"Spongy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shoots them when they come to the surface. Their burrows are usually in the high banks of the river, with the entrance under water, and rising within to above the level of high water. Sometimes their nests, composed of dried meadow grass and flags, may be discovered where the bank is low and spongy, by the yielding of the ground under the feet. They have from three to seven or eight young ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... 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 ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... the ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along, and the lowering gloom was only enlivened by the occasional driving rush of the tempest. Earth and sky were pretty much the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... 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 ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... The settler owes to the industrious habits of this animal those large open tracts of land called beaver meadows, covered with long, thick, rank grass, which he cuts down and uses as hay. These beaver meadows have the appearance of dried-up lakes. The soil is black and spongy; for you may put a stick down to the depth of many feet; it is only in the months of July, August, and September, that they are dry. Bushes of black alder, with a few poplars and twining shrubs, are scattered ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... the rigid Puritanism which was the affliction and at the same time the making of New England; it is a fast, an aggravated fast, a scourge to indulgence, a reproach to gluttony; it comes Saturday night, and is followed Sunday morning by the dry, spongy, antiseptic, absorbent fish-ball as a castigation of nature and as a preparation for the austere observance of the Sabbath; it is the harsh, but no doubt deserved, punishment of the stomach for its worldliness during the week; inured to suffering, the native accepts the dose as a matter ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... earth he did create, Form'd man who should of both participate; If our lives' motions theirs must imitate, Our knowledge, like our blood, must circulate. When like a bridegroom from the east, the sun Sets forth, he thither, whence he came, doth run; Into earth's spongy veins the ocean sinks, Those rivers to replenish which he drinks; 220 So learning, which from reason's fountain springs, Back to the source some secret channel brings. 'Tis happy when our streams of knowledge flow To fill their banks, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... the penis is composed of three cavernous bodies, the paired corpora cavernosa penis, and the single corpus spongiosum, or corpus cavernosum urethrae. These consist of what is known as erectile tissue, a spongy mass within whose lacunar spaces a large quantity of blood can, in certain conditions, be retained. When this occurs, the penis becomes notably thicker and longer, and simultaneously hard and inflexible. This process is known ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... altogether produc'd of roots or suckers, (though it sheds a kind of samera about the Spring) which being planted at four or five foot interval, in small twigs, will suddenly rise to trees; provided they affect the ground, which cannot well be too barren, or spongy; for it will thrive both in the dry, and the wet, sand, and stony, marshes, and bogs; the water-galls, and uliginous parts of forests that hardly bear any grass, do many times spontaneously produce it in abundance, whether the place be high, or low, and nothing comes amiss to it. Plant ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... logs of palmetto wood, and was looked upon with some distrust by its defenders, who did not know how well that material could withstand cannon-shot; but the opening volley of the fleet re-assured them. The balls penetrated deep in the soft, spongy wood without detaching any of the splinters, which, in a battle, are more dangerous than the shot themselves. The fort soon replied to the fire of the fleet; and the thunder of three hundred cannon rang out over ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... 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 Alexander ordered the opening of the canal ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... realised shortly—he would have a branch laid on, at his own expense, to his dairy. Anyicska and Masinka, the two bridesmaids of last evening, met me at the gate, and were very officious in showing me in, and while Anyicska brought me a cup of excellent sweet milk, Masinka brought some spongy rye bread, fresh from the oven, upon a salver. Of course, this was offered as a bribe for my secrecy on the topic of last night, and I promised them not to tell Countess Diodora how they had been employed at the mock wedding. Poor things, why should I betray them for obeying ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... 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 used to drive the generators of the artificial ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... other kinds of fungus, and, I believe, all kinds of puff-balls, will also make tinder. "It should be gathered in August or September, and is prepared by removing the outer bark with a knife, and separating carefully the spongy yellowish mass that lies within it. This is cut into thin slices, and beaten with a mallet to soften it, till it can easily be pulled asunder between the fingers. It is then boiled in a strong solution ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the edge of the distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere on the California Sierra, and still falling. It had been snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes; snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple-black clouds in white flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines like white lances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! The woods were so choked with it, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... yielding sand; and, by the directions of Philip, they separated in every direction, to look for the means of quenching their agony of thirst. As they proceeded over the sand-hills, they found growing in the sand a low spongy-leaf sort of shrub, something like what in our greenhouses is termed the ice-plant; the thick leaves of which were covered with large drops of dew. They sank down on their knees, and proceeded from one to the other licking off the moisture which was abundant, and soon felt ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... two of them on one side and two on the other, they tramped along the course of the canal, poking with their sticks into the long, sedgy grass and reeds beside its banks, peering among the clumps of osiers that grew thick and tall in the damp, spongy ground below the tow-path. On, on they went, only pausing for a few minutes now and again, to take a rest or to hold a consultation. They questioned closely every pedestrian whom they met by the way, but nobody could give them any tidings to help them in their search. ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... infant has been supplied with air and nourishment by the mother. An organ called the Placenta, a spongy growth of blood vessels, develops on the inner point of the womb. To this organ the growing foetus is moored by a species of cable, the Umbilical Cord. This cord, also made up mainly of blood vessels, carries the blood of the foetus to and from the Placenta, absorbing it through the thin walls ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... a winter of almost insufferable length and coldness; * * there are but a few inconsiderable spots fit to cultivate, and the land is covered with a cold spongy moss in place of grass. * * Winter continues at least seven months in the year; the country is wrapt in the gloom of a perpetual fog; the mountains run down to the sea coast, and leave but here and there a spot to inhabit." Some ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... left cheek was more conspicuous than of yore, and the features seemed to have settled into a perpetual frown. But, worst of all, the countenance was bloated and besotted. The nose had become bulbous and spongy, the eyes watery and weak. The man's clothes were patched and seedy, and presented a general aspect of being desperately out at elbows. His unsteady step indicated that he was at least half drunk at that moment. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... greater carefulness, When to sweet pleasure they themselves address. Near Esthwaite's foot exists a lonely spot, Named by the country people "The Priest's Pot"; A strange, deep hole, with crystal water filled, By land surrounded which was never tilled; Of spongy texture, yielding to the foot— Quite full of danger is this marshy spot. To this place WILLIAM once a fishing went, And, ere his patience was completely spent, Took up a fresh position; but, alas! His foothold ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... re-commences his search, to summon the entire island to the assistance of Marimonda. From each of his trees he borrows a branch; from his bushes, his rocks, his streams—a plant, a fruit, a leaf, a root! For the first time he ventures across the pajonals—spongy marshes formed by the sea along the cliffs, and where, beneath the shade of the mangroves, grow those singular vegetables, those gelatinous plants, endowed with vitality and motion. At sight of all these remedies, Marimonda closes her eyes, and reopens them only to address ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... Hereward the Wake what they used to be like in old days, and even as late as 1662 Dugdale writes that here "no element is good. The air cloudy, gross and full of rotten harrs[1]; water putrid and muddy, yea, full of loathsome vermin; the earth spongy and boggy; and the fire noisome by the stink of smoking hassocks[2]." But during the Stuart period wide ditches or drains were dug, into which the water could flow and be pumped into rivers. This reclamation ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... 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 duties appear to be to cut up the leaves into small fragments and to care ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Englishman here is as 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 environment, there is ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of Siam is more or less hot according to the latitude; only continual bathing can render it endurable. There are but two seasons, the wet and the dry. As soon as the southwest monsoon sets in, masses of spongy cumuli gather on the summits of the western mountains, giving rise to furious squalls about sunset, and dispersing in peals of thunder and torrents of refreshing rain. From the beginning to the end of the rainy ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... not so much as guess in what quarter of the heavens he might be lying perdu, you may suppose I almost despaired. Ten minutes passed. It was evident we were doomed to remain, kicking our heels for another four-and-twenty hours where we were. No!—yes!—no! By Phoebus! there he is! A faint spongy spot of brightness gleamed through the grey roof overhead. The indistinct outline grew a little clearer; one-half of him, though still behind a cloud, hardened into a sharp edge. Up went the sextant. "52.43!" (or whatever it was) I shouted to Mr. Wyse. "52.41, my Lord!" ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Gilbert says, is sometimes the name of an organ, sometimes of a disease. As an organ it is spongy and loose in texture, and attracts and retains the superfluities of the black-bile, expelled from the liver for its own cleansing. Hence it is a servile and insensitive organ, and accordingly suffers different diseases, such as obstruction, tumors, hardening, softening, abscess, ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... Jaime 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 ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 troops in a ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... sure I 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.
... spring or early summer, are covered with a delicate, nearly colorless skin. Beneath this is a layer of bark, usually green, which gives the color to the stem, an inner layer of bark, the wood and the pith. The pith is soft, spongy and somewhat sappy. There is also sap between the bark and the wood. An older twig has changed its color. There is a layer of brown bark, which has replaced the colorless skin. In a twig a year old the wood is thicker and the pith is dryer. Comparing sections of older branches ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... tree," CASTANOSPERMUM AUSTRALE. A tall, glabrous tree; pods eight or nine inches long, about two inches broad; the valves hard and thick, the spongy substance inside dividing it into three to five cells each, containing a large, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... around but 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 ...
— Year of the Big Thaw • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... portions of this district, from the mouth of the Tigris to the edge of the desert. The aspect of the country was constantly changing, and presented no distinctive features; it was a region difficult to attack and easy to defend; it consisted first of a spongy plain, saturated with water, with scattered artificial mounds on which stood the clustered huts of the villages; between this plain and the shore stretched a labyrinth of fens and peat-bogs, irregularly divided by canals and channels freshly formed each year in flood-time, meres strewn ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hydrogen. Then it is dropped into the tank of oil and hydrogen gas is blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of the electrical current, or by passing steam over spongy iron which takes out the oxygen. The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil converts the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into stearic. If you figured up the weights from the symbols given above you ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... 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 ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... were Tested.—I. The bottom layer, 11/4 in. thick; the color of ore quite black, with small particles of reduced spongy metallic iron. II. Layer above I., 41/4 in. thick; the color was also black, but showed a little purple tint. III. Layer above II., 5 in. thick; purple red color. IV. Layer above III., ore a red ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... mine art) Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, 150 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 ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... man wearing a long reddish-brown coat, a cap and high boots with sagging bootlegs and carrying a whip in his hand. This was not an old man, only about forty. When he looked round Yegorushka saw a long red face with a scanty goat-beard and a spongy looking swelling under his right eye. Apart from this very ugly swelling, there was another peculiar thing about him which caught the eye at once: in his left hand he carried a whip, while he waved the right as though he were conducting ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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, seem Cylindrical and somewhat pithy; the Bristles of a Cat B, are conical and pithy: ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... a low rise and a faint blur of buildings loomed among a cluster of lights. They were now going furiously and he seized the side of the car as they swung round a curve. He felt the near wheels sink as they crushed through spongy sod, and the car tilted, but they got round, and there was a sudden jar when the station lay some fifty yards ahead. Foster jumped out before the ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... in a pocket, 'pears ter me," reflected the man of the plains as he gazed about him. On three sides the walls of the hole were very nearly perpendicular, on the fourth the slant was as previously stated, but here the soil was spongy and treacherous. ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... character of the several scenes! It may be worth while here to mention (not as an object of beauty, but of curiosity) that there occasionally appears above the surface of Derwent-water, and always in the same place, a considerable tract of spongy ground covered with aquatic plants, which is called the Floating, but with more propriety might be named the Buoyant, Island; and, on one of the pools near the lake of Esthwaite, may sometimes be seen a mossy Islet, with trees upon it, shifting about ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... astride the windpipe, it descends and covers over the upper portion of the heart, overlapping the great vessels at the base of the heart. It is a brownish red mass, which when cut presents the spongy effect of a sweetbread. The more intimate view of detail revealed by the higher powers of the microscope shows conglomerations of the white cells of the blood known as lymphocytes. But scattered through the substance of the gland, between these ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... was put in motion for the first time. On the occasion when the fires under the first set of retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did not retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet bare frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lump of silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the dark depths of the Gould Concession; she had laid her unmercenary hands, with an eagerness that made them tremble, upon the first silver ingot turned out still warm from the mould; ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... muttered the stockbroker, as he recognised traces of his brother's sprawling penmanship upon the pad. The message had been written with a heavy hand and a spongy quill pen, and had left a tolerably clear impression of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... a course some distance from the road, where he was sheltered by the deep foliage and could yet see what was passing along the main artery of travel. The ground at times was spongy, making traveling hard, and twice his horse swam deep creeks. He would have turned into the road at these points but the bridges were broken down and he had ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... occurring during the progress of pneumonia is the solidification of a larger or smaller part of one or both lungs by the deposit in the terminal bronchial tubes and in the air cells of a substance by which the spongy lungs are rendered as solid and heavy as a piece of liver. The access of the respired air to the solidified part being totally prevented, life is inevitably destroyed if a sufficiently large portion of the lungs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... themselves struggling nearly up to their waists in 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
... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... always the last, and was always the man who had to be looked after and waited for. At first the ascent was delusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, and the material of which they were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon. After a hundred yards or so, however, the verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began. Not noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in their ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... especially in rainy weather, which began in November and continued with more or less interruption until April. The new comer, not cautious to secure a sure footing would sometimes sink deep in the soft mud or even disappear in the spongy earth. With the ships too came not only the gold-seekers from many lands, but rats also as if they had a right and title to the rising city. These swarmed along the primitive wharfs, and at times they ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... 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 ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the colour of the wood before varnishing by staining it with a solution of bichromate of potash. Sometimes when dexterously applied the colour is very good, but the stain is liable to make itself too evident in parts where the wood may be a little more spongy than at others. Most of the instruments treated in this way may be recognised at a glance, the curl of the maple is brought out strongly, in fact overdone. With small portions of wood for repairing this stain may, with much caution, be used to advantage. It has the property of throwing up the ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... appeared to have formed an hexagonal pyramid, the base of which was two inches in diameter, and about half-an-inch thick, gradually thinning towards the edge. They were tolerably solid internally, each containing about the size of a pea of clear ice at the centre, but the sides and angles were spongy and flocculent, as if the particles had been driven together by the force of the wind, and had coalesced at the instant of contact. A phenomenon so striking as the fall of ice, at the moment of the most intense atmospherical ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... to this, for the day had been long and adventurous, so Cap'n Bill kissed Trot and went in to the Peony Room, where he lay down upon his spongy couch and fell fast asleep. The mermaids and Trot followed this example, and I think none of them was much worried, after all, because they quickly sank into peaceful slumber and forgot all ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... opposite the petals bearing anthers, 5 alternate without anthers. Anthers dorsal, unilocular. Ovary 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
... Issa came again, And offered this excuse for his delay, "The soil is spongy all along this glen— To have it settle I have ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... like Magnesia, 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! Come ye all ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... slope on the other side of the valley the party left the road and made their way across a spongy field, Ukridge explaining that this was a short cut. They climbed through a hedge, crossed a stream and another field, and after negotiating a difficult bank topped with barbed wire, found themselves in ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... the wild fig and strawberry; The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found 140 Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hollows around the hill and, though the superabundance of this element had caused the chief impediment to our progress through the country at that time, we were obliged to pass a night most uncomfortably from the total want of it at the base of Mount Napier. The spongy-looking rocks were however dry enough to sleep upon, a quality of which the soil in general had been rather deficient, as most of us felt in our muscles. I perceived a remarkable uniformity in the size of the trees, very few of which were dead or fallen. From this circumstance, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... be equal; but, on the 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 ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... soft, spongy ground and was shut in on either hand by a wet jungle of tangled vines and creepers. They interlaced like the strands of a hammock, choking and strangling and clinging to each other in a great ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... generally known, particularly in the warm and moist lands along the coast, in the vicinity of Rio Janeiro. Few of them crawl on the ground; the greater part of them live on the leaves and fruits, or under the bark of trees, in flowers, and in the spongy excrescences of the trees. Among the coleoptera, the Stachylinus is a rarity: the white-winged Cicindela nivea of Kirby is to be found in great abundance on the sand of the beach, which is of the same colour as itself; the Cic. nodicornis and angusticollis Dej. on the other hand, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... hole at the top for hanging it up. Upon the board nail 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 this moss always damp, and to sprinkle these ferns ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... — N. sponge, honeycomb, network; frit[Chem], filter. sieve, net, screen (opening) 260. Adj. cellular, spongy, spongious[obs3]; honeycombed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... little phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes, Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense, And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-ray A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk, Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey, Or a drift of muddy leaves, or ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... of phantom fish, Goggling in on me through the misty panes; My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains; My few clear quiet autumn ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... 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 ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... for a mile or two, along the regular path; then of a sudden, in an open part, the trail failed us. I turned back, a few yards, and looked close, with my eyes fixed on the spongy soil, as keen as a hound that sniffs his way after his quarry. 'He went off here, Elsie!' I said at last, pulling up short by a ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Bep's nature was spongy with a capacity for saturation. She took in every new child fad and folly. She believed in a multiplicity of remedies, and was ready to try a new one—on somebody else—whenever the occasion offered. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... trees could be detected by the sound. The tree was felled by sawing close to the roots; the interior was hollow for several feet up the stem, and two of the main roots were hollow as far as we could poke canes, and no doubt further. The dark-colored rotting mass around the hollow was wet and spongy, and consisted of disintegrated wood held together by a mesh work of the rhizomorphs. Further outward the wood was yellow, with white patches scattered in the yellow matrix, and, again, the rhizomorph strands were seen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... 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
... and everlasting architecture; hills of black basalt jutted out from the barren base of sand, and the molten air quivered on the overheated surface of the fearful desert. 114 degrees Fahr. in the shade under the water-skins; 137 degrees in the sun. Noiselessly the spongy tread of the camels crept along the sand—the only sound was the rattle of some loosely secured baggage of their packs. The Arab camel-drivers followed silently at intervals, and hour by hour we struck deeper into the solitude of ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... bulbs, which fall off and take root. There is a bulb, frequently seen on birch-trees, like a bird's nest, which seems to be a similar attempt of nature, to produce another tree; which falling off might take root in spongy ground. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... hunger, and in many cases utter inability to retain food, good or bad. More than that, the sluggish water-course that served as their reservoir crept across their pen foul and thick with the debris of the Rebel camp above, and in the centre filtered through the spongy ground, and creamed and mantled and spread out loathsomely into a hateful swamp; and the fierce sun, beating down on its slimy surface, drew from its festering pools and mounds of refuse a vapor of death, and the prisoners breathed it; and the reek of unwashed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... hundred Virginia frontiersmen out scouting. They find no trace of raiders, but the old chief picks up the trail of the ambushed French. Here they had broken branches going through the woods; there a moccasin track punctures the spongy mold; here leaves have been scattered to hide camp ashes. At midnight, with the rain slashing through the forest black as pitch, Washington sets out with forty men, following his Indian guide. Through the dark they feel rather than follow the trail, and it is a slow but an easy ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... traced on the lining with the tracing wheel, with a slow backward and forward movement, making the perforations clear and distinct. Soft spongy goods that cannot be traced may be marked with a line of basting, tailor's chalk or by taking stitches with a pin along the line to be marked and twisting them in the goods. This will make holes that can be ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... you will listen, in the soft tread of these hundred horse-hoofs upon the spongy vegetable soil. They are trotting now in 'common time.' You may hear the whole Croats' March (the finest trotting march in the world) played by those iron heels; the time, as it does in the Croats' March, breaking now and then, plunging, jingling, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... were to take Courcelette had to march about two miles under shell fire, part of the way over ground that was spongy earth cut by shell-craters, before they could begin their charge and that they were undertaking an innovation in tactics, and you have only half an understanding of their task. Their officers were men out of civil life in every ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... crawled through the lank wet grass and soft spongy soil, he found himself suddenly confronted with a great barrier of fallen rocks; as though, at some period of its existence, the north end of the island had tapered to a gigantic peak which, in the fulness of its time, had come down with a crash, and now lay like a titanic ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... and in cases where the fragments are incompletely immobilised. The newly formed bone is at first arranged in little masses or in the form of rods which unite with each other to form a network of spongy bone, the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... wore his cap 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
... diluted, may be used; but this very rarely, and with the greatest caution, as in cleaning sea-shells. When the gums are spongy, they should be frequently pricked with a lancet. Should black spots in teeth be cut out? Does the enamel grow again when it has been ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... on the margin of the stream in great profusion, and according to Giaom, the bisi tree (as she called it) is occasionally carried by the winds and currents as far south as the Prince of Wales Islands, when the natives scoop out the soft spongy inner wood, wash it well with fresh water, beat it up into a pulp, separate the farinaceous substance which falls to the bottom of the vessel, and bake it as bread. On no part of the coast of New Guinea, however, did we ever see any of this sago bread, which ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the man was riding was soft and spongy sand, permeated with crab-holes; and at last, taking pity on his labouring horse, he dismounted, and led him. Half a mile distant, and right ahead, a grey sandstone bluff rose sheer from the water's edge to a height of fifty feet, its sides clothed with verdure of a sickly green. At the back of this ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... balancing on it with one foot, kicked a hole in the spongy turf. Finding this would support him ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... 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
... sunshine, swing his legs over the edge, where it was nice and dangerous if he slipped, and finally leaned back to rest on one elbow, and gaze in the direction of the high cliff beyond the depression, where the men were gone to chip out pieces of the soft spongy-looking tufa, which lay in beds ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... 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 are long ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... we used a flint with a spongy piece of dry wood and a stone to strike with. Another way of starting fire was for several of the boys to sit down in a circle and rub two pieces of dry, spongy wood together, one after another, until the wood ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... lieutenant, Fernando's rival, were rowing toward Duck Island fire or six miles away. The island was reached. It was a dismal affair little more than an elevated marsh. When the tide was out on Duck Island, its extended dreariness was potent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay were all hard facts. Occasionally, here and there, could be seen a few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... Breathes.—Oxygen and nutriment are both supplied to it through the medium of an organ called the placenta, which is a spongy growth composed almost entirely of blood-vessels, and is developed upon the inner wall of the uterus, at the point at which the ovum attaches itself after fecundation. The growing fetus is connected with this vascular organ by means of a sort of cable, called the umbilical cord. The ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... terrible to think how the very water-springs of 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 ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... winterers; it was chiefly salt meat. The effect of this was seen as early as December. Some of the party became listless and sluggish, their faces turned sallow and their eyes appeared sunken. They found it difficult to breathe and their gums were swollen and spongy. Macdonell, a veteran in hardship, saw at once that scurvy had broken out among them; but he had a simple remedy and the supply was without limit. The sap of the white spruce was extracted and administered to the sufferers. Almost ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... words, so as to enjoy the feeling that a way of retreat was open to him—he walked back toward the depression along which the vapour rose, examining every step of the way, and noticing that by degrees all growth ceased as he approached, and that the ground gradually grew softer and then spongy to the tread, as if he were walking ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... deposited remains in the centre, as the milk, till the tiny embryo begins to sprout. As soon as it does so, the little knob which was at first so very small enlarges rapidly and absorbs the water, till it grows out into a big spongy cellular mass, which at last almost fills up the entire shell. At the same time, its other end pushes its way out through the soft hole, and then gives birth to a growing bud at the top—the future stem and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... some detail. Mental depression, debility, syncope, petechiae, livid patches, spongy gums, lesions, swellings, and so on to things that are worse. He passed to some of the theories held and remedies tried in accordance with them. Ralph came nearest the truth in discovering decrease of chlorine and alkalinity ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the stem, and are white with a creamy hue. The stem is also white, tinged faintly with yellow. We will take a penknife and divide it into halves, cutting straight through the stem and cap. We find the stem is filled with a spongy substance, and we can now see more clearly the position of the gills. Our specimen measures 2 inches across the cap, and the stem is 2 or 3 inches long. It is an Amanita, resembling the Fly Amanita, which we will probably soon ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... 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 a ...
— 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
... the "mother of vinegar," though this film may contain other organisms as well. The idea that this film of bacteria oxidizes the alcohol beneath by merely condensing atmospheric oxygen in its interstices, after the manner of spongy platinum, has long been given up; but the explanation of the action as an incomplete combustion, depending on the peculiar respiration of these organisms—much as in the case of nitrifying and sulphur bacteria—is not clear, though ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... to work promptly. The bottle of cream he had begged from Ma Briskow he now put to use. With this soothing liquid he first washed out their eyes, the membranes of which were raw and spongy, and excruciatingly sensitive to light, then he bandaged them as best he could ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... alien 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
... prowling over the morass, and wild cats also clamber amid its woods. Even in summer, the air, instead of being hot and pestiferous, is especially cool, the evaporation continually going on in the wet spongy soil generating an atmosphere resembling that of a region considerably elevated above the level of the ocean. Canals have been cut through this swamp. They are shaded by tall trees, their branches almost joining across, and throwing a dark shade on the water, which itself looks almost black, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... she knew from whom it came. It was Gilby's voice, and she stopped, her soul ravished by the music. All the way along, bobolinks, canaries, and song-sparrows had been singing to her, the swallows and red-throats had been talking; everywhere among the soft spongy mosses, the singing frog of the Canadian spring had been filling the air with its one soft whistling note. Zilda had not heard them, but now she stopped suddenly with head bent, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... slope of Monte Verde, between the beautiful spring of Dornajito and Caravela, are black masses, altered by decomposition, sometimes porous, and with very oblong pores. The basis of these lower lavas is rather wacke than basalt; when it is spongy, it resembles the amygdaloids* of Frankfort-on-the-Main. (* Wakkenartiger mandelstein. Steinkaute.) Its fracture is generally irregular; wherever it is conchoidal, we may presume that the cooling has been more rapid, and the mass has been exposed to a less powerful pressure. These ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... and inflammation of the spongy tissues of the lungs is frequently seen in sheep, the same ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... went the camels, their soft spongy feet making a noise as they trod the ground. The camel-drivers laughed, ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... a curious encounter. An early spring had set in abruptly; at midday the heat rose to eighteen degrees Reaumur. Everything was turning green, and shooting up out of the spongy, damp earth. I hired a horse at the riding-school, and went out for a ride into the outskirts of the town, towards the Vorobyov hills. On the road I was met by a little cart, drawn by a pair of spirited ponies, splashed with mud up to their ears, with plaited tails, and red ribbons in their ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hair. The hairs are from about two to four inches long, mostly of a dull bluish-gray color, though varying somewhat with the seasons. In general characteristics they are closely related to the hairs of the deer and antelope, being light, spongy, and elastic, with a highly polished surface, and though somewhat ridged and spiraled, like wool, they do not manifest the slightest tendency to felt or become taggy. A hair two and a half inches long, which is perhaps near the average length, will stretch about one fourth ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... ever by his side, started on their tortuous way, here and there turning to the right and to the left to follow the course of some tidal stream, or avoid the swampy places. The faint odour of wild lavender was mingled with the brackish scent of the sea. The ground was soft and spongy beneath their feet, and a breeze as soft as a caress blew in their faces. Up before them always, gaunt and bare, surrounded by its belts of weather-stricken trees, stood the Red Hall. Andrew looked ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of course," said Miss Shott, "that if the disease did get into this house, Willy Croup would be the first to take it, because she is such a spongy person that she takes almost anything that is in the air and is not wholesome; but then you would not want to lose her, and after a funeral in the house, no matter whose it may be, things is always gloomy for a long time afterwards, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... rain were till hanging about in a fashion rather undecided. It was a morning of gusts and of showers. The rooks swayed in the elm tops, or flew up under the scudding clouds of a treacherous sky. There was a strong smell of damp earth, and the turf of the wide spreading lawns looked spongy. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... heath. The stones are fixed in the earth, being very large and unequal, and generally are as deep in the ground as they appear above it; and where there are any spaces between the stones, there is a loose spongy sward, perhaps not above five or six inches deep, and incapable to produce any thing but heath, and all beneath it is ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... no further attention to bestow on him, and immediately led Josephine away over the damp and spongy sod to that portion of the ground at the rear of the house which showed, by a few lingering signs, that it once had been a proud ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... and brake head 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 mists of dawn, in their ears lark songs of morning from ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... become very numerous, and whole fleets of medusae have passed us; some we have picked up, besides a very beautiful purple sea-snail. This fish has four horns, like a snail, the shell is very beautifully tinted with purple, and there is a spongy substance attached to the fish which I thought assisted it to swim: it is larger in bulk than the whole fish. One of them gave out fully a quarter of an ounce of purple fluid from the lower part of the fish. A fine yellow locust ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... him,—frank, winning, generous. She thought she knew him well; held him a slave to her fluttering hand. Being proud of her slave, she let the hand flutter down now somehow with some flowers it held until it touched his hard fingers, her cheek flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongy hand,—what a death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back once at the motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston had said about starving to death for a kind word? LOVE? He was sick of the sickly talk,—crushed it out ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... at him with horrified eyes. His spongy hands were pointing down to the floor. There was an underground world to this beautiful palace, a shadow that was ever close to the light, a region of dimly-lit passages, of shadowed corners, of noiseless, tongueless slaves, of sudden, sharp ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... spherical form from access of water and lose their ability to unite for the production of connective tissue. Moreover, to the extent salt in the blood cells is decreased the connective tissue and muscle and tendon substance absorb water and the tissues become spongy, especially in the kidneys, so that the thinned blood albumen ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... morrow came, the clouds were weeping and the damp was dripping from every leaf, and gloomy rifts of spongy vapor floated lazily upon the breeze, promising a wet and very unpleasant day. These misty periods rarely endure many hours in the autumn, but sometimes they continue for days. The atmosphere seems half water, and its warm damp compels ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... saturated with moisture. The surface soil was spongy, and rested on impermeable rock; it breathed in the damp mists by night, and breathed them out again by day, under Branchspell's rays. The walking grew first unpleasant, then difficult, and finally dangerous. None of the party could distinguish firm ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... intermixed, and cattle feeding. They cease grazing when an intruder appears, and look at him with long and wary observation, then bend their heads to the pasture again. Where the firm ground of the pasture ceases, the meadow begins, loose, spongy, yielding to the tread, sometimes permitting the foot to sink into black mud, or perhaps over ankles in water. Cattle-paths, somewhat firmer than the general surface, traverse the dense shrubbery which ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... see ghosts on dis very road nigh 'bout ever' night. Dey wuz white an' spongy lookin' an' dey set under de bushes an' holler an' holler an' holler. I'se poured water on 'em many a time but ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... 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 an ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... Heat. This effect of heat has a vital influence on our lives, because the changes which take place when food is cooked are due to it. The doughy mass which goes into the oven, comes out a light spongy loaf; the small indigestible rice grain comes out the swollen, fluffy, digestible grain. Were it not for the chemical changes brought about by heat, many of our present foods would be useless to man. Hundreds of ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... end of the yard of the Muets farm, among the outbuildings, the barn gapes like a cavern. It is always caverns for us, even in houses! When you have crossed the yard, where the manure yields underfoot with a spongy sound or have gone round it instead on the narrow paved path of difficult equilibrium, and when you have arrived at the entrance to the barn, you ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine barrens, where the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log causeways, through long cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy ground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss, while ever and anon the loathsome form of the mocassin snake might be seen sliding among broken stumps and shattered branches that lay here and there, rotting in ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the stream or other objects is always downstream from the place where they are formed; in large streams it is frequently many miles below; a large part of them do not become fixed, but as they come in contact with each other, regelate and form spongy masses, often of considerable size, which drift along with the current, and are often troublesome impediments to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... thinking this now as he strode across the spongy sod toward the lighted windows of the shanty. The air was damp and chill, for the ice was not yet out of the ponds or swamps of tall grasses. An occasional prairie-cock sent forth a muffled, drowsy "boom"; low-hung flights of geese, gabbling anxiously, or the less-orderly ducks, with ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... share of soil moisture that is thus left for the clover plants. Pasturing clover sown thus should be avoided when the ground is so wet as to poach or become impact in consequence. Unless on light, spongy soils which readily lose their moisture, such grazing should not begin until the plants have made considerable growth, nor should it be too close, or root development in ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... distinctly called the latter article "poor fellow!" twice. In reply to this, Mrs. Muddles, the skin of whose hands was crimped up into patterns like sea-weed, from the amphibious nature of her employment, and whose general appearance was, from the same cause, moist and spongy, expressed much gratitude for the contents of the basket, made a pathetic apology to the night-cap, tried to ignore the imbibing propensity of her better half; but, when pressed home upon the point, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... 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 |
