"Peaty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanderer who may read this page to be at all more successful than myself. No doubt they are sometimes to be had, by the basketful, but not often, nor by him who thinks twice before risking his life by smothering in a peaty bottom. ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... waters were contained in no bed, and were spread over every part of the globe, they rushed where they liked, tearing from the scarcely-formed rocks material with which to compose schists, sandstones, and limestones. This the roving waves bore over the submerged and now peaty forests, and deposited above them the elements of rocks which were to superpose the coal strata. In course of time, periods of which include millions of years, these earths hardened in layers, and enclosed under a thick carapace of pudding-stone, schist, ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... woods, sent forth three young. This latter nest was most charmingly and ingeniously placed. I discovered it while in quest of pond-lilies, in a long, deep, level stretch of water in the woods. A large tree had blown over at the edge of the water, and its dense mass of upturned roots, with the black, peaty soil filling the interstices, was like the fragment of a wall several feet high, rising from the edge of the languid current. In a niche in this earthy wall, and visible and accessible only from the water, a ph[oe]be had built her nest and reared her brood. I paddled my boat ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... gathers her fur cape about her as she steps out on to the bog road, for a keen wind blows from the mountains. As she turns to leave the cottage, a man, who has been smoking in the shelter of one of the heaps of turf, straightens himself and walks after her. His steps fall noiselessly on the peaty soil; but some instinct makes Honor turn her head, and at sight of him her ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... a voice scarcely above a whisper, and Juliet crouched low against the peaty wall of the butt. There was an instant's silence, and then crack, crack, shots sounded from the other end of the line. Another minute and Lord Ashiel's gun went up; she heard the whirr of approaching wings before she covered both ears with her ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... planters of the Malay Peninsula knew little about proper methods of cultivating, and depended mostly upon what they learned of the practises in Ceylon, which, unfortunately for them, were not at all suited to the Malay country. They secured their best crops from lowlands where peaty soil prevailed, and eventually all the coffee grown on the peninsula ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... that delicately-tinged foliage of feathery green, which they lose later on in the season, while the ground below was covered with fruit blossoms like snowflakes, a stray blue flag or daffodil just springing up from the peaty soil, gleaming out amidst the vegetable wealth around, and the air perfumed with a delicious scent, of the wallflowers that were scattered about the garden in every stray ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... up to his ankles in peaty ground, now tearing his shins, now bruising his knees, Spargo, yearning for the London lights, the well-paved London streets, the convenient taxi-cab, even the humble omnibus, plodded forward after his ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... sparkling, or peaty and brown, join the Rede Water on its way, amongst others the little Otter Burn, by whose banks took place that stirring episode in the constant quarrels between the Douglases and Percies known as "Chevy Chase," from ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... foliage, that to my mind they suggested a most pleasing form of spring bedding, and also one of semi-wildness, which, for quiet beauty, more laboured planting could certainly not excel. Most Ericas require peaty soil; in the case of this, however, it is not necessary. Doubtless it would do well in peat, but I have ever found it to thrive in ordinary loam or garden soil, so that I have never planted it otherwise, except where peat has been the most handy. It is also easily propagated, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... years! and neither apostles nor inheritors of apostleship had yet gone into all the world and preached the gospel to every creature. Here, on their peaty ground, the wild people, still trusting in Pomona for apples, in Silvanus for acorns, in Ceres for bread, and in Proserpina for rest, hoped but the season's blessing from the Gods of Harvest, and feared no eternal anger from the Queen ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... for them. Bannocks of oatmeal with collops, sometimes of venison, sometimes of mountain sheep, were always at their service, washed down by a drink new to the boys, and which at first brought the water into their eyes. This was called usquebaugh, and had a strange peaty flavor, which was at first very unpleasant to them, but to which before they left Scotland they became quite accustomed. The last two days they traveled upon broad roads again, and being now in a country devoted to the Earl of Montrose, were under ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... fain to hear the soft wind blowing, Soughing through the fir-tops up on northern fells! Oh, my eye's an ache to see the brown burns flowing Through the peaty soil ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Mons the valley of the Haine forms a long, low plain, covered with meadows, through which the river meanders in broad bends as far as the Scheldt. Numerous water ditches, cut in the peaty soil and marked out by poplars and willows, drain the land and render the movement off the roads of any troops ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... Helen, and her cousin rode forward side by side. The tones of the low sky, of the ranks of firs and stretches of heather formed a rich, though sombre, harmony of colour. Scents, pungent and singularly exhilarating, were given off by the damp mosses and the peaty moorland soil. The freedom of the forest, the feeling of the noble horse under her, stirred Helen as with the excitement of a mighty hunting, a positively royal sport. While the close presence of the young man riding beside her sharpened the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... As pigments, the peaty Cappah brown is the most transparent and rich in colour. A prompt drier in oil, its surface rivels during drying where it lies thick. The other and metallic sort is a more opaque, a lighter and warmer brown pigment, which dries rapidly ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... Dismal Swamp," and you see we have here what might well be the beginning of a bed of coal; for we know that peat when dried becomes firm and makes an excellent fire, and that if it were pressed till it was hard and solid it would not be unlike coal. If, then, we can explain how this peaty bed has been kept pure from earth, we shall be able to understand how a coal-bed may have been formed, even though the plants and trees which grow in this swamp are different from those which grew ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... as being a bleak kind of place on the whole, with very little vegetation, except some peaty stuff, and a lot of bare rock. There were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks white and disagreeable to see. The sea was often rough, and once there was a thunderstorm, and he lay and shouted at the silent flashes. Once or twice seals pulled up on the beach, but only ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... very heavy this morning, and we did not start until rather late, travelling through a very grassy country, abounding in fresh swamps of a soft peaty soil, and often with the broad flag-reed growing in them. All these places were boggy and impassable for horses. In attempting to cross one a horse sunk up to his haunches, and we had much difficulty in extricating him. At five miles from our camp we ascended ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... our trousers, scratched our hands, and our eyes filled with fine dust that made it most difficult to avoid the clinging, prickly network of branches and creepers. Coarse white grass that caught our feet like string grew here and there in patches. It crowned the lumps of peaty growth that stuck up like human heads, fantastically dressed, thrusting up at us out of the ground with crests of dead hair. We stumbled and floundered among them. It was hard going, and I could well conceive it impossible to find a way ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... he strode on rapidly. The road was neglected, broken and flinty and very soft. After he had gone about a mile it narrowed to pursue its way between two broad ditches lined with pollard willows and brimful of brown peaty water. By this time he judged, from his recollection of the map, that he must be on Morstead Fen. An interminable waste of sodden, emerald green fields, intersected by ditches, stretched ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... one of the salient features of this glorious landscape. This is an interesting peculiarity of Scotch scenery;—civilization sapping the barbarism of the wilderness; wheat-fields mordant biting in upon peaty moorlands, or climbing to the tops of cold, bald mountains, shearing off their thorny locks of heather and covering them with the well-dressed chevelure of yellow grain. Where the farmer's horse cannot climb with the plough, or the little sheep cannot graze to advantage, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... that lay the flat bottom through which he went—meadowland broken by rushes; his mare Cecily stepped along, now cracking the thin ice of the little pools with her dainty feet, now going gently over peaty ground, blowing thin clouds from her red nostrils, yet unencouraged by word or caress from her rider; who sat, heavy and all but slouching, staring with his blue eyes under puckered eyelids, as if he went to an appointment ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Atlantic, NNE. of the Orkneys; Mainland (378 sq. m.), Fell, and Unst are the largest; the coast-line is boldly precipitous and indented, while the scenery all over the island is very grand; the soil is peaty, ill adapted to cultivation, but there is considerable rearing of stock, and the little shaggy pony is well known; fishing is the chief industry, herring, cod, ling, &c. LERWICK ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... coal pits and shale deposits is usually present as sulphate due to the oxidation of pyrites, a sulphuret or sulphide of iron. Water from heaths and moorlands is often acid from certain vegetable acids termed "peaty acids." This acidity places the water in the condition of a direct solvent for iron, and that dissolved iron may cause great injury. If such water cannot be dispensed with, the best way is to carefully neutralise it with carbonate of soda; the iron is then precipitated as carbonate ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... to render them incapable of resisting the beckoning fingers. Andra watched breathlessly from the bank above. Ralph came nearer to see the issue. The long, slender fingers, shining mellow in the peaty water, were just closing, when the stone on which Ralph was standing precariously toppled a little and fell over into the burn with a splash. The trout darted out and in a moment was down stream into ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... constant leakage, were buried and supported in the vanished earthwork. It was not a pleasant bridge, for to the right lay the mud-bottomed gulf, and to the left, almost level with his feet, were the black and peaty waters of the rain-fed dyke pouring onwards to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and meadow, etc. See on 35 above. Moss is used in the North-of-England sense of a boggy or peaty district, like the famous Chat Moss ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... was about to take the lead, but Coffee and Chicory uttered such a strong protest in their native tongue, that he smilingly handed his hatchet to Coffee; while Chicory collected some tolerably dry peaty growth, struck a light and set it on fire, causing a dense cloud of smoke to rise up round the tree that contained the wild honey, and stupefying and suffocating the bees that flew to ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... as sweet, over the picturesque little bridge and along that deep, dark, sleepy water flowing so silently in its sullen smoothness. On we went a long way over a wide common, where the coarse-grained peaty earth and golden glory of the flowering gorse reminded me ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... with a secret grudge. You get a kind of impatience with their locked ranks, until you come out lastly on some high, windy dome and see what they are about. They troop thickly up the open ways, river banks, and brook borders; up open swales of dribbling springs; swarm over old moraines; circle the peaty swamps and part and meet about clean still lakes; scale the stony gullies; tormented, bowed, persisting to the door of the storm chambers, tall priests to pray for rain. The spring winds lift clouds of pollen ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... a shout, and charged to come at the young men led by Galazi the Wolf; but beyond the foot of the slope was peaty ground, and they came through it heavily, and as they came Galazi and the young men fell upon them and slew them; still, they could not hold them back for long, because of their great numbers, and presently the battle ranged all along the ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... of the Fens. It is a range of low gravel hills, shaped roughly like a human hand. The river runs at the wrist, and Ely stands just above it, at the base of the palm, the fingers stretching out to the west. The fens themselves, vast peaty plains, the bottoms of the old lagoons, made up of the accumulation of centuries of rotting water-plants, stretch round it on every side; far away you can see the low heights of Brandon, the Newmarket Downs, the Gogmagogs behind Cambridge, the low wolds of Huntingdon. To the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... light on its heathy sides. There were few trees, although a line of black firs ran boldly to the crest of a neighboring rise, and stone dykes were more common than the ragged hedges. Foster saw no plowed land, and nothing except heather seemed to grow on the peaty soil, which looked black as jet where the railway cutting pierced it. Indeed, he thought the landscape as savage and desolate as any he had seen in Canada, but as he did not like tame country ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... rather delicate. Kirsty and he had walked together to the top of the Horn, and there sat, in the heart of old memories. The sun was clouded above; the boggy basin lay dark below, with its rim of heathery hills not yet in bloom, and its bottom of peaty marsh, green and black, with here and there a shining spot; the growing crops of the far-off farms on the other side but little affected the general impression the view gave of a waste world; yet the wide expanse of heaven and earth lifted the heart of Kirsty with an indescribable ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... should think, the sum of eight hundred and forty-five pounds is distilled from out the peaty soil of my humble parish, under the denomination of ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... kennedyas, aptly called the 'bleeding- heart' or 'coral-pea,' brighten the greyness of the sandy peaty wastes." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... progressed foot by foot, creeping on as it were from the sea-shore, an innocent-looking channel that seemed valueless, but which would, when finished, rid the land of its stagnant water, and turn the boggy, peaty soil of the fen into rich pasture and corn-land, whereas its finest produce now was wild-fowl and a harvest ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... tramped silently on, they came to the bridge beneath which the peaty waters of the Garple ran in porter-coloured pools and tawny cascades. From a clump of elders on the other side Dougal emerged. A barefoot boy, dressed in much the same parody of a Boy Scout's uniform, but with corduroy shorts instead of a kilt, stood before him at rigid attention. Some command ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Bovey Tracey, contains the birthplace of Charles Kingsley. Dartmoor is so huge that one must be born and spend a lifetime in or near it to really know it, and the visitor can merely endeavour to see typical examples of its granite tors, its peaty streams, its great stretches of boulder-strewn heather, and its strangely ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... mixed with animal or vegetable matter. The peculiar geological structure of the State furnishes the material for every possible variety of soil. In fact, there is no description or combination unrepresented. There are, first, the black and deep peaty soils of Hyde county and the great swamp tracts along the eastern border of the Tidewater section; then come the alluvious marls and light sandy soils of the more elevated portions of the same section; then the clayey, sandy and gravelly soils of the Piedmont and Mountain section, ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... marshy ground appeared to be the narrowest, I retreated a few steps, gathered myself together, and, after a short run, attempted to take the bog by surprise and get across before it was quite ready to receive me. Wallowing towards the other side, I felt my feet sinking deeply into the decayed peaty moss, which gurgled expectantly. I was almost over when suddenly, in a second, I sank almost to my waist. Immediately throwing myself on my face, I scrambled forward, and digging my stick into the firm ground in front, pulled for all I was worth. I was almost free when my poor stick broke ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... 3.80,—leaving from 2 to 3 inches of the bottom of 4-foot ditches to be finished by the graders. This makes the cost of digging about 43 cents per rod. In loamy soil the cost will be a little less than this, and in very hard ground, a little more. In sandy and peaty soils, the cost will not be more than 30 cents. Probably 43 cents would be a fair average for soils requiring drainage, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... dyke was cut. This set the farmer the pool belonged to thinking that if he cut a ditch to the big dyke, he could empty the old pool, and if he did he would get 'bout three acres of good dry ground instead of a black peaty pool; so he set a lot o' chaps at work one dry summer when they weren't busy, and we boys went to see it done. Now, you may believe me ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the isle, to fetch and carry it back. It was a weary tramp in all ways, and if hope had not buoyed me up, I must have cast myself down and given up. Whether with the sea salt, or because I was growing fevered, I was distressed with thirst, and had to stop, as I went, and drink the peaty water out ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... at the edge of a trickle of water splashing in a peaty hollow, and they followed it down, seeing only odd strips of hillside amid the vapor. At length the ground grew softer, and Vane, going first, sank among the long green moss almost to his knees. It made a bubbling, sucking sound as he drew out ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... for this reason that strong loams and clay soils absorb and hold three times as much water as sandy soils do, while peaty or humus soils absorb a still ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... people. The model village above-named belongs to him. Travellers to Londonderry via the Great Northern will remember how the great Herdman flax-spinning mills, with their clean, prosperous, almost palatial appearance, relieve the melancholy aspect of the peaty landscape about the Rivers Mourne and Derg. Mr. Herdman pays in wages some L30,000 a year, a sum of which the magnitude assumes colossal proportions in view of the surrounding landscape. The people of the district speak ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... broad, slowly moving waters of peaty rivers, the reflections of sky and landscape seem almost to exceed the originals in lustre and delicate detail. Some of the Tasmanian rivers possess this reflecting quality ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... basin. At the same time the lower part of the sheet, decaying, contributes a shower of soft peat mud to the floor of the lake. In this way, growing at its edge, deepening, and contributing to an upgrowth from the bottom, a few centuries may serve entirely to fill a deep basin with peaty accumulation. In general, however, the surface of the bog closes over the lake before the accumulation has completely filled the shoreward portions of the area. In these conditions we have what is familiarly known as a quaking bog, which can be swayed up ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... incline rises heather thickens on the slope. Sometimes we wander beside the streamlet which goes a mile into the coombe—the shadow is deep and cool in the vast groove of the hill, the shadow accumulates there, and is pressed by its own weight—up slowly as far as the 'sog,' or peaty place where the spring rises, and where the sundew grows. Sometimes climbing steep and rocky walls—scarce sprinkled with grass—we pause every other minute to look down on the great valley which reaches across to Dunkery. The horned sheep, which are practically wild, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... gathering cloud of flies, whose droning over a neighbouring thicket must have kept awake a lighter sleeper. But Manvers was so fast that he did not hear footsteps in the wood, nor the sound of picking in the peaty ground. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... the blackest disappointment. With high hopes we struck across the peaty, russet moor, intersected with a thousand sheep paths, until we came to the broad, light-green belt which marked the morass between us and Holdernesse. Certainly, if the lad had gone homewards, he must have passed this, and he could not pass it ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... yard or two of matting that the sexton gave when the chancel was new laid. I don't know that there is any thing else to mention, unless it be a gaunt lurcher belonging to Ben Burke, and with all a dog's resemblance to his master, who lies stretched before the hearth where the peaty embers never quite die out, but smoulder away to a heap of white ashes; over these is hanging a black boiler, the cook of the family; and beside them, on a substratum of dry heather, and wrapped about with an old blanket, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... district, lies north of the Ythan, and, comprising the north-east of the county, is next in size to Mar, parts of the coast being bold and rocky, the interior bare, low, flat, undulating and in places peaty. On the coast, 6 m. S. of Peterhead, are the Bullers of Buchan—a basin in which the sea, entering by a natural arch, boils up violently in stormy weather. Buchan Ness is the most easterly point of Scotland. The fourth district, Garioch, in the centre of the shire, is a beautiful, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her for a second as she lightly jumped the burn and climbed the peaty slope. Then he turned to his fishing, and when Alice looked back from the vantage-ground of the hill shoulder she saw a figure bending intently below a great pool. She was no coquette, but she could not repress ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... dig into a small knoll near the ancient shell-heap; and here we found, in a precisely similar sarcophagus, the remains of a skeleton, of which also only the cranium retained sufficient consistency to admit of preservation. This inclosure, however, was filled with a dense peaty mass not reduced to mold, the result of centuries of sphagnous growth, which had reached a thickness of nearly 2 feet above the remains. When we reflect upon the well-known slowness of this kind of growth in these northern regions, attested by numerous ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... best shrubs in cultivation, evergreen, 5-10 ft., or even becoming a small tree south; usually profits by partial shade; thrives in a peaty or loamy rather loose soil, and said to be averse to limestone and clay; extensively transferred from the wild for landscape effects in large private places; should thrive as far north as it ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... in the East to be told that of what we call "foreign grapes," the Muscat of Alexandria succeeds best in these moist, peaty lands. It is the market grape here. Trees have not grown to a great size on the tule lands, but bees are very fond of the wild-flowers which abound in the unreclaimed marshes, and, having no hollow trees to build in, they adapt themselves ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... woods about this point fall away to the left and the right, while the road curves upwards and the wind sweeps keenly over the swelling uplands. The broad strips of bracken glowed red and yellow against the black peaty soil, and a queenly doe who grazed among them turned her white front and her great questioning eyes towards the wayfarers. Alleyne gazed in admiration at the supple beauty of the creature; but the archer's fingers played with his quiver, and his eyes glistened with the fell instinct which urges ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... again the heather will creep down, rig on rig, for all the stone dykes, deer fences, and tile drains that ever a man put money in. I never knew why it was they called it "Red Ground," for it was mostly black peaty soil, but my grandfather would be saying, "It will be growing corn. Give it wrack, and it will be growing corn ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... effort and did not know afterwards how it was made. For all that, she dragged him up a foot and then to one side. The strain was horrible, but she held on and thought she saw the car tilt and the back wheel tear the peaty soil from the ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... brown, or purple and yellow with heather and gorse. Rocks cropped out everywhere, and the peaty tarps were mostly bleak and frozen. The broad Firth was ever ebbing and flowing with the restless sea, and the burns bickering down the glens. The minister of the little hill kirk had said once that in England the pastures were green and the lakes still and bright; but that was ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... Nevada mountains, in Spain, is one of great beauty, and well worthy of extended culture. The flowers are produced abundantly, and are of a bright yellow colour, resembling those of our common Broom, to which family it is nearly allied. Peaty soil suits it well, and repeated trials have clearly proved that it is hardy, at least in the ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... short-lived, this prairie insect. He usually dies in thirty days—by courtesy alone he lives. He expresses the settlers' hope and sense of justice. In these spring days of good cheer he lived at times to sixty days—but only on stony ground or fire-scarred, peaty lowlands. ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... bed of the Venus costellata and of an oyster, lying on the summit-edge of a piece of tableland, 350 feet (by the barometer) above the level of the sea. The shells were closely packed together, embedded in and covered by a very black, damp, peaty mould, two or three feet in thickness, out of which a forest of great trees was growing. Considering the nature and dampness of this peaty soil, it is surprising that the fine ridges on the outside of the Venus are ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin |
