leave but a few per cent. of ash, others ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... filthy morass known as 'Scottish Lines,' saw its labour of three weeks thrown away in a couple of nights. For the human beings there were a few tents and huts, but in face of the searching wind canvas seemed quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings to the bitter air. But up at the Bluff conditions were terrible. The trenches had disappeared under repeated bombardments, and had become mere ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan

... cremation men had reverted to the old mode of burial. In the tumuli of the Bronze age, on the other hand, where the date can be determined with the aid of the ornaments and trinkets scatered about, the ustion was more complete; the bones are friable and porous, crumbling into dust when touched, and there is nothing to indicate that inhumation and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... impressions, even after they have been censored in all kinds of ways, tends to force us to adopt the greater economy of the allegory. So great is the multitude of things that we cannot keep them vividly in mind. Usually, then, we name them, and let the name stand for the whole impression. But a name is porous. Old meanings slip out and new ones slip in, and the attempt to retain the full meaning of the name is almost as fatiguing as trying to recall the original impressions. Yet names are a poor currency for thought. They are too empty, too ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... sometimes that a ship may carry a cargo that floats and that is not porous, such as wood. It is impossible to sink a vessel with such a cargo by admitting water into the hold. Shots therefore must be fired at the engine and boiler rooms to force this kind of a steamer to sink. In general ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... water. Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... is furnished with a pair of excrescences, usually called horns, although very unlike the horn of any other animal. They are of a porous bony texture covered with short, coarse bristles. Naturalists have, as yet, failed to determine for what purpose these osseous processes are provided. They cannot be either for offence or defence, since they are too easily displaced to afford ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... Pasteur's laboratory, we filter the liquids in which microbes have been cultivated, so as to separate them from the medium in which they exist. For this purpose we employ a small unglazed porcelain tube that we have had especially constructed therefor. The liquid traverses the porous sides of this under the influence of atmospheric pressure, since we cause a vacuum around the tube by means of an air-pump. We collect in this way, after several hours, a few cubic inches of a liquid which is absolutely pure, since animals may be inoculated with it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... perceptible difference in length between the days and nights; during the spring and autumn, rains are more frequent than in a severe winter or torrid summer. Another reason is: if the earth really is porous, and these pores emit vapours which form clouds charged with water, it will necessarily follow that this continent must have a greater rainfall than any other country in the world, because it is narrow and shut in on each side by two immense neighbouring ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... form new colors. No outline block was used. To obtain variations from light to dark in each pigment Jackson scraped down the blocks with a knife; he thus lowered the surfaces slightly and created porous textures which would introduce the white paper or the underlying color. Examination of the prints clearly shows granular textures in the light areas. Scraping to lighten impressions was a common procedure in black-and-white printmaking, ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... fossils came; here they certainly are; many of them perfect in form, and light and porous to the eye, but all hard and heavy as stone to the touch. Teeth, which are considered the most valuable of all the remains, are sometimes found as wide as a man's hand, and weighing several pounds; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... carried off with the water of decantation. When 30 per cent. and upwards is decanted off, the soil becomes retentive of water and consequently wet. When less than 20 per cent., say only 16 per cent. and under, is carried off, it becomes too porous; water passes through it too rapidly; its soluble matter is washed off into the substratum, and it has a strong tendency to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... also to a large extent made of the same material. These bricks are brought to London in large quantities. They have a sanded face, are mostly square, true, and of uniform color, but they are usually porous, soft, and absorbent. Still, they are in great demand as facing bricks, and the moulded bricks enable the architect to produce many architectural effects at a moderate outlay. These fields furnish many ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... held in them. The excess of water finally is lost by evaporation, and the sticky mass becomes dry and hard. The incorporation of organic matter with clay or silt changes the character of such land, breaking up the mass, and giving it the porous condition so essential to productiveness. Improved physical condition is likewise given to a sandy soil, the humus ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... Nieder-Mendig, quoting Karsten's Archiv fuer Bergbau.[167] The ice is found in the hottest days of summer, although the interior of the quarry is connected with the outer air by many side shafts. The porous nature of the stone is assigned as the cause of the phenomenon. Daubeny (On Volcanoes) describes the remarkable basaltic deposits at Niedermennig—as he spells it—but says nothing of ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... went a River large, Nor chang'd his course, but through the shaggie hill Pass'd underneath ingulft, for God had thrown That Mountain as his Garden mould high rais'd Upon the rapid current, which through veins Of porous Earth with kindly thirst up drawn, Rose a fresh Fountain, and with many a rill Waterd the Garden; thence united fell 230 Down the steep glade, and met the neather Flood, Which from his darksom passage now appeers, And now divided into four main Streams, Runs divers, wandring many a ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... these diseases are spread by the agency of door-mats. Do you understand? Door-mats! And I'll explain to you how it's done. Here's a man who's been in a house where there's disease. He gets it on his boots. The leather is porous, and it becomes saturated. He goes to another house and wipes his boots on the mat. Now, every man who uses that mat must get some of the stuff on his boots, and he spreads it over every other door-mat that he wipes them ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... and—she could not help feeling—a little suspiciously. And their appearance was something of a shock to her; they did not, somehow, "go with the house," and they dressed even more carelessly than Peter Erwin. This was particularly true of Joshua, whose low, turned-down collar revealed a porous, brick-red, and extremely virile neck, and whose clothes were creased at the knees and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Coke is a porous product consisting almost entirely of carbon remaining after certain manufacturing processes have distilled off the hydrocarbon gases of the fuel used. It is produced, first, from gas coal distilled in gas retorts; second, from gas or ordinary ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... blue-green leaves, porous like blotting-paper and shaped like birch leaves, hung on waxen red stems. "Yes, I think I did. Are these the ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... could discharge her cargo of movables upon the projecting bluff, and again proceed to sea inside of three hours. The live stock thus landed could be marched a short distance across the main island, over a porous soil which refuses to retain the recent foot-prints, until they were again placed in boats, and were concealed upon some of the innumerable little islands which thicken on the waters of the Laguna in the rear. These islands, being ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... but if you will try to restrain your tears I will tell you about it. On earth I was a manufacturer of Imported Holes for American Swiss Cheese, and I will acknowledge that I supplied a superior article, which was in great demand. Also I made pores for porous plasters and high-grade holes for doughnuts and buttons. Finally I invented a new Adjustable Post-hole, which I thought would make my fortune. I manufactured a large quantity of these post-holes, and ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... new characters under the influence of heat. Heat thus according to Nyaya directly affects the characters of the molecules and changes their qualities without effecting a change in the atoms. Nyaya holds that the heat-corpuscles penetrate into the porous body of the object and thereby produce the change of colour. The object as a whole is not disintegrated into atoms and then reconstituted again, for such a procedure is never experienced by observation. This is called the doctrine of pi@tharapaka (heating of molecules). ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... seen the brass barrel of our telescope. It would be folly for them to attempt to come up the road we were guarding, for we could easily heave boulders over and crush them. I had already put my shoulder to an immense rock near the brink, to see if it was as heavy as it looked. I found it porous and crumbly, and no heavier than so much chalk. Up the roadway the great birds climbed with wonderful ease. Their riders were evidently looking for us without any idea ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... blacksmith's shop, to discover the reason of this. It is not the polish; for take two blades of equal polish, and the breath will disappear from one as much quicker than it does from the other, as the blade is better. It is because the material of the blade is more compact or less porous in one case ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... you know how to do it. In that tank is a porous asbestos packing saturated with acetone, under pressure. Thus they carry acetylene safely, for it is dissolved and the possibility of ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... seemed to find out for herself, and it cured all her troubles. She prayed promptly for every one she saw doing wrong, including Shovel, who occasionally had words with Tommy on the subject, and she not only prayed for her mother, but proposed to Tommy that they should buy her a porous plaster. Mrs. Sandys had ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... west of the Megna. The climate is uniformly hot, but the thermometer never rises above 90 degrees, nor sinks below 45 degrees; at this temperature hoar-frost will form on straw, and ice on water placed in porous pans, indicating a powerful radiation.* [The winds are north-west and north in the cold season (from November to March), drawing round to west in the afternoons. North-west winds and heavy hailstorms are frequent from March to May, when violent gales set in from the southward. The rains commence ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... call it whales' teeth, as it occupies the same position as teeth, and, in a measure, serves the same purpose. Moreover, the whale has a skeleton of true bones underlying its flesh, and serving as a framework for its huge, bulky body. These bones are very light and porous, and this is a great advantage to the whale, which spends most of its time floating upon the surface of the water without having to ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... dust; the reddish, molded stone, the hewn, yellowish, porous tuff; the dark, polished porphyry, gleaming with moisture, and the living, tiny, silvery jet of water: material and ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... is put into moulds to make bricks, and slowly baked in a kiln. Then the bricks are dry and not so heavy as the clay was. They are porous. ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various

... two hands—one to receive and the other to give; in other words, it has a rough hand and a smooth one. The activity of the second is necessarily subordinate to the activity of the first. Strictly, Government may take and not restore. This is evident, and may be explained by the porous and absorbing nature of its hands, which always retain a part, and sometimes the whole, of what they touch. But the thing that never was seen, and never will be seen or conceived, is, that Government can restore more to ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... earth without deeply penetrating it; for decomposition is then stimulated, and the miasma arising from the Campagna is blown abroad. So long as the earth is dry, there is no danger of fever, except at morning and nightfall, and then simply because of the heavy dews which the porous and baked earth then inhales and expires. After the autumn has given a thorough, drenching rain, Rome is healthy and free ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... dust there, he set to chisel out the gems from the porous ore, and as the chisel won the luscious plums, held them up, glutting his gaze, scratched his name on a fragment of window-pane, and was enchanted that the adamant rim ripped the glass like rag: the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... openings elongate, run into each other, and form waving furrows all over the surface, instead of the small round pits so characteristic of the Astraeans. The Porites resemble the Astraeans, but the pits are smaller, with fewer partitions and fewer tentacles, and their whole substance is more porous. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... cellars of the best houses for the enjoyment of its fruit—sometimes in lumps measuring two feet in diameter which, being soaked in water, produced these edible fungi. A stone yielding food—a miracle! It is a porous tufa adapted, presumably, for sheltering and fecundating vegetable spores. A little pamphlet by Professor A. Trotter ("Flora Montana della Calabria") gives some idea of the local plants and contains a useful bibliography. A curious feature ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... set in sandy loam soil with a porous yellow subsoil in a field of medium elevation which has excellent air drainage so I have had little damage from cold injury. The soil is of fair fertility for the Upper Costal Plain area. Of the trees sent me, fourteen ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... very porous substance, easily catches the dust that is carried about by the wind; which, at first I observe, only yields a kind of moss; this rotting, and by degrees increasing the soil, some small meagre vegetables are next produced; which rotting in their ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... I observed spy-glasses, compasses, sea-charts, books, and a quantity of choice cabin-furniture. We obtained a sufficiency of water for cookery and drinking from holes dug in the sand, and we managed to cool the beverage by suspending it in a draft of air in porous vessels, which are known throughout the West Indies by the mischievous name of "monkeys." Our copious thickets supplied us with fuel, nor were we without a small, rough garden, in which the gang cultivated peppers, tomatoes and mint. The premises being reviewed, I returned with my ill-favored ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... think all Italy must have been ransacked in old times for garden stone-work of exceptional beauty; and these treasures have been put together by some master-hand. Even the formal borders of the walks are of old porous stone, which takes the weather-staining so beautifully, and are carved in endless variety. Now that the gardens have been so long neglected or left in abeyance, the green staining has become perfect. Though ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... testifying to his arrival at the bottom. Fortunately for Jung there was plenty of water—a fact of which most probably he was well aware—and there were, moreover, many chinks and crannies in the porous stone of which the well was built; so, having learnt his lesson, Jung clung dextrously to the side of the well until midnight, when his friends, who had been previously apprized of the part they were to perform, came and rescued him from his uncomfortable position, ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... perceive, had not a keen susceptibility to shades of doctrine, and it is probable that, after listening to Dissenting eloquence for thirty years, she might safely have re-entered the Establishment without performing any spiritual quarantine. Her mind, apparently, was of that non-porous flinty character which is not in the least danger from surrounding damp. But on the question of getting start of the sun on the day's business, and clearing her conscience of the necessary sum of meals and the consequent 'washing up' as soon as possible, so that the family might ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... mighty turf pit, measured from the bottom of certain ravines, is often not less than seventy feet deep, and presents to the eye the view of successive layers of black burned-up rocky detritus, separated by thin streaks of porous sandstone. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... grievance, and to dry up, as one of the late Gazettes informs us, some springs near Waymouth, that used to run constantly) it may be worth inquiry, whether these obstinate Droughts, may not be cleaving of the ground too deep, and making it also in some places more porous and as it were, spungy, give a more copious Vent, than is usual, to subterraneal steams, which adscending into the Air, increase the gravity of it. The inducements I have to propose this inquiry, I must not now stay to mention. But perhaps, if the Observation holds, it may prove not ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... was very hungry and thirsty. He sniffed the air, instinctively searching for the odors of food. He had been following the wall for a long time, searching for an opening. It curved away from him, rising vertically from the level earth. Its surface was porous, unadorned, too smooth to climb. It was, Brett estimated, twenty feet high. If there were anything to make a ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer

... government, military, and police; possible small-scale opium, heroin, and amphetamine production; large producer of cannabis for the international market; vulnerable to money laundering due to its cash-based economy and porous borders ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... washing and worked among them—they came down and drew their drinking-water from the river, either beside the camels or down-stream of them, with complete indifference. It is true this water percolates drop by drop through large, porous clay pots before it is drunk, but even so, it would have seemed that they would have preferred its coming from up-stream of the derelict "ships of the desert." On the third day, to their mild surprise, we managed with infinite difficulty to tow the camels out through the ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... a mantle depend upon the fabric and upon the rare-earths used. It must not shrink unduly when burned, and the ash should remain porous. It has been found that a mantle in which thoria is used alone is a poor light-source, but that when a small amount of ceria is added the mantle glows brilliantly. By experiment it was determined that the best proportions for the rare-earth content are one part of ceria and ninety-nine ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... All porous earth-beds are reservoirs of water, and give out their supplies more or less copiously according to their states of engorgement; and at higher or lower levels, as they are more or less replenished by rain. Rain percolates through the chalk rapidly at ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various

... moved warily to establish his contact. He let the talk drift to impersonal topics as they picked their way out from the town along the mossy trail. The ground was spongy with water. On either side of them ferns and brakes grew lush. Sheba took the porous path with a step elastic. To the young man following she seemed a miracle of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... preserving or destroying the original textures. This process is sometimes called metasomatic replacement. Igneous rocks as a rule are compact, and hence are not so much subject to the processes of cementation as sedimentary rocks; but certain of the more porous phases of the surface lavas, as well as any joints in igneous rocks, may become cemented. All of these changes may be grouped under the general ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... When we start, old horse, we start up. I'm a porous plaster. I could stick here if it was twice as steep. I'm getting a sizable hole for one heel already. Now, you ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... my dear colleague, to observe.' But no one would listen. And the 'first collector in France' was perfectly aware of it. See what a savage look he casts at his dear colleague in the pauses of his scientific harangue! What venom is in every deeply graven hollow of his porous, pumice-stone face! ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... less than 1000 square miles was buried beneath an eruption of pumice, but it is considered that the action of the frost and rain upon this porous substance will eventually fertilise the soil and permit of its cultivation. Iceland is the most volcanic region of ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... found to terminate in three deep creeks branching off between North-East and South-East, the largest of which led into fresh water, but in small detached pools, which are separated from the salt, by a shelf of red porous sandstone, and which two miles further became entirely lost in the rocks. The green appearance of the gumtrees and an occasional clump of palms, which had pleasingly succeeded the mangroves, as they advanced, assured Captain Wickham that there was fresh water near. Probably, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... of the brim. There seemed to be thousands of them, and they ran squealing about everywhere, great fat fellows, some of them as big as grey squirrels. The ground was so perforated with their holes that it reminded one of a porous plaster. ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... gradually round off the sharp angles and topple down the spires that characterised them in the land of their birth. The process of dissolution, too, is carried on internally; for rain and melted water on the surface percolates through the mass, rendering it porous. As the waves cut away the base, the centre of gravity is thrown out, and the whole berg turns over with a terrible crash. Sometimes loud reports like cannon-shots are heard, and the huge mountain splits asunder; while, not unfrequently, ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... manufactured is very similar to that produced in Satsuma, but it is lighter and more porous; the decorations are also nearly the same, being of birds and flowers. There is a description of ware made in Kioto, called "Eraku," the whole body of which is covered with a red oxide of iron, and over this mythical figures of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... of obtaining it:—First, in warm climates, where the sun is strong, the sea-water is collected into shallow pools, and there left until it is evaporated by the sun's rays. The ground where these pools are made must neither be muddy nor porous, else the salt would get mixed with the mud and sand. Of course the people who manufacture it in this way take care to choose firm, hard ground for the bottoms of their pools. There are sluices ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... woodsman will look for straight-grained, long-fibred woods, with the absence of disturbing resinous and coloring matter, knots, etc., and will quickly distinguish the more porous red or black oaks from the less porous white species, Quercus alba. That the inspection should have regard to defects and unhealthy conditions (often indicated by color) goes without saying, and such inspection is usually practised. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... white plaster. On the right of this casement hung a cage, containing a quail: on the left another cage, of minute dimensions, decorated with red and yellow beads, served as palace to a cricket. A jar of porous earth, suspended by the ears to a string, and covered with a pearly moisture, held water cooling in the evening breeze, and from time to time allowed a few drops to fall upon two pots of sweet basil that stood beneath it. The window was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... applause shook the rafters." Mr. Rudolph rose majestically, and smiled and bowed. Heigh-ho! man accepts applause so easily; the noise, not the heart behind it; the uproar, not the thought. Man usually fools himself when he opens his ears to these sounds, often more empty than brass. But so porous is man's vanity that it readily absorbs any kind of noise ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... may be dug in front of the trenches and filled with a porous material which is then soaked with oil. Heavy oils, being hard to ignite, are not dangerous to the defense, and will remain with little loss for a long time. To make sure of prompt ignition gas lines are laid in the ditches. When turned on the gas readily ignites and the resulting fire produces ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... officinalis) was divided by Aristotle into three kinds—namely, the loose and porous, the thick and close, and the fine and compact. These last, which are rare, were called the sponges of Achilles, and were placed by the ancients in the interior of their helmets and boots, as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... damp. Slowly, day by day, the walls grew tediously up, to a melody of tinkling trowels. These bricks are joined by mortar, which is mixed in small quantities, and must vary very greatly in its quality and properties throughout the house. In order to prevent the obvious evils of a wall of porous and irregular baked clay and lime mud, a damp course of tarred felt, which cannot possibly last more than a few years, was inserted about a foot from the ground. Then the wall, being quite insufficient to stand the heavy drift of weather to which it is exposed, was ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... again to the barren valleys of the island of St. Jago. Among the basaltic cliffs I found some plants which I had seen nowhere else, but others I recognised as being wanderers from Tierra del Fuego. These porous rocks serve as a reservoir for the scanty rain-water; and consequently on the line where the igneous and sedimentary formations unite, some small springs (most rare occurrences in Patagonia) burst forth; and they could be distinguished ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb had made that flinty couch soft to the holy sufferer as a bed of down. His limbs were clothed in a garb of horsehair of the coarsest fabric; his drink was the dank drops that oozed from the porous walls of his cell; and his sustenance, such morsels as were bestowed upon him by the poor—the only strangers permitted to approach him. No fire was suffered, where perpetual winter reigned. None were admitted to his nightly vigils; none witnessed any act of penance; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the end of our voyage, we rejoice to see that the dull down-pourings and the sharp storms of Fernando Po have apparently not yet migrated so far south. Dancing blue wavelets, under the soft azure sky, plash and cream upon the pure clean sand that projects here and there black lines of porous ironstone waiting to become piers; and the water-line is backed by swelling ridges, here open and green- grassed, there spotted with islets of close and shady trees. Mangrove, that horror of the African voyager, shines by its absence; ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... that at first an attempt was made to construct balloons of fine, light paper; but this material being permeable, and the gas being inflammable, balloons thus made did not succeed. It was necessary to seek a material less porous, and, if possible, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... It is not, properly speaking, weight which is the cause of this retardation, since the boats are going down and not upwards; but it is the same cause which also increases the weight in bodies that have greater density, which are, that is to say, less porous and more charged with matter that is proper to them: for the matter which passes through the pores, not receiving the same movement, must not be taken into account. It is therefore matter itself which originally ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... of Graciosa are not in columns, but are divided into strata ten or fifteen inches thick. These strata are inclined at an angle of 80 degrees to the north-west. The compact basalt alternates with the strata of porous basalt and marl. The rock does not contain hornblende, but great crystals of foliated olivine, which have a triple cleavage.* (* Blaettriger olivin.) This substance is decomposed with great difficulty. M. Hauy considers it a variety of the pyroxene. The porous basalt, which passes into mandelstein, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... season's ice, namely, that of about three feet in thickness, symptoms of a speedy disruption were very apparent; long narrow cracks extended continuously for miles; the snow from the surface had all melted, and, running through, served to render the ice-fields porous and spongy: the joyful signs hurried us on, though not without suffering from the lack of pure snow, with which to procure water for drinking. At last Griffith's Island rose above the horizon; a five-and-twenty-mile march brought us to it, and another ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... dried and then pickled in brine, with rice bran. It is very porous, and absorbs a good deal of the pickle in the three months in which it lies in it, and then has a smell so awful that it is difficult to remain in a house in which it is being eaten. It is the worst smell I know of except that of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... along she made good use of her eyes. The soil was sandy and porous, and she understood why the rain and water from the few springs disappeared so quickly. At a little distance the grama-grass appeared thick, but near at hand it was seen to be sparse. Bunches of greasewood and cactus plants ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... and porous and readily absorbs water, except where the earth is tramped and packed hard by the cattle. One peculiarity of the country as found marked upon the maps, and that exists in fact, is the diminution and often complete disappearance of a stream ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... layers, dipping south, or a pebbly conglomerate. Sometimes there was a little coralline limestone, but no volcanic rocks. The forest had a dense luxuriance and loftiness seldom found on the dry and porous lavas and raised coral reefs of Ternate and Gilolo; and hoping for a corresponding richness in the birds and insects, it was with much satisfaction and with considerable expectation that I began my explorations in the hitherto unknown island ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... lapse of time that must have occurred since any fire had burned upon this hearth. In one corner of the room we found a pile of mats, but on touching these they crumbled into fragments in our hands; and the bone in the pot was so dry and so porous that ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... soil, and its great agricultural capacities. The valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquim alone are capable of supporting a population of two millions, if carefully cultivated. The deep, black, porous soil produces the important cereal grains, although on the seaboard the air is too cool for the ripening of Indian corn. Enormous crops of wheat may be obtained by irrigation, such as was successfully practiced by the great Jesuit missions; and, without it, from ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... door of his customer with his goods in the original package. The goats are more docile and better behaved than the children. They stand and deliver the quantity demanded. There is neither chance for nor great economy in adulteration—water is too scarce. It is brought to the city mule-back in porous jars. You can have your milk from the black, white or brown nanny as desired. A goat is a respected member of the family and his ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... by a covering of large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the chain is lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though well preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly obliterated to the northward, but then material ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... something else, and we were overlooked in the hurry to get away. Since the quarrying of the rock had commenced, my work had been overseeing the native help, of which we had some fifteen cutting and hauling. In numerous places within a mile of headquarters, a soft porous rock cropped out. By using a crowbar with a tempered chisel point, the Mexicans easily channeled the rock into blocks, eighteen by thirty inches, splitting each stone a foot in thickness, so that when hauled to the place of use, each piece was ready to ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... is made by heating wood in closed vessels or in large masses, when all the hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are expelled in the gaseous state, and the carbon is left mixed with the mineral constituents of the wood; this form of carbon is very porous and light, and is used in a number of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... to Comitan, the road passes over a curious lime deposit, apparently formed by ancient hot waters; it is a porous tufa which gave back a hollow sound under the hoofs of our horses. It contains moss, leaves, and branches, crusted with lime, and often forms basin terraces, which, while beautiful to see, were peculiarly harsh and rough for our animals. But the hard, and far more ancient, limestone, onto which ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... explosive substance, intensely local in its action; formed by impregnating a porous siliceous earth or other substance with some 70 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Cuckmere river, which has cut itself a deep glen in the chalk hills just beneath the high cliffs of Beachy Head. Beyond the Downs again, to the north, the country descended abruptly to the deep trough of the Weald, whose cold and sticky clays or porous sandstones are never of any use for purposes of tillage. Hence, as its very name tells us, the Weald has always been a wild and wood-clad region. The Romans knew it as the Silva Anderida, or forest of Pevensey; the early English as the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... glacier—a down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of smouldering fire, crushing and grinding its brown, flinty lavas, and thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain from summit to base. How much denudation and degradation has been effected we have no means of determining, the porous, crumbling rocks being ill adapted for the reception and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... of the soil is another important condition regulating this loss. Some soils are very much opener and more porous than others; in such soils, of course, the loss by drainage will be greatest. We are apt at first sight, however, knowing the great solubility of nitrates, to overrate this source of loss. We have to remember ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... of pillars and walls inside the cave are of clay or a soft porous rock having the same appearance, and are covered with curious little raised markings like the indescribable designs of mixed nothing generally known as "Persian patterns." This is, of course, easily explained; the clay being the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... full of it, and then fill the bottle with fine sand, which serves to preserve a low temperature; then place the bottle in a porous cup, same as used in the battery; fill this also with sand, and close the end with plaster of Paris. Place this in a coating-box, and it will be found to act with great uniformity ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... 'consist of woody vessels and of porous vessels.' This is the first we have heard of woody vessels! He means the 'fibres ligneux' of Figuier; and represents them in each compartment, as at C (Fig. 25). without telling us why he draws the woody vessels as radiating. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... deal of blustering wind—for the most part from north-west—very cold and very noisy in your chimneys. But there has also been a great deal of sunshine with the gales, and the exposure of your house to south-east has, on most days, given us a sheltered walk. Moreover, your soil is so porous and absorbent, that one gets dry walking immediately after rain. I have only been kept indoors two ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... policy : politiko. polish : poluri. politics : politiko. pompous : pompa. poodle : pudelo. poor : malricxa, kompatinda. pope : papo. poplar : poplo. poppy : papavo. -"coloured", punca popular : populara. porcelain : porcelano. porcupine : histriko. porous : pora, truajxa. porpoise : fokeno. porridge : kacxo. port : haveno. porter : portisto, pordisto. portion : parto, (ration) porcio, portmanteau : valizo. position : pozicio, situacio. positive : pozitiva, definitiva. possess ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... the large bowels, though they are occasionally seen in the small intestines. They are of various sizes, weighing from 1 ounce to 25 pounds; they may be single or multiple, and differ in composition and appearance, some being soft (composed mostly of animal or vegetable matter), while others are porous, or honeycombed (consisting of animal and mineral matter), and others are entirely hard and stonelike. The hair balls, so common to the stomach and intestines of cattle, are very rare in horses. Intestinal calculi form around some ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... no longer seen issuing from the woods of maple. The lake had lost the beauty of a field of ice, but still a dark and gloomy covering concealed its waters, for the absence of currents left them yet hidden under a porous crust, which, saturated with the fluid, barely retained enough strength to preserve the continuity of its parts. Large flocks of wild geese were seen passing over the country, which hovered, for a ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Porous" :   porose, leaky, porosity, holey, pore, permeable, nonporous, poriferous



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