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Porous   /pˈɔrəs/   Listen
Porous

adjective
1.
Able to absorb fluids.  "Compacting the soil to make it less porous"
2.
Full of pores or vessels or holes.  Synonym: poriferous.
3.
Allowing passage in and out.  Synonym: holey.



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"Porous" Quotes from Famous Books



... round their trays, Small social parties just begun to dine; Pilaus and meats of all sorts met the gaze, And flasks of Samian and of Chian wine, And sherbet cooling in the porous vase; Above them their dessert grew on its vine;— The orange and pomegranate nodding o'er, Dropped in their laps, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

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

... Josh would eat a little food now and then, just to be sociable, but what he really lived on was tobacco. Usually kept a chew in one cheek and a cob pipe in the other. He was a powerful hand for a joke and had one of those porous heads and movable scalps which go with a sense of humor in a small village. Used to scare us boys by drawing in on his pipe and letting the smoke sort of leak out through his eyes and ears and nose. Pretended that he was the devil and that he was on fire inside. Old Doc Hoover caught ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... feet. This central mass consists principally of a greyish trachytic porphyry, in some places rich in veins of silver-ore. The tops of the hills are often crowned with basaltic columns, and a soft porous amygdaloid abounds on the outskirts of the Mexican valley. Besides this, traces of more recent volcanic action abound, in the shape of numerous extinct craters in the high plateaus, and immense "pedrigals" or fields of lava not ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... camp near a well or spring. Wood, too, you will want and it must be dry. Don't try to cook with fat pine. It's all right to kindle with but not for cooking. Your bacon fried over it will be as fine eating as a porous plaster. Fry your potatoes. If you must roast them dig a hole in the ashes and cover them deep. Then go away and forget them. Let some one else come along and cook all sorts of things on top of them. ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... gentlemen a drink!" commanded Don Pablo severely, and after Hardy had accepted the gourd of cold water which the boy dipped from a porous olla, resting in the three-pronged fork of a trimmed mesquite, the old gentleman called for his tobacco. This the mozo brought in an Indian basket wrought by the Apaches who live across the river—Bull ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

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

... passage from the skin as little as possible. For this reason one's garments should be permeable to air. The body is cooled by rapid evaporation, on the familiar principle of a tropical water bag that is porous enough to let some of the water exude. So the best summer clothing is that which permits free evaporation—and this means all over, from head to heel. In winter it is just the same, there should be free passage for bodily moisture through the underclothes, but extra layers ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... retreat, who would not equivocate, who would not be silent and who would be heard." Then came the stage when men tried legislative palliatives; when all manner of political medicaments and poultices were tried as cures, which were about as effective in destroying the poison as a porous plaster would be to draw out the fire from a volcano. For more than sixty years a veil had hung before men's minds, and it was as if they saw slaves as trees walking, in an unreal world. The sea captain fears a fog more than an equinoctial storm. When the mist falls, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

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

... the city, the wall of Romulus, and the massive blocks on which the Capitol rests, being formed of this substance. Over this a later stratum was deposited called tufa granolare, consisting of a similar mechanical conglomerate of scoriae, ashes, and other volcanic products, but more porous and friable in texture. It is in this last formation, which is so soft that it can be easily hollowed out, and yet so solid that it does not crumble, that the Catacombs are invariably found. There is something that appeals strongly to the imagination in the fact that ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... either for a mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

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

... muddy water settling in a hole and thoroughly evaporating. There was also some travertine in small lumps here and there through the clay, and above it was a mass fully 2 feet thick at one side of the trench but running out before it reached the other side. It was porous, almost spongy, and seemed to be the lime dust from the roof and sides cemented by dripping water. Above all this, so far as the trench extended toward the sides of the cave, was an inch to 4 inches of loose, dry, dark earth, which on the left dipped down to the ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

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

... lava streams, partly by undulating plains of black volcanic sand, shingle, and loose stones. This region is of course without verdure, and entirely uninhabited. The rocks are all of igneous origin, but of very different ages, traps, basalts, amygdaloids, tufas, ochres, and porous lavas. The number of active volcanoes is, at present, not great, but hot springs and mud volcanoes testify to the existence of volcanic action along a line running from the extreme south west at Cape Reykjanes to the north ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... growing in patches where the lava had decayed into soil. Then came bare slopes with dark hollow and sharp ridges. We walked on old stiff lava-streams. Sometimes we had to plod through piles of coarse, porous cinders. Sometimes we climbed over tangled, lumpy beds of twisted, shiny rock. Sometimes we looked into dark arched tunnels. Red streams had once flowed out of them. A few times we passed near fresh cracks in the ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall

... cut it," I said; "it's many a long day since I've been a Patsy for the ponies. Once they stung me so hard that for months my bank account looked like a porous plaster, so I took the chloroform treatment and now you and your tips to the discards, my boy, ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh

... early life before the great world knew it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side of the porous limestone hills and start a new river with another name; leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and wade and push the canoe through ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood

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

... had been cut down four years. To the different qualities of the wood of Norfolk Island and New South Wales, perhaps the difference of soil may in some measure be traced. That of Norfolk Island is light and porous: it rots and turns into mould in two years. Besides its hardness that of Port Jackson abounds with red corrosive gum, which contributes ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

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

... loosen), in chemistry, a process invented by Thomas Graham for separating colloidal and crystalline substances. He found that solutions could be divided into two classes according to their action upon a porous diaphragm such as parchment. If a solution, say of salt, be placed in a drum provided with a parchment bottom, termed a "dialyser," and the drum and its contents placed in a larger vessel of water, the salt will pass through the membrane. If the salt solution be replaced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... place could be entered only by causeways. They marched on a wide avenue which led through the heart of the city, beholding the size, architecture, and beauty of the Aztec capital with astonishment. This avenue was lined with some of the finest houses, built of a porous red stone dug from quarries in the neighborhood. The people gathered in crowds on the streets, on the flat roofs, in the doorways, and at the windows to witness the arrival of the Spaniards. Most of the streets were narrow, and had houses of a much ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... town. And I saw this had once been a goodly city though its glory was departed, its noble buildings decayed or ruinated and cheek by jowl with primitive dwellings of clay. And these greater houses were of a noble simplicity, flat-roofed and builded of a red, porous stone, in some cases coated with white cement, whiles here and there, towering high among these, rose huge structures that I took for palaces or temples, yet one and all timeworn and crumbling to decay. Before one of such, standing in a goodly square, we alighted ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... are of calcium oxide or of graphite. Pottery is clay, molded, baked, and either glazed, like crockery, or unglazed, like flower-pots. Jugs and coarse earthenware are glazed by volatilizing NaCl in an oven which holds the porous material. This coats the ware with sodium silicate. To glaze china, it is dipped into a powder of feldspar and SiO2 suspended in water and vinegar, and then fused. If the ware and glaze expand uniformly with heat, ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... intensity from managed or dormant to violent or militarized; most disputes over the alignment of political boundaries are confined to short segments and are today less common and less hostile than borderland, resource, and territorial disputes; undemarcated, indefinite, porous, and unmanaged boundaries, however, encourage illegal cross-border activities, uncontrolled migration, and confrontation; territorial disputes may evolve from historical and/or cultural claims, or they may be brought on by resource competition; ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... up a considerable-sized stone that had been washed on to the Chinamen's ground; it was a piece of lava thrown from one of the volcanic hills which bound the plain,—how many thousands of years ago! These volcanic stones are so light and porous that they swim like corks, and they abound in ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... rubber or leather cement, preferably the latter. This can be made by dissolving gutta-percha in bisulphide of carbon, but a good leather cement may be had at almost any shoe store. If the bellows are porous, it may be well to give them a coat of cement, but never paint them; the paint cracks and the leaks are ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer

... Club building is nine stories high, yellow brick with glassy roof-garden above and portico of huge limestone columns below. The lobby, with its thick pillars of porous Caen stone, its pointed vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile floor like well-baked bread-crust, is a combination of cathedral-crypt and rathskellar. The members rush into the lobby as though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus did Babbitt enter, and to the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... and swells in organic solvents. The ultimate product of this class of substances is "Resit" which is obtained when concentrated hydrochloric acid is allowed to act upon a mixture of phenol and formaldehyde; the temperature rises spontaneously, and a hard, porous, insoluble mass of great resistance is obtained. By heating resols, resitols are formed which, on further heating, are finally converted into resits. [Footnote: Ber., 1892, ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... right hand into the shape of a cup and raised it to his mouth, at the same time exhibiting three fingers of his left hand; and the steward, nodding and grinning his comprehension of the mute order, withdrew, to reappear next moment with a case-bottle of rum, three glasses, and a water-monkey, or porous earthen jar, full of what proved, on our pouring it out, to be a ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... of Ladscha which I have seen is, like Hauran, entirely formed of basalt, often very porous, and in many districts forming vast stony deserts. The villages, which are mostly in ruins, are built on the sides of the rocks. The black colour of the basalt, the ruined houses, the churches and towers fallen ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... of course, more digestible. It was this discovery that led up to the modern bread-making processes, in which substances known as leavening agents, or ferments, are used to make bread light, or porous. Chief among the substances is yeast, a microscopic plant that ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... slender twigs of the weeping willow, it is made much deeper, so that when swayed about violently by the wind the young may not tumble out. It has been observed also, that the nests built in the warm Southern States are much slighter and more porous in texture than those in the colder regions of the north. Our own house-sparrow equally well adapts himself to circumstances. When he builds in trees, as he, no doubt, always did originally, he constructs a well-made domed nest, perfectly fitted to protect his young ones; but when he can find a ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

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

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

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

... most of the houses in Havana are built of "mamposteria" or rubble masonry, a porous material which freely absorbs atmospheric as well as ground moisture. The mark of this can often be seen high on the walls, which varies from 2 to 7 feet in the houses generally. The roofs are excellent, usually ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... Fresh soil was then added, until the whole was consolidated, and capable of bearing a considerable weight. The ground is now about nine inches thick, floating upon the surface of the water, and the stalks of the weeds below it having disappeared. It is exceedingly porous and is used for the cultivation of water melons, when walking upon it a peculiar elasticity is perceived, accompanied with a tremulous or jelly like motion. It is divided into long stripes pierced by a stake at each end, which secures them in their position ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... feet. The top of Little Ararat was still at that time streaked with snow, but not covered. With so many extensive snow-beds, one would naturally expect to find copious brooks and streams flowing down the mountain into the plain; but owing to the porous and dry nature of the soil, the water is entirely lost before reaching the base of the mountain. Even as early as July we saw no stream below 6000 feet, and even above this height the mountain freshets frequently flowed far beneath the surface under the loosely packed rocks, bidding ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

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

... to the forms and produce a better surface, and the voids in the stone will be much better filled if it is so wet as to require but little tamping; moreover there is less danger of obtaining a weak, porous wall should a workman neglect thorough tamping, than there is where only a moist mixture is used. It is also to the contractor's interest to use wet concrete for much less labor is required in mixing and placing it. Small broken stone or gravel is preferable in concrete for sewers. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... shady place, allowing plenty of space about the outside to fill in with gravel. A quantity of small stones and sand is first put in wet. A box is placed in the hole over the top of the barrel and filled in with clay or earth well tamped. The porous condition of the gravel drains the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

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

... Arab writer, Al Makkari. "It consisted," he says, "of a long line of arches, and the way it was done was this: whenever they came to high ground or to a mountain they cut a passage through it; when the ground was lower, they built a bridge over arches; if they met with a porous soil, they laid a bed of gravel for the passage of the water; when the building reached the sea-shore, the water was made to pass underground, and in this way it reached Cadiz." So it was built, and "wise" was the king who built ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... forming the point at Luders bay consist of a porous trap, or basalt—a volcanic product of a modern period. The rocks belong to agglomerated masses, which form the immediate ground of the cascades, and have been already mentioned as constituting a bed of cemented conglomerate rocks, appearing ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... torture." I afterwards saw this dreadful place, also a legacy from the prehistoric people who lived in Kor. The only objects in the cave itself were slabs of rock arranged in various positions to facilitate the operations of the torturers. Many of these slabs, which were of a porous stone, were stained quite dark with the blood of ancient victims that had soaked into them. Also in the centre of the room was a place for a furnace, with a cavity wherein to heat the historic pot. But the most dreadful thing about the cave was that over each slab was a sculptured ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... Ead's bread always takes the prize at the county fair. It looks like pound-cake. I don't want you girls to make flabby, porous bread, full of air-holes. I want you to learn how to knead it till it is just ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... The porous clay cracked like an egg-shell, the top coming off in one piece, with a few flying splinters; and I pressed the bouquet ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

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

... elsewhere on the difference observed by Herodotus on a battle-field between the skulls of the Persians and those of the Egyptians. Since it is desirable that the bones of the skull should grow harder and more substantial, less fragile and porous, not only to protect the brain against injuries but against colds, fever, and every influence of the air, you should therefore accustom your children to go bare-headed winter and summer, day and night. If you make them wear a night-cap to keep their hair clean and tidy, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... very hard the sugar, adding the lemon, and beating the whole for a long time. Then by degrees, stir in the flour slowly and lightly; for if the flour is stirred hard and fast into sponge cake, it will make it porous and tough. Have ready buttered, a sufficient number of little square tins, (the thinner they are the better,) half fill them with the mixture; grate loaf-sugar over the top of each; put them immediately into a quick oven, ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

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

... an injudicious and unfortunate selection of the spot for building. The kennel is generally built on a sand-bed, or on a sandstone rock, while the healthiest grounds in England are on a stiff clay, and they are the healthiest because they are the least porous. Although this may be contrary to the opinion and prejudice of the majority of sportsmen, it is a fact that cannot ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

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

... mushrooms at all seasons, several methods of propagation have been had recourse to. It is said that, in some parts of Italy, a species of stone is used for this purpose, which is described as being of two different kinds; the one is found in the chalk hills near Naples, and has a white, porous, stalactical appearance; the other is a hardened turf from some volcanic mountains near Florence. These stones are kept in cellars, and occasionally moistened with water which has been used in the washing of mushrooms, and are thus supplied with their minute seeds. In this country, gardeners provide ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... and all appliances are constructed of metal except the chair in which the subject sits. This is of hard wood, well shellacked, and consequently non-porous. With this calorimeter it is desired to make studies regarding the moisture elimination, and consequently it is necessary to avoid the use of all material of a hygroscopic nature. Although the chair can be weighed from time to time ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict

... retaining the eggs within the body until they were hatched; and, as a result of this, certain structures which grow out from the embryo while it is still within the egg and become applied to the inner wall of the porous shell for the purpose of obtaining air, got their supply of oxygen, not from the outer air, but from the blood-vessels of the maternal tissues. When this connection (called the placenta) between embryo and mother through the egg-shell became more perfect, not only oxygen but ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... two highly suggestive points. They show us, first, that two substances can exist within the space formerly thought to be completely filled by one. Second, they show that ALL substances are porous to the ether. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... we put our hands into the dish and flicked them into our mouths in what cannot but be the true Oriental manner. I asked for lamb and pistachio-nuts, and cream- tarts au poivre; but J.'s cook did not furnish us with either of those historic dishes. And for drink, we had water freshened in the porous little pots of grey clay, at whose spout every traveller in the East has sucked delighted. Also, it must be confessed, we drank certain sherbets, prepared by the two great rivals, Hadji Hodson and Bass Bey—the bitterest and most delicious of draughts! O divine ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... brine, until an absolutely stale egg will float. Successful preservation depends in a great measure upon the condition of the egg at the time of preserving. Different methods of preserving all aim at the same thing, namely, at coating the porous shell with some substance which will prevent the air entering and setting up decomposition. See ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... particles of the solid separate from each other and disappear from view. (Shown in dropping salt in water.) At the same time they mix with the solvent, forming a solution, from which they separate only with great difficulty. For this reason solids in solution can diffuse through porous partitions along with the solvents in which they are dissolved ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... conception of the over-soul is submitted to analysis it is found to consist of nothing else than vague images drawn from material sensation. We think of the world for instance as a vast porous sponge continually penetrated by a flood of water or air or vapour drawn from some hidden cistern or reservoir or cosmic lake. The modern theological expression "immanent" has done harm in this direction. There is nothing profound about this conception of ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... twilight! while Bacchus rules o'er us: No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus: Let us moisten our clay, since 'tis thirsty and porous: No thinking! no shrinking! ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... in May, thus securing a few blooms the following Autumn, one year after gathering the seed. Most of the bulbs thus treated should attain blooming size by the end of the first season. If only a few seeds of a rare variety are obtainable, very porous compost in five-inch pots or shallower boxes, the seeds sown near the edges, will give best results. The seedling gladiolus the first year is so slender and with such a small root system that considerable attention is needed to avoid excess moisture ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford

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

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

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

... stems. After trimming off all but a few of the upper leaves, which should be clipped to reduce transpiration, the cuttings—never more than 4 or 5 inches long—should be plunged nearly full depth in well-shaded, rather light, porous, well-drained loam where they should remain undisturbed until they show evidences of growth. Then they may be transplanted. While in the cutting bed they must never be allowed to become dry. This is especially true of greenwood cuttings made during the ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... covering, where they were protected by the earth above and below, were reduced to charcoal, parallel pieces of which were found at right angles to the length of the mound. No charcoal was found among or near the remains, the combustion there having been complete. The porous and softer portions of the bones were reduced to pulverized bone-black. Mr. Stevens also examined the furnace. The mound had probably not ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... storing and collecting water, larger ones for keeping grain, flour and vegetables, and surahis or amphoras for drinking-water. In the manufacture of these last salt and saltpetre are mixed with the clay to make them more porous and so increase their cooling capacity. A very useful thing is the small saucer which serves as a lamp, being filled with oil on which a lighted wick is floated. These saucers resemble those found in the excavations of Roman remains. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... the ship was in a most dilapidated condition; but in the forecastle it looked like the hollow of an old tree going to decay. In every direction the wood was damp and discoloured, and here and there soft and porous. Moreover, it was hacked and hewed without mercy, the cook frequently helping himself to splinters for kindling-wood from the bitts and beams. Overhead, every carline was sooty, and here and there deep holes ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

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

... in the middle of the public square was built of bricks, of that porous, fiery sort which seem so peculiarly designed to the monstrous vagaries of rural architecture. Here in Ascalon they fitted well with the arid appearance of things, as a fiery face goes ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... of the phenomenon is easily understood. The secondary and tertiary geological formations often present the appearance of immense basins, the boundary or rim of the basin having been formed by an upheaval of adjacent strata. In these formations it often happens that a porous stratum, consisting of sand, sandstone, chalk or other calcareous matter, is included between two impermeable layers of clay, so as to form a flat [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'porus'] porous U tube, continuous ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... igloos allowed each man from eighteen to twenty inches space in which to lie down, and just room enough to stretch his legs well. With our sleeping bags they were entirely comfortable, no matter what the weather outside. The snow is porous enough to admit of air circulation, but even a gale of wind without would not affect the temperature within. It is claimed by the natives that when the wind blows, a snow house is warmer than in a period of still cold. I could see no difference. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... and not a spungie and porous substance.[1] But this is denied by Diogenes, Vitellio, and Reinoldus, and some others, who held the Moone to bee of the same kind of nature as a Pumice-stone, and this, say they, is the reason why in the Suns eclipses there appeares within her a duskish ruddy ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins

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

... the starch is washed out and a rubbery, sticky ball is left—the gluten, which is the protein of the wheat. It is this gluten in the flour that stretches when bread rises and then stiffens when it is baked, making a light, porous loaf. Wheat is the only one of the cereals that has much gluten; rye has a little ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker

... carefully along the slopes, as in Switzerland, by the peasants, to keep their hay-crops green and gladden the thirsty turf throughout the heat and drought of summer. The soil is a Jurassic limestone: the rain penetrates the porous rock, and sinks through cracks and fissures, to reappear above the base of the mountain in a full-grown stream. This is a defect in the Generoso, as much to be regretted as the want of shade upon its ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... the waves of the sea. Its glaciers are one of the wonders of Alaska, for nowhere in the world can they be witnessed in such perfection. According to a talented American authoress, "In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty, air-holed ice, that has fastened itself like a cold, porous plaster to the side of an alp. Distance alone lends enchantment to the view. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been suddenly frozen when about to plunge into the sea," and the comparison, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... mixture, and you are extremely glad of the glass of cold water after it. This is, however, rather an exception; lemonade, azucarillas and water, or tea served in a separate room about twelve o'clock, is more usual. The azucarilla is a confection not unlike "Edinburgh rock," but more porous and of the nature of a meringue. You stir the water with it, when it instantly dissolves, flavouring the water with vanilla, lemon, or orange, as well as sugar. Sometimes you are offered meringues, which you eat first, and ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... however, absorption takes place with great activity. The semi-liquid food is separated from the enormous supply of blood-vessels in the mucous membrane only by a thin porous partition. There is, therefore, nothing to prevent the exchange taking place between the blood and the food. Water, along with any substances in the food that have become dissolved, will pass through the partition and enter the blood-current. Thus it is that a certain amount of starch that ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

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

... declivity, shadowed by cedar trees, and reached the edge of a tiny, almost landlocked, lagoon. It was no more than a few hundred feet in diameter. The jagged, porous gray-black rocks rose like an upstanding crater rim to mark its ten-foot entrance to the sea. A little white house stood here with its back against the fifty-foot cliff. It was dark, its colored ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... washed up, which on examination was found to be of a granitic character, clearly showing the primary formation of the country through which the Adelaide flowed. The only rocks noticed in the parts traversed by the boats were, as I have before said, of red porous sandstone. The smoke of several large fires was observed up the country, but none of the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... hard words, and, to literally translate the old Greek narrative, "blackguarded" him so effectually that the poor devil fled with his tail between his legs. At Taxilia, Phraortes, the King, a lineal descendant of the famous Porus—and truly a porous personage, since he was renowned for drinking—gave the philosopher a grand reception, and introduced him to the chief of the Brahmins, whose temples he explored. These Hindoo gentlemen opened the eyes of Apollonius wider than they had ever been before, and taught him a few things ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... entirely, runs to different breadths into the sea, where it ends all at once, and becomes like a high, steep wall. It is nearly even with the surface of the water, and of a brown or brick colour; but the texture is rather porous, yet sufficient to withstand the washing of the surf ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... no difficulty in returning a portion of the rent; he anticipates such an application. Such immense possessions can support losses which would press most heavily upon comparatively small properties. At one side of the estate the soil perchance is light and porous, and is all the better for rain; on the other, half across the county, or quite, the soil is deep and heavy and naturally well watered and flourishes in dry summers. So that there is generally some one prospering if another suffers, and thus ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... that which can alone be conceived as producing this evident deplacement of bodies formed horizontally at the bottom of the sea, but we have also found that this same cause has operated every where upon those strata, in consolidating by means of fusion the porous texture of their masses. Now when the evidence of those two facts are united, we cannot refuse to admit, as a part of the general system of the earth, that which is every where to be observed, although not every where to such ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... toward the door. The seams of that door, which I had always thought well joined, seemed now to stand twelve inches or more apart. Every atom of that wood which had appeared so solid to me was now more porous than any sponge or honey-comb. Out we went through the crevice. A party of men were standing upon the doorsteps. One put forth his hand to grasp mine. I laughed aloud when I recognized the person as James Harper! Another ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... marked than in the previous condition, and progression, to a large extent, takes place upon the heels. In addition to its deformity, the horn is greatly altered in quality, and, as the name 'pumice' indicates, is more or less porous ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... graceful forms outlined against the deep blue of sky and sea on the western horizon, or against the equally lovely background of grey and violet mountains to the east. But it was not always thus. The porous local travertine that gave their building material to the Greeks of the sixth century before Christ was once carefully stuccoed, and, in the manner of Hellenic art, painted in the most brilliant hues of azure and vermilion, so that it becomes hard for us to realise the original effect ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... light and air could be regulated to a nicety. The walls were covered with fine basket work, apparently adapted in panels; but these panels were in reality movable trays, as it were, forming shallow boxes fitted with closely-woven wicker covers, and filled with charcoal and other porous substances intended to absorb the impurities of the air, and thus easily changed and renewed from time to time. Immediately beneath the ceiling were placed delicate glass globes of various soft colours, with silken ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... country. It is peculiar to north China and it is not found south of the Yangtsze. The loess is a solid but friable earth of brownish-yellow colour, and when triturated with water is not unlike loam, but differs from the latter by its highly porous and tubular structure. The loess soil is extremely favourable to agriculture. (See LOESS and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... me: 'Have you visited Florence? I am told that recently new and handsome shops have been opened which are lighted at night.' She said also 'We have a good chemist here. The Austrian chemists are not better. He placed on my leg, six months ago, a porous plaster which has not yet come off.' Such are the words that Maria Therese deigned to address to me. O simple grandeur! O Christian virtue! O daughter of Saint Louis! O marvellous echo of your ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... proof of this—at least I should have in every gravel-pit at Eversley—in a few pieces of a stone which is not chalk-flint at all; flattish and oblong, not more than two or three inches in diameter; of a grayish colour, and a porous worm-eaten surface, which no chalk-flint ever has. They are chert, which abound in the greensand formation; and insignificant as they look, are a great token of a most important fact; that the currents which ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

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

... heard or read about the wonderful devotion to study of the modern German young man came home to him during the next two weeks. Our English youth fritters away its time in idleness and pleasure-seeking. The German concentrates. Adolf concentrated like a porous plaster. Every day after breakfast, just when the success of James's literary career depended on absolute seclusion, he would come trotting up for his lesson. James's ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... surface consisting of more or less parallel mountain ranges and broad intervening troughs that are filled to great depths with rock waste washed from the mountains. These great deposits of rock waste were in large part laid down by torrential streams and are relatively coarse and porous. Because these deposits are porous the rain that falls upon them and the run-off that reaches them from the mountains sinks into them, and the valleys in which they lie are exceptionally arid. These deposits, however, form huge reservoirs ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

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

... pumice in building their arched incombustible roofs. This porous material possessed the additional advantage, when combined with good cement, of rendering the arched surface one united petrifaction, opposing (in consequence of its firm union) little lateral pressure, comparatively, against ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... not left the direction of the Soudan military railways—which under the Sirdar he built—to join the Board of the Egyptian lines, we should, I believe, have had better provision made for passengers. Ziehs, or porous native clay-jars to hold cool drinking water, and various other little accessories to lighten the hardships of the trip would surely have been provided. Later on, the officials took care to have ziehs and plenty of cool drinking water ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... set to and ransacked the lockers, where, amongst a vast variety of miscellaneous matters, I was not long in finding a bottle of very tolerable rum, some salt junk, some biscuit, and a goglet or porous earthen jar of water, with some capital cigars. By this time I was like to faint with the heat and smell; so I filled a tumbler with good half—and—half and swigged it off. The effect was speedy; I thought I could eat a bit, so I attacked the salt junk and made a hearty ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... English. The boat itself was a queer, stubby craft propelled by home-made oars. Before the morning was well advanced the ship was surrounded by boats carrying shells, limes, prickly pears, green cocoanuts, bananas, fish, and "water monkeys." The latter were jugs made of a porous clay, and they were eagerly purchased. The "water monkey" is a natural cooler, and when placed in a draught of air will keep water at a temperature delightful in ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... of the muscles of support. The back curves from the action of gravity, the strength of the support of the muscles at the back not counteracting the pull of the weight of the abdominal viscera in front. The bones become more porous ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

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

... sufficient quantity, the solution will soon be deprived of colour. The more perfect the ivory or bone black, the more powerful is its action likely to be: either over or under calcined, animal charcoal is less energetic; in the former case, because it is less porous; in the latter, because the animal matter, not being wholly consumed, makes a kind of varnish in the charcoal which interferes with its acting. To a greater or less extent, gums, oils, and varnishes serve similarly as preventives, thereby decreasing the danger of employing ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... Fomentations of hops, etc., applied hot and frequently changed to keep them hot are beneficial in some cases. I have found in some cases that an adhesive plaster put over the sore parts relieves the severe pain. Porous plasters are also good. Tincture of ranunculus bulbosus (buttercup) is a good remedy. Put ten drops in a glass half full of water, and take two ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... of the Aztec Teocalli. The faces of these pyramids are within fifty-two seconds, exactly north and south and east and west. Their interior consists of massive clay and stone. This solid nucleus is covered by a kind of porous amygdaloid, called tetzontli. They are ascended by steps of hewn stone to their pinnacles, where tradition affirms, there were anciently statues covered with thin lamina of gold. And it was on these sublime heights, ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... it is certainly not the work of running water, as in the case of the canyons of Colorado; the porous matter of which the mountain is formed is quite incapable of originating and supporting a stream of sufficient volume to excavate and carry away such enormous masses of matter within the period required for the purpose. We must therefore have recourse to some ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... closely connected with the palisade layer and has thin-walled cells that closely resemble, in all respects, the endocarp of the apple. The outer layer consists of thick-walled fibers, which are remarkably porous (Fig. 333, 6; Fig. 336) while the fibers of the inner layer are thin-walled and run ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... whispered to his Majesty: 'That Voltaire has sent off a Jew to buy Steuer-Scheine, and has promised to get him made Court-Jeweller!' [Voltaire,—OEuvres,—lxxiv. 314 ("Letter to Friedrich, February, 1751,"—AFTER Catastrophe).], So; within a week, and before Hirsch is even gone! For men are very porous; weighty secrets oozing out of them, like quicksilver through clay jars. I could guess, Hirsch, by way of galling insolent Ephraim, had blabbed something: and in the course of five days, it has got to the very King,—this ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... Gambia, shaped like the letter U consisting each of one solid flint, hollowed through, also hookahs made by sailors with cocoanut shells. All, however, now agree that it is impossible to have either comfortable, cool, or safe smoking, unless through a substance like clay, porous and absorbent, especially as portable pipes are the mode. Those of black charcoal are not handsome; indeed, I always feel like a mute at a funeral while smoking one, but they are delightfully cool, absorbing more essential oil of nicotine, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

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

... from rich crimson, through rose-pink to creamy white. Cuttings strike readily in spring before growth has commenced; they should be potted in 3-in. or 4-in. pots, well drained, in loamy soil made very porous by the admixture of finely broken crocks and sand, and placed in a temperature of 60 deg.; when these pots are filled with roots they are to be shifted into larger ones, but overpotting must be avoided. During the summer they need considerable heat, all the light possible and plenty of air; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... type in porous beds, such as Lake Superior copper conglomerates and African gold bankets. 2. Deposits of the fissure vein type, such as California quartz veins. 3. Replacement or impregnation deposits on the lines ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... "alcohol for burning" in his best Italian. The assistant seemed mystified, but suddenly a light flooded his intelligent face, he flew to a series of neat little drawers behind the counter, rummaged about, and in much triumph produced an "Alcock's porous plaster," which he vehemently assured Vincent would be sure to burn, and was a real English medicine, imported with great trouble and expense, and certain to cure the ailment from which he was suffering. How Vincent would have got out of the tangle, or convinced the chemist's assistant that he was ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

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

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

... streams, and especially that where round pebbles indicated a strong eddy ten times as much gold might be expected as in the level parts. Gravel and shingle were cleared away without examination, then a bed of gray clay, as too porous to hold gold; but when a stratum of pipeclay was reached the diggers knew that not an ounce of gold would be found beneath, and their search was confined to a little streak of brownish clay, about an inch in thickness, just above the pipeclay. Every particle of this was carefully washed, and after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... large solid bone of an old animal, such as a knee or hip joint of beef, should be burned for hours to get rid of the connective tissue which holds the mineral substance in shape. This should be carefully done, in order to retain the shape of the bone and to show the porous formation of the mineral substance. If the bone is not blackened by the fire, its white colour will also indicate the lime of which it ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

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

... the ancient city are the temples, the most important of which form a row along the low cliffs at the south end of the city. All are built in the Doric style, of the local porous stone, which is of a warm red brown colour, full of fossil shells and easily corroded when exposed to the air. It should be noted that their traditional names, with the exception of that of Zeus and that of Asclepius, have no foundation in fact, while the attribution of the temple ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... soil is clayey, and holds water for this reason, it can be drained by porous tiles, sunk at intervals in the same way as meadow or hay land would be drained, that is if the size of your garden and the lay of the land warrants it. If, however, the roses are to be in separate beds or long borders, the earth ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... we leave the trenches may we cheer?" officers have been asked in the dead of winter, when water stood deep over the porous mud and morning found a scale of ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... girth and height not often seen in its own land. The flora of the Cape Colony is exceptionally varied and beautiful, but one peculiarity incidentally alluded to by my charming guide struck me as very noticeable. It is that in this dry climate and porous soil all the efforts of uncultivated nature are devoted to the stems of the vegetation: on their sap-retaining power depends the life of the plant, so blossom and leaf, though exquisitely indicated, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... gravel will drain perfectly; a basin filled with the same gravel will not drain at all. More than this, a sieve filled with the stiffest clay, if not "puddled,"(1) will drain completely, and so will heavy clay soils on porous and well drained subsoils. Money expended in draining such lands as do not require the operation is, of course, wasted; and when there is doubt as to the requirement, tests should be made before the outlay for so ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... very porous, and therefore allows easily fusible substances (such as alkalies and fluxes) to pass into it, while other substances less fusible, such as metals, to ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... separate and melt the substances with which it comes in contact, it follows that the oily part of the earth is melted by it, whereas the hard and what I might call the bony part of it is left as it was. Hence the masses of earth necessarily become porous and when exposed to the dry air crumble into dust, but when they are placed in a swirl of water and sand grow into a solid piece; as much of them as is in the liquid hardens and petrifies. The reason for this is that the brittle element in ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... short time, or very rapidly by the action of heat, and gives porous blocks of a solidity increasing with the quantity of cement employed (5 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... one suppose, and in addition, being an opaque stone, slight dulling or scratching hardly lessens its beauty. It may therefore be used in ring mountings. However, it should be suggested that most turquoise is sufficiently porous to absorb grease, oil, or other liquids, and its color is frequently ruined thereby. Of course, such a change is far more likely to occur to a ring stone than to a turquoise mounted in ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... layer of soil is very porous, and the water soaks along it," he answered; adding that "where necessary it was assisted by porous pipes ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

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

... but to tell Mrs. Fontage so had become as unthinkable as murder. I had, in fact, on returning from my first inspection of the picture, refrained from imparting to Eleanor my opinion of its value. Eleanor is porous, and I knew that sooner or later the unnecessary truth would exude through the loose texture of her dissimulation. Not infrequently she thus creates the misery she alleviates; and I have sometimes suspected her of paining people in order ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... surface of the land or out of its porous underlayers, then flows seaward through its creases and folds, affecting the land and the land's creatures along the way and being affected by them. Thus, as we have already noted in more than one way, the management of land and the management ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... must have worked; the result being, partly the effect of the washing down of the fresh castings by rain. The specific gravity of the objects does not affect their rate of sinking, as could be seen by porous cinders, burnt marl, chalk and quartz pebbles, having all sunk to the same depth within the same time. Considering the nature of the sub-stratum, which at Leith Hill Place was sandy soil including many bits of rock, and at Stonehenge, chalk-rubble with broken flints; considering, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... dryness, which is even worse than if they were watered to death. If we will observe how judiciously Nature distributes the sunshine and shadow, the periodical rains, and the refreshing dews, we will learn an important lesson. A pot, or other receptacle in which plants are grown, should be porous; glazed, or painted pots, ought never to be used, where plain, unglazed pots can be obtained; all non-porous pots of tin and similar material, should be discarded. Plants growing in them can never compare in health ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... great outlay of labour that these long, apparently endless, yet elaborately designed galleries, were increasing so rapidly, with their layers of beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either side the path-way, in the porous tufa, through which all the moisture filters downwards, leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. All alike were carefully closed, and with all the delicate costliness at command; some with simple tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched by fair inscriptions: ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... by its constant swinging backwards and forwards by every wave against the body of the ship, had beaten off much of the copper from the starboard side, and exposed the seams so much to the sea that the decayed oakum washed out, and the whole frame became at once exceedingly porous and leaky. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... takes careful measurements for breeches, and rectifies any faults there may be in their fit. The best kind of material for breeches is elastic cloth, which is specially made for that purpose. It is both strong and porous, and can be obtained in any shade to match the riding-habit, which, of course, is necessary. The breeches should be fitted while the wearer is seated on a wooden horse, and special attention should be devoted to ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... in a bucket of water and it falls on its side, it is fresh. If it sort of topples in the water, standing on its end, it is fairly fresh, but, if it floats, beware of it. The shell of a fresh egg looks dull and porous. As it begins to age, the shell takes on a shiny appearance. If an egg is kept any length of time, a portion of its water evaporates, which leaves a space in the shell, and the egg will "rattle." An egg that rattles may be perfectly ...
— Many Ways for Cooking Eggs • Mrs. S.T. Rorer

... buildings, and for statues, altars, tombs, chimney-pieces, &c. The word is derived from the French marbre, marble. Marble is supposed to be formed, deep within the bowels of the earth, from a loose and porous carbonate of lime, subjected ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

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

... good plant for cool houses or windows. During the summer it should be syringed over-head with tepid water, and weak soot water should be given three times a week. It is propagated by off-sets planted in sand, also by slicing off a portion from the top of the plant and placing it in light, rich, porous loam. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

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

... the soil when dried in the sun was well fitted for certain uses. Among the debris left by the earliest pioneers of civilization we find the remains of vases which seem to have been dried only in the sun. But porous and friable pottery like this could only be used for a few purposes, and it was finally renounced as soon as the art of firing the earth, first in the hot ashes of the domestic hearth, and afterwards in the searching flames of the close oven, was discovered. It was otherwise with brick. The ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... over the hills being very light and porous, careless hands are apt to drop the seed too deep. Care should be taken not to drop the seed all in one spot, but to scatter them over a surface of two or three inches square, that each plant may have room to develop without crowding ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory

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

... are partly submerged perpendicularly, the water will rise between the plates—furthest on the side at which the two plates touch, and less and less as the other edge is approached. The tendency of liquids to rise through porous bodies is a phenomenon ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... strike me as particularly grand. An uneven wall of lava suddenly rose fifteen paces in advance of us, with whole strata of pure sulphur and other beautifully-coloured substances depending from its projecting angles. One of these substances was of a snowy-white colour, light, and very porous. I took a piece with me, but the next day on proceeding to pack it carefully, I found that above half had melted and become quite soft and damp, so that I was compelled to throw the whole away. The same thing happened to a mass of a red ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... melted, it not only soaked into the clay but fairly ran out of it on all sides. The thing, therefore, was to devise some means of preventing this inconvenience, not arising from cracks, but from the substance of which the lamp was made being too porous. They made, therefore, a new one, dried it thoroughly in the air, then heated it red-hot, and afterwards quenched it in their kettle, wherein they had boiled a quantity of flour down to the consistence of thin starch. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... water jars are made of porous clay; the water that seeps through keeps the water ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... him than a porous plaster. When Boyd ain't around, I'm him, that's all." From her look Fraser judged that he was progressing finely. He hastened to add: "I always like to help out young fellows like him. I like to give 'em a chance. That's my name, you ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... dearly as we can.' Fortunately, we had still water with us, for it was not known whether we should find any on the march, and we had been ordered to leave our kits behind, and to carry, in addition to the water-bottles, a skin holding about a gallon. In our hut we found eight porous jars, each of which would hold about a couple of gallons. Six of them were full. The empty ones we filled up from our skins, for these jars keep the water wonderfully cool. In none of the other huts ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... tons for the next twenty inches. The tight clay stratum reaches from about twenty to thirty-six inches. Above this is a flour-like gray layer varying in thickness from an inch to ten inches, but below the tight clay the subsoil seems to be more porous, and I am hoping that we may lay tile just below the tight clay and then puncture that clay stratum with red clover roots and thus improve the physical condition of the soil. I asked Mr. Secor, a friend who operates ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... impressed him most unpleasantly. It had the look less of a fortress than of a neglected tomb. Its front was broken by wind and waves, its surface, blotched and mildewed, white with crusted salt, hideous with an eruption of dead barnacles. As each wave lifted and retreated, leaving the porous wall dripping like a sponge, it disturbed countless crabs, rock scorpions and creeping, leech-like things that ran blindly into the holes in the limestone; and, at the water-line, the sea-weed, licking hungrily at the wall, rose and fell, the great arms twisting and coiling ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... picture of desolation. It was surveyed by two detachments, and was found to be covered with black and porous stones. The entire vegetation which could thrive on this mass of lava consisted of two or three kinds of rugose grass, which grew on the rocks, scanty bushes, especially the paper-mulberry, the 'hibiscus,' and the mimosa, and some plantains. Close to the landing-place is a perpendicular wall, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... obliterated by bright young growth. Many of the pools had dried up, but four of the largest kept fairly well filled with brackish water, evidently supplied by some underground communication with the sea, possibly merely by slow filtration through the porous coral rock, sufficient, however, to keep them fit ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... considerable severity and when the protection of snow is more or less wanting, unless the plants are strong when they enter the winter, they are almost certain to perish. Loam soils with reasonably porous subsoils are best adapted to its growth. Of these, sandy loams have a higher adaptation than clay loams, when equal to the former in fertility, as in the latter the plants can more quickly gather the ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... intercourse with African women. It would seem as if highly "refined" Europeans are nowadays given to exaggerate the sensation produced on their over delicate olfactory nerves by the exhalations caused by perspiration through a healthy and porous skin. In many of the so-called Ladies' Journals published in England and America advertisements appear regularly vaunting chemical preparations for the disguising of the odour of perspiration which, it is alleged, mars the attractiveness of women. If this is ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... having the clothes very loose fitting, so as to leave ample air space, and by having the outer clothes of a good non-conductor of heat. The cloth, of course, should be as light in weight as possible, but it is more important to have it a good non-conductor of heat and of porous weave. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... on the desert, tiny oases, full of flowers and verdure, immediately spring up amidst the burning, drifting sand-hills, and burnt and pulverized black marble which is only to be found in the Dead Mountains. A judicious intermingling of this mixture produces a soft, porous, and exceedingly damp soil, and in this soil the Kapudan Pasha very carefully planted out his tulips with his own hands. He selected the bulbs resulting from last spring's blooms, making a hole for each of them, one by one, with his index-finger, ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... pebbles and earth. Soon after the seed thrusts out of the same crevice another arm that has an instinct to go upward to the light. Neither of these arms is yet solid and strong. They are beyond expression tender, delicate, and porous, but the one is to become great roots that reach all over an acre, and the other one of California's big trees, thirty feet in diameter and four ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... vegetables have an exterior coating which is porous and pervious to water when it is unripe. But when it fully ripens this coating is chemically changed into a thin, impervious coating of a cork-like structure, through which water cannot pass, and as a result potatoes, and fruit, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

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



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



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