"Superincumbent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peculiarly dull and foggy; but whether it was this or something else, certain it is, that he felt himself more than usually overpowered. The air oppressed him like a leaden shroud, and the energies of his soul seemed for once on the point of sinking beneath the superincumbent burden. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... the silurian strata, supposing such to have been formerly deposited; for it might well happen that strata which had subsided some miles nearer to the centre of the earth, and which had been pressed on by an enormous weight of superincumbent water, might have undergone far more metamorphic action than strata which have always remained nearer to the surface. The immense areas in some parts of the world, for instance in South America, of bare ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... hight, and so near together as to admit between their summits only very small arcs of the circumference of the wheel; comes into action. This element is the constantly recurring lifting of the superincumbent weight of the machine. Even this would not result in loss of power, could the power developed in falling be wholly applied to useful work in the direction of the advance of the engine. The fact is, however, that it is not so applied, and in any ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen upon them after yawning open, and would keep them down. A diver made known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man, and had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he had ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... far smaller quantity of material than was previously necessary. The various little shafts or columns are so disposed as to distribute the weight of the superstructure and thus relieve the greater columns or piers of some portion of the superincumbent weight; the aisles help to support the nave; the walls of the side chapels act as abutments against the walls of the aisles, while the towers are generally placed so as to resist the accumulated thrust of all the arches along ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... are exhumed at great depths. No water is found in this loam by digging or boring; but after passing through this secondary formation, the humus or soil of the primitive is reached—the leaves and limbs of trees superincumbent on this indicating its character—then the sand and gravel, and very soon water, as in other primitive formations. These hills extend back from the river in an irregular line from ten to fifteen miles, and are distinguished by a peculiar growth ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... hams, boiled tongues, boiled bacon, boiled fowls, boiled turkeys, boiled sausages, boiled cabbages, boiled potatoes, and boiled carrots. Duplicates of each were ranged in opposition, until the table groaned with its superincumbent weight. All were cut up, placed in one dish, and handed round to the guests. When they drank wine, every glass was filled, and everybody who filled his glass was expected to drink the health of every guest separately and by name before ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... dirt intervened between the sleeping soldiers and all this powder. In a moment the superincumbent earth, for a space forty by eighty feet, was hurled upward, carrying with it the artillery-men, with their four guns, and three companies of soldiers. As the huge mass fell backwards it buried the startled men under immense clods—tons of dirt. Some of the artillery was thrown forty ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... mass extends itself out horizontally in the air over cities built on the ridges, sides, and foot of the parent mountain-chain, and far beyond the extreme bounds of these cities, for miles over and parallel with the sea, at a height which from the lower cities makes the superincumbent mass rarely distinguishable ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... congenial soil and climate, exhibits great luxuriance in its foliage, throwing out abundance of suckers and lateral stems, especially when from any cause the main stem is thrown out of the perpendicular, to which it is very liable from its great superincumbent weight compared with the hold of its root in the ground. The native planters, availing themselves of this propensity, often give this plant a considerable inclination, not only to increase the foliage, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... types, as Umbellula, Elpidia, Alecto, asterids of many kinds, &c. Towards the east the sea-bottom rises gradually and then forms a plain lying 30 to 90 metres below the surface of the sea, nearly as level as the surface of the superincumbent water. The bottom of the sea in the south and west parts of it consists of clay, in the regions of Beli Ostrov of sand, farther north of gravel. Shells of crustacea and pebbles are here often surrounded by bog-ore formations, resembling the figures on page 186. These also occur ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... with some difficulty from under the superincumbent snowdrift, and alighted from the carriage, expecting that a kind and hospitable reception would indemnify me for the toils and hardships of the day. A gentleman person in black opened the door, and admitted me into a spacious hall, lighted by an amber-coloured lamp suspended ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... some planks before we reached Port Jackson. . . When the repairs were completed, and the people were more at leisure, I made an excursion as far as Bat Island, off Cape Brewster. . . . Bat Island is a mass of sandstone superincumbent upon a quartzoze basis, and intersected by nearly vertical veins of white quartz, the surface of which was in a crystallised state. The floor of the cavern was covered with heaps of water-worn fragments of quartzoze rock containing copper pyrites, in some of which the cavities were covered ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... male organism specially adapted for the superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental female organism, passive ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... distance in the meantime only varying about 3 to 1." To account for this, a memoir was published on the subject by M. Valz, in which he supposes an atmosphere around the sun, whose condensation increases rapidly from superincumbent pressure; so that the deeper the comet penetrates into this atmosphere the greater will be the pressure, and the less the volume. In this it is evident, that the ponderous nature of a resisting medium is not yet banished from the schools. In commenting on this memoir, Arago justly observes, that ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... which time has made harder than the stone itself. In some places, where the ravines had been filled up with masonry, the mountain torrents, wearing on it for ages, have gradually eaten a way through the base, and left the superincumbent mass—such is the cohesion of the materials—still spanning the valley like an arch ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... sake of culture will be well catered for in Mr. Grant Allen's new series of Historical Guides.... There are few more satisfactory books for a student who wishes to dig out the Paris of the past from the immense superincumbent mass of coffee-houses, kiosks, fashionable hotels, and other temples of civilisation beneath which it is now submerged. Florence is more easily dug up, as you have only to go into the picture galleries or into the churches or museums, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... under the superincumbent crust broke through—split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thousand feet long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward, and ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... of the ore costs nothing to break, and the average cost is often remarkably low. As said, the system implies bodies of large horizontal area. They must start near enough to the surface that the whole superincumbent mass may cave and give crushing weight, or the immediately overhanging roof must easily cave. All of these are conditions not often met with in mines of the character ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... top of the winter housing, which was fifteen feet above the deck, and then blew over to leeward, filling up on that side likewise; whilst we, unable to face the storm without, could only prevent the housing from being broken in, by placing props of planks and spars to support the superincumbent weight. We had actually to dig our way out of the vessel; and I know not how we should have freed the poor smothered craft, had not Nature assisted us, by the breaking down of the floe. This at first threatened to injure and strain the "Pioneer," for, firmly held as she was all round, the ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... profit to betray any expectation of failure, and a responsible firm will contract to lay a cable across the Pacific itself. In the Atlantic lines the uniformly low temperature of the ocean floor (about 4 deg. C.), and the great pressure of the superincumbent sea, co-operate in effecting an enormous enhancement both in the insulation and in the carrying capacity of the wire. As an example of recent work in ocean telegraphy let us glance at the cable laid in 1894, by the Commercial Cable Company of New York. It unites Cape Canso, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... death—(miserable and terrible consolation)—a matter of preference and of hope. Fathers and husbands were seen wandering amidst the ruins that covered the objects of their affections, and, wanting the power to move the superincumbent masses, were calling in vain for the assistance of the bystanders; or haply they lay groaning, night and day, in their despair, upon the ruinous fragments. But the most horrid fate—(a fate too dreadful ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... evident on examination that a space had been cleared out under the cargo, and filled with straw and shavings and other light matter. This had caused the smoke, though until the bales above it had been removed the flames were kept down. When the superincumbent bales were lifted off, the flames quickly rose up; but the material which fed them being light, had speedily burned out before they had time to ignite the surrounding cargo, which, fortunately being very tightly packed, did not easily catch fire. A ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the former process repeated. But the Tyrians had met the new tactics with new methods. They had employed divers to attach hooks to the boughs where they projected into the sea, and by sheer force had dragged the trees out from the superincumbent mass, bringing down in this way large portions of the structure.[14398] But with Alexander's coming, and the retirement of the Tyrian fleet, all this was altered. Alexander's workmen were no longer impeded, except from ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... equator, without varying his declination, the following effects would ensue: That portion of the earth lying, say thirty degrees, on each side of the equator, being more exposed to the action of the sun than those further from it, would become much warmer; while the superincumbent air, being greatly heated by the contact, would expand, or become specifically lighter, and would consequently rise. The adjacent air, both on the north and south, being cooler, and, of course, heavier, would rush in to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... inches thick, the triangular ceiling as it projected toward the center in rising, required the interior support of a core to insure the possibility of construction by their methods. Once put together over such a core and carried up several feet above the top of the arch, the down weight of the superincumbent mass would articulate and hold the masonry together. It shows further that the essential feature of the arch ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... circumference of three inches. The whole space between the collar and the pipe on each side of the collar is open, and affords no resistance to the entrance of water; while at the same time the superincumbent arch of the collar protects the junction of two pipes from the intrusion of particles of soil. We confess to some original misgivings that a pipe resting only on an inch at each end, and lying hollow, might prove weak and liable to fracture ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... things he seriously pondered over, was the position of the various soils and strata that came under his notice on the lands which he surveyed or travelled over; more especially the position of the red earth in regard to the lias and superincumbent rocks. The surveys of numerous collieries which he was called upon to make, gave him further experience; and already, when only twenty-three years of age, he contemplated making a model of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles |
