"Spongy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the darkness, across the fields, through the woods. In the starlight, the great world lay dim and lovely before him—it belonged to him! He felt the joyous buffet of the night wind upon his face, the brush of boughs against his shoulder, the scent of young ferns, and the give of the spongy earth under his feet; he sprang in long leaps over the grass, the tears were wet upon his fresh cheeks, he sang aloud. But he did not know what he sang; in his young breast, Love, like some warm living thing, stirred, and lifted glorious wings ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... chest and ran down over the abdomen and the loin cloth. The knees had been forced together and the rotulae touched, but the lower legs were held wide apart, though the feet were placed one on top of the other. These, beginning to putrefy, were turning green beneath a river of blood. Spongy and blistered, they were horrible, the flesh tumefied, swollen over the head of the spike, and the gripping toes, with the horny blue nails, contradicted the imploring gesture of the hands, turning that benediction into a curse; ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... lank wet grass and soft spongy soil, he found himself suddenly confronted with a great barrier of fallen rocks; as though, at some period of its existence, the north end of the island had tapered to a gigantic peak which, in the fulness of its time, had come down with a crash, and now lay like a titanic wall from summit ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... in the vicinity of the sandbanks. The many phenomena seen there increased the astonishment of the ordinary man concerning the wonders of the sea, which had here appeared to him: the whale, swimming majestically; and the spongy mass polyps, scarcely with the organization of a living creature; multitudes of porpoises, which pursued with amusing leaps out of the water the course of the flying fish, and the latter then fell down upon the decks, where they found a more certain death; shoals of dolphins, which ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... ochre-coloured water, which swarmed with animalculae. By-and-by, a few miles south of the base of this ridge (which I call Kasera, from the country which it cuts in halves), these several ravines converge and debouch into the broad, [marshy?], oozy, spongy "river" of Usense, which trends in a south-easterly direction; after which, gathering the contents of the watercourses from the north and northeast into its own broader channel, it soon becomes a stream of some breadth and consequence, and meets a river flowing from the east, from the direction ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... in Brittany the culprit, tied in an iron chair, was gradually brought near a blazing furnace. In Normandy, one thumb was squeezed in a screw in the ordinary, and both thumbs in the extraordinary torture. At Autun, after high boots made of spongy leather had been placed on the culprit's feet, he was tied on to a table near a large fire, and a quantity of boiling water was poured on the boots, which penetrated the leather, ate away the flesh, and even dissolved ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... form, teeth, and colour, with the Cardium rubrum of Montagu, but it is larger. It was found imbedded in the seaweed and spongy-like substance that ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... five inches long and three-and-a-half inches thick, which contains from twenty to thirty beans, arranged in five regular rows with partitions between, and which are surrounded with a rose-colored spongy substance, like that of water melons. There are fruits, however, so large as to contain from forty to fifty beans. Those grown in the West India islands, as well as Berbice and Demerara, are much smaller, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... an immense peat bog of about twelve square miles in extent. Unlike the bogs or swamps of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, which consist principally of soft mud or silt, this bog is a vast mass of spongy vegetable pulp, the result of the growth and decay of ages. The spagni, or bog-mosses, cover the entire area; one year's growth rising over another,—the older growths not entirely decaying, but remaining partially preserved ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... small family, perhaps, the saving might not be considered an object, but any one who has for a few months been accustomed to eat home-made bread, would be sorry to have recourse to the baker's; the loaves purchased are usually spongy the first day, and dry and harsh the second. It is not only that other ingredients than flour, yeast, and water are mixed in the dough, but it is seldom sufficiently baked; bread well made at home and baked in a brick ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... kill fish for food, saw them carve the thick, spongy hearts from certain giant growths and eat them. I saw a pair of killer sharks swoop down on the band, and the quick, deadly accuracy with which both men and woman met the attack. One man, older than the rest, was injured before the sharks were vanquished, and when their efforts to staunch ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... large, though his lips are thin and bloodless; and his big, prominent, pale brown eyes inspire anything but confidence. His nose, however, is his redeeming feature: it is pronounced straight and well-formed; though I myself should have liked it better if it did not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... cakes! No mistake!" he assured us, as he knelt on the ground, big and burly in front of the mixing-dish, kneading enthusiastically at his mixture. "Look at that!" as air-bubbles appeared all over the light, spongy dough. "Didn't I tell you I knew a thing or two about cooking?" and cutting off nuggety-looking chunks, he buried ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... giant broom. Then it puts forth gouty fingers, generally five, standing stiffly up and still capped by the thick yucca-like tufts. Lastly the digitations grow to enormous arms, sometimes eighteen feet in girth, of light and porous, soft and spongy wood. The tree then resembles the baobab or calabash, the elephant or ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... talked high, and his splotchy face lighted itself up with all the shifting tints and signs of evil pleasure and promised triumph—purple, yellow, red, green—they were all there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... look inside the incomplete model of the rectum, or rather sleeve, you observe circular muscular bands or fibres which it is necessary to cover with soft spongy or fatty substance in whose meshes are nerves, blood-vessels, etc. This is called the areolar layer or coat. One more layer or coat upon this—the mucous coat—completes the structure. This latter possesses the power of accommodating itself to the distention and contraction of the muscular ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... the Kenawha River. Some stir was made two years ago by the reported discovery of the prints of human feet in a stone quarry on the coast of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. The footprints are remarkably sharp and distinct; one seems that of a little child. The stone in which they are impressed is a spongy volcanic tuff, and the layer superimposed upon them in the quarry was of similar material. These prehistoric footprints were doubtless accidentally impressed upon the volcanic stone, and would seem to throw back the age of man on the earth to a most ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... with them the pottery, the furnace being extinguished until they could put it to a new use. Their return was marked by a fortunate incident; the engineer discovered a substance which replaced tinder. It is known that a spongy, velvety flesh is procured from a certain mushroom of the genus polyporous. Properly prepared, it is extremely inflammable, especially when it has been previously saturated with gunpowder, or boiled in a solution of nitrate or chlorate ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... chiefly sand; its produce, variety of brush, with some few small gum trees, and a species of fir, that grows tall and straight to the height of 20 or 25 feet. There are within the body of the brush several clear spots, where the ground is partly rocky or sandy, partly wet and spongy. These are somewhat enlivened by beautiful flowering heath, and low shrubs, but have upon the whole a dark sombrous aspect, too much resembling the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... sticks laid side by side like c, nor should they seem like two sticks somewhat remote from such contact so that the skin hangs in an empty loose curve as at f; but it should be like i, laid over the spongy fat that lies in the angles as the angle n m o; which angle is formed by the contact of the ends of the muscles and as the skin cannot fold down into such an angle, nature has filled up such angles ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the Wanderer makes no such provision he depends upon Mother Nature to take care of him. In summer he is brown, like the great tree trunks among which he moves unseen. Then the frog of his foot expands and grows spongy, so that he can cling to the mountain-side like a goat, or move silently over the dead leaves. In winter he becomes a soft gray, the better to fade into a snowstorm, or to stand concealed in plain ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... to tell you very much about the storage battery but you ought to know a little about it if you are to own and run one with your radio set. When it is all charged and ready to work, the negative plate is a lot of soft spongy lead held in place by a frame of harder lead. The positive plate is a lead frame with small squares which are filled with lead peroxide, as it is called. This is a substance with molecules formed of one lead atom and two oxygen atoms. Why the chemists ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... offered was near Point Sutherland, where there was a small run of good water; but the ground near it, as well as a considerable part of the higher ground, was spongy, and the ships could not approach this ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... used a flint with a spongy piece of dry wood and a stone to strike with. Another way of starting fire was for several of the boys to sit down in a circle and rub two pieces of dry, spongy wood together, one after another, until ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... covered with only one season's ice, namely, that of about three feet in thickness, symptoms of a speedy disruption were very apparent; long narrow cracks extended continuously for miles; the snow from the surface had all melted, and, running through, served to render the ice-fields porous and spongy: the joyful signs hurried us on, though not without suffering from the lack of pure snow, with which to procure water for drinking. At last Griffith's Island rose above the horizon; a five-and-twenty-mile march brought us to it, and another heavy drag through the melting snow carried ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... mill, which answered its purpose. It was quite like the old one, and people said, "Why, yonder is the mill on the hill, proud to look at!" But this mill was better arranged, more according to the time than the last, so that progress might be made. The old beams had become worm-eaten and spongy—they lay in dust and ashes. The body of the mill did not rise out of the dust as they had believed it would do. They had taken it literally, and all things are not ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... forest with him. It did not disturb him. Whatever was here was not alien to him or the forest. His eyes probed the mist that slithered through the ancient mossy trees and hanging vines. He listened, looked, but found nothing. Birds chittered, but that was all. He sat down, his back against a spongy tree trunk, fondled ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... other than iron which is not so. Soft iron we do not bring together by fusion, but by a process which is analogous to the one that was followed in the case of platinum, namely, welding; for these divided grains of spongy platinum having been well washed and sunk in water for the purpose of excluding air, and pressed together, and heated, and hammered, and pressed again, until they come into a pretty close, dense, compact mass, did so cohere, that when ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... wonder what could be the object of a round, spongy tubercle on the outside of each of these sepals which hold the ripened seed closely? I did not know their use for a long time, but now think I have discovered their meaning. They are not exactly life-preservers, but the next thing to it. The naked, seed-like fruit, the shape of the fruit of ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... Plaines. Marquette knew the way, for he had passed by this route on his return from the Mississippi. Amid the rains of opening spring, they floated down the swollen current of the Des Plaines, by naked woods, and spongy, saturated prairies, till they reached its junction with the main stream of the Illinois, which they descended to their destination,—the Indian town which Marquette calls Kaskaskia. Here, as we are told, he was received "like an angel from Heaven." He passed from wigwam to wigwam, telling ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... He could feel the ribs against his toes through the leather of his boot. He kicked again and again with all his might. The German rolled over heavily. He had no face. Chrisfield felt the hatred suddenly ebb out of him. Where the face had been was a spongy mass of purple and yellow and red, half of which stuck to the russet leaves when the body rolled over. Large flies with bright shiny green bodies circled about it. In a brown ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... figure of speech. That the tones of the voice are reinforced by the resonance of the air in the chest cavity, is an utter absurdity. In the acoustic sense, the thorax is not a cavity at all. The thorax is filled with the spongy tissue of the lungs, not to mention the heart. It is no better adapted for air resonance than an ordinary spherical resonator would be, ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... weather was terribly inclement, alternating between extremes. Heavy snowstorms and hard frosts were followed by thaws and drenching rains. The difficulties of transport continued supreme. Roads, mere spongy sloughs of despond, were nearly impassable, and the waste of baggage-animals was so great that soon few ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... serous membrane which lines the abdominal cavity, and wholly or in part envelopes the organs contained in it; it also partly covers the organs contained in the pelvic cavity. Phenomena. Remarkable appearances. Physical. Pertaining to the body. Placenta. After-birth, a soft, spongy, vascular body adherent to the uterus, and which is connected with the embryo through the umbilical cord. Plethora. A condition marked by a superabundance of blood. Postpartum Hemorrhage. Hemorrhage following labor. Pregnant. Enceinte, gravid; the state of a woman who is with child. Premature ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have done enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or in taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist; sculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more drifted into form than they are carved into form, the warm air around them cutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapour beyond certain limits; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... slip down each side, in which slip the feet and belly part are to be comprehended; and the circumstance which determines Mr. S—— to cut the hide in this manner is, that the feet, and the parts that are near the belly, are more spongy and more easily penetrated by the tan; and as they produce leather of an inferior quality they may be more advantageously tanned separately, than put promiscuously into the solutions of tan with the rest. The remaining part of the hide ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... this place we passed a Mormon settlement, a little colony sent out from Utah. The group of bare white buildings was some distance back from the road, and we did not stop to visit them. Near by was a hou-tree swamp, a spongy, marshy place where cattle were eating grass that grew under water. They would reach down until their ears were almost covered, take a mouthful and lift up their heads while they chewed it. Thus far on our journey there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... sure (For so I can distinguish by mine art) Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, And to my wily trains: I shall ere long Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl My dazzling spells into the spongy air, Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, And give it false presentments, lest the place And my quaint habits breed astonishment, And put the damsel to suspicious flight; Which must not be, for that's against my course. I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, And well-placed words of ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... seats Vandeloup espied a little figure in white, and seeing that it was Kitty, he strolled up to her in a leisurely manner. She was looking at the ground when he came up, and was prodding holes in the spongy turf with her umbrella, but glanced up carelessly as he came near. Then she sprang up with a cry of joy, and throwing her arms around his neck, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... her feet, for her dress did not reach the ground. They were bare, as the feet of the dead ought to be, which are about to tread softly in the realm of Hades, But how stained and mouldy and iron-spotted, as if the rain had been soaking through the spongy coffin, did the dress show beside the pure whiteness of those exquisite feet! Not a sign of the tomb was upon them. Small, living, delicately formed, Hugh, could he have forgot the face they bore above, might ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... vague, inchoate sort of way, Lilly at sixteen was visualizing nature procreant as an abominable woman creature standing shank deep in spongy swampland and from behind that portentous curtain moaning in the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Anthers dorsal, unilocular. Ovary pedunculate, lanceolate, unilocular, with many ovules in 2 series, inserted on the parietal placent. Fruit a pod terminating in a beak, 3-valved. Seeds numerous, very large, winged, embedded in a spongy substance. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... much diluted, may be used; but this very rarely, and with the greatest caution, as in cleaning sea-shells. When the gums are spongy, they should be frequently pricked with a lancet. Should black spots in teeth be cut out? Does the enamel grow again when it has ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sunshine, swing his legs over the edge, where it was nice and dangerous if he slipped, and finally leaned back to rest on one elbow, and gaze in the direction of the high cliff beyond the depression, where the men were gone to chip out pieces of the soft spongy-looking tufa, which lay in beds on ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... scar on the left cheek was more conspicuous than of yore, and the features seemed to have settled into a perpetual frown. But, worst of all, the countenance was bloated and besotted. The nose had become bulbous and spongy, the eyes watery and weak. The man's clothes were patched and seedy, and presented a general aspect of being desperately out at elbows. His unsteady step indicated that he was at least half drunk at that moment. He did not see; or at any rate did not take any notice ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... too rapidly, the deposit is likely to be spongy or loosely adherent and falls off on subsequent treatment. This places a practical limit to the current density to be employed, for a given electrode surface. The cause of the unsatisfactory character of the deposit is apparently ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... to the section Cassia, and has a long pinnate leaf, the leaflets an inch long, and half an inch broad. Its pods were about a foot long, half an inch broad; and every seed was surrounded by a fleshy spongy tissue, which, when dry, gave to the pod a slightly articulate appearance. The seeds, when young, had an agreeable taste, and the tissue, when dry, was pleasantly acidulous, and was eaten by some of my companions without ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... create, Form'd man who should of both participate; If our lives' motions theirs must imitate, Our knowledge, like our blood, must circulate. When like a bridegroom from the east, the sun Sets forth, he thither, whence he came, doth run; Into earth's spongy veins the ocean sinks, Those rivers to replenish which he drinks; 220 So learning, which from reason's fountain springs, Back to the source some secret channel brings. 'Tis happy when our streams of knowledge flow To fill their ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes, Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense, And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-ray A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk, Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey, Or a drift of muddy leaves, or a banded ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... the disease is usually limited to the gums, and affects especially those of the front of the lower jaw, which become swollen, ulcerated at their edges, where a very ill-smelling deposit takes place of a dirty white or greyish colour, the surface beneath being spongy, swollen, raw, and bleeding. The ulceration sometimes extends so as to lay bare a large part of the sockets of the teeth; but though loosened they seldom drop out. Coupled with this, the glands at the angle of the jaw are swollen, and the child dribbles constantly ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... day, without pause to rest or eat, without backward glance, with eye ever piercing through the long leafy vistas of the forest on the watch for the fresh-chipped bark of the trees that guided his course, or the narrow indurated path over the spongy mould worn by running warriors. And when night filled the forest with the hoot of owl, and the far, weird cries of wild creatures on the rove, there sped through the aisled columns of star light and shadow, the ghostly figure of the French boy slim, and lithe as a willow, with muscles tense as ironwood, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... are large pale-green mosses, growing often in enormous masses, forming the foundation of peat-bogs. They are of a peculiar spongy texture, very light when dry, and capable of absorbing a great amount of water. They branch (Fig. 64, A), the branches being closely crowded at the top, where the stems continue to ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... salt, soda, cream tartar or baking powder with the flour, sift; rub in the butter until fine like meal. Add the liquid gradually, mixing with a knife, and use just enough to make it of a light spongy consistency. Turn the dough out on a well floured board, pat lightly into a flat cake and roll gently till half inch thick. Bake either in a spider or pie plate in the oven; split, butter, and spread ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... better accustomed to the country than was Jack's. After having gone a considerable distance, he left Jack some way behind. The marks of the horse's feet had immediately been lost, by the spongy ground returning to its former state. Jack, however, thought there could be no difficulty in pushing on directly behind him. He had not, however, gone far before he found that, instead of following Burdale's direction to turn neither ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... On both sides of the road, the bare fields stretched out, yellowed by the corn and wheat stubble which covered the soil, like a beard that had been badly shaved. The spongy earth seemed to smoke. The larks were singing, high up in the air, while other ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... unknown regions. By the walks I had arrived at the locked door of the kitchen garden, at a small wood or wilderness of endless delights (including a broken swing), and at a dilapidated summer-house. I had wandered over the spongy lawn, which was cut into a long green promenade by high clipt yew-hedges, walking between which, in olden times, the ladies grew erect and stately, as plants among brushwood stretch ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and miles away, was a winding string of wagons, a dozen perhaps, one right behind another. We watched until we could make out our own white horse, Bob, and then we slid down the hickory pole that leaned against the stack, and made our way across the spongy sod to the burying-ground that stood on a knoll ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... with them as rivers bring to the sea, they bring only clear, pure water, because, as they filter for miles through the dense jungle of reeds, ferns, and shrubs which grow round the marsh, all the earth is sifted out and left behind. In this way the spongy mass of dead plants remains free from earthy grains, while the water and the shade of the thick forest of trees prevent the leaves, stems, etc., from being decomposed by the air and sun. And so year after year as the plants die they ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... In a moment, as if some fireworks were being ignited, the flame ran along the west side of the OMBU; the dead wood and nests of dried grass, and the whole sap, which was of a spongy texture, supplied food for its ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... occasion when the fires under the first set of retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did not retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet bare frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lump of silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the dark depths of the Gould Concession; she had laid her unmercenary hands, with an eagerness that made them tremble, upon the first silver ingot turned out still warm from the mould; ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... attempts have been made to isolate this radical, but so far none have been successful. By the addition of sodium amalgam to a concentrated solution of ammonium chloride, the so-called ammonium amalgam is obtained as a spongy mass which floats on the surface of the liquid; it decomposes readily at ordinary temperatures into ammonia and hydrogen; it does not reduce silver and gold salts, a behaviour which distinguishes it from the amalgams of the alkali metals, and for this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... further attention to bestow on him, and immediately led Josephine away over the damp and spongy sod to that portion of the ground at the rear of the house which showed, by a few lingering signs, that it once had been a proud and ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... Keep them a moderate length—long enough to protect the toe, but not so long as to cut holes in the stockings. Always cut the nails; never tear them, as is too frequently the practice. Be careful not to destroy the spongy substance below the nails, as that is the great guard to prevent them going into ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... dashing in his face, kept him blinking and gasping, and still that wild thing pawed and snorted. Fascinated, Piang gazed into the vicious, bleary eyes, and finally he realized that they were losing some of their fury; the tusks sank into the spongy earth; the head fell lower. The babui was a prisoner, pinioned to the ground by a fallen tree! Relief was Piang's first sensation, but pity for the animal and fear for himself, roused him to the realization of new dangers yet to be faced. He must plunge into the dense jungle; it was only a short ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... five miles of Providence Road had been a delight, as Redwheels and I ran along it, the dirt lane that led to The Briers was an intoxicating joy. The wet earth, the drenched cedars, the oak buds, the spongy moss, the reddening blackberry-bushes, and the sprouting grain, all mingled in a queer creation odor that went right through the pores of my skin into my vitals and made me feel as strong as an ox, or rather, as Sam's ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... their time. In other words the month of May was about a week old, and there was a bright day to recommend it—bright, only a little too much tinctured with March and April to be all enjoyable. The earth was still spongy, the water cold, the air crisp, and the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... slope on the other side of the valley the party left the road and made their way across a spongy field, Ukridge explaining that this was a short cut. They climbed through a hedge, crossed a stream and another field, and after negotiating a difficult bank topped with barbed wire, found themselves in ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... the stem squarely (adnate) or they are decurrent (extend downward on the stem), are white, or whitish, becoming in age more or less dingy or stained. The spores are rounded or elliptical, 6—9 mu. The stem is elastic, spongy within and sometimes hollow. It is smooth or often floccose scaly below the ring, sometimes with prominent transverse bands of a hairy substance. It is usually whitish near the upper end, but dull brown or reddish brown below the ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... a rill, not a beck, refreshes the spongy, crumbling earth; we must travel far, penetrate the openings just indicated by the dark- blue shadows in the distance, and descend the lofty walls of the Causses to find silvery cascades, impetuous rivers, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... spongy nature of this meshwork affords free access of aqueous to the venous sinus of Schlemm, thence by tributaries into the supra-choroidal space and anterior ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... February—rather late in the season; so late, in fact, that, in spite of my faith in winter, I began to grow anxious—something no one on a hill in Hingham need ever do. Since New Year's Day unseasonable weather had prevailed: shifty winds, uncertain skies, rain and snow and sleet—that soft, spongy weather when the ice soaks and grows soggy. By the middle of January what little ice there had been in the pond was gone, and the ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... sponge, honeycomb, network; frit[Chem], filter. sieve, net, screen (opening) 260. Adj. cellular, spongy, spongious[obs3]; honeycombed, alveolar; sintered; porous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... at first out of the earth, not farre from the said hanging rocke, and running a while in one entire current, continueth so, till it commeth almost to the brim of the cragg; where being opposed by a damme (as it were artificiall) of certaine spongy stones, is afterwards divided into many smaller branches, and falleth from on ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... modified joints of anterior tarsi in Dytiscidae; plate-like, horny or spongy structures on the undersides of the tarsal joints: the ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... fungus; these ants are, in reality, mushroom growers and eaters. Belt several times exposed the underground chambers to observation and found that they were always about three parts filled with "a speckled, brown, flocculent, spongy-looking mass of a light and loosely-connected substance." Scattered throughout these masses were the pupae and larvae, together with the smallest division of workers who do not engage in leaf-carrying, but whose duties appear to ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... time Kagh came to the edge of a tamarack swamp. Here the ground was soft and spongy. The prostrate trunks of a number of great trees lay half submerged in lily-choked pools, beside which stalks of the brilliant cardinal flower flamed by day in the green dimness. Scrambling upon one of these decaying logs the porcupine made ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... detour to avoid it, but as the tall trees which grew on the surrounding hills would not allow me to get a view of the country, I could not determine in what direction to steer my course. I did not perceive an important circumstance. Owing to the spongy nature of the ground, into which my feet sank at every step, the marks were soon obliterated, while I still supposed that my trail was sufficiently defined to enable Manley and the sergeant to ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... nearly up to their waists in water. Luckily they were able to clutch at the hazel bushes above, and, by swinging themselves along the branches, to arrive at a firmer foothold, though even there the ground felt very insecure and spongy, and little dark pools came oozing up ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... 'green' water of the Nile; for during the early period of the flood what is known as 'the false rise' washes the filth and sewage off the foreshore all along the river, and brings down the green and rotting vegetation from the spongy swamps of Equatoria. The water is then dangerous and impure. There was nothing else for the army to drink; but it was undesirable to aggravate the evil by keeping the troops in ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Anne river, a branch of the Hedgemain, interposed a few miles further on, and passing through a covered bridge, I turned down the north bank, crossed some spongy fields, and at length came to a dry place in the edge of a woods, where I tied my nag, spread out my bed, and prepared to dine. A box of sardines, a lemon, and some fresh sandwiches constituted the repast, and being dusty and parched I stripped afterward and swam across the river. Seeing that my ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... when she would lie looking at her, with such a still, watchful, almost dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and change her place, as persons do whose breath some cunning orator had been sucking out of them with his spongy eloquence, so that, when he stops, they must get some air and stir about, or they feel as if they should ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been connected with the projected voyage of Nearchus. It is certain, however, that by his directions the principal canal was much improved; indeed it was in reality cut in a more convenient and suitable place; for the soil where it had been originally cut was soft and spongy, so that much labour and time were required to restore the waters to their course, and secure its mouth in a safe and firm manner. A little lower down, the soil was much more suitable, being strong and rocky; here then Alexander ordered the opening of the canal to be made: ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... and Battersleigh, cavalryman, became Batty, scouter for bones, while Franklin remained at the market. It was Franklin who, bethinking himself of the commercial difference between hard black horn and soft, spongy bone, began the earliest shipments of the tips of the buffalo horns, which he employed a man to saw off and pack into sacks ready for the far-off button factories. Many tons of these tips alone he came to ship, such had been ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot, but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. The boy's brooding face did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves, and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more gayly to the swing of his ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... and inflammation of the spongy tissues of the lungs is frequently seen in sheep, the same as in ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... full of anger for the tragedy of the inaction. At the moment he gave small attention to his own life, its heights or depths, past or future. He saw Stafford, but he could not be said to consider him at all. He turned from the road into the wood, and pushed the great bay over spongy ground toward the isolated 65th. Stafford saw that he gave him no thought, and it angered him. On the highroad of his life it would not have done so, but he had left the road and was lost in the jungle. There were few things that Richard Cleave might do which would not now work like madness ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... feet, landing on his rump on a spongy surface that bounced him back and forth. He was vaguely incredulous when he found himself sitting in the sky staring through his spread legs ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... blame mesilf. For I call t' mind now that me father always varnished th' dongolas before he soaked thim overnight. 'Take no chances, Mike,' he used t' say t' me, 'always varnish thim firrst. Some of thim is rubbery an' will not soak up wather, but some is spongy, an' 'tis best t' varnish ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... do not partake of this increase, but become flat and hard, the substance of the gland losing its spongy structure. The legs and arms lose their roundness of outline, and, where they do not grow fat, dry up, and resemble those of the other sex. The abdomen enlarges, even to the extent occasionally of leading the wife to believe ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... "The best thing you can do, Josiah Allen, is to foller his tracks. The ground is kinder soft and spongy, and you can do it," says I. "Where did he go to last ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... overgrown with rank grass and dismal willows. The water, which was clear enough on the open sandy side, where the sun shone, looked black and poisonous opposite to me, where it lay deeper under the shade of the spongy banks, and the rank overhanging thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... 'prentice hand in the art of murder, and its intended victims often manage to get away from it. Built on a very different model is the bladderwort, busy in stagnant ponds near the sea coast from Nova Scotia to Texas. Its little white spongy bladders, about a tenth of an inch across, encircle the flowering stem by scores. From each bladder a bunch of twelve or fifteen hairy prongs protrude, giving the structure no slight resemblance to an insect form. These prongs hide a valve which, as ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted upon boarding the carcass. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth so great ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... in the wind. Behind him came the relentless pad, pad of the wolf; it's hot, fetid breath scorched the nape of his neck; he could hear it snapping its jaws. He stumbled, lurched forward, fell: as he was about to lift himself from the deep spongy snow, the wolf leaped upon him and struck him from behind—a short, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... They were going so fast that all the reds and greens and yellows of the autumn trees melted into one variegated band. A moment later they came out on the ocean. And now on the water side were two other streaks of color, one a spongy blue that was sky, another a clear shining blue that was sea. Maida half-shut her eyes and the whole world seemed ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... more or less hot according to the latitude; only continual bathing can render it endurable. There are but two seasons, the wet and the dry. As soon as the southwest monsoon sets in, masses of spongy cumuli gather on the summits of the western mountains, giving rise to furious squalls about sunset, and dispersing in peals of thunder and torrents of refreshing rain. From the beginning to the end of the rainy season, this succession ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... diminutive and watery potatoes and apples, that have come down from the clouds, and on St. Catherine's Peak I once picked a few strawberries, which had about as much savor as so many chips. The noble forest trees of the lower mountains, as you go up, give way to an exuberant but spongy growth of tree-ferns and bushes. Great herds of wild swine, descended from those introduced by the Spaniards, roam these secluded thickets, and once furnished subsistence to the runaway negroes who, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... favorite daughter Charlotte,—his dear companion, the confidant and sharer of all his sylvan pleasures. She was tired and dusty; and her short printed gown showed traces of green, spongy grass, and lichen-covered rocks. But her face was a joy to see: she had such bright eyes, such a kind, handsome mouth, such a cheerful voice, such a merry laugh. As they came in sight of the wide-open front-doors, she looked ruefully down at her feet and her grass-and-water-stained ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... cuts through like a drain to catch its sewage, Every Man's Land, a reeking march of humanity and humidity, steams with the excrement of seventeen languages, flung in patois from tenement windows, fire-escapes, curbs, stoops, and cellars whose walls are terrible and spongy with fungi. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... up on the sand on rollers, as the ancients did, according to Virgil. When the tide is rising, and advancing on land, it is not prudent to bring the vessels too close inshore, for, if the wind is fresh, the prows are buried in the sand; and the sand of that coast is spongy; it receives easily, but does not yield so well. It was on this account, no doubt, that a boat was detached from the bark as soon as the latter had cast anchor, and came with eight sailors, amidst whom was to be seen an object of an oblong form, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wanted; by abusing him you will only frighten him into obstinacy. When you have got the animal under perfect subjection, examine the foot carefully, and you will find the heels, at the back part of the frog, entirely free from that member, which is soft and spongy. When the foot is down, resting on the ground, grasp the heels in your strong hand, press them inwards towards the frog, and you will immediately find that they will yield. You will then see that what yields so easily ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... course," said Miss Shott, "that if the disease did get into this house, Willy Croup would be the first to take it, because she is such a spongy person that she takes almost anything that is in the air and is not wholesome; but then you would not want to lose her, and after a funeral in the house, no matter whose it may be, things is always ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... species of the monkey-bread tree, which struck us as very curious. This tree was about sixty feet high and forty feet in circumference; the bark was smooth, and of a greyish colour, and the boughs were entirely destitute of leaves. This fruit hung thickly at the end of twisted, spongy stalks, from one to two feet long. The fruit is of an oval form, about six inches in length, and three or four inches in diameter; and the outer shell being broken, it contains a farinaceous substance, enveloping dark brown seeds of an agreeable ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... disclosed a globular jar of glass and metal, connected by wires to a dynamo. Above the jar was a Life Ray projector. Lilith slid aside a metal portion of the jar, disclosing through the glass underneath the squirming, kicking body of a baby, resting on a bed of soft, spongy substance, to which it was connected by the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... seem fair," Julia mused. She presently went on an errand for her grandmother, and came back with sausages and fresh pulpy bread and large spongy crullers from the grocery. By this time the windy summer twilight was closing in, and the homegoing labourers and factory hands were filing home through the dirty streets. Julia found her two cousins in the lamp-lighted kitchen, Evelyn rather heavy and coarse looking, Marguerite reedy and thin, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... You champ on spongy toadstools, hateful treat! Fearful of poisons in each bit you eat: He feasts secure on mushrooms, fine as those Which Claudius for his special eating chose, Till one more fine, provided by his wife, Finished at once his feasting and his ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... is painful and tender, the slightest injury causing it to bleed. It is of a dark purplish hue, and filled with spongy, sensitive granulations. It discharges a thin, bloody matter which is sometimes very fetid and acrid, and excoriates the tissues if it comes in contact with them. The edges of this species of ulcer are shelf-like and ragged, and turn inward. The adjacent structures ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... stalk and covered with long downy hairs, which render the fruits very light and readily carried by the wind. The name bulrush is more correctly applied to Scirpus lacustris, a member of a different family (Cyperaceae), a common plant in wet places, with tall spongy, usually leafless stems, bearing a tuft of many-flowered spikelets. The stems are used for matting, &c. The bulrush of Scripture, associated with the hiding of Moses, was the Papyrus (q.v.), also a member of the order Cyperaceae, which was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various |
