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verb
Subsoil  v. t.  To turn up the subsoil of.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subsoil" Quotes from Famous Books



... orchard would do better if the slope were to the northeast. That may be true, but mine has done well enough thus far, and, what is more to the point, I had no land with a northeast slope. The surface soil was thin and somewhat impoverished, but the subsoil was a friable clay in which almost anything would grow if it was properly worked and fed. It was my desire to make this square block of forty acres into a first-class apple orchard for profit. Seven years from planting is almost too soon to decide how well I have ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... is probably the foremost Negro in the State. He has made many speeches, which, homely in manner, have, nevertheless, a subsoil of strong common sense. He has been employed by the Military authorities from time to time in aiding, by "moral suasion" to preserve peace; is about 45 years of age; was formerly a hotel servant in Columbia where he still resides. Some months ago, on the same ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... an extraordinary excitement about Paris," he wrote. "A levity. I suspect the gypsum in the subsoil—some as yet undescribed radiations. Suddenly the world looks brightly cynical.... None of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... different character from the surface soil, but this difference is more often the result of circumstances than of formation. The surface soil from having been long cultivated has been more opened to the influences of the air than is the case with the subsoil, which has never been disturbed so as to allow the same action. Again the growth of plants has supplied the surface soil with roots, which by decaying have given it organic matter, thus darkening its ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... the spot, we give a few items more in detail of Mr. Newton's operations, than he has done in the preceding quotations. The tract of land he speaks of is gently undulating; of a sandy loam, with a greater amount of clay in the subsoil; had been literally worn out in former years by the shallow plowing, skinning system of farming, until it would produce no more, when it was abandoned and suffered to grow up again in forest timber, principally pine of the "old field" species. No land could offer less inducements to the cultivator ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... Cassius, and I'll tell you why. You take it on the farm down home. Dad says that our land in Gilead is no good because it's been worked over and over, and it's all worn out, but if you plow deep and strike a brand new subsoil you get wonderful crops. Just think what a lovely time you'll have planting crops in my ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... breadth, backed by an escarpment of varied height and character, which is known to geologists as the old coast-line. On this flat terrace most of the seaport towns of the empire are built. The subsoil which underlies its covering of vegetable mould consists usually of stratified sands and gravels, arranged after the same fashion as on the neighboring beach, and interspersed in the same manner with sea ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... the south of Ireland—the moory bog—varies in depth from nine inches to three feet, below which there is a clayey or sandy subsoil. On the average, about L4 per statute acre is required to bring it from a state of nature to one of cultivation, and then it will fetch a rent of from 5s. to ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... works in addition to the special reading for the work of each Sunday. Week by week a conscientious minister has to do an immense amount of miscellaneous reading in commentaries, dictionaries, etc., in connection with the discourses in hand; but, in addition to this, he should be enriching the subsoil of his mind by larger efforts in wider fields. It is far from easy to carry this on in a busy pastorate; and it is almost impossible unless the foundation has been laid ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... desert is a tract with a dry substratum and dry air, great heat during some part of the year, and bright sunshine. The soil may be loam or sand, and as regards vegetation a sandy desert is the worst owing to the rapid drying up of the subsoil after rain. In the third of the maps appended to Schimper's Plant Geography by far the greater part of the area dealt with in this book is shown as part of the vast desert extending from the Sahara to Manchuria. Seeing that the monsoon penetrates into the province and that it is traversed by large ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... real people are really doing, when one thinks of it, are Soap, Tooth-brushes, Subsoil Pipes, Wall Papers, Razors, Mattresses, Suspenders, Tiles, Shoes, Pots, and Kettles. Of course the first thing that happened to us, to Lim and to me (as any one might guess, in a little quiet job ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Kinghorn and later Wester Kinghorn. The origin and meaning of the present name of the town have always been a matter of conjecture. There seems reason to believe that it refers to the time when the site, or a portion of it, formed an island, as sea-sand is the subsoil even of the oldest quarters. Another derivation is from Gaelic words meaning "the island beyond the bend." With Dysart, Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy, it unites in returning one ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... taught me, and that I have found the lesson true, that there is no such thing as a shallow nature: every nature is infinitely deep, for the works of God are everlasting. Also, there is no nature that is not shallow to what it must become. I suspect every nature must have the subsoil ploughing of sorrow, before it can recognize either its present poverty ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... in a general way, but particularly if around, and worse still, under our dwellings. However healthy a district is considered to be, it is never safe to leave the top soil inclosed within the walls of our houses; and in many cases the subsoil should be covered with a layer of cement concrete, and at times with asphalt on the concrete. For if the subsoil be damp, moisture will rise; if it be porous, offensive matter may percolate through. It is my belief that much of the cold dampness felt in so many houses is caused ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... that pulverizes easily—and, if possible, of volcanic origin—is best for coffee; also, soil rich in decomposed mold. In Brazil the best soil is known as terra roxa, a topsoil of red clay three or four feet thick with a gravel subsoil. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... apple prefers a rather strong soil, neither very heavy nor very light. Subsoil is rather more important than surface soil, although the latter should be friable and easily worked. The apple follows good timber successfully. Heavy clay soils are apt to be too cold, compact, and wet; light sandy soils too loose and dry. A medium ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... harder task than had been anticipated. Captain Smithers had expected to find the subsoil of the island all soft alluvial earth, in which, from the neighbourhood of the river, there would be an abundance of water. It had never occurred to him that if the island had been of soft earth it would long before have been washed ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... Malaria and miasms offer to the unpractised eye of the military officer no perceptible signs of their presence. The camp is liable to be pitched and the men required to sleep in malarious spots, or on the damp earth, or over a wet subsoil, exposed to noisome and dangerous exhalations from which disease may arise. Pringle says, that, in 1798, the regiment which had 52 per cent, sick in two months, and 94 per cent, sick in one season, "were cantoned on marshes whence noxious exhalations emanated."[51] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... want of a vision of the inevitable fate of the godless and disobedient, that much of our present-day preaching is so powerless and ephemeral. You cannot get crops out of the land merely by summer showers and sunshine; there must be the subsoil ploughing, the pulverizing frost, the wild March wind. And only when we modern preachers have seen sin as God sees it, and begin to apply the divine standard to the human conscience; only when our eagerness and yearning well over into our eyes ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... clay, and the subsoil, which you see in the cliffs, is yellow sandstone—the loveliest, goldenest soil ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... suspicious; river water to which sewage gains access and shallow-well water as dangerous. The water that is used so largely for drinking purposes for stock throughout some States can not but be impure. I refer to those sections where there is an impervious clay subsoil. It is the custom to scoop, or hollow out, a large basin in the pastures. During rains these basins become filled with water. The clay subsoil, being almost impervious, acts as a jug, and there is no escape for the water ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... Betty, who knew the power of man to exasperate, appreciated his consideration. She wondered how deep his actual knowledge of women went, how much of his success with them he owed to the strong manly instincts springing from a subsoil of sound common-sense which had carried him safely past so many of ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... a potent influence, especially in his earlier days; but the chief source of his liberty was another. It was his personal spontaneity, similar to that of Emerson, and his personal vitality, similar to that of nobody else. Convictions and ideas came to him, so to speak, from the subsoil. He had a prophetic sympathy with the dawning sentiments of the age, with the moods of the dumb majority. His scattered words caught fire in many parts of the world. His way of thinking and feeling represented the true ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... aid of manure. A hothouse climate and regular rainfall made Bengal the predestined breeding-ground of mankind; the seat of an ancient and complex civilisation. But subsistence is too easily secured in those fertile plains. Malaria, due to the absence of subsoil drainage, is ubiquitous, and the standard of vitality extremely low. Bengal has always been at the mercy of invaders. The earliest inroad was prompted by economic necessity. About 2000 B.C. a congeries of races which are now styled "Aryan" were driven by the shrinkage of water from their ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... drainage, need little more in this direction than such a conformation of the surface as will prevent water from standing on the footway when the ground is frozen. At all other times it sinks naturally away into the earth. It is much more often the case that the character of the soil or subsoil prevents a settling away of water, or that subterranean oozing from higher ground keeps the earth throughout the spring and autumn, and after heavy rains in summer, damp, and often sloppy. Wherever the ground is of such a character as to prevent the ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring

... to unravel. As a rule, Roman town-gates had large super-structures and needed stronger foundations than the town-walls. At Newgate, where the superstructure must have been comparatively slender, the published plans show that under a part, at least, of the gate-towers the undisturbed subsoil rises higher than beneath the adjacent town-walls. According to the elevation published by Dr. Norman and Mr. F. W. Reader in Archaeologia lxiii, plate lvii, the wall-builders at this point stopped their deep foundation trenches for the full width of ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield

... what roads! Now it was a strip of corduroy, now a piece of well-graded elevation with clay subsoil and gravel surface, now a neglected stretch full of dangerous holes; and worst of all, running through the great forests, long pieces of road from which the stumps had been only partly extracted, and where the sunlight barely penetrated. Here the soaked earth ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie

... hard corn is to subsoil it with a hatchet, though a little judicious paring is good; soft corn sometimes does the pairing itself, though not judiciously. Soft corn is sometimes called sweet corn, on the principle, "sweet are the uses of adversity." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... chestnut are at home in non-calcareous soils. The latter class of lands gains nothing in lime as time passes, and the timber continues to be a sure index, but in the former class the surface soil may have lost enough lime to limit crop production materially while the trees continue to find in the subsoil all that they need. It does not follow that the land has gone down in value to the naturally lime-deficient class, but its power to produce is impaired, and will remain so until there has been restoration of its ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... wondered," Polwarth yet again resumed, "whether the troubles without end that some people seem born to—I do not mean those they bring upon themselves—may not be as subsoil plows, tearing deep into the family mold, that the seeds of the lost virtues of their race may in them be once more brought within reach of sun and air and dew. It would be a pleasant, hopeful thought if one might hold it. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... the birth-stock of a New World. For feudalism, caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from political institutions, still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in this country, entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the very subsoil, of education, and of social ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... is not so deep, and the subsoil coarse and rather gravelly, the ground is not trenched so deep; the bottom of the trench being merely dug over. Above this, however, a large quantity of manure is applied; and by this, with good after-management,—chiefly consisting in making the soil fine and light for the shoots ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... exhaustive study of them all; but sermons and parish calls and funerals, and that little affair of Mrs. Samuel Nute, have forced him, by a process of which we all know something, to forego his projected subsoil ploughing and make such hasty preparation ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... unprecedented faith, God's faith, Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd, The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid bare, Open'd by thee to heaven's light ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... had been made to dig a tank in the garden, but the subsoil water proving too low, it had been abandoned, unfinished, with the excavated earth left piled up into a hillock. On the top of this height my father used to sit for his morning prayer, and as he sat the sun would rise at the edge of the undulating expanse which stretched away to the eastern ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... the hill for hundreds and hundreds of feet along this side had been ruthlessly rent from its place and flung broadcast everywhere, and, in the chaos he beheld, Buck calculated that hundreds of thousands of tons of the blackened rock and subsoil had been ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it.—The explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the enormous number of impressions which pass through our consciousness, until in some future ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the greatest chance to manifest itself. But I repeat, I cannot express an opinion upon this point. I have gone forward with you as far as I can; I stop upon the threshold of the mystery. To explore the most secret depths of the unconscious, to labor in what I have just called the subsoil of consciousness, that will be the principal task of psychology in the century which is opening. I do not doubt that wonderful discoveries await it there, as important perhaps as have been in the preceding centuries the discoveries ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... about 1830 that the subsoil-plough of Mr. Smith of Deanston was first contrived for special work upon the lands of Perthshire. Notwithstanding all the brilliant successes of Bakewell, long-legged, raw-boned cattle were admired by the majority of British farmers at the opening of this century, and elephantine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... during the preceding century, this miserable village, with various other hamlets and almost all the cottages attached to farms on the Melrose estate, were the scandal of the countryside. Roofs that let in rain and wind, clay floors, a subsoil soaked in every possible abomination, bedrooms "more like dens for wild animals than sleeping-places for men and women," to quote a recent Government report, and a polluted water supply!—what more could reckless human living, aided by human carelessness ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... anonymous donor had promised a second five hundred pounds, if the hospital was built on high ground with a subsoil of gravel." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... it. In three years, even oaks and other usually slow growing forest trees have covered the land, making shoots by three feet in a season, and throwing out roots well qualified, by their number and length, to derive from the subsoil abundant nourishment, in proportion as the surface becomes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... own country, in the neighbourhood of the falls of Niagara. In the immediate vicinity of the whirlpool, and again upon Goat Island, in the superficial deposits which cover the surface of the rocky subsoil in those regions, there are found remains of animals in perfect preservation, and among them, shells belonging to exactly the same species as those which at present inhabit the still waters of Lake Erie. It is evident, from the structure of the country, that these animal ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... of the Karst region are imperfect valleys which have no outlet. As a consequence of this, the water cannot escape by an overground bed, so it forces itself through the porous surface to reappear in a lower valley, undermining the subsoil, which in time collapses, and forms the oases of this otherwise barren land. The rain washes down the little earth that there is on the hillside, the chemical action of the limestone oxidises the same, and the so-called "terra rossa" is formed in these depressions, sufficient ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... meanwhile taken place. The Kimballs had come from the Pacific coast, where the same alchemist's result had been wrought with a block of Southern Pacific Railway stock. The family tree of the Earls had rooted itself into the subsoil of real culture, while that of the Kimballs was mostly displayed above ground with only here and there a stray fibre that had sunk ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... saltpetre which the waters had dissolved in their passage, crystallising on the limestone, would corrode and undermine everything, if precautions were not taken. When the inundation was over, the subsidence of the water which impregnated the subsoil caused in course of time settlements in the most solid foundations: the walls, disturbed by the unequal sinking of the ground, got out of the perpendicular and cracked; this shifting displaced the architraves which held the columns together, and the stone slabs which formed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... orchards to undergo, probably the selection of the wrong kind of land has been the cause of more disappointment than any other one source. A fertile soil deep, mellow, well drained sandy or gravelly clay subsoil should be ideal for pecans anywhere in the latitude in which they are hardy. However, many other types of soil are producing pecans, and if your home happens to be located where the soil is not ideal, you can still grow them by furnishing the elements ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... him in the cavern. The top surface of the ground was rolled up into waves like the sea. The sides of the hole were almost sheer. The naked rock was exposed for thirty feet. Above the rock could be seen the subsoil, and then the layer of top soil and vegetation. Dr. Bird was carefully ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... of conflict, fear and grief, When the strong hand of God, put forth in might, Plows up the subsoil of the stagnant heart And brings the imprisoned truth-seed ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... believed to extend from Pennsylvania to Venezuela embraces a considerable portion of the Dominican Republic. Near Puerto Plata, during rains, one of the streams flowing down from the mountains in the Mameyes section, is covered with greasy spots thought to be petroleum that has oozed from the subsoil. Traces of petroleum have also been discovered near Neiba, and in the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... of abundant rainfall, a great distinction exists between the soil and the subsoil. The soil is represented by the upper few inches which are filled with the remnants of decayed vegetable matter and modified by plowing, harrowing, and other cultural operations. The subsoil has been profoundly modified by the action of the heavy rainfall, which, in soaking ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... peculiar vegetation, not only within the area he has himself traversed, but for perhaps a hundred miles around it. His acute observation enables him to detect the slightest undulations of the surface, the various changes of subsoil and alterations in the character of the vegetation, that would be quite imperceptible to a stranger. His eye is always open to the direction in which he is going; the mossy side of trees, the presence of certain plants under the shade of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... one of the original 13 States of N. America, on the Atlantic, about the size of England, S. of Virginia, 480 m. from E. to W. and 180 m. from N. to S.; has a fertile, well-watered subsoil in the high lands; is rich in minerals and natural products; the mountains are covered with forests, and the manufactures ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... soil and subsoil will frequently afford most useful indications respecting the value of land. It may be laid down as an axiom that a soil to be fertile must contain all the chemical ingredients which a plant can only obtain from the soil, and chemistry ought to be able to inform ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... condition of immediate removal. They serve for the retention of excremental and other matters. In a porous soil it endangers the purity of the wells. The Indian cities afford numerous examples of subsoil pollution. The Delhi ulcer was traced to the pollution of the wells from the contaminated subsoil; and the soil in many cities and villages is loaded with niter and salt, the chemical results of animal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... subsoil.—In countries of abundant rainfall, a great distinction exists between the soil and the subsoil. The soil is represented by the upper few inches which are filled with the remnants of decayed vegetable matter and modified by plowing, harrowing, and other cultural operations. ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... for them. But the Second of December had its refinements of cruelty; it required in addition petty victims. Its appetite for extermination extended to the poor and to the obscure, its anger and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... that the roots will strike far into it, and be enabled thereby to withstand droughts and cold winters. The best means of deepening the soil, as explained in Chapter IV, is by tile-draining; but it can also be accomplished to some extent by the use of the subsoil plow and by trenching. Since the lawn cannot be refitted, however, the subsoil is likely to fall back into a hard-pan in a few years if it has been subsoiled or trenched, whereas a good tile-drain affords a permanent amelioration ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... interesting spot we stood awhile to note the peculiarities of the place and its position. The soil is a loose clay, deep-red or brown, impregnated with iron and, where unclothed with humus, cold and infertile, as the spontaneous aloe shows. The subsoil is laterite, also highly ferruginous. Soft and working well with the axe while it retains the quarry-water, it soon hardens by exposure; and, thus weathered, it forms the best and ugliest of the local ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... labor put on this piece of land, as it was first reduced to a level by removing the soil and subsoil, and levelling the gravelly bottom; then returning the subsoil and soil to the top. Walks were next laid out with great care, and flower beds made. A border was also dug for the expected new greenhouse, and filled with ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... sandy loam consists of from 8 to 12 inches of a heavy brown or gray sandy loam, underlain by a heavy yellow or red loam or clay loam. Often the subsoil contains a considerable quantity of coarse sand, making the texture much the same as that of the soil. The sand of the soil and subsoil is composed of very coarse rounded and subangular quartz particles. The surface material is not a light sandy loam, but is more like a loam containing ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... they go?" He is lost in such questions, but finds no answer to them. To discover the false seed of poesy which lies in those heads and fructifies in those lives, it is necessary to dig into them; and when we do that we soon come to a thin subsoil beneath the surface. The Parisian shopkeeper nurtures his soul on some hope or other, more or less attainable, without which he would doubtless perish. One dreams of building or managing a theatre; another longs for the honors of mayoralty; this one desires a country-house, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... apple-tree should be made larger than for any other tree, because its roots are wide-spreading, like its branches. The earth should be thrown out to the depth of twenty inches, and four or five feet square, for an ordinary-sized tree. This, however, will not do on a heavy clay subsoil, for it would form a basin to hold water and injure the tree. A ditch, as low as the bottom of the holes, should extend from tree to tree, and running out of the orchard, constructed in the usual method of drains, and, whatever be the subsoil, the trees will flourish. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... degrees beyond the limit where the ground at the depth of a few feet remains perpetually congealed, are covered by forests of large and tall trees. (5/9. See "Zoological Remarks to Captain Back's Expedition" by Dr. Richardson. He says, "The subsoil north of latitude 56 degrees is perpetually frozen, the thaw on the coast not penetrating above three feet, and at Bear Lake, in latitude 64 degrees, not more than twenty inches. The frozen substratum ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... in the ground to be secure from frost; but to be most effective it should not be over fourteen to sixteen inches below the surface, hence sub-irrigation cannot be used very successfully in the Northern states. In a sandy loam soil with a clay subsoil it works best at ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... been set in blasted holes, a stick about one and one-half inches long being sufficient to make a hole three feet in diameter and perhaps twenty inches in depth. It is yet too early to measure the results of this work, but owing to the nature of the subsoil in this region, we are looking for splendid results. With regard to the stock secured from the Fruit Farm, we have not been uniformly successful. Much of the stock seems to be weak and dies readily from some cause unknown to us. Next season we should be able to render a more complete report, as our ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... 12-mile contiguous zone in addition to its 12-mile territorial sea) continental shelf - the LOS Convention (Article 76) defines the continental shelf of a coastal State as comprising the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... paralysis for life. I believe that Salisbury Plain is known for it, and I hear that all the ground that troops are now occupying is to be ploughed up when we leave. As far as that goes we have ploughed it up a bit already, but a systematic ploughing will make it more regular. The subsoil is only four inches, then you come to chalky clay. The tent-pegs when they are taken from the ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... "are called 'The Roof of New England.' There's not much of any timber on top, but on the sides you will find some spruce, yellow pine and hemlock. It's all granite a little way under the subsoil; and over the subsoil grows moss. Among these mosses and the roots of the trees almost every important stream in New England takes its rise, and some of them grow to be quite decent rivers. You ladies live in this state, ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... hundreds of them, and heard their individual narratives of escapes from death until my imagination was saturated with the spirit of their conflict of body and soul. I saw a green, downy countryside, beautiful in its summer life, ravaged by gun-fire so that the white chalk of its subsoil was flung above the earth and grass in a wide, sterile stretch of desolation pitted with shell-craters, ditched by deep trenches, whose walls were hideously upheaved by explosive fire, and littered ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... the thin and loose soil on the sides of hills; apparently because this lay on rock, or a substratum so tenacious as to support the water in or just under the surface. The wheels and also the feet of the cattle sunk at once to this rocky subsoil whatever its depth, and up came the water, so that on level parts our track resembled a ditch of mud and water, and on slopes it formed a current of water and a drain from the sides of hills. I had observed the plains during my reconnaissance of the interior from ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... kaetae] on the conjecture of Sylburgius, who was followed by Bekker, Dindorf, and Boissevain. (Compare also Suetonius, Life of Nero, chapter 12).] swam in it, and had a naval battle between "Persians" and "Athenians." At the close of it he suddenly withdrew the water, dried the subsoil, and continued land contests, not only between two men at a time but with ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... kennel. According to the early opinion of Mr. Asheton Smith, who is a good authority, it was referable to some peculiarity in the breed or management of the hounds; but, agreeably to a later opinion, it is dependent on situation and subsoil, and may be aggravated or increased by circumstances over which we have no control. Some kennels are in low and damp situations, yet the hounds are free from all complaint: and others, with the stanchest dogs and under the best management, are continually ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... canal mud are applied to the fields, sometimes at the rate of even 70 and more tons per acre. So, too, where there are no canals, both soil and subsoil are carried into the villages and there between the intervals when needed they are, at the expense of great labor, composted with organic refuse and often afterwards dried and pulverized before being carried back and used on the fields as home-made fertilizers. Manure of all kinds, human ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... unthinking or superficial mind. Her mother had early taught her the trick of agreeable talk which appears to imply superiority, replying to arguments by clever jests, and attracting by the graceful volubility beneath which a woman hides the subsoil of her mind, as Nature disguises her barren strata beneath a wealth of ephemeral vegetation. Natalie had the charm of children who have never known what it is to suffer. She charmed by her frankness, and had none of that solemn air which mothers impose on their daughters by laying down a ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... the facility of cleansing will be greatly increased. A smooth surface, between which and the subsoil is interposed a thick concrete—which grows as hard and impermeable as iron—will not generate mud and filth to one-fiftieth of the extent of either granite roads or Macadam. It is probable that if there were no importations of dirt from the wheels of carriages coming off the stone streets, little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... passed horizontally under the kangs before rising through the roof. These kangs were wide enough to spread the beds upon, about thirty inches high, and had been constructed from brick twelve inches square and four inches thick, made from the clay subsoil taken from the fields and worked into a plastic mass, mixed with chaff and short straw, dried in the sun and then laid in a mortar of the same material. These massive kangs are thus capable of absorbing large ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... below the surface of the prairie, and often in especially dry seasons cattle would perish were not these faithful little well-diggers and pumpers constantly at work for them. In the river valleys of Arizona although the air is dry the subsoil water is near the surface of the ground. Here flourishes the mesquit tree, Prosopis juliflora, with a tale to tell well worth knowing. When a mesquit seems stunted, it is because its strength is withdrawn for the task of delving to find water; where a tree grows tall with goodly branches, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... often observe a change of texture. It has become finer, and at the same time the clay is paler in colour. This subsoil represents the finer particles carried by rain from above. The change of colour is due to the state of the iron which is less oxidised low down in the soil. Beneath ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... one's mind with nautical stories which charmed one in the long-past days of youth. A steamer is very much the reverse. "Sam Slick," with his usual force and aptitude of illustration, says that "she goes through the water like a subsoil-plough with an eight-horse team." There is so much noise and groaning, and smoke and dirt, so much mystery also, and the ship leaves so much commotion in the water behind her. There do not seem to be any ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... hot season. This system of drainage is not a modern invention; the Italian monks understood it as well as, and even better than, we do. In deep and loose soils they used sometimes, just as we do now, porous clay pipes; but when the subsoil was formed of compact and nearly impermeable matters, they employed a system of drainage, the extent and grandeur of which astonishes us. It is that of drainage by cavities, applied by the Etruscans, Latins, and Volsci to all the Roman hills formed of volcanic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... we have twice already noted, that the exalted or seemingly improved condition, whether of plant or animal, induced by human interference, is not the true and artistical ideal of it.[35] It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert,[36] that many plants are found alone on a certain soil or subsoil in a wild state, not because such soil is favorable to them, but because they alone are capable of existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its inhospitality removed. Now if we withdraw the plant from this position, which it hardly ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... size—the [v.04 p.0561] chief being the Foret de Senart, the Foret de Crecy and the Foret d'Armainvilliers. The surface soil is clay in which are embedded fragments of siliceous sandstone, used for millstones and constructional purposes; the subsoil is limestone. The Yeres, a tributary of the Seine, and the Grand Morin and Petit Morin, tributaries of the Marne, are the chief rivers, but the region is not abundantly watered and the rainfall is only between ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the enormous number of impressions which ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... their weight; the top of the rounded heap was about 4 feet high. This justified the hope that something might be discovered beneath them. But although the entire space within, up to the fairly defined inner faces of the walls, was thoroughly cleaned out down into the untouched gravelly subsoil, no trace of a bone or other indication of a burial was found. The only artificial object was a section 31/4 inches long of a columella perforated lengthwise, apparently lost by the wearer, as it lay on the natural surface. This is shown in ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... 2,000 yards from the enemy's line, the stillness of what one sees is in marked contrast to the turmoil of shells passing overhead. The only movement is the cloud of smoke and earth that marks the burst of a shell. Here and there long white lines are visible, when a trench has brought the chalky subsoil up to the top, but the number of trenches seen is very small compared to the number that exist, for one cannot see into the valleys, and the top of the ground is an unhealthy place to choose for seating a trench. The woods are pointed ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the other, which had already been cropped once or twice. One of two horses went first, and, with a common English plough, turned an ordinary furrow. Then the other followed, of twice the force of the first, in the same furrow, with a subsoil plough held to the work beam-deep. The iron-stones and ferruginous clods turned up by this "deep tillage" would make a prairie farmer of Illinois wonder, if not shudder, at the plucky and ingenious industry which competes with his easy toil and cheap land ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... awhile in the misty distance, the whale came near us. It was almost calm and we could see him without glasses. He rose and disappeared at intervals of a minute, and as he moved along he rippled the surface like a subsoil plough on a gigantic scale. After ten or twelve small dives, he threw his tail in air and went down for ten minutes or more. When he reappeared he was two or three hundred yards from ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... that the rows will be straight both ways. The pegging being completed, the holes should be dug not less than 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. The top soil should be carefully placed on one side of the hole and the subsoil on the other, the holes should remain open as long as possible and should only be filled in a week or so before planting the trees. The bottoms of the holes should be explored with a light crowbar and, if any rocks or stones are found, they ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs

... our rainfall is almost too great; our soil so damp that we have had to invent a whole art of subsoil drainage unknown to you; while, as for fuel, our coal-mines make us the great fuel-exporting people ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... N. interiority; inside, interior; interspace^, subsoil, substratum; intrados. contents &c 190; substance, pith, marrow; backbone &c (center) 222; heart, bosom, breast; abdomen; vitals, viscera, entrails, bowels, belly, intestines, guts, chitterings^, womb, lap; penetralia [Lat.], recesses, innermost recesses; cave &c (concavity) 252. V. be inside ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... good many Anti-Slavery men who thought the party feeling of the Whigs and Democrats was a great obstacle to their cause, joined the movement simply in order that they might get rid of the old parties, and prepare the State as with a subsoil plow for a new one. They had no belief in the proscriptive doctrines, and were willing that men of foreign birth and Catholics should have their just rights, and expected to destroy the Know Nothing Party in its turn when it had destroyed Whiggery ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... agricultural probe is an instrument which I first saw slung over my friend Baddely's shoulders, and of his invention. It is a sort of huge screw gimblet, or auger, which readily penetrates the ground by being worked with a long cross-handle, and brings up the subsoil in a groove to a considerable depth. Specimens of the soil and of rocks and minerals were collected, and a plan was adopted which is a useful lesson to future explorers. A small piece of linen or cotton, about four inches square, had two pieces of twine sewed on opposite ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... drainage we went down to a subsoil we did not know, and have found there is a Concord under old Concord, which we are now getting the best crops from; a Middlesex under Middlesex; and, in fine, that Massachusetts has a basement story more valuable and that promises ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... interiority; inside, interior; interspace[obs3], subsoil, substratum; intrados. contents &c. 190; substance, pith, marrow; backbone &c. (center) 222; heart, bosom, breast; abdomen; vitals, viscera, entrails, bowels, belly, intestines, guts, chitterings[obs3], womb, lap; penetralia[Lat], recesses, innermost recesses; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... such a way that it will hold all the water it needs. It must be level, or some of the rice plants will have only their feet wet while others will be up to their necks. The ordinary procedure in making a paddy is to remove the top soil, beat down the subsoil beneath, and then restore the top soil—there may be from 5 to 10 in. of it. But the best efforts of the paddy-field builder may be brought to naught by springs or by a gravelly bottom. Then the farmer must make the best terms he can ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... rise to a tract of rough uncultivated land which is in many places covered with woods. On its southern boundary the ground rises steeply on the east, and more gently on the west, to the Franco-Belgian frontier, over a rocky subsoil in which the affluents of the river ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres

... become a thing of the past. In the wastes of Gascony it was formerly a means of locomotion adapted to the nature of the country. The waste lands were then great level plains covered with stunted bushes and dry heath. Moreover, on account of the permeability of the subsoil, all the declivities were transformed into marshes after the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... the field. Examine the soil in the holes dug for the root lessons, noticing the difference between the upper or surface soil and the under or subsoil. Examine as many kinds of surface soils and subsoils as possible, also decayed leaf mould, the black soil of the woods, etc. If there are in the neighborhood any exposed embankments where a road has been cut through a hill, or where a river or the sea water has cut into a bank ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... end. It will be remembered that these trees have greatly suffered, in past times, from the ravages of canker-worms. Moreover, the impenetrable state of the surface soil, the exhausted condition of the subsoil, and the deprivation of all benefit from the decomposition of accumulated leaves, which, in a state of nature, the trees would have enjoyed, but which a regard for neatness has industriously removed, have ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... was with infinitely greater effort that the two sections of the canals were forced ahead each day. The surface of the ground was like stone, only by repeated attempts pierced by plows and torn apart; while the subsoil immediately froze if left unworked. The weaker labourers began to break: the scrawny Mexicans, the debilitated white men, the drifters and the dissatisfied; and they left the camps. These the labour agencies found it harder and harder to replace as ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... cultivation accordingly. In the British Isles wheat is, as a rule, sown in the autumn on a heavier soil, and has four or five months in which to distribute its roots, and so it gets possession of a wide range of soil and subsoil before barley is sown in the spring. Barley, on the other hand, is sown in a lighter surface soil, and, with its short period for root-development, relies in a much greater degree on the stores of plant-food within ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... palms ran in serried rows quarter of a mile inland, then began a jungle of bamboo, gum-tree, sandalwood, plantain, huge fern, and choking grasses. The south-east end of the island was hillocky, with volcanic subsoil. There ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... was a wonderful leader on potatoes yesterday. We must dig up the garden. Do you know what the subsoil is?" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... features of these swampy countries, and the intelligence of the insects directs their architecture to a height far above the level of the highest floods. The earth used in their construction is the subsoil, brought up from a considerable depth, as the ant-hills are yellow, while the surface soil is black. The earth is first swallowed by the insect and thus it becomes mixed with some albuminous matter which converts it into a cement that resists the action of rain. These ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... cherries; the peaches and apricots correspondingly advanced; the cherries under glass quite over. One of the latest improvements is a second flower garden to the west of the house, in the English landscape style. In rear of this garden to the north, there existed formerly a cedar swamp, which deep subsoil draining with tiles has converted into a grass meadow of great beauty; a belt of pine, spruce, tamarack, and some deciduous trees, thinned towards the south-west, let in a glimpse of the St. Lawrence and the high-wooded Point Levi shores, shutting out ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... it; and should the plan be to raise an early crop, this end will be promoted by fall ploughing, on any soil, as the land will thereby be made drier in early spring. In New England the soil for cabbages should be ploughed as deep as the subsoil, and the larger drumheads should be planted only on the deepest soil. If the season should prove a favorable one, a good crop of cabbage may be grown on sod broken up immediately after a crop of hay has been taken from it, ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory

... the waters retire, the women drop a few grains in a hole made with a hoe, then push back the soil with the foot. One weeding alone is required before the grain comes to maturity. This simple process represents all our subsoil plowing, liming, manuring, and harrowing, for in four months after planting a good crop is ready for the sickle, and has been known to yield a hundred-fold. It flourished still more at Zumbo. No irrigation is required, because here there are gentle rains, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... only knew the Holy Scriptures, but was "wise unto salvation"—but it strengthened and clarified, quickened and gave permanent direction to, his sense of God as revealed in His Word. He took as it were to subsoil ploughing; he got a new and adamantine point to the instrument with which he bored, and with a fresh power—with his whole might, he sunk it right down into the living rock, to the virgin gold. His entire nature had got a shock, and his ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... resulting chiefly from the insanity for speed, in those who for the most part have nothing to do at the end of the race, which they run as if they were so many Mercuries speeding with messages from Jupiter. Look at our scientific drainage, which turns refuse into poison. Look at the subsoil of London, whenever it is turned up to the air, converted by gas leakage into one mass of pestilent blackness, in which no vegetation can flourish, and above which, with the rapid growth of the ever-growing nuisance, no living ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... such a thing as the sudden giving way of the inward subsoil. A despairing certainty does not make its way into a man without thrusting aside and breaking certain profound elements which, in some cases, are the very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... (vide Coleridge, etc.). Is this aesthetic? Is this exegetical? How glad I shall be if you can assure me that it is! But, nonsense apart and begged pardon for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place. "The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay, with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation; adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover—requiring, however, a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc." ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... disposal to give him an opportunity of studying English agriculture. The chance was not thrown away. Cavour learnt everything about the management of a well-ordered English estate down to the minutest particulars. He admired much, especially the system of subsoil drainage, then a novelty to foreigners, but he was not carried away by the beautiful appearance of the English country so far as to think that the English farmer was in all respects ahead of the North Italian. He compared the up-and-down English meadow left to itself ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... thinking; with inclusive feeling, transcendent aspiration. It does not try to pietize the ordinary, commercial and domestic affairs of men. Instead it deals with the highest questions and perceptions of human life; argues from those sublime hypotheses which are the very subsoil of the religious temperament and understanding. It deals with those aspects of human life which indeed include, but include because they transcend, the commercial and domestic, the professional and political affairs of daily living. We have been insisting in these chapters that it is ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... of course, that War itself does anything final in the advance of civilization. War itself is, what the poets call it, a terrible piece of ploughing. With us, just now, it is subsoil-ploughing, very deep at that. Stumps and stones have to be heaved out, which had on them the moss and lichens and superficial soil of centuries, and which had fancied, in that heavy semi-consciousness which belongs to stumps and stones, that they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... How glad I shall be if you can assure me that it is. But, nonsense apart and begged-pardon-for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place. 'The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover—requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc.' This is not an unpleasing style on ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... more destructive on the summits of isolated hills and ridges and on the steep slopes of mountains. The influence of the form of the ground was, however, subordinate to that exerted by the nature of the subsoil. Thus, at Mentone, as we have seen, and also at Nice and Genoa, houses built on rock in elevated positions suffered much less than those situated on the plains below that are composed of ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... in their growth when irrigation is not used; while those that do have a tap root, as do walnuts, continue to grow and thrive even in the driest weather. The walnut should be planted, however, in soil having a subsoil free from any hard substance that will permit the tap root to grow downward into the strata of ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various

... smartness with which he wears his dress, buttoned up as it is, and coaxed about him with all the ingenuity which experience and necessity bring to the aid of vanity. His napeless hat is severely brushed in order to give the subsoil an appearance of the nap which is gone, but it won't do; every one sees that his intention is excellent, were it possible for address and industry to work it out. This is not the case, however, and the hat is consequently a clear ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... Nitrifying Organism in the Soil.—Three series of experiments have been made on the distribution of the nitrifying organism in the clay soil and subsoil at Rothamsted. Advantage was taken of the fact that deep pits had been dug in one of the experimental fields for the purpose of obtaining samples of the soil and subsoil. Small quantities of soil were taken from freshly-cut surfaces on the sides of these pits at depths varying from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... length, was daily observed in the autumn during several weeks, and every morning many fresh castings were seen; but not a single leaf was drawn into these burrows. These castings from their blackness and from the nature of the subsoil could not have been brought up from a greater depth than 6 or 8 inches. On what could these worms have subsisted during this whole time, if not on matter contained in the black earth? On the other hand, whenever a large number of leaves are drawn into the burrows, the worms seem to subsist ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... permanently settled must do their best with such land as they have, and in a later chapter I shall suggest how differing soils should be managed. To those who can still choose their location, I would recommend a deep mellow loam, with a rather compact subsoil,— moist, but capable of thorough drainage. Diversity of soil and exposure offer peculiar advantages also. Some fruits thrive best in a stiff clay, others in sandy upland. Early varieties ripen earlier on a sunny slope, while a late kind is rendered later on a northern ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... Tandogo, we encamped on the Bogan where there was a good pond of water. This abundance was the more acceptable as we had now left behind a part of the bed of this little river which for thirty miles was quite dry; the total want of water there being chiefly owing to the absorbent nature of the subsoil. We were now drawing towards its sources amongst the hills, and the same scarcity no longer prevailed. The height and girt of some of the callitris trees were very considerable. Thus we found that Australia contains some extensive forests ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... ... their Disintegration ... Chemical Composition of the Soil ... Fertile and Barren Soils ... Mechanical Texture of Soils ... Absorbent Action of Soils ... their Physical Characters ... Relation to Heat and Moisture ... The Subsoil ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... mind so often fails of realization; that it is one thing to design, and another to accomplish. The grandest design for a palace may fail to stand because some peculiarity of the stone has been forgotten, or some character of foundation and subsoil has been misunderstood. The noblest form of turret-ship may prove useless because the strength of some material will not correspond to the ideal, or some curve of stability has been miscalculated. Not only this: man may create, as a sculptor, the ideal form for his to-be statue, ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... Farming is a happy sedative for English noblemen of the nineteenth century, thought Theodora, as she heard them discussing subsoil and rocks, and thought of the poet turned high farmer, and forgetting even love and embarrassment! However, she had the satisfaction of hearing, 'No, we cannot carry it out thoroughly there without blowing up the rocks, and I cannot have the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 5.45 p. m. on March 2, 1916, a thing like a great black mushroom rose from the earth. Beneath it appeared, with the ponderous momentum of these big upheavals, a white growth like the mushroom's gills. It was the chalk subsoil following in the wake of the black loam. With this black and white upheaval went up, Heaven knows, how many bodies and limbs of Germans, scattered everywhere with the rest of the debris. And the explosion sent up many graves as well as the bodies of the living. One of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... path across the mire there is he knows it and we don't, and, as you say, who's goin' to follow him?" Having delivered himself of these sage remarks he stepped to the brink of the mire and put his foot heavily upon its surface. His top-boot sank quickly through the yielding crust, and the black subsoil rose with oily, sucking action, 'and his foot was immediately buried out of sight. He drew it out sharply, a shudder of horror quickening his action. Strong man and hardy as he was, the muskeg inspired ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... may be, the grandest renovating and enriching crop commonly grown on our farms. It owes its great value, not to any power it may or may not possess of getting nitrogen from the atmosphere, or phosphoric acid and potash from the subsoil, but principally, if not entirely, to the fact that the roots can drink up such a large amount of water, and live and thrive on ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... runs off on the surface, forming brooks, streams, and lakes, and if it falls on roofs of houses or on prepared catchment areas, it can be collected in cisterns or tanks as rain water. Another part of the water soaks away into pervious strata of the subsoil, and constitutes underground water, which becomes available for supply either in springs or in wells. A third part is either absorbed by plants or ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... successful walnut orchards, though such lands may in due time produce trees that will bear nuts. A first-class walnut orchard can only be produced upon first-class land, deep, fertile soil, a low water table, an open subsoil, with choice varieties, grafted upon the most suitable stock and then given ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... The parallel of this vast plateau was almost confounded with tropical latitudes, and, during certain months in summer, the sun, in passing to the zenith, darted its perpendicular rays there. There was, therefore, an enormous quantity of imprisoned heat in this earth, of which the subsoil preserved the damp. Also, nothing could be more magnificent than this succession of forests, or rather ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... like snow before the wind, and the outlines of these miniature mountain ranges change often in a single night. At one time, centuries ago, this part of Flanders, which is now so bare, was, it is pretty clear, covered by forests, the remains of which are still sometimes found beneath the subsoil inland and under the sea. When the great change came is unknown, but the process was probably gradual. At an early period, here, as in Holland, the fight against the invasions of the sea began, and the first dykes are said ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

... are variously tinted. The stems are herbaceous and not twining. The seeds are inclosed in pods or seed sacks, each of which contains one, two and sometimes, but not often, three or four seeds. The plants have tap roots, and in some varieties these go far down into the subsoil. The roots are also in some varieties ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... sovereignty of a coastal state extends beyond its land territory and internal waters to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea in the UNCLOS (Part II); this sovereignty extends to the air space over the territorial sea as well as its underlying seabed and subsoil; every state has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles; the normal baseline for measuring the breadth of the territorial sea is the low-water line along the coast as marked on large-scale charts ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... on a sidehill, even when otherwise advantageous, is to be regarded with suspicion if the subsoil strata are horizontal and neighbors up the slope have cesspools in use. The writer knows of several cesspools, built in rock, which, so far as their owners were concerned, have worked successfully for many years, but the water leeching ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... long, and terminal erect clusters of not very showy greenish-white flowers that exhale a rather disagreeable odour. It is one of the most distinct and imposing of pinnate-leaved trees, and forms a neat specimen for the lawn or park. Light loam or a gravelly subsoil suits ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster



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