"Humidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in such a manner that the solution as formed may drain off. Such a battery continues in action as long as the air contains moisture; the only means of stopping it is to shut it up in an air-tight case. The electro-motive force depends on the degree of humidity in the air, and also upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... other end of the room and persistently turned my back. But I saw out of the corner of my eye they were far away above food, and, Mate, believe me, they did n't even know it was hot, though a rain barrel couldn't have measured the humidity. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... warme well your garments at the fire, and warm the linings of the same, for it helpeth concoction, and remoueth all humidity and moysture. But my father did not allow of this custome, warning men of strength, and those that are borne for the Common-wealth, not to accustom themselves to such kind of softnesse, which doe weaken our bodies. Also [c] when you put off your garments to go ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... the path that the radar waves take as they travel through the air is known. Normal conditions are when the temperature and relative humidity of the air decrease with an increase in altitude. But sometimes a condition will occur where at some level, instead of the temperature and/or relative humidity decreasing with altitude, it will begin to increase. This layer ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... no end of water, month after month! The heat is the same all the year round—not very excessive, seldom 104 deg., but still oppressive and enervating because of the humidity of the air. Yet the voyage was not monotonous. Leaning against the masts and gunwale, or leisurely moving the oars, the soldiers could observe the dolphins leaping in the river, the sudden darts of the alligators ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... wild beasts and other animals, as well as against the humidity of marshy ground, the Sakais of the plain often build their huts either up a tree ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... made in a year in which the summer rains were late, beginning in late July (Stebbins, 1951:137), whereas ours were made in a year having abundant and relatively early rainfall, beginning in late June. Microclimatic humidity is of extreme importance to both the ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... afternoon we were enveloped in dense fog which lasted the whole night, the cold being quite severe, and the more perceptible because of the humidity in the air. The trail here described a wide detour, which could have easily been avoided had another trail that went direct to New Bermudez been followed at the bottom of the valley. The journey by that lower trail could be accomplished in one day and a half. The elevation by ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... citizens. Blanchard, the French mining engineer, in his cool linen viewed the smoke of his cigarette through his calm glasses, impervious to the heat. Clancy sat on the steps, smoking his short pipe. His mood was the gossip's; the others were reduced, by the humidity, to the state of disability desirable in ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... inhabitants and the industrial processes would exceed the radiation from the exterior walls and roof of the city. Sunshine and "fresh air" they had not, but our own scientists had taught us for generations that heat and humidity and not lack of oxygen or sunshine was the cause of the depression experienced in indoor quarters. The air of Berlin was cool and the excess of vapor had been frozen out of it. Yes, the "climate" of Berlin should be more salubrious to the body, if not to the mind, than the fickle environment ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... lost its way. With what a soft sweet light every star glowed! No matter what its magnitude, the stream that flowed from it looked calm and holy. No twinkling, no scintillation, no nictitation, disturbed their pure and lambent gleam. No atmosphere here interposed its layers of humidity or of unequal density to interrupt the stately majesty of their effulgence. The longer he gazed upon them, the more absorbing became their attraction. He felt that they were great kindly eyes looking down even yet with ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... concord here below Makes the fierce elements to flow And circle without quarrel still, Though temper'd diversely; thus will The hot assist the cold; the dry Is a friend to humidity: And by the law of kindness they The like relief to them repay. The fire, which active is and bright, Tends upward, and from thence gives light. The earth allows it all that space And makes choice of the lower place; For things ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... he settled at Keswick, in a house, which if not built, was at least finished for him, by a then neighbour (a Mr. Jackson,) and for a time he occupied a part of it. But here his health greatly failed, and he suffered severe rheumatism from the humidity of a lake country, which was the main cause of his ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... be multiplied and intensified to infinity, but only to a certain limit, neither is the aforesaid aptitude diminished or remitted infinitely, as appears in the active and passive qualities of the elements; for coldness and humidity, whereby the aptitude of matter to the form of fire is diminished or remitted, cannot be infinitely multiplied. But if the contrary dispositions can be infinitely multiplied, the aforesaid aptitude is also infinitely diminished or remitted; yet, nevertheless, it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... clump of trees situated between the pavilion and the wall, from the center of which the waters of a fountain gushed forth, thus forming an impenetrable place of concealment; for it was not likely that in the night-time, with the freshness and humidity which would naturally be found near this fountain, the prince would seek the vicinity of the water and the thickets. Hidden behind the statue with which the fountain was ornamented, and standing at ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... manifested to the eyes of the profane. When they teach that creation's object and end was man, your theologians and your philosophers reason like the multiped of Versailles or the Tuileries, who believe the humidity of the cellars is made for their special use and that the remainder of the castle is uninhabitable. The system of the world, as Canon Copernicus taught in the last century, following the doctrines of Aristarchus of Samos and Pythagorean philosophers, is doubtless known to you, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... many quarts of rain, they slept at nights in barns through which the water dripped on to puddled straw, or in holes beneath the carts with dampness oozing through the clay walls, or in boggy beetroot fields under a hail of shrapnel, and their physical discomfort of coldness and humidity was harder to bear than their fear ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... most obvious use of the portable fires was their drying up the moisture, and especially in those places where there was the least circulation of air. This humidity, composed of the perspirable matter of a multitude of men, and often of animals (kept for a live-flock) and of the steams of the bilge water from the well, where the corruption is the greatest; this putrid moisture, I say, being one of the main sources of the scurvy, was therefore ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... a relative who was probably an unrepentant pagan. The greater number of the parishioners live at Polruan, distant rather more than a mile; the church is surrounded by fields and lanes, whose luxuriant growth of bank and hedge suggest a rich humidity of soil. In summer there is a remarkable abundance of ragged-robins by the wayside, with honeysuckles and wild-roses clustering above them in glorious profusion; here and there rises the stately spire of a foxglove. Ferns of exquisite ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... and the sea continued to be encumbered with islands. Some of the ships, which had been scraped by the reefs, had sprung; ropes, sails, and other tackle were rotted, and provisions were spoiled by the humidity. The Admiral was, consequently, obliged to retrace his course.[20] The extreme point of this country reached by him, and which he believed to be a continent, he ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... matter of fact, there is exceedingly little evidence to show that pure, fresh, open air at any reasonable temperature and humidity ever did harm when inhaled directly into the lungs. In fact, a considerable proportion of us, when swinging along at a lively gait on the country roads, or playing tennis or football, or engaged in any form of active sport, will be found to keep our lips parted and to inhale from ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... had a schedule for refitting to serve as a mail ship, and that time allowance did not allow for humidity playing the devil with the innards of robot fitters. She had to be ready to lift when the Combine ship now plying that run set down and formally signed off in her favor. Luckily, most of the work was done and Dane had given a last searching inspection before signing the ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... inhabitants seldom have more than fifteen or twenty days of fair weather in autumn, and hardly do eight days pass at any other season without rain. The atmosphere is consequently extremely moist, yet salubrious, and the climate is exceedingly mild and temperate. Owing to the great humidity, grain and fruits are by no means productive, yet the inhabitants raise sufficient grain, mostly barley and beans, for their support, and grow abundance of excellent flax. The town of Castro, on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the longitude and the latitude, corrected for magnetic variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing —inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision the degree of influence which they would exercise upon the mood and disposition of the assassin at that time of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Old General Humidity hasn't shirked his job a minute to-day," Bob Strahan told Miss Carter as they left the car and walked up the block ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... never think of ascribing to this scant and varying constituent any important influence on terrestrial radiation; and yet its influence is far more potent than that of the great body of the air. To say that on a day of average humidity in England, the atmospheric vapour exerts 100 times the action of the air itself, would certainly be an understatement of the fact. Comparing a single molecule of aqueous vapour with an atom of either of the main constituents of our atmosphere, I am not prepared ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... an abnormal heat. There was not one breath of the usual invigorating mountain air. A few more degrees of humidity, and the cup of endurance would have been filled to overflowing and toiling humanity breathing something like sheer moisture. The sky was heavy and gray, and a dull sun, as though it too had been rendered faint-hearted, was painfully struggling ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... much interested in how hot it gets in such tropics as we traversed. Unfortunately it is very difficult to tell them. Temperature tables have very little to do with the matter, for humidity varies greatly. On the Serengetti at lower reaches of the Guaso Nyero I have seen it above 110 degrees. It was hot, to be sure, but not exhaustingly so. On the other hand, at 90 or 95 degrees the low coast belt I have had the sweat run from me literally in streams; so that a muddy spot formed ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... appears like a nebulous circle projected in yellow upon the green ground of the woods and meadows. I have noticed, too, that this luminous shadow is generally all the more strongly marked in proportion to the greater humidity of the surface of ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... pierced the massive walls. The Seine flows by upon one side, separated only by the high way of the quays. The bed of the Seine is above the floor of the prison. The surrounding earth was consequently saturated with water, and the oozing moisture diffused over the walls and the floors the humidity of the sepulcher. The plash of the river; the rumbling of carts upon the pavements overhead; the heavy tramp of countless footfalls, as the multitude poured into and out of the halls of justice, mingled with the moaning of the prisoners ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... whitening it and making the surface smooth, a deplorable business, for it made the paper very moisture absorbent, a condition fatal in such a humid climate as in these islands. Moreover, as the alum used is impure and contains a large proportion of iron salts, the humidity and weather oxidize it which finally darkens the paper, so that Philippine books present a coloration which runs the gamut of tones from the color of bone to ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... vigorous plant, which sheds abundant seed. The consequence of having adopted ridiculous titles for these academies suggested to them many other characteristic fopperies. At Florence every brother of the "Umidi" assumed the name of something aquatic, or any quality pertaining to humidity. One was called "the Frozen," another "the Damp;" one was "the Pike," another "the Swan:" and Grazzini, the celebrated novelist, is known better by the cognomen of La Lasca, "the Roach," by which he whimsically designates himself among the "Humids." I find among ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... was observed both by August's psychrometer and Saussure's hygrometer. But I do not believe that these instruments give trustworthy results at a temperature considerably under the freezing-point. Moreover the degree of humidity at the place where there can be a question of setting up a psychrometer and hygrometer during a wintering in the high north, has not the meteorological importance which has often been ascribed to it. For the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the summer, too, the Hunter place had been closed, until that day in late October. It had been a warm week—a week of such unseasonable humidity for the hills that Caleb, rising somewhat before his usual hour, had blamed his sleeplessness, as usual, upon the weather. He was glad to be home again that morning; he had been so lonely away from home that he was warmed unaccountably by the thought that Allison was ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... sweet taste and refreshing coolness of the vegetables had quickly been succeeded by an intolerable burning sensation. Some cases of dysentery had appeared among the men, caused by fatigue, improper food and the persistent humidity of the atmosphere. More than ten times that night did Jean stretch forth his hand to see that Maurice had not uncovered himself in the movements of his slumber, and thus he kept watch and ward over his ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... hoyo hole, pit, dimple. hueco hollow. huerfano, -a orphan. huerta orchard, garden. hueso bone. huesped, -a guest. hueste f. host. huevo egg. huir to fly. humanidad f. humanity. humano human, humane. humedad f. humidity. humildad f. humility. humilde humble. humillar to humble. humo smoke, fume. humor m. humor, liquid. hundir to submerge, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... carried on are so many of them outside of the control of the operator that it is very difficult to predict results or to attain any fixed standard. This is necessarily so with an operation which has so many uncertain factors to deal with as agriculture. Humidity of the atmosphere and of the soil, the available plant food in the soil, methods of tillage, fertilizers used, recurrence of frosts, amount of sunlight, the altitude and latitude of different localities, all have a bearing upon crop production. It is, therefore, very difficult ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... these two regions of extreme heat and cold there would, in every place, be found two streams of air following in opposite directions. If those streams of air, therefore, shall be supposed as both sufficiently saturated with humidity, then, as they are of different temperatures, there would be formed a continual condensation of aqueous vapor, in some middle region of the atmosphere, by the commixtion of part of those ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... typical of Winnipeg in summer. The fresh northwest breeze that sweeps the Manitoba plains had dropped. Dark thunder-clouds rolled about the sky, but the sun was hot and an enervating humidity brooded over the town. The perspiring crowd in Main Street moved slackly, the saloon bars were full, and the groups of holiday-makers flocking to the station wore ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... construction debris and found a pair of small wooden boxes that had held instruments. With Hassan as interpreter, Rick talked to the construction foreman and a plasterer was detailed to help. If the form could be prepared right away, the low desert humidity would harden it enough to use by the time they ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... weather. By protecting the houses with shutters, this difficulty may be obviated. Crowding the fire, and raising the water in the tanks to a high temperature, is a more objectionable remedy. In this way the bottom heat is too strong. But my most serious difficulty has arisen from excessive humidity. I put three inches of sand over the whole slate surface of the tanks, using a part for cuttings, and the rest, (say 100 running feet of the three feet wide table), for standing pot plants upon the surface of the sand. The plants dried rapidly, and required watering every morning. ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... add to our collections of new mineral substances, we found ourselves obliged to throw away others, which we had collected a considerable time before. These sacrifices were not less vexatious than the losses we accidentally sustained. Sad experience taught us but too late, that from the sultry humidity of the climate, and the frequent falls of the beasts of burden, we could preserve neither the skins of animals hastily prepared, nor the fishes and reptiles placed in phials filled with alcohol. I enter into these details, because, though little interesting in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Knight explains these symbols as follows: "It appears therefore that the asterisk, bull, or minotaur, in the centre of a square or labyrinth equally mean the same as the Indian lingam,—that is the male personification of the productive attribute placed in the female, or heat acting upon humidity. Sometimes the bull is placed between two dolphins, and sometimes upon a dolphin or another fish; and in other instances the goat or the ram occupy the same situation. Which are all different modes ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... HUMIDITY. Something which comes in through the window and goes out through the pores. A warm proposition any way you take it. A brother-in-law to Torture and ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... deepen in tone; while tempera, if protected from humidity, retain their brilliancy and clearness as long as the material on which they rest endures. The true occupation of the restorer is to put the work given to him in a condition as near as possible to its original state, carefully abstaining from obliterating the legitimate marks of age, and limiting ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... like ghosts ourselves, and despair would be seizing on our hearts. We should be in continual squabbles with our guides and porters, and completely exposed to their unbridled brutality. During the daytime, a damp, penetrating, unendurable humidity! At night, a cold frequently intolerable, and the stings of a kind of fly whose bite pierces the thickest cloth, and drives the victim crazy! All this, too, without saying any thing about wild beasts ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... bosom; and looking round to catch what was passing in the count's mind, she beheld him leaning against the box, with his head inclined to the curtain of the door. "Mr. Constantine!" almost unconsciously escaped her lips. He started, and discovered by the humidity on his eyelashes why he had withdrawn. Her ladyship's tears were gliding down her cheeks. Miss Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed countenance of the count, could ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... what the interior parts may produce we know not. To judge of the whole garment by the skirts, it cannot produce much; for so much as we saw of it consisted wholly of coral rocks, all over-run with woods and bushes. Not a bit of soil was to be seen; the rocks alone supplying the trees with humidity. If these coral rocks were first formed in the sea by animals, how came they thrown up to such an height? Has this island been raised by an earthquake? Or has the sea receded from it? Some philosophers have attempted to account for the formation of low isles, such as are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... direct attention to C.W. Beebe's ("Zoologica: N.Y. Zool. Soc." Vol. I. No. 1, Sept. 25, 1907: "Geographic variation in birds with especial reference to the effects of humidity".) recent discovery that the pigmentation of the plumage of certain birds is increased by confinement in a superhumid atmosphere. In Scardafella inca, on which the most complete series of experiments was made, the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... compositions appears to be a union of violent acid with inflammable matter, whence it may be termed an animal sulphur, and is actually found to burn successfully under a common glass-bell; and to afford flowers too, which, by attracting the humidity of the air, become a liquor like oleum sulphuris per campanam[Footnote: Oil of sulphur by ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the Egyptians, the efflux of Os{i}ris. The lower part of his habit is made up of descending rays, and his body is surrounded with orbs. His right hand is extended in a commanding attitude, and his left holds a thyrsus or staff of the papyrus, pointing out the principle of humidity, and the fertility thence ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... afternoon when I was thus awaiting her in the village. The eternal smile of the Californian summer had begun to waver and grow less fixed; dust lay thick on leaf and blade; the dry hills were clothed in russet leather; the trade winds were shifting to the south with an ominous warm humidity; a few days longer and the rains would be here. It so chanced that this afternoon my seclusion on the roadside was accidentally invaded by a village belle—a Western young lady somewhat older than myself, and of flirtatious reputation. As she persistently and—as I now have reason to ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... closely-fitting glass-doors. {2} The shelves should be lined with velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact with the wood. A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will also help to keep out humidity. Most writers recommend that the bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth. These ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... speed, sir," he said. "Atmosphere is rather denser than I had expected. Hendricks reports the air breathable, with a humidity of one hundred. And—tell me, sir, what do you make of the appearance of the ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... weather, and by service, his garments are becoming ragged. He must shield himself from the humidity of the air; where shall he procure materials? Has he not the choice between seal-skins and goat-skins? He gives the preference to the latter, as more pliable, and behold him a tailor, cutting with the point of his knife; as ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... of June, in the year 708, merry crowds were thronging to Vazon Forest. It was a lovely spot. The other portions of the island were bare and somewhat rugged; here the humidity of the soil favoured the growth of fine, vigorous timber. On the low ground flourished oak and sycamore, torn and bent near the shore where the trees met the force of the Atlantic gales, growing freely and with rich verdure where better ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast monsoon, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... perhaps ventures to mention some predilections as to the cut, and takes his departure with a light heart. The fact that the cloth is cheap, unshrunken goods, which will shrivel up at the first shower or severe humidity, and will, at all events, get wrinkled out of shape in a few days, does not dash the hopeful prisoner's jocundity; nor even the consideration that the "prison cut" will be instantly recognized all over the country, by every detective, private or federal, and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... very hot and the humidity very heavy, and at Las Palmas inside the bungalow that served as a police-station the lamps on either side of the lieutenant's desk burned like tiny furnaces. Between them, panting in the moist heat and with the sweat from his forehead and hand dripping upon an otherwise immaculate report, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... local spinnings are most apt to occur in the season when the air next the earth is relatively warm, and they are aptest to take place in the half of the advancing front lying between the east and south, for the reason that there the highest temperatures and the greatest humidity are likely to coexist. In that part of the field, during the time when the storm is advancing from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, a dozen or more of these spinning uprushes may be produced, though few of them are likely to be of large size or ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... room of ordinary humidity, one in which the air is never dryer for any reason than the average, should be used to store these batteries. They should ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... but on the left there is a long crevice or chasm, which we have never yet visited, and which we cannot discern until we reach it. This is full of soft mould, very moist, and many high reeds and canes are growing there; and the rock itself too drips with humidity along it, and is covered with more tufted moss and more variegated lichens. This crevice, with its windings and sinuosities, is about four hundred paces long, and in many parts eleven, twelve, thirteen feet ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... over me on the first day out from Floresta. I had felt a peculiar drowsiness for several days, but had paid little attention to it as one generally feels drowsy and tired in the oppressive heat and humidity. When to this was added a second chill that shook me from head to foot with such violence that I thought my last hour had come, I knew I was in for my first experience of the dreaded Javary fever. There was nothing to do but to take copious doses of quinine and keep still in ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... sound travels through the air is about 1100 feet per second, the rapidity varying somewhat with fluctuations in temperature and humidity. In water the rate is much higher than in air (about four times as great) while the velocity of sound through other mediums (as e.g., steel) is sometimes as much as sixteen times ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... merest toy—a complex plaything, nothing more. Allow me to explain. I have a line of very large greenhouses which extends from one end of my smoking-room. These different houses are kept at varying degrees of heat and humidity so as to reproduce the exact climates of Egypt, China, and the rest. You see, our crystal chamber is a tramway running with a minimum of friction along a steel rod. By pulling this or that handle I regulate how far it shall go, and it travels, as you have ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... itself until it reaches the liquid level. Arrived at this point, it makes a large lair in the soft soil, and effects communication with the outside by various openings. It can thus easily come and go and retire into its cave, where it finds security and a humidity favourable for branchial respiration. From time to time it cleans out the dirt and rubbish which accumulate in the hole. It makes a little pile of all the refuse which it finds, and, seizing it between its claws and abdomen, carries it outside. Executing several journeys very rapidly, it soon ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... eight inches, and corn from two to four feet. There the frequent clouds introduce their fertilizing contents at a modest distance from the fat valley, and send their humid influences from the mountain tops. There the saline atmosphere of Salt Lake mingles in wedlock with the fresh humidity of the same vegetable element which comes over the mountain top, as if the nuptial bonds of rare elements were introduced to exhibit a novel specimen of a perfect vegetable progeny in the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... known. Its name arose from the fact of its production in greatest perfection on the low, sandy islands near the coasts of some of the Southern states. It does well on low land near the seashore. The saltness and humidity of such locations seem peculiarly favorable to its greatest perfection. It yields about half as much as the "short staple" called Mexican and Petit gulf cotton, and known in commerce as upland cotton. But the sea-island, or long staple, sells ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... and turn in their webs so as to take it from the point of a pin or camel's-hair pencil. Besides water to drink, they require an atmosphere saturated with moisture, like that of their native island, the relative humidity being about seventy on the Hygrodeik scale. If stroked upon the back, they often raise their bodies as a cat does, and sometimes put back a leg to push away your finger. They may be allowed to run over one's person with perfect safety, but, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... noon-day observation that we had weathered the cape, and were, consequently, now in the Pacific ocean. Up to that date we had but one man attacked with scurvy, a malady to which those who make long voyages are subject, and which is occasioned by the constant use of salt provisions, by the humidity of ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... of marvellous beauty rose from the water. I had seen the long green locks, the eyes of azure, and the glossy neck—it was Tethys, the queen of the sea-nymphs. She was begotten of humidity in the remote beginning, and seemed even now cloudy and incorporeal. Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools, lay in the waves at her feet, projecting a spectrum of spray, in ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... summits perpetual thunderstorms seem to play, and from which fierce gales swoop down on the sea. Clammy, suffocating heat, fever-dealing swamps, decaying towns, with an effete population and a huge rainfall, do not constitute an attractive whole. Owing to the intense humidity, even the gales bring no refreshing ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... in his learned work on Symbolism, received from him the two sexes, represented by heaven and the earth. Heaven, as the fecundating principle, was male, and the source of fire; the earth, as the fecundated, was female, and the source of humidity. All things issued from the alliance of these two principles. The vivifying powers of the heavens are concentrated in the sun, and the earth, eternally fixed in the place which it occupies, receives the emanations from the sun, through the medium of the moon, which sheds upon the earth the germs ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... The same as every other single in the city—or any city. The walls are the shade of green that's best for the eyes. Furniture and fixtures are always the same colors. Every compartment has a servoconsole to condition the air, control the temperature and humidity, bring you food or any other standard service, provide teleview shows, music or requests. You could live your life inside this square hole. Everybody has everything and nothing means anything—can't you ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... oak, and they began to unscrew the lid. The humidity of the earth had rusted the screws, and it was not without some difficulty that the coffin was opened. A painful odour arose in spite of the aromatic plants with which ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... Acute non-contagious intestinal disturbance of infants formerly common in congested areas with high humidity and temperature. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... not depend on the humidity of the soil, or low, wet pastures containing ponds. Probably dusty quarters are responsible in large ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... (caliente), and the former the cold region (fria). Between the two climates, as the traveler mounts from the sea-level to the great plateau, is the temperate region (templada), an intermediate belt of perpetual humidity, a welcome escape from the heat and deadly malaria of the hot region with its "bilious fevers." Sometimes as he passes along the bases of the volcanic mountains, casting his eye "down some steep slope or almost unfathomable ravine on the margin of the road, he ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... by the armies was low and swampy, a character which it possessed in ancient times; the marshes on the southern side being supposed to be the same in which Marius concealed himself from his enemies during his proscription. [20] Its natural humidity was greatly increased, at this time, by the excessive rains, which began earlier and with much more violence than usual. The French position was neither so low nor so wet as that of the Spaniards. It had the advantage, moreover, of being supported by a well-peopled ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... from the Depot in charge of the home returning party, he passed by the spot where this animal had fallen; and, in elucidation of what I have stated, I will here give the extract of a letter I subsequently received from him from India. Speaking of the humidity of the climate of Bengal, he says: "It appears to me that heat alone is rather a preservative from decomposition; of which I recollect an instance, in the bullock that died in the march through the Pine scrub on the 1st of January, 1845. When I passed by the spot in the following July, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... it was a burial ground —a dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying—Jenny, the mother of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... are more than usually painful, and wiping his brow.] It's not so much the heat as the humidity. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... invested with a particular interest and originality. They were in progress for a whole year, in a thick forest of almost impenetrable brushwood, split with numerous deep ravines and abrupt, slippery precipices. The humidity of the forest is excessive, the waters pouring down from high promontories. The soldiers who struggled here practically spent ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the home of the apple, particularly Central Europe, Canada, the United States. In certain regions in the southern hemisphere the temperature and humidity are right for the good growing of apples, mostly in elevated areas. In New Zealand and parts of Australia, apple-growing is assuming large proportions. Their export trade to Europe and parts of South America has come ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... adds the Seculo, "although in water, did not present the least vestige of humidity. The news of this curious discovery was immediately circulated, and there was a great pilgrimage, including a reporter of the Seculo, to this miraculous fountain ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... ditches the water quickly runs off the moor, and subsequently the whole countryside suffers from drought. This sort of thing has occurred wherever man has been sufficiently civilised and enterprising to commit the folly of destroying forests. Forests have an immense effect on climate, causing humidity of both the air and the soil, and give rise to moderate and persistent instead of torrential streams. Spain has been irretrievably injured by the cutting down of her forests in the course of a few hundred years. The same thing is ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... by the steam tramway which goes up the hill. The rain fell. Madame Marmet went to sleep and Choulette complained. All his ills came to attack him at once: the humidity in the air gave him a pain in the knee, and he could not bend his leg; his carpet-bag, lost the day before in the trip from the station to Fiesole, had not been found, and it was an irreparable disaster; a Paris review had just published one of his poems, with typographical errors ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... muleteers squatted in a circle, by a fire near a pile of packs, and listened to a long monotonously and rather mournfully chanted song about a dance and a love-affair. We ourselves worked busily with our photographs and our writing. There was so much humidity in the air that everything grew damp and stayed damp, and mould gathered quickly. At this season it is a country in which writing, taking photographs, and preparing specimens are all works of difficulty, at least so far as concerns preserving and ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... before — were made the subject of long and serious discussion. It was at length decided that Pizarro should remain in his present quarters, inconvenient and even unwholesome as they were rendered by the humidity of the climate, and the pestilent swarms of insects that filled the atmosphere. Almagro would pass over to Panama, lay the case before the governor, and secure, if possible, his good-will towards the prosecution of the enterprise. If no obstacle were thrown in their way from this quarter, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of the water, exactly over the two patches of sand which had so drawn and held them or their brethren two hours before. Whatever the ultimate satisfaction may have been, the attraction was something transcending humidity, aridity, or immediate possibility of attainment. It was a definite cosmic point, a geographical focus, which, to my eyes and understanding, was unreasonable, unsuitable, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... fly begins laying eggs in from 2 1/2 to 20 days after emerging, the time interval depending to a large extent upon temperature, humidity, and character and abundance of food. The number of eggs laid by an individual fly at one time ranges from 120 to 159 and a single female will usually lay two and sometimes four such batches. Dunn has recently reported that in Panama a fly may deposit as many as 2,367 eggs in 21 batches, ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... think this moisture is bad you ought to see a mill with the old vapour-pot system with the steam shooting out into the room. Look here!" He led Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room was controlled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "running"—that is, leakage of wind from one pipe to another. In poor chests of this description the slides are apt to stick when the atmosphere is excessively damp, and to become too loose on days when little or no humidity is present. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... run down the road through the narrow strip of jungle. The Death Ray had cut huge swathes in the tangle of trees and vines, and now areas of heaped debris, livid with the colors of recent decay, exhaled a mephitic humidity altogether alien to the snow that fell in soft, slow flakes. Each hesitated to voice the new fear: had the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... remained at a low altitude camping out was not an unalloyed pleasure, because the tormenting gnats were exasperating, and at night the humidity was great, making the bed and everything else damp. The atmosphere was heavy and filled with the odor of decaying vegetable matter never before disturbed. In the morning at five o'clock, my hour for rising, there was considerable chill in the air. It was difficult to see a star here and there ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... I felt love was now a proposition which wouldn't find a crevice in his heart to trickle into and widen until it split him asunder. But with the clever young woman of business, in the rush and turmoil of the down-town hustle, it is such a gentle humidity it seems to work its corrosion unseen in the broad daylight. Thermometer readings don't show it. You have to keep close to the barometer of eyes and sighs to know anything definite of its ups and downs—unless ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... frame or pit. It appears, however, that in Melon-houses red spider is more frequently seen than in frames heated by fermenting material; but this point rests on management, and there can be nothing more certain than that a reasonable employment of atmospheric humidity may be made effectual for preventing and removing this pest. For the convenient cultivation of the crop a lean-to or half-span is to be preferred. The width should not exceed twelve feet, and ten to twelve feet should ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the grosser parts either of earth or water; these parts must be reduced by warmth into subtle vapours before the roots can suck them up into the plant. In like manner the nutrition of the nerves is only effected by means of the more subtle parts of the humidity of the brain, which are sucked up by the roots or extremities of the nerves, and are carried thence through all the branches of the sensory system. This system forms, as we have said, a whole, all whose parts are interconnected ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Dunstkreis - meaning the humidity contained in the air and, as such, spherically surrounding the earth. I had to make up the word 'hygrosphere' (after hygrometer, etc.) to keep clear the distinction from both atmosphere and hydrosphere. Except for this term in the first two sentences, the above follows Oxenford's ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... But on the bluffs overhanging the banks of our large streams, especially on the northern and western sides, where the vines are sheltered from the north and west winds, and fully exposed to the warm southern winds of our summer days, and where the fogs arising from the water yet give sufficient humidity to the atmosphere, even in the hottest summer days, to refresh the leaf during the night and morning hours; where the soil on the southern and eastern slopes is a mixture of decomposed stone and leaf-mould, and feels like velvet ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... white and hung with chintz, seemed to keep some traces of the elegant gallantry of the eighteenth century. A heap of still-glowing ashes—which testified to the pains taken to dispel humidity—filled the fireplace, whose marble mantlepiece supported a bust of Marie Antoinette in bisuit. Attached to the frame of the tarnished and discoloured mirror, two brass hooks, that had once doubtless ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... inspirations. It now extinguished the flame, but I found only some traces of aerial acid in it. (b.) I was surprised that I was not able the first time to take away from this air the property of allowing fire to burn in it; I thought that perhaps the great humidity prevented me from drawing this air into my lungs so often as was really possible. Accordingly I repeated the same experiment, only with this difference, that I put a handful of potashes into the bladder before the fire-air ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... dreariness, gloominess, and humidity, of a Milanese sky in winter; which, I conclude, under the old regime, led to all the hospitality, and conviviality, practised here, by their voluptuous but ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... life, Or the art of living long in perfect health. Translated from the Italian of Louis Cornaro, a Venetian noble. To which is added the way of correcting a bad constitution, and enjoying perfect felicity to the most advanced years. and to die only from the using up of the original humidity in ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... are high.'" [252] According to the Japanese fairy tale the moon was to "rule over the new-born earth and the blue waste of the sea, with its multitudinous salt waters." [253] Thus we see that throughout Asia, "as lord of moisture and humidity, the moon is connected with growth and the nurturing power ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... mind, though, that neither the cold of winter nor the heat of summer, in northern Arizona, are as frigid or as torrid as the readings of the thermometer may seem to indicate. The cold or heat is not felt to such an extreme as in the East. A minimum of humidity is the basic reason for this wide difference between, for example, the July or January climate of New York, and the July or January climate of the Grand Canyon. Extremes that in New York drive people to the cool seashore or To California's winter warmth, here bring no discomfort. You don't feel ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... This heavy humidity also tends to prevent radiation of heat, and the temperature at night does not drop exceedingly low, although frost is not uncommon even in summer. As our vegetation is acclimated and adapted to our environment no damage is done to growing crops ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... eastern Washington sweltered under the most torrid spell of heat on record. It was a dry, high country, noted for an equable climate, with cool summers and mild winters. And this unprecedented wave would have been unbearable had not the atmosphere been free from humidity. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... heat, we give it water in abundance and perfect sanitation and light everywhere, we give it ventilation less successfully than we might, and finally we give it the human quality that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good modern house, no disgraceful lairs for servants, no horrors of humidity. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... During the summer, for long months together, the sky remains inexorably blue while the temperature is hot and parching. In winter, clouds are almost as rare; but winds often play violently over the great tracts of unbroken country. When these blow from the south they soon lose their warmth and humidity at the contact of a soil which, but a short while ago, was at the bottom of the sea, and is, therefore, in many places still strongly impregnated with salt which acts as a refrigerant.[19] Again, when the north wind comes down ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot |
