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Absorbent   Listen
adjective
absorbent  adj.  Absorbing; swallowing; absorptive.
Absorbent ground (Paint.), a ground prepared for a picture, chiefly with distemper, or water colors, by which the oil is absorbed, and a brilliancy is imparted to the colors.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Absorbent" Quotes from Famous Books



... experiment is conducted in exactly the same way as that of the tubes with the vermin. The result is entirely different from what I expected. The white of egg does not liquefy. It simply becomes moist on the surface; and even this moisture may come from the pepsin, which is highly absorbent. Yes, I was right: if the thing were feasible, it would be an advantage for the chemists to collect their digestive drug from the stomach of the maggot. The worm, in this case, beats the pig ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... While the highly-absorbent character of the snaring-thread has its drawbacks, it also has compensating advantages. Both Epeirae, when hunting by day, affect those hot places, exposed to the fierce rays of the sun, wherein the Crickets delight. In the torrid ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... of the man, whether of body or of mind, there stands the soul, which uses them for purposes of its own, be they for better or for worse. And of these there is always one which in time becomes the absorbent of all its life, the essence of all its being; and such purpose is soon found in the life of every man who lives, and not merely exists; such purpose is soon found in the mightiest as well as in the frailest, in the loftiest as well as in the lowest. And till such purpose is understood, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... sodium on heating gives up the extra carbonic acid, which can be collected and stored pure, while the liquor passes back to simple carbonate of sodium, to be used over again as an absorbent. This is not at all new in theory, of course, nor is this the first proposal to use it commercially; but it is claimed that this is the first successful working of it on a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... the neatest creature imaginable; she wore the highest of turbans, and her clothes were spotless. She took the greatest pride in her dairy; for milk vessels she used great calibashes with wooden covers, and, as they naturally were absorbent, it was necessary to sun one set while another was in use. She kept them beautifully, and the milk and butter ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... when it becomes a very pure vegetable mould; and it is well known that very pure vegetable mould is the most proper of all materials for the growth of almost all kinds of plants. The moss would also not retain more moisture than precisely the quantity best adapted to the absorbent powers of the root—a condition which can scarcely be obtained with any certainty by the use ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... dry earth is by far the best deodorizer and absorbent, but when it cannot be easily and cheaply procured, well sifted wood or coal ashes—wood preferred—is a good substitute. The ashes must be kept dry. If they are not, they lose their absorbing, deodorizing powers. They must ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... occasion to pamper my natural aversion to affectation or pretence, by romantic and artificial means. I had better have formed myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class of persons whose virtues and most shining qualities sink in, and are concealed by, an absorbent ground of modesty and reserve; and such a one I do, without vanity, profess myself.[149] Now these are the very persons who are likely to attach themselves to the character of Emilius, and of whom it is ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... new territory. As the root continues to extend, parts behind the tip cease to be effective because, as soil particles in direct contact with these tips and hairs dry out, the older roots thicken and develop a bark, while most of the absorbent hairs slough off. This rotation from being actively foraging tissue to becoming more passive conductive and supportive tissue is probably a survival adaptation, because the slow capillary movement of soil moisture fails to replace what ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... the unknown McLean as a most unnecessary absorbent of Jack Ryder's time and attention and now ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... into little cylinders in the form of the bark of cinnamon. In this state it takes the name of ampo, and is sold in the public markets. This clay has a peculiar taste, which is owing to the baking: it is very absorbent, and adheres to the tongue, which it dries. In general it is only the Javanese women who eat the ampo, either in the time of pregnancy, or in order to grow thin; the absence of plumpness being there ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... internal improvements, capable of indefinite enlargement and sufficient to swallow up as many millions annually as could be exacted from the foreign commerce of the country. This was a convenient and necessary adjunct of the protective tariff. It was to be the great absorbent of any surplus which might at any time accumulate in the Treasury and of the taxes levied on the people, not for necessary revenue purposes, but for the avowed object of affording ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... us prevents our distinguishing any details of his surface, but spectral analysis reveals the presence of an absorbent atmosphere in which are gases unknown to the air of our planet, and of which the chemical composition resembles that of the atmosphere ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... tightly. Very little scraping will be necessary, and usually if well rubbed with fine sand-paper, to remove any chance finger-marks or loose fragments of paper, the edge will be smooth enough to gild. If the paper is very absorbent, the edges must be washed over with vellum size and left ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... all stars are suns with continuous spectra, and the classes are differentiated by the character of the absorbent vapours of ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... from the paler green of the lower side. It is no wonder that New England claims fame for her elms, which, loved and cared for, arch over the long village streets that give character to the homes of the descendants of the Puritan fathers. The fully grown elm presents to the sun a darkly absorbent hue, and to the passer-by who rests beneath its shade the most grateful and restful color ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... told about it. They used it first, as Pownall the local historian tells you, "as a vulnerary and abstersive," and healed wounds with it; then some labourers accidentally drank it, and Epsom's fortune was made. The doctors agreed; Epsom salts were bitter, diluent, absorbent, soluble, cathartic—everything that salts should be. In two years the wells were enclosed with a wall; in twenty years France and Germany had heard of Epsom, and distinguished foreigners obediently paced the common. But the great days were still to come. As yet ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... specimen clay was used next the skin in places to perfect the modelling, but such amounts would be required for a large animal as to affect the durability of the skin. Clay and plaster being in a dry state very absorbent, will eventually rob of all oily matter any skin in contact with them. Such skins will crack, split and finally disintegrate as thoroughly as those having an excess of fat adhering ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... The absorbent properties of bricks vary considerably with the kind of brick. The ordinary London stock of good quality should [Sidenote: Varieties of bricks.] not have absorbed, after twenty-four hours' soaking, more than one-fifth of its bulk. Inferior bricks will absorb as much as a third. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... upon a superabundance of the humours of the eye, occasioned by over-secretion, or a want of power in the absorbent vessels to carry off the natural ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... the stone." This ash, as is evident from inspection, cannot have belonged toany vegetable substance, for it is almost entirely composed of phosphate of lime. Mr. Faraday adds that "if the piece of matter has ever been employed as a spongy absorbent, it seems hardly fit for that purpose in its present state: but who can say to what treatment it has been subjected since it was fit for use, or to what treatment the natives may submit it when expecting to have occasion ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... shirt over the spot on his broad shoulder where a wad of absorbent cotton and a lot of crisscrossed surgeon's plaster marked the slight wound. He moved the shoulder curiously. "That will be stiff for a couple of days, I suppose, but that is all there will be to it. Nothing but a scratch. Did you see ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... your flow of words, Kitten, but I do agree with their meaning. Yes, small towns can turn out gigantic specimens of conceited ego. And that conceit is like a paraffine coating; air tight against personal progress, absorbent for the poisons of jealousy and envy. There, that sounds as if I have learned a little English, doesn't it? But it isn't enough to face ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... confusing complications. It is evidently simply a coiled tube— coiled for the sake of packing— with occasional dilatations, and with one side-shunt, the caecum (cae.), into which the food enters, and is returned to the main line, after probably absorbent action, imperfectly understood at present. A spiral fold in this cul-de-sac {bottom-of-sack}, which is marked externally by constrictions, has a directive influence on the circulation of its contents. The student should sketch Figure 1 once or twice, and make himself familiar ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... country into which he was come. And further, how could the habit of lapsing in thought, or more simply, of passing abruptly from the present subject, be explained except on the theory of something to which he had so given himself it had become overmastering and all absorbent? This, she saw intuitively, would prove the key to the man; and she set about ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... should pay especial attention to cleanliness during this period. She should be provided with a circular girdle of some strong material cut upon the bias, so it may be elastic, and provided with tabs to which to pin the folded cloth. She also should have a supply of sanitary cloths made of absorbent cotton fabric, or pads made of absorbent-cotton enclosed in gauze. The latter are especially convenient for the girl who is obliged to room away from home, for they may be burned, and the cost of new ones is no greater than the laundry of cloths. These pads or cloths should ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry

... so serious as he did now, and he was more slim than in England. He impressed me as permeated by an atmosphere of perception. A magnetic current of sympathy with the city rendered him contemplative and absorbent as a cloud. He was everywhere, but only looked in silence, so far as I was aware. "The Marble Faun" shows what he thought in sentences that reveal, like mineral specimens, strata of ideas stretching far beyond the confines of the novel. While he observed Rome, as he frequently mentions, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... measure depended upon the Professor Sylvius de la Boe, who having just embraced the chemical doctrines of Van Helmont, assigned the origin of the distemper to a prevailing acid, and declared that its cure could alone [only] be effected by the copious administration of absorbent ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... anxiously. The stain upon the cloth was rapidly growing larger. She was sure he ought not to lie there with the bleeding unchecked. She went to the door of the small private office; her eyes fell upon a package labeled "Absorbent Cotton." She opened it, pulled out a handful, and went back to ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... forming a tolerably air tight box. The next day the old flowers are removed, and fresh ones are substituted for them. This is repeated until the fat is sufficiently impregnated. From time to time the surface of the absorbent is renewed by serrating it with a comb-like instrument. This, of course, is necessary in order to give the hungry, non-saturated lower layers a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... me by fits and starts and longo intervallo, yet displaying so manifest and absorbent a delight in my society that he could not bring himself to terminate the audience, while I was to conceal my immense wearisomeness and the ardent desire I had conceived to ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... she was afraid of shock, so she gave him a dose of morphine and whiskey. Then with a quick stroke of a razor she laid open the green streak and immersed the whole arm in a strong solution of bichloride of mercury for twenty minutes. She then dressed the wound with absorbent cotton saturated with olive oil and carbolic acid, bundled her patient into a buggy, and drove forty-five miles that night to get him to a doctor. The doctor told us that only her quick action and knowledge of what to ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... mandate of law was sufficient authorization for them to prey upon the whole world outside of their charmed circle. With this scrap of paper they could go forth on the highways of commerce and over the farms and drag in, by the devious, absorbent processes of the banking system, a great part of the wealth created by the actual producers. As it was with taxation, so was it with the burdens of this system; they fell largely upon the worker, whether in the shop or on the farm. When the business man and the landowner were ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... applied, the Peruvians acting upon the philosophical principal, whether they comprehend its theory or not, that to secure the nutrient properties of this active fertilizer to their growing crops, it is essential that they provide an absorbent, and that they find in the water furnished by their processes of irrigation. Experience, practice, and irrigation have taught them, that unless they cause the carbonate of ammonia, and the various compound substances with which it exists in the guano, to descend speedily ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... mouth is kept moist, and thirst is mitigated, by exciting the saliva to flow. This can be done by chewing something, as a leaf; or by keeping in the mouth a bullet, or a smooth, non-absorbent stone, such as a ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... possessed the outlines of the field of knowledge. It was a matter only of time, when he would fill in the outline. Then watch out, he thought—'ware shoal, everybody! He felt like sitting at the feet of the professor, worshipful and absorbent; but, as he listened, he began to discern a weakness in the other's judgments—a weakness so stray and elusive that he might not have caught it had it not been ever present. And when he did catch it, he leapt to equality ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... deficient in wholly white animals. The explanation has, however, been carried a step further, by experiments showing that the absorption of odors by dead matter, such as clothing, is greatly affected by color, black being the most powerful absorbent, then blue, red, yellow, and lastly white. We have here a physical cause for the sense inferiority of totally white animals which may account for their rarity in nature. For few, if any, wild animals are wholly white. The head, the face, or at least the muzzle or the nose, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... length of the intestines, which apparently results from changed diet, is a more remarkable case, because it is characteristic of certain animals in their domesticated condition, and therefore must be inherited. The complex absorbent system, the blood-vessels, nerves, and muscles, are necessarily all modified together with the intestines. According to Daubenton, the intestines of the domestic cat are one-third longer than those of the wild cat of Europe; and although this species is not the parent-stock of the domestic ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... decay, to fold the freshly prepared skin in a clean paper, wrap in damp cloth, and lay over one night in a cool place, before mounting. This allows arsenic-water to penetrate through into base of plumage, thus becoming more effective against moths than if skin were immediately filled with absorbent material which would tend to draw out ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... perforated oiled-silk protective, which is made to cover the raw surface and the skin for about a quarter of an inch beyond the margins of the sore. Over this three or four thicknesses of sterilised gauze, wrung out of eusol, creolin, or sterilised water, are applied, and covered by a pad of absorbent wool. As far as possible the part should be kept at rest, and the position should be adjusted so as to favour the circulation in ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... of Canada, is wealthy, busy, commercial, Scotch, absorbent of whisky; but she is duly aware of other things. She has a most modern and efficient interest in education; and here are gathered what faint, faint beginnings or premonitions of such things as Art Canada ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... had set out with. He could not force his child to be a genius, but he insisted that Joel should have an education. The editor had found himself handicapped by a lack of the mysterious enrichment that a tour through college gives the least absorbent mind. He was determined to provide it for his boy, though Joel felt that every moment's delay in leaping into the commercial arena was so much delay ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... out. The communications between the ramifications of the vena portae and of the proper veins of the liver are supposed by Galen to be effected by means of anastomosing pores or channels. Although it is evident that Galen was ignorant of the true absorbent system, yet he appears to have been aware of the lacteals; for he says that in addition to those mesenteric veins which by their union form the vena portae, there are visible in every part of the mesentery other ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae

... powdered boric acid is added to three ounces of water and thoroughly mixed. This is poured into a six-ounce bottle, which is then filled with grain alcohol (95 per cent). The solution is applied twice a day with a small piece of absorbent cotton. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... fixative, and then the specimen must be covered with a bell-jar or other receiver to prevent even the slightest draft of air, otherwise the spores will float around more or less. The spores may be caught on a thin, absorbent paper, and the paper then be floated on the fixative in a shallow vessel until it soaks through and comes in contact with the spores. I have sometimes used white of egg as a fixative. These pieces of paper can then be cut ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... of soils to absorb water from air is much connected with fertility.... I have compared the absorbent powers of many soils, with respect to atmospheric moisture, and I have always found it greatest in the most fertile soils; so that it affords one method of judging ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... Russian calf modeling leather. (1.) Make on paper the design wanted. (2.) Moisten the back side of the leather with sponge or cloth with as much water as it will take yet not show through on the face side. (3.) Place the leather on some hard non-absorbent material, such as brass or marble. (4.) Place the paper design on the leather and, holding it in place with the left hand, trace the outline, of the object and the decorative design with the nut pick so as to make a V-shaped groove ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... Tom. "Swipe a bunch of that absorbent cotton from Danny for me, will you? If he sees this he will make a fuss about it. I don't want it to get stiff on me. Hi, Fowler, ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... mushrooms may be added. If the mixture is too moist add a few more crumbs; if too dry add a little ketchup, milk, tomato juice, &c. Form into sausage-shaped pieces or small flat cakes. Dip into frying batter, and drop into smoking-hot fat. When a golden brown lift out, and drain on absorbent paper. Serve them, as also the golden marbles, on sippets of toast or fried bread with tomato ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... pigment from the neighbourhood of Oxford, semi-opaque, of a warm yellow colour and soft argillaceous texture, absorbent of water and oil, in both of which it may be safely employed. It is one of the ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... lungs? Increase the general nutrition of the body in every way, and then the lungs can resist the inroads of the disease. The first thing necessary to improve the nutrition of the body is to stimulate the digestive and absorbent functions of the stomach and intestines. Naturally then, you must throw the so-called cough medicines out of the window. The drugs used to stop a cough are sedatives. Now, no sedative or nauseant is known that does not lock up the natural secretions and thus lessen ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... here, avick! Devise a little drink, my son,—none of the weakest—no lemon—-hot! You understand, hot! That chap has an eye for punch; there's no mistaking an Irish fellow, Nature has endowed them richly,—fine features and a beautiful absorbent system! That's the gift! Just look at him, blowing up the fire,—isn't he a picture? Well, O'Mealey, I was fretting that we hadn't you up at Torrijos; we were enjoying life very respectably,—we established a little system of small tithes upon fowl, sheep, pigs' heads, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... to a large extent made of the same material. These bricks are brought to London in large quantities. They have a sanded face, are mostly square, true, and of uniform color, but they are usually porous, soft, and absorbent. Still, they are in great demand as facing bricks, and the moulded bricks enable the architect to produce many architectural effects at a moderate outlay. These fields furnish many sorts of bricks, which are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... a living body falling upon any non-absorbent surface will, in the course of a few minutes, solidify into a jelly which will, at first, have the same bulk and colour as the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... will be seen that, with a little practice, the method is scarcely any more complicated than the one daily employed for coleoptera and orthoptera, which latter, too, must pass through alcohol, and be pinned, spread out, and dried. There are but two additional elements, carbolated glycerine and absorbent paper. I do not estimate the time necessary for desiccation as being very long, since the zoologist can occupy himself with other subjects while the specimens are drying. Let us add that the process renders the preservation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... town of Caen, is authoritative.) Peron pointed to the political insecurity of the Spanish-American colonies, and predicted that the outbreak of revolution in them, possibly with the connivance of the English, would further the deep designs of that absorbent and dominating nation.* (* A French author of later date, Prevost-Paradol (La France Nouvelle, published in 1868), predicted that some day "a new Monroe doctrine would forbid old Europe, in the ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... conquest of a people which had not only religious aspirations, but also latent aesthetic possibilities of a high order. As in its course through China this Northern Buddhism had acted as an all-powerful absorbent of local beliefs and superstitions, so in Japan it was destined to make a more remarkable record, and, not only to absorb local ideas but actually to cause the indigenous religion ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... not the slightest cough; and it was remarked by Dr. WARREN, sen. that he had never observed that diseased action to increase, while the wound remained open. At last the lower extremities swelled, which might be attributed to the upright posture, and the pressure on the absorbent vessels in that posture. The appetite failed; she complained of a constant sense of depression at the stomach, and, without any remission of the difficulty of breathing, died on the 1st ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren

... hypothesis we can fairly well interpret the phenomena of the dispersion of light in the case of transparent substances; but far from well, as M. Carvallo has noted in some extremely careful experiments, the dispersion of the infra-red spectrum, and not at all the peculiarities presented by absorbent substances. ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... one-per-cent solution of sodium carbonate, and add 5 drops of liquor pancreaticus, or a few grains of Fairchild's extract of pancreas, in each. Boil B, and make C acid with dilute hydrochloric acid. Place in each tube an equal amount of well-washed fibrin, plug the tubes with absorbent cotton, and place all in a water-bath ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... warmth-bringing currents of the sea; the short summer, on the other hand, is hot. In the Southern Ocean the winter is not so excessively cold, but the summer is far less hot, for the clouded sky seldom allows the sun to warm the ocean, itself a bad absorbent of heat: and hence the mean temperature of the year, which regulates the zone of perpetually congealed under-soil, is low. It is evident that a rank vegetation, which does not so much require heat as it does protection from intense cold, would approach ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... with a rising color and brightening eyes. Already, the absorbent capacity of the Roman Church had drawn to itself that sympathetic side of his character which was also one of its strongest sides. Already, his love for Penrose—hitherto inspired by the virtues of the man—had narrowed its ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... been advanced to account for the nature of the morbid state, which gives rise to general and local dropsy, there are only three which our author regards as entitled to our notice. According to these, all dropsical accumulations arise either, 1st, From a want of tone or energy in the absorbent vessels, giving rise to a deficient absorption. 2nd, From an increased exhalation of the natural fluid, through a similar want of tone in the exhalents; and 3d, From a mechanical obstruction to the free return of blood by the veins, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... was worried again, now that he saw the twins, by doubts. They didn't look as though they would easily be put to school. His idea still seemed to him magnificent, a great solution, but would the Annas be able to see it? They might turn out impervious to it; not rejecting it, but simply non-absorbent. As they slowly and contentedly ate their grape-fruit, gazing out between the spoonfuls at the sea shining across the road through palm trees, and looking unruffled itself, he felt it was going to be rather like suggesting to two cherubs ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... thinking out new subjects for her brush, at that quiet hour. She said to a friend: "I have been a faithful student since I was ten years old. I have copied no master. I have studied Nature, and expressed to the best of my ability the ideas and feelings with which she has inspired me. Art is an absorbent—a tyrant. It demands heart, brain, soul, body, the entireness of the votary. Nothing less will win its highest favor. I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life-dream, the air I breathe. I know nothing else, feel nothing else, think nothing else, My soul finds in it ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... roofing purposes is hard, heavy and of a bluish gray color. A good slate should readily split into even laminae; it should not be absorbent of water either on its face or endwise, a property evinced by its not increasing perceptibly in weight after immersion in water; and it should be sound, compact and not apt to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... corals. On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who flourished two bright torches. On her left hand stood the man of Modena with his white lamb, a new S. John. On her right stood the man of Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter. Both were laughing after their all-absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was written, Sic Genius. Are not all things, even ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... or absorbent, system is connected with the blood-vascular system, and consists of a series of tubes which absorb and convey to the blood certain fluids. These tubes lead to lymphatic glands, through which the fluids pass to reach the right lymphatic vein and thoracic ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... Cromwell's time, to swallow up Presbyterianism. I make no invidious comparison between the two systems: I merely look at facts. And it does appear to me that Congregationalism—so simple, so free, so unsectarian, and so catholic—is nevertheless a powerful absorbent. It has absorbed all that was orthodox in the old Presbyterian Churches of England; and it is absorbing the Calvinistic Methodists and the churches named after the Countess of Huntingdon. It has all along exerted a powerful influence on the ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... accident. The tertiary radicles, or those emitted by the secondary ones, are not influenced, at least in the case of the bean, by geotropism; so they grow out freely in all directions. From this manner of growth of the various kinds of radicles, they are distributed, together with their absorbent hairs, throughout the surrounding soil, as Sachs has remarked, in the most advantageous manner; for the whole soil is ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... pupil engineers; and as there are not more than a hundred or so of engineers-in-chief, only a limited number of the sub-engineers can hope to rise. Besides, above the grade of engineer-in-chief, there is no absorbent class; for we cannot count as a means of absorption the ten or fifteen places of inspector-generals or divisionaries,—posts that are almost as useless in our corps as colonels are in the artillery, where the battery is the essential thing. The engineer-in-ordinary, like the captain of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... is to give a perfectly level and non-absorbent basis for varnish covering or other finish. This can be done with shellac carefully rubbed down with fine oiled sandpaper, but this method requires much toil and patience, and has therefore been given up by furniture finishers. The ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... removing these impurities have been tried; one is the use of absorbent substances, such as fossil meal, alumina, etc., to withdraw the greasy matter, so that the remaining impurities can be easily removed by washing. In other methods, naphtha or similar solvent liquids are used to dissolve the wool fats. This ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... half may be covered with a warm soft towel while the nurse is oiling the upper part, and vice versa. After the body has been thoroughly oiled it should be cleansed with water at the proper temperature, in which pure castile soap has been dissolved. Absorbent cotton only should be used to wash the baby. All the washing is done with the baby on the nurse's knee; it is not ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... hours, filtered, the precipitate washed with water rendered slightly ammoniacal, dried, ignited, and weighed. The weight so found multiplied by 0.278 gives the weight of phosphorus in the form of phosphine in the volume of gas passed through the absorbent liquid. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... conceived of making bar iron without wood charcoal. I told them, consistent with the notion I had adopted in common with all others I had conversed with, that I thought it impossible, because the vegetable salts in the charcoal being an alkali acted as an absorbent to the sulphur of the iron, which occasions the red-short quality of the iron, and pit coal abounding with sulphur would increase it. This specious answer, which would probably have appeared conclusive to most, and which indeed was what I really thought, was not so to ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... 10. For the radiation from carbonic acid, the same layer of bisulphide transmits only 25 per cent., 75 per cent. being absorbed. For this source of rays, indeed, the bisulphide transcends, as an absorbent, many substances which, for all other sources, far ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... following morning Lloyd came and went about the house with an untiring energy, yet with the silence of a swiftly moving shadow, getting together the things needed for the operation—strychnia tablets, absorbent cotton, the rubber tubing for the tourniquet, bandages, salt, and the like—and preparing the little chamber adjoining the sick-room as ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... petals, carpels, and even the stamens, as a general rule, correspond to the sheath rather than to the blade of the leaf, as may be seen by the arrangement of the veins. The blade of the leaf seems to be set apart for special respiratory and absorbent offices, while the sheath is in structure, if not in office, more akin to the stem. It would not be easy apart from their position to distinguish between a tubular sheathing leaf and a hollow stem. The development of adventitious growths by chorisis or enation has been ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... remained behind, or by the addition of an alkali which attracted the acid to itself: and this last method he recommends as the best. He likewise makes an inquiry into the nature and virtues of the powder thus prepared; and observes, that it is an absorbent earth which joins readily with all acids, and must necessarily destroy any acidity it meets in the stomach; but that its purgative power is uncertain, for sometimes it has not the least effect of that kind. As it is a mere insipid earth, he rationally concludes it ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black

... the solid objects in the bundle was a flat wooden case, about nine by ten inches. I slid it open. It was divided carefully into sections cushioned with sponge-absorbent plastic, and in them lay tiny slips of glass, on Wolf as precious as jewels. They were lenses—camera lenses, microscope lenses, even eyeglass lenses. Packed close, there were nearly a hundred of them ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... of iron is a very good absorbent of ammonia, and consequently, as will be hereafter described, adds to ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... fertilisers, and their leases in general prohibit their selling off the straw produced on their farms. Yet chemical analysis has clearly proved that the manurial value of straw is perfectly insignificant, and that, as a constituent of stable manure, it is chiefly useful as an absorbent of the liquid egesta of the animals littered upon it. As food for stock, straw was at one time regarded by our farmers as almost perfectly innutritious; some even went so far as to declare that it possessed ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... decidedly ill-bred to rob a locality of its precious plants. Pick your fern leaf down close to the root-stock, including a portion of that also, if it can be spared. Place your fronds between newspaper sheets and lay "dryers" over them (blotting paper or other absorbent paper). Cover with a board or slat frame, and lay on this a weight of several pounds, leaving it for twenty-four hours; if the specimens are not then cured, change the dryers. Mount the prepared specimens on white mounting sheets. The regulation size is 16-1/2 by 11-1/2 inches. The labels ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton

... presents a remarkable structure, the typhlosolis, or, as the old anatomists called it, an intestine within an intestine; and Claparede {13} has shown that this consists of a deep longitudinal involution of the walls of the intestine, by which means an extensive absorbent ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... whether Molly heard anything of this exposition; she may well have missed one or two steps in a carefully reasoned argument. Hers was that state of absorbent lassitude when the words and acts put to you sink into the floating mass of your weakness. The late shocking grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold the spectre off, and so are serviceable—but no more. The cold cheek, the clay-cold lips, the long, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We think the hypothesis is also supported in some degree by the fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causes which tend to disturb the equality between the secerning and absorbent systems." {182} Here particles of organized matter are suggested as the germinal origin of distinct and fully organized animals, many of which have a highly developed reproductive system. How near such ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... by new faces, and jealous when there of the privileges those new faces would enjoy; and then, how my recent deadness of life cried out against me as worse than a spendthrift, a destroyer! a nerveless absorbent of the bliss showered on me—the light of her morning presence when, just before embracing, she made her obeisance to the margravine, and kindly saluted me, and stooped her forehead for the baroness to kiss it; her gestures and her voice; her figure on horseback, with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... squashes. | | | |Whenever squashes or pumpkins in storage show | | | |signs of decay, the sound portion should be | | | |immediately canned. | | | | Tomatoes |Cool cellar or cave; can be wrapped in any absorbent paper |preferably without printing upon it, and laid upon shelves to |ripen. The paper absorbs the moisture given off by the |tomatoes and causes them to ripen uniformly. If cellar is dry |or well ventilated, tomatoes can be kept a month ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... Absorbent Mind would clip out Hints to the Young, and Confidential Charts warning the Just-Outs against taking Presents from Strangers and putting them next to Rules of Conduct that would be sure to please and fascinate Proper Young Men. ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... the highlands of Scotland, in the Hebrides and the Isle of Man, Gauls (Gaels) still live under their primitive name. There we still have the Gaelic race and tongue, free, if not from any change, at least from absorbent fusion. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... can shut out external noises and eliminate many of those within. Loud dictation, conversations, clicking typewriters, loud-ringing telephones, can all be cut to a key which makes them virtually indistinguishable in an office of any size. More and more the big open office as an absorbent of sound seems to be gaining in favor. In one of the newest and largest of these I know, nearly all the typewriting machines are segregated in a glass-walled room, and long-distance telephone messages can be taken at any instrument ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... shall be set up at all times. The following articles are recommended in dressing and caring for infants: Sterile gauze, absorbent cotton, medium and small safety pins, bottle of alcohol, a bar of pure mild soap, a proper lubricant (albolene or olive oil), boric acid solution, pure powder, ...
— Rules and regulations governing maternity hospitals and homes ... September, 1922 • California. State Board of Charities and Corrections

... cause, or to their proximate effect, though they may he somewhat similar in less essential properties; thus the thin and saline discharge from the nostrils on going into the cold air of a frosty morning, which is owing to the deficient action of the absorbent vessels of the nostrils, is one species; and the viscid mucus discharged from the secerning vessels of the same membrane, when inflamed, is another species of the same genus, Catarrhus. Which bear no analogy ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... synchronism between the "radiant" and the "absorbent" is well shown by the behavior of carbonic acid gas. To the complex emission from our heated stove, carbonic acid would be one of the most transparent of gases. For such waves olefiant gas, for example, would vastly transcend it in absorbing power. But when we select a radiant ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... form, they were too alien to have much in common. Only as intelligences, as life forces, could they share a common bed. And it had evolved to that in fifty years. A bed of protoplasm in a shock-absorbent tank. ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton

... by excessive perspiration, especially under the arms, any hard work making the dress quite wet. The ordinary shields are not very good, as they are not absorbent enough. A piece of flannel basted inside of the shield is a help, as that is absorbent. The auxiliary space might be bathed with a solution of alum; alcohol is good or alcohol with white-oak bark. Many preparations for this ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... couldn't, you couldn't! You are too intensely absorbent, you are too rigidly individual. The flame in you would never consent even for an instant to be the flame in anybody else—any of those people who, for the purpose of the state, are called ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... under surface that is coated. When the upper leaf surface is hairy, we know that the plant is protected in this way from perspiring too freely. Doubtless these leaves of the steeple bush, like those of other plants that choose a similar habitat, have woolly hairs beneath as an absorbent to protect their pores from clogging with the vapors that must rise from the damp ground where the plant grows. If these pores were filled with moisture from without, how could they possibly throw off the waste ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... her soap! And she,—whose support,—like the fishes that fly, Was to have her fins wet, must now drop from her sky— She whose living it was, and a part of her fare, To be damp'd once a day, like the great white sea bear, With her hands like a sponge, and her head like a mop— Quite a living absorbent that revell'd in slop— She that paddled in water, must walk upon sand, And sigh for her deeps like ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... in progress; that the introduction of sheep meant the ultimate extirpation of all trees and scrubs, except the inedible pine; and that the perpetual trampling of those sharp little hoofs would in time caulk the spongy, absorbent surface; so that these fluffy, scrub-clad expanses would become a country of rich and spacious plains, variegated by lakes and forests, and probably enjoying ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... of silver in like manner is changed into a sub-iodide; but with water hydriodic acid is formed unless an iodine absorbent be present—then into hypoiodic acid. The silver bromide undergoes a similar change. When with light alone, a sub-bromide, Ag2Br2Ag2BrBr, and with water hypobromous acid. It is important to bear this in mind, as one or other, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... abrasive purposes. Chert or flint constitutes grinding pebbles and tube-mill linings, and is also ground up for abrasives. Diatomaceous (infusorial) earth is used as a polishing agent and also as a filtering medium, an absorbent, and for heat insulation. Tripoli (and rottenstone) are used in polishing powders and scouring soaps as well as for filter blocks and many ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... The absorbent stem power of the Laminaria for taking up iodine is very large; and this element is afterwards brought out by fire in the kelp kilns of Ireland and Scotland. Sea Tang acts most beneficially against the various forms of scrofulous disease; and signally relieves some rheumatic ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... absorbent vessels pump up the chyle from the stomach and intestines, and convey it, after many circumvolutions, into the great vein near ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... gracefully melancholy nature when he had lost, but she was far too womanly not to miss something very essential in what he said and in his way of saying it. A woman may love flattery ever so much and have ever so strong a moral absorbent system with which to digest it; she does not hate banality the less. There is no such word as banality in the English tongue, but there might be, and if there were, it would mean that peculiarly tasteless and saltless nature of actions and speeches done and delivered ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his absorbent vessels begin their task as children begin the guessing game, by asking, "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" He responds to stimulation and recuperates after the exhaustion of his response, and his being is singularly careless whether the stimulation comes as a drug or stimulant, or as ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... absorbent, has usually been recommended as the best material for under-clothing in sweltering weather, such as that of the present summer. An ingenious gentleman of this city, however, has discovered that a full under-suit of blotting-paper ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various

... the vegetating branch. Thus if the upper part of a branch be cut away, the buds near the extremity of the remaining stem, having a greater proportional supply of nutriment, or possessing a greater facility of shooting their roots, or absorbent vessels, down the bark, will become leaf-buds, which might otherwise have been flower-buds. And the contrary as explained in note on l. 463. of ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... histories, and a vial still bearing ghastly frost of Borgian contarella spoke of a virgin martyr and of a princely cardinal whose deeds were forgotten by all save Mother Church. Paul's genius was absorbent, fructiferous, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... dry, till it was "as white as milk and as smooth as ivory" (Cennini), the outline of the picture was drawn, and its light and shade expressed, usually with the pen, with all possible care; and over this outline a coating of size was applied in order to render the gesso ground non-absorbent. The establishment of this fact is of the greatest importance, for the whole question of the true function and use of the gesso ground hangs upon it. That use has been supposed by all previous writers on the technical ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... maiolica is a tin-glazed earthenware with a soft body usually buff in color and porous in texture. The colorful decorations were hand painted on the absorbent surface—usually in greens, blues, yellows, and reddish-browns, against a white background. Some small Spanish jugs in the collection bear very crude dark-red floral designs painted against a cream-colored background. A few examples of maiolica ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... 10 cents each. Two yards sterilized plain gauze in carton, 20 cents a yard. One roll three-inch adhesive plaster, $1.00. One paper medium size safety pins, 10 cents. One paper medium size common pins, 5 cents. Four ounces sterilized absorbent cotton in cartons, 20 cents. One-half dozen assorted egg-eyed surgeon's needles, straight to full curve, 50 cents. One card braided silk ligature, assorted in one card (white), about 30 cents. One hundred ordinary corrosive sublimate tablets, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... "Having styptic, absorbent, and balsamic qualities, would produce a kind of tanning operation on the body, which would also, no doubt, be heightened by the washing with ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... Rocky Mountains, and traced every affluent of the great river in quest of their respective prey; but the wild, desolate region watered by the Colorado, the Humboldt, or the streams that are lost in the Great Salt Lake, or some smaller absorbent of the scanty waters of the Great Basin, had never proved attractive to our borderers, and for excellent reasons. It is, as a whole, so arid, so sterile (though its valleys do not lack fertility wherever their ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Glass—Even the smallest pieces of broken glass can be easily picked up by using a bit of wet absorbent cotton, which can afterward ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler

... bicyanide gauze, absorbent wool, and common open-wove bandages, together with a good supply of nail brushes, soap, and carbolic acid for the primary disinfection of the skin and the external wound, are to be greatly bettered at the present day ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... one should not forget that the liquid excrement contains more nitrogen and more potassium than the solid, and that much of this can be saved and returned to the land by use of plenty of absorbent bedding, and in pasturing there is no danger of ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... liver, and with the pancreatic juice. By the action of these agents, the chyme is converted into two distinct portions: a milky white fluid, called chyle, and a thick yellow residue. This process is called chylification, or chyle-making. The chyle is then taken up by the absorbent vessels, which are extensively ramified over the inner membrane or lining of the bowels. From the white color of the contents of these vessels, they have been named lacteals or milk-bearers, from lac, which signifies milk. These ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... not germ-free, but practically never contains pus-germs), until the wound has been thoroughly washed out, wiping any gravel or dirt out of the cut with soft rags which have been recently washed, or baked in the oven; then dry with a small piece of linen, or white goods, put on a dressing of absorbent cotton such as can be purchased for a few cents an ounce at any drug store. Absorbent or surgical cotton makes a good dressing, because it both sucks up any fluids which might leak out of the wound, and forms a mesh-filter through ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... glances at Beth, had brought absorbent cotton, clean linen, a basin of water and a sponge, and Stryker and Brierly washed the wound, while McGuire rushed for his bottle and managed to force some whisky and water between Peter's teeth. The bullet they found had gone through the body and ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... mystery in our mental food. It may constitute no part of the nutriment, and may often be deleterious, but it meets a want, somehow or other, and wants, however undefinable, must be recognized. It is a spur that titillates the absorbent surfaces and helps to keep them in action. It is a craving that the race is never going to outlive, and that will afford occupation and subsistence to a considerable class of its most intelligent and respectable members until the year one million, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... of New York uses the following: A new antiseptic enzymol. This is used as follows.—Use one part of enzymol, three parts of warm water. Rub and cleanse the nose thoroughly with the solution, saturate a piece of absorbent cotton with this solution, place it in the nostril and leave it there fifteen to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... out that he harboured only the purest and most abstract sentiments towards these young women. There is a period in the life of the literary artist, unhappily not permanent, when the surface of his mind may be described as absorbent of emotional influences, a period which results in the accumulation of vast quantities of data concerning women without to any degree destroying the authentic simplicity of his heart. And when the point of saturation is reached, to use an engineer's phrase, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... broad paint-brush. The application should be very rapid to prevent congealing and setting in lumps on the boards; accordingly the bowl containing the size should be set in boiling water until it is thoroughly liquid, and kept in this condition. The number of coats must depend upon the absorbent nature of the boards. One coat must be allowed to dry thoroughly before another is applied. Over night is a sufficient time for this. Varnishing also should be done rapidly to prevent dust settling ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... back to an end piece, on each of which a button is sewn. Buttonholes in the napkins at the corners, diagonal from each other, will make them easily attached or removed. The napkins should be of a material that is quickly absorbent of the flow. Cheesecloth is cheap, and can be burned or otherwise disposed of after using. It may be protected by an outer strip of unbleached muslin ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... gooseberry? or the grape rot? or for the yellows or leaf-curl in peach trees? or for the rust in the blackberry and raspberry? In any or all of these it may have a decided value, and should be faithfully experimented with. As an absorbent alone it ought to be worth saving, to use in retaining the house slops and other liquid manures that ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... printing stamps by the line-engraved method the paper usually has to be slightly wetted (this was an invariable rule at the time these early Canada stamps were printed) and it can be easily seen that the wetting would have quite different results on different qualities of paper. Some would be more absorbent than others and would stretch while damp and contract again when drying. The amount of wetting administered would, also, result in differences even in the same qualify of paper. These variations in ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... An absorbent gland is occasionally in the way, and has even been mistaken for the vessel and carefully cleaned. Such ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... wounded. He had obtained a gold medal for pointing out a test by which pus might be distinguished from mucus; and the Essay in which he had stated his discovery was published by his father after his death, together with another treatise, which he left incomplete, on the Retrograde Motions of the Absorbent Vessels of Animal Bodies in some Diseases. Another of his sons, Erasmus, who was a lawyer, in a temporary fit of mental derangement put an end to his existence, in 1799. Robert Waring, a physician, now in high reputation at Shrewsbury, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... eyes, steep good green tea in rose-water, soak bits of absorbent cotton in the liquid, and ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... be avoided by sponging the parts with a warm antiseptic solution upon changing the cloth. Every woman should be provided with a circular girdle cut upon the bias so it may be elastic, and provided with tabs to which to pin the folded cloth. She also should have a supply of sanitary cloths made of absorbent cotton-fabric, or pads made of absorbent cotton enclosed in gauze. The latter especially are convenient for the girl who is obliged to room away from home, for they may be burned and the cost of new ones is no greater than the laundry of cloths. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... necessary to confine the animal in some way before attempting to do this. Horses should be twitched, cattle held by the nose, and the head of a small animal held firmly with the hands. It may be necessary to cocainize the eye before the operator can remove the foreign object with absorbent cotton ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... Thomson, F.R.C.S., has shewn ("British Medical Journal," January 7th, 1922) from observations of the lining of the womb in animals and in women that "the weight of evidence goes to prove that its function is more likely to be absorbent than excretive, and that as such it plays an important part in the ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett

... this is best accomplished with a weak reducer. If the tray be rocked gently the reduction will be quite uniform. If, however, only a portion of the print needs reduction, this can be effected by applying the ferricyanide solution locally with a brush or bit of absorbent cotton. Extreme care is needed in this operation. In this way unduly deep shadows can be softened, veiled high lights brightened, or almost any modification obtained which may be deemed desirable. When reduction is almost completed quickly rinse the print in running water and ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant

... disappointment, a drop that was deeper even than the fall of his elation the previous night. The good of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn't there to enliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand gay finale. Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them was to walk on water. What was at bottom the matter with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might—what was at bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was after all renewedly afraid; the strange strength ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... organs are obviously unfit for the further nourishment of the body—that is, for the increase or reproduction of the mass. They pass through the absorbent and lymphatic vessels into the veins, and their accumulation in these would soon put a stop to the nutritive process were it not that the blood has to pass through a filtering apparatus, as it were, before reaching the heart. The venous blood, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... hypodermically, or a tablet may be dissolved on the tongue. The amyl nitrite should be in the emergency case of the physician in the form of ampules, or may be carried by the patient after he has had one or more attacks. The ampules now come made of very thin glass with an absorbent and silk covering ready for crushing with the fingers, and are thus immediately ready for inhalation. One of these is generally all that it is necessary to use at any one time. Nitroglycerin, if given hypodermically, ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... I have tested the applicability of artificial precipitates to close the holes in boilers, cylinder-covers, and stuffing boxes. I took, generally with the best success, alternate layers of hemp-cotton, thread, and absorbent paper, all well saturated with the chlorides of calcium and magnesium. The next layers of the same fiber are moistened with silicate of soda. By pressure the fluids are mixed and the pores are closed. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... "Bring some absorbent cotton and some bandages, Hutchins," she said. "I am bleeding from a hundred wounds. As for you"—she turned fiercely on Aggie and me—"the least you could have done was to be here when I returned, exhausted, injured, and weary; but, of course, you were gallivanting round the lake in an upholstered ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... is recommended as an absorbent of gases in the milk-room where foul gases are present. It should be freshly powdered and kept there continually, especially in hot weather, when unwholesome odors are most liable ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... disinfection of walls in stables and barns, common thin white wash Ca(OH){2} is admirably adapted if made from freshly-burned quick lime. It possesses strong germicidal powers, increases the amount of light in the barn, is a good absorbent of odors, and ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... all the liquid and solid excrements into a manure-cellar underneath the cow-stable. In this cellar, dry swamp-muck, dry earth, or other absorbent material, is mixed with the manure in sufficient quantity to keep down offensive odors. A little dry earth or muck is also used in the stable, scattering it twice a day in the gutters and under the hind ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... subject, like its Italian ancestors, to rivalry with its own species; nothing checks the growth; it may absorb all the juices of the ground, all the air and sunshine of the region, and become the Colossus which the ancient plants, equally deep-rooted and certainly as absorbent, but born in a less friable soil and more crowded ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Three pounds of absorbent cotton. One large package of sterile gauze (25 yards). Four rolls of cotton batting. Two yards of stout muslin for abdominal binders. Two old sheets. Twelve old towels or diapers. One yard of strong narrow tape for tying the cord. Three short obstetrical gowns for the patient. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... Nobel conceived the idea (in 1866) of absorbing the liquid in some absorbent earth, and thus forming the material that is now known as dynamite, that the use of nitro-glycerine ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... even the most transparent, are more or less absorbent of light. Take the case of water. A glass cell of clear water interposed in the track of our beam does not perceptibly change any one of the colours of the spectrum. Still absorption, though insensible, has here occurred, and to render it sensible we have only to increase the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... exist, and are indispensable to make good the expression that the "tree grows." We might also trace the capabilities of the tree itself, its roots, bark, veins or pores, fibres or grains, its succulent and absorbent powers. But, as in the case of the "man that killed the deer," noticed in a former lecture, the mind here conceives a single idea of a complete whole, which is signified by the single ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... presence had not been favourable to his recovery, irrespectively of the excitement and restlessness which it occasioned; for she was an absorbent rather than a diffuser of life. Her own unsatisfied nature, her excitableness, her openness to all influences from the external world, and her incapacity for supplying her needs in any approximate ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... that strenuous interval there was little more than the eating and sleeping for one whose time for the absorbent process was all too limited. Also, the perplexing questions reaching down into the under-soul of things were silent. Also, again—mark of a change so radical that none but a Thomas Jefferson may read and understand—an ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... each proportion. (a.) When it becomes, as it were, saturated with it, a true fire arises, and it is then completely destroyed. (b.) When the inflammable principle is present in smaller quantity, this acid is converted into a kind of air which will not unite either with the alkalies or with the absorbent earths, and with water only in very small quantity. When this acid of nitre, resembling air, meets with the air, the latter takes the inflammable substance from it again, it loses its elasticity (Sec. 13), the vapours ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... gardens, awaiting removal to the final resting place. It is this custom, too, I am told, which has led to placing a large quantity of caustic lime in the bottom of the casket, on which the body rests, this acting as an effective absorbent. ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... of a newspaper reader before the war, but now he can challenge the American commuter as an absorbent of the printed word. And not only has the German been suddenly educated into an avid newspaper reader, but he has developed a tendency to think for himself, to read between the lines, and interpret sentences. Thus, no German has any illusions about the military prowess of Austria; but ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Wilson of Bellwood, Pa., relates the case of an old lady of seventy-eight whom he found with the blood gushing from the nostrils. After plugging the nares thoroughly with absorbent cotton dusted with tannic acid he was surprised to see the blood ooze out around the eyelids and trickle down the cheeks. This oozing continued for the greater part of an hour, being controlled by applications of ice to both ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... upon the subject of their outrageous abduction of him. Therefore, after performing his post-prandial ablutions in a basin of solid gold, held before him by a kneeling man, and drying himself upon an immaculate towel woven of cotton which was a perfect miracle of absorbent softness, tendered to him by another kneeling man, he resolutely seated himself upon a moss-grown rock which happened to conveniently protrude itself from the soil close at hand, and proceeded to deal with the matter. He had ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... possible to hurt the surface on which they press. Hence they should be broad, soft, and constructed so that their tendency to retain sweat between them and the horse's skin may be reduced as far as practicable. They can best fulfil the last-mentioned important condition when they are absorbent and open in texture. It is evident that sweat retained between the girth and the skin will have the effect of the moisture of a poultice in rendering the part soft and unusually liable to injury from pressure ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... by the application of a chemical preparation by which the ink is made soluble and is then easily removed from the paper by means of a blotter or absorbent cotton. Of course this method is also an imperfect one and the letters can easily be traced by close observation. When a chemical preparation has been used for erasing purposes, I find that in most cases it leaves a stain and also that the fibres ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... minute, giving time for the liquid to thoroughly saturate their wool. But this was not all, nor yet the most disagreeable part of the affair. On raising them from the tub, it was necessary to dry their fleeces to some extent, by squeezing and wringing them in our hands, lest, owing to the absorbent capacity of their wool, there should soon be nothing left of our decoction in the tub. Taken with the struggles of the lambs, this proved a repulsive task. Before half the lambs were dipped, our old jacket sleeves were soaked. Withal we were nauseated, either from having our hands in the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... light yet warm, and sufficiently free so as not to interfere with bodily movements. The clothing next the skin should, we think, be linen, as being more porous and absorbent than wool (see Underwear). No woman who values her health should submit to any tight lacing. The organs of the body require every inch of space for the proper performance of their functions, and if they are unduly squeezed many serious complaints ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... milk through clean absorbent cotton will reveal the presence of such dirt and another kind of dirt that does not show through the opaque fluid. This second kind of dirt is generally found in milk when the first kind is present in any quantity. It is more liable to be harmful ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... insuperable barriers in the way of any one who may attempt to conduct water from the river by means of canals. It appears to me, from the information that I have been able to obtain, that the difficulties with which settlers have here to contend arise not so much from the absorbent nature of the soil as from the want of anything to absorb. This last season is said to have been the most rainy that they have had for several years; yet everything looked so parched up that I should have imagined it had been an exceedingly ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... spirituous liquors, and to use wine very moderately; carefully to avoid all fat, rancid, and salted provisions, and high seasoned dishes of every description. The constant use of barley bread is recommended, with large doses of powdered ginger boiled in milk for breakfast. Absorbent powders of two scruples of magnesia, and three or four grains each of rhubarb and purified kali, should be taken during the intervals of gouty fits, and repeated every other morning for several weeks. The feet should be kept warm, sinapisms frequently applied to them, and the part affected ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... young herbaceous twigs, presents a considerable surface for absorption and evaporation; it abstracts the carbon of carbonic acid, and solidifies it in wood, fecula, and a multitude of other compounds. The result is that a forest withdraws from the air, by its great absorbent surface, much more gas than meadows or cultivated fields, and exhales proportionally a considerably greater quantity of oxygen. The influence of the forests on the chemical composition of the atmosphere is, in ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... twenty; forgotten what rain was like; now forcibly reminded of its peculiarities. With intermission of one full day, and occasional hours, been raining ever since. If it must rain, Homburg as good a place to be in as most public haunts; lies within narrow compass; soil rapidly absorbent; if it rains in torrents at ten o'clock, and sun afterwards comes out, roadways dry by noon. Then there is the Kurhaus always open; palatial building, not to be outdone in size and beauty by Casino at Monte Carlo; but sound of roulette tablets ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various

... should be done long before they begin to expand. The pistillate, or female blossoms, should be enclosed in bags, about six of the three-pound, common kraft bags should be enough. These are slipped over those branches which bear female blossoms and are tied around a heavy packing of absorbent cotton, which has been wound around the branch at approximately the place where the opening of the bag will be. In fastening the mouth of the bag around the cotton, I find that No. 18 copper wire, wrapped several times ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... which was so acted upon, I could save my pictures. I then made a strong solution of sal. soda I had in the house, and soaked my paper in it, and then washed it off in hot water, which perfectly fixed the view upon the paper. This paper was very poor with thick spots, more absorbent than other parts, and consequently made dark shades in the picture where they should not have been; but it was enough to convince me that I had succeeded, and that at some future time, when I had the ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling



Words linked to "Absorbent" :   nonabsorbent, absorbency, assimilative, assimilating, hygroscopic, absorb, spongelike, sponge, sorbefacient, absorbent material, sorbent, thirsty, absorptive, shock-absorbent



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