Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Porous   /pˈɔrəs/   Listen
Porous

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



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Porous" Quotes from Famous Books



... in 1842 thought of substituting in the Bunsen battery a solution of bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid for nitric acid, and of thus making a single liquid pile of it, in suppressing the porous vessel, his idea has been taken up a considerable number of times. Some rediscovered it simply, while others, who were better posted in regard to the work of their predecessors, took Poggendorff's pile as he conceived it, and, considering the future that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... the larger stations women come to the train with roast quails stuffed with rice, which they sell at six-pence apiece, and at every station along the line children bring water in the porous clay bottles of the country. This latter is badly needed, for the train rattles along most of the time in a stifling cloud of dust, that penetrates the car and settles ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

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

... firm, not succulent green stems. After trimming off all but a few of the upper leaves, which should be clipped to reduce transpiration, the cuttings—never more than 4 or 5 inches long—should be plunged nearly full depth in well-shaded, rather light, porous, well-drained loam where they should remain undisturbed until they show evidences of growth. Then they may be transplanted. While in the cutting bed they must never be allowed to become dry. This is especially true of greenwood cuttings made during the summer. These should ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... tunnel, stave in. Adj. depressed &c. v.; alveolate[obs3], calathiform[obs3], cup-shaped, dishing; favaginous[obs3], faveolate[obs3], favose[obs3]; scyphiform[obs3], scyphose[obs3]; concave, hollow, stove in; retiring; retreating; cavernous; porous &c. (with holes) 260; infundibul[obs3], infundibular[obs3], infundibuliform[obs3]; funnel shaped, bell shaped; campaniform[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

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

... cleanest way, too. You are all familiar with the sight of a pot covered with crepe paper stained and discoloured from water spilt upon it and moisture given off from the porous pot. ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

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

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

... depth at which the bottom water is reached, but the height to which the water rises in the holes, and the distance at which a drain will lay the hole dry. In sinking these holes, clay-banks are found with hollows or furrows between them, which are filled with a more porous soil, as represented in the annexed ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness in innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl, Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and moulding figures,—hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... engine its final adjustment. "I think, upon my word, this machine's better to-day than when she was first built. If I'm not mistaken, buckskin's a better material for planes than ever canvas was—it's far stronger and less porous, for one thing—and as for the stays, I prefer the braided hide. Wire's ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... warts that look like jet beads, emits a smell like that of grilled meat and leaves a residue of red clay. It is therefore formed of clay and sanies. Moreover, the paste is sprinkled with little scraps of dead flesh. At the smaller end is the egg, in a chamber with a very porous roof, to allow the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... that of about three feet in thickness, symptoms of a speedy disruption were very apparent; long narrow cracks extended continuously for miles; the snow from the surface had all melted, and, running through, served to render the ice-fields porous and spongy: the joyful signs hurried us on, though not without suffering from the lack of pure snow, with which to procure water for drinking. At last Griffith's Island rose above the horizon; a five-and-twenty-mile march brought us to it, and another heavy drag through ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... may be judged from various standpoints when examining the pelt as tannage proceeds. On the one hand, the surface of the but slightly porous pelt is altered so as to present a more porous appearance, which is now rendered more capable of absorbing liquids. On the other hand, a similar alteration takes place within the pelt, to the extent to ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... short time, or very rapidly by the action of heat, and gives porous blocks of a solidity increasing with the quantity of cement employed (5 to 10 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... toads which have been imprisoned in porous rock where they could get the necessary air. They have lived for months in a stupor. In impervious rock they have died. Frozen fish can revive; bears and other animals hibernate. There are all gradations from ordinary ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... carry a set with me. I made my wife put it in the bottom of my trunk, along with a bottle of real whiskey and a couple of porous plasters. A man can't be too careful when he's away ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... you a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;—the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,—its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

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

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

... colonial period tobacco was classified into two main varieties, Oronoco and sweet-scented. Oronoco had a large porous pointed leaf and was strong in taste. Sweet-scented was milder, the leaf was rounder and the fibers were finer. We are also told that sweet-scented grew mostly in the lower parts of Virginia, along the York and James rivers, and later on the Rappahannock and on the southside ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon

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

... in the hand beats two pair.' Such things don't help a boy to be good. What a boy wants is club skates, and seven shot revolvers, and such things. Well, I must go and help Pa roll over in bed, and put on a new porous plaster. Good bye." ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

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

... they almost always are by the usages of life), if you put your finger into a little warm water, the water will creep a little way up the finger, though you may not stop to examine it. I have here a substance which is rather porous—a column of salt—and I will pour into the plate at the bottom, not water, as it appears, but a saturated solution of salt which cannot absorb more; so that the action which you see will not be due to its dissolving anything. We may consider the plate ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... boat; and it was as impossible for the ships to enter it, as if it had been so many rocks. I took particular notice, that it was all pure transparent ice, except the upper surface, which was a little porous. It appeared to be entirely composed of frozen snow, and to have been all formed at sea. For setting aside the improbability, or rather impossibility, of such huge masses floating out of rivers, in which there is hardly water for a boat, none of the productions of the land were found incorporated, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... buildings is a composition, partaking of the nature of both plaster and concrete, made in imitation of Travertine, a much-prized building marble of Italy. This composition has the warm ochre tone and porous texture of the original stone, thus avoiding the unpleasant smoothness and glare which characterize stucco, the ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney

... Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; southern Sudan provides shelter to Ugandans seeking periodic protection from soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army; Sudan accuses Eritrea of supporting Sudanese rebel groups; efforts to demarcate the porous boundary with Ethiopia have been delayed by civil and ethnic fighting in Sudan; Kenya's administrative boundary extends into the southern Sudan, creating the "Ilemi Triangle"; Egypt and Sudan retain claims to administer triangular areas that extend north and south of the 1899 Treaty boundary ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... drawing is done to the artist's satisfaction, the most usual method is to treat the stone with a solution of gum-arabic and a little nitric acid. After this is dry, the gum is washed off as far as may be with water; some of the gum is left in the porous stone, but it is rejected where the greasy lines and tones of the drawing come. Prints may now be obtained by rolling up the stone with an inked roller. The ink is composed of a varnish of boiled linseed oil and any of the lithographic colours ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... include a filter of some sort, and this is accomplished in two ways. Either the cistern is divided into two parts, the water being received on one side, and allowed to slowly filter through a wall of porous brick, regarded by many as an amply sufficient means of purification; or a more elaborate form is used, the division in such case being into upper and under compartments, the upper one containing the usual filter of iron, charcoal, sponge, and gravel or sand. If this water has a free current ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... the tissues in relation to a callous ulcer of the leg often leads to changes in the underlying bones. The periosteum is abnormally thick and vascular, the superficial layers of the bone become injected and porous, and the bones, as a whole, are thickened. In the macerated bone "the surface is covered with irregular, stalactite-like processes or foliaceous masses, which, to a certain extent, follow the line of attachment of the interosseous membrane and of the intermuscular ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... drift to impersonal topics as they picked their way out from the town along the mossy trail. The ground was spongy with water. On either side of them ferns and brakes grew lush. Sheba took the porous path with a step elastic. To the young man following she seemed a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... worship, surrounded by a grass plot, on which a number of stones were ranged in a circle with some taller ones in the middle. Ki Illi is celebrated for its manufacture of pottery, of which we saw many specimens, formed with great taste, of a coarse porous material, which being unglazed is well adapted for cooling by evaporation, in the manner so much ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

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

... arrived there were sixteen, three of which were uninhabited. They all face the sea; and run east and west. On account of the very high winds the walls are built about four feet thick at the gable ends, and about two feet at the sides. Most of the stone they are built of is porous, in consequence of which the walls on the south side are very damp and are often covered on the inside with a green slime. The houses are thatched with a reed-like grass called tussock, which is ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

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

... Egyptian earthenware, and dishes of pewter and brass. The retainers, if they required a plate, found one in the large flat barley cake with which each was supplied. For the principal guests there was no want of coarse goblets of Bohemian glass; delicious water abounded in vases of porous pottery, which might be blended, if necessary, with the red or white wine of the mountain. The rice, which had been dressed with a savoury sauce, was eaten with wooden spoons by those who were supplied with these instruments; but ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... crops to employ in rotation is sugar-beets, because they strike many small roots deep into the earth. As these decay, each leaves behind a tiny load of vegetable mold deep in the earth, and also makes the soil more porous. As the principal elements of the soil needed by sugar-beets are carbon and oxygen, which are absorbed from the air and sunshine, and as the beets can be sold at a good profit, it is an excellent crop to employ in rotation. In the United States records in various ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... that a ship may carry a cargo that floats and that is not porous, such as wood. It is impossible to sink a vessel with such a cargo by admitting water into the hold. Shots therefore must be fired at the engine and boiler rooms to force this kind of a steamer to sink. In general this is a safe rule to follow, for these are always the most vulnerable ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... to make matters worse all the money is paper, coins having gone out of circulation since the beginning of the mix-up. A kopec is the size of a postage stamp, a rouble looks like a United Cigar Store's Certificate, a 25-rouble note resembles a porous plaster and a 100-rouble ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

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

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

... advantage of yellowish teeth rests in the fact that their dentine is, as a rule, stronger. Extremely bluish white teeth often consist of a soft, porous and ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

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

... window stood a jar big enough to hide in, into which trickled a cool thread of water from a huge dripping-stone, while above these a shelf held native waterpots whose yellow and crimson surfaces were constantly pearled with dew oozing through the porous ware. On a low press near by was piled the remnant of father's library, and on the ancient sideboard were silver candlesticks, snuffers, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

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

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

... a river large, Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown That mountain as his garden mould, high raised Upon the rapid current, which through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Water'd the garden; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome passage now appears; And now, divided into four main streams, Runs diverse, wandering many a famous ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... type to permit easy access of air to the skin. For this reason the character of one's underwear is important. Wool is undoubtedly warmer and more or less suitable for exceptionally cold weather; yet for most purposes linen is to be preferred because of its more porous character. Linen permits of free circulation of the air, and when the underwear is woven with an open mesh it is especially satisfactory. Next to linen cotton is to be preferred, being likewise porous. The question of ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... proper control. For ordinary bricks the firing atmosphere should be oxidizing, and the finishing temperature should be adjusted to the nature of the clay, the object being to produce a hard strong brick, of good shape, that will not be too porous and will withstand the action of frost. The finishing temperature ranges from 900 deg. C. to 1250 deg. C., the usual temperature being about 1050 deg. C. for ordinary bricks. As before mentioned, lime-clays require a higher firing temperature (usually about 1150 deg. C. to 1200 deg. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... completion rapidly in the next few days, taking on at last a shake roof of hand-dressed cedar to keep out the cold rains that now began to beat down, the forerunner of that interminable downpour which deluges the British Columbia coast from November to April, the torrential weeping of the skies upon a porous soil which nourishes vast forests of enormous trees, jungles of undergrowth tropical in its density, in its variety of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... three ways of obtaining it:—First, in warm climates, where the sun is strong, the sea-water is collected into shallow pools, and there left until it is evaporated by the sun's rays. The ground where these pools are made must neither be muddy nor porous, else the salt would get mixed with the mud and sand. Of course the people who manufacture it in this way take care to choose firm, hard ground for the bottoms of their pools. There are sluices attached to these pools by which any water that may not evaporate ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... Mechanics of a Liquid.—An ingenious method of measuring the volume of fibrous and porous substances without immersion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... of large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the chain is lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though well preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly obliterated to the northward, but then material is found scattered ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

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

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

... we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... foolish man, waited till th' czar come near him; an' thin th' czar feinted with his left, an' put in a right hook an' pulled off Muttons's face. I tell ye 'tis so. He jus' hauled it off th' way ye'd haul off a porous plasther,—raked off th' whole iv Muttons's fr-ront ilivation. 'I like ye'er face,' he says, an' took it. An' all this time, an' 'twas fifty year ago, Muttons hasn't had a face to shave. Ne'er a one. So ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... occasionally seen in the small intestines. They are of various sizes, weighing from 1 ounce to 25 pounds; they may be single or multiple, and differ in composition and appearance, some being soft (composed mostly of animal or vegetable matter), while others are porous, or honeycombed (consisting of animal and mineral matter), and others are entirely hard and stonelike. The hair balls, so common to the stomach and intestines of cattle, are very rare in horses. Intestinal calculi form around ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... long, in order that the cooler air, settling down from mesa and mountain, might drift through every room and hallway, licking up the starting dew upon the smooth, rounded surface of the huge ollas, the porous water jars that hung suspended on every porch, and wafting comfort to the heated brows of the lightly covered sleepers within. Pyjamas were then unknown in army circles, else even the single sheet that covered the drowsing soldier might have been ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... say to the British consul; "I'll tell you what that is, old man. That's a porous plaster. It has some holes, but it's ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... another mode of producing copies in almost unlimited number. The original which supplies the copies is a drawing made on a stone of a slightly porous nature, the ink employed for tracing it is made of such greasy materials that when water is poured over the stone it shall not wet the lines of the drawing. When a roller covered with printing ink, which ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... the tornado season) each of these valleys is occupied by a raging torrent from the look of the confused water-worn boulders. Now among the rocks there are only isolated pools, for the weather for a fortnight before I left Victoria had been fairly dry, and this rich porous soil soaks up an immense amount of water. It strikes me as strange that when we are either going up or down the hills, the ground is less muddy than when we are skirting their summits, but it must be because on the inclines the rush of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

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

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

... probably 10 pounds in the house and a cheque which was due on the morrow would bring him another 30 pounds. He looked at the letter again. It was written on paper of an unusual texture. The surface was rough almost like blotting paper and in some places the ink absorbed by the porous surface had run. The blank sheets had evidently been inserted by a man in so violent a hurry that he had ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... occurs from the escape of air from porous spots which do not extend to the interior of the shells. In this case the action of the bellows produces no increase of bubbles, which cease rising as soon as the spots or cavities are filled with water. Porous spots are also detected by their absorbing ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... Sandstone, being porous, may be considered a healthy foundation, and sands and gravels of all sorts are usually free from ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... the palace and take your choice of either curving slope to descend into the Forum. Then you see that the little stuccoed edifice is but a modern excrescence on the mighty cliff of a primitive construction, whose great squares of porous tufa, as they underlie each other, seem to resolve themselves back into the colossal cohesion of unhewn rock. There are prodigious strangenesses in the union of this airy and comparatively fresh- faced superstructure and these deep-plunging, hoary foundations; ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... the rock, the new minerals either preserving or destroying the original textures. This process is sometimes called metasomatic replacement. Igneous rocks as a rule are compact, and hence are not so much subject to the processes of cementation as sedimentary rocks; but certain of the more porous phases of the surface lavas, as well as any joints in igneous rocks, may become cemented. All of these changes may be grouped under the ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

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

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

... life of several of the most useful of the varieties of clover, no attempt is usually made to renew them when they fail, unless when growing in pasture somewhat permanent in character. To this, however, there may be some exceptions. On certain porous soils it has been found possible to maintain medium red clover and also the mammoth and alsike varieties for several years by simply allowing some of the seed to ripen in the autumn, and in this way to re-seed the land, a result made possible ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... bicarbonate with some substance (the compound known as cream of tartar is generally used) which slowly reacts with it, liberating carbon dioxide, is used largely in baking. The carbon dioxide generated forces its way through the dough, thus making it porous and light. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... which forms the basis of the soil, are perpendicular layers of a lamellated brown argil, assuming, as it were, the slaty structure. Dr. Clarke noticed among the pebbles near the Lake of Tiberias pieces of a porous rock resembling the substance called toadstone in England; its cavities were filled with zeolite. Native gold was likewise found there, but the quantity was so small as not to draw from the travellers a suitable degree ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... complete, yet circumscribed, fusion which is here observed. Although fused into a solid mass, the courses of bricks are still visible, identifying them with the standing pile above, but so hardened by the power of heat, that it is almost impossible to break off the smallest piece; and, though porous in texture, and full of air-holes and cavities, like other bricks, they require, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the same machinery as is used to dress ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

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

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

... which is suitable for either public water-baths or air-baths, because it meets the demand of those whose minimum requirement is that the chief sexual centres of the body should be covered in public, while it is otherwise fairly unobjectionable. It consists of two pieces, made of porous material, one covering the breasts with a band over the shoulders, and the other covering the abdomen below the navel and drawn between the legs. This minimal costume, while neither ideal nor aesthetic, adequately covers the sexual regions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... one by one, among the fibres of the rushes until the frail raft on which the earth rested was saturated; and still pressing upward, the busy drops would penetrate the superincumbent earth, moistening and adding to the specific gravity of the garden by filling the porous earth until it became too heavy to float, if ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... sing in; were songs ever heard there? I laid my head upon my hand, and listened to one that Fancy tried to sing,—I, who never sing, in whose soul music rolls and swells in great ocean-waves, that never in this world will break against the shore of sound; and so I builded one, very wild and porous and wavering, a style of iceberg shore, far out in the limitless, waters, and listened to the echoes that came,—and, listening, must have fallen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

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

... every road-section between Galle, Colombo, and Ratnapoora, with the difference that the granite and gneiss here crumbled down to a coarse sand, which was again bound together by newly-formed hydrated peroxide of iron to a peculiar porous sandstone, called by the natives cabook. This sandstone forms the layer lying next the rock in nearly all the hills on that part of the island which we visited. It evidently belongs to an earlier geological ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... sogginess, and that is the rather ingenious one of mixing some substance in the dough which will give off bubbles of a gas, carbon dioxid, and cause it to puff up and become spongy and light, or, as we say, "full of air." This is what gives bread its well-known spongy or porous texture; but the tiny cells and holes in it are filled, not with air, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... up large quantities, but absorption throughout the porous soil of its wide bottoms consumes much more. In all the wells dug in the bottom lands of the Missouri, water is always found at the depth of the surface of the river, and invariably rises or sinks with the floods and ebbings of the stream. Volumes of sand frequently enter these ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

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

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

... rafters." Mr. Rudolph rose majestically, and smiled and bowed. Heigh-ho! man accepts applause so easily; the noise, not the heart behind it; the uproar, not the thought. Man usually fools himself when he opens his ears to these sounds, often more empty than brass. But so porous is man's vanity that it readily absorbs any kind of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... the case with the Sunderbund stations west of the Megna. The climate is uniformly hot, but the thermometer never rises above 90 degrees, nor sinks below 45 degrees; at this temperature hoar-frost will form on straw, and ice on water placed in porous pans, indicating a powerful radiation.* [The winds are north-west and north in the cold season (from November to March), drawing round to west in the afternoons. North-west winds and heavy hailstorms are frequent from March to May, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... could stand for flim-flamming the generous public, but my meal ticket was punched so full of holes that it looked like a porous plaster, and I consented. Merritt spent most of the night decorating that python, and in the morning it looked like the pennant of a man-o'-war. I had to sit up and watch him, for he had the artistic temperament, and he was so carried away by ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

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

... their portion; a baked turkey stuffed with nuts, or on important occasions a whole sheep, forms the principal dish, which is cleverly divided by the host or principal guest without the aid of knife or fork. Water in porous jars, often flavoured with rose-leaves or verbena, is presented by servants as the meal proceeds. The final dish always consists of boiled rice and milk sweetened with honey, a delicious dish, which is eaten with the same spoon by which the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... this meteoric water through the slopes of stone, until it reascended toward the clouds of its origin and was lost in the forest of the fossils, where every decaying fibre made bubbles to drive it forward, and hold in solution the mineral substances it was to receive in the porous magnesian barrier between it and freedom. Soaking through this, the water escaped by the break in the strata at the arch of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... for ichthyosaurus, Who lived when the world was all porous; But he fainted with shame When he first heard his name, And departed a ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

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

... rocks from atmospheric influences, and did not again reappear until they had reached the foot of the precipice which terminated the tableland whence they sprang; here they came foaming out in a rapid stream which had undoubtedly worked strange havoc in the porous sandstone rocks among which it ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... lustre, and flat conchoidal fracture. This stone, though so compact in the recent fracture, has distinct traces of stratification on the decomposed surface, which is of a dull reddish hue. Bright red ferruginous granular quartz (Eisen-kiesel ?) with a glistening lustre, and a somewhat porous texture. A specimen of the soil of the hills at Cygnet Bay, consists of very fine reddish-yellow quartzose sand. A large rounded pebble, consisting of ferruginous granular quartz, of a dark purplish-brown colour, and considerable density, was found here; near ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

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

... (or on the outer surface when the plant is spread over the substratum), honey-combed, porous, tubulose, or reticulate; in one genus with ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

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

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

... is made by heating wood in closed vessels or in large masses, when all the hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are expelled in the gaseous state, and the carbon is left mixed with the mineral constituents of the wood; this form of carbon is very porous and light, and is used in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... remarkable for retaining water in winter. On level, and even high prairie land, water will stand in winter, and thoroughly saturate the soil and freeze up. This is very destructive to the tender, porous root of the cherry-tree. How shall such locations be made dry, and these evils prevented? By carting on gravel and sand. Put two or three loads of sand or gravel, or both, in the shape of a slight mound, for each cherry-tree. There should first be a slight excavation, that the sand and ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

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

... its heartiness and strength from the one and its canorous elegance from the other. The Saxon language does not sing, and, though its tough mortar serve to hold together the less compact Latin words, porous with vowels, it is to the Latin that our verse owes majesty, harmony, variety, and the capacity for rhyme. A quotation of six lines from Wither ends at the top of the very page on which Mr. Parr lays down his extraordinary dictum, and we will let this answer him, Italicizing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... fossils came; here they certainly are; many of them perfect in form, and light and porous to the eye, but all hard and heavy as stone to the touch. Teeth, which are considered the most valuable of all the remains, are sometimes found as wide as a man's hand, and weighing several pounds; but Mysie was quite content ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

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

... and the sun was exercising his power over the whole ice field. I sat down by a great ice block, about fifty feet long, to interrogate it, and see what I could make of it, by a cool, confidential proximity and examination. The ice was porous and spongy, as I have seen it on the shores of the Connecticut, when beginning to thaw out under the influence of a spring sun. I could see the little drops of water percolating in a thousand tiny streams through it, and dropping down on every ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... against the dining-room. The schoolboys don't tell tales of each other. They agree not to choose to know who has made the noise, who has broken the window, who has eaten up the pigeons, who has picked all the plovers'-eggs out of the aspic, how it is that liqueur brandy of Gledstane's is in such porous glass bottles—-and so forth. Suppose Brutus had a footman, who came and told him that the butler drank the Curacoa, which of these servants would you dismiss?—the butler, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

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

... a great mistake to clothe children too warmly, indeed, the same may be said of adults. Garments should always be loose and porous, so as to allow of the beneficial action of the air on the skin. One of the objections to corsets is that they do not fulfil these conditions (see Tight ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... haughtiness, will generally, like the Frenchman, melt at once at a touch of the hat, and an appeal to 'Laissez passer Mademoiselle.' On shore we got, through be-coaled Negroes, men and women, safe and not very much be-coaled ourselves; and were driven up steep streets of black porous lava, between lava houses and walls, and past lava gardens, in which jutted up everywhere, amid the loveliest vegetation, black knots and lumps scorched by the nether fires. The situation of the house—the principal one of the island—to which we drove, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... of dry, porous wood, and cutting smooth a spot of it lay it in a horizontal direction. They then apply a smaller piece, of a harder substance, with a blunt point, in a perpendicular position, and turn it quickly round, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

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

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

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

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

... cheese fresh from the press is, to a considerable extent, dependent upon the acid produced in the curds. If the curds are put to press in a relatively sweet condition the texture is open and porous. The curd particles do not mat closely together and "mechanical holes," rough and irregular in outline, occur. Very often, at relatively high temperatures, such cheese begin to "huff," soon after being taken from the press, a condition ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... ships. Only a few Mexican sheep-herders lived there, up at the east end where less-rugged land allowed pasture for their flocks. A little rain falls during the winter months, and soon disappears from the porous canon-beds. Water-holes were rare and springs rarer. The summit was flat, except for some rounded domes of mountains, and there the deadly cholla cactus grew—not in profusion, but enough to prove the dread of the ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

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

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

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

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

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

... of it. The surface water and generally the sewage—for we are very far yet from having discovered a drain-pipe which is impeccable in respect of leakage—soak through the porous cap down to the clay and lie there—to rise again not at the Last Day by any means, but on the evening of the very first one that's been hot ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... which after a while make it hard and friable upon the roof; but, by reason of its greater percentage of resinous components, it will always preserve a superior degree of durability and become far less porous. One hundred parts by weight absorb 140 or 150 parts by weight of coal tar. A factory which distilled a good standard tar for roofing paper recovered, besides benzole and naphtha, also about ten per cent. of creosote oil, used for one hundred parts raw paper, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... by any means soak through it in an equable degree. It is an easier matter for it to ooze many miles, along a layer of gravel, than to penetrate six inches into a layer of clay that may bound the gravel. Therefore, whenever a porous earth or a fissured rock crops out to the light of day, there is, in ignorance of all other facts, some chance of a spring being discovered in the lowest part of the outcrop. A favourable condition for the existence of a large and permanent fountain, is where ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... time to master these branch joints, for not only must they be wiped symmetrically for the sake of appearances, but they must be wiped while the solder is hot to secure a tight joint. A joint that is wiped with solder that is too cold will be porous and will leak when put under pressure. With care the same pipe can be used throughout for all the positions of ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul—for the reason given above— may perceive it in the surface of the eye. In the same way as to the sense of hearing, it would have sufficed if the voice had merely sounded in the porous cavity of the indurated portion of the temporal bone which lies within the ear, without making any farther transit from this bone to the common sense, where the voice confers with and discourses to the common judgment. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... white was pretty whitish neer the yelk, but more duskie towards the shell; some of them I could plainly perceive to be shot or radiated like a Pyrites or fire-stone; the yelk in some I saw hollow, in others fill'd with a duskie brown and porous substance like a kind ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

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

... area at a higher altitude formed an example of a principle that may be accepted as the rule throughout the island. In walking over this extensive surface, there was occasionally a hollow, drum-like sound beneath the feet, denoting subterranean cavities in the porous and soluble strata beneath the harder upper stratum. It was a natural consequence that a substratum impervious to water should form a bed at a certain level to retain the drainage: by tapping this bed at any point, the water ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

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

... must be taken in handling neteen to preserve the shape, as it is very easily stretched and pulled out of shape while sewing on the edge wire. The same method is used in covering a neteen frame as with the buckram frame. The velvet, if velvet is used, can be glued on, but the material is so porous that it is not very satisfactory. Neteen and crinoline make excellent foundations for braid hats, as these materials are light in weight, soft, and pliable. They are also very satisfactory ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... English light brick, and the material of the brick is very good and hard, looking, in places, almost vitrified, and so compact as to resemble stone. Together with this brick occurs another of a deep full red, and more porous substance, which is used for decoration chiefly, while all the parts requiring strength are composed of the yellow brick. Both these materials are cast into any shape and size the builder required, either into curved pieces for the arches, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... ideal bread: "(1) It should retain as much as possible of the nutritive principles of the grain from which it is made; (2) it should be prepared in such a manner as to secure the complete assimilation of these nutritive principles; (3) it should be light and porous, so as to allow the digestive juices to penetrate it quickly and thoroughly; (4) it should be nearly or quite free from coarse bran, which causes too rapid muscular action to allow of complete digestion. This effect is also produced ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless

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

... attacks a man in his most prominent point, which, in your case, is your stomach. Men of genius like Savage, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Poe and others, it attacked their brains and made madmen of them; but it always soaks into a fool, because he is soft and porous like a sponge; and any man at a look would place you among the latter. Why, sir, you are at present full to the eyebrows, and your nose is a danger-signal to warn all young men to keep out ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... "Perpetual porous plasters! They would if they only knew what a reputation we have achieved!" exclaimed Nat, as the train rolled in. "Hello, there's some of ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young

... that of Puebla 9,000 feet. This central mass consists principally of a greyish trachytic porphyry, in some places rich in veins of silver-ore. The tops of the hills are often crowned with basaltic columns, and a soft porous amygdaloid abounds on the outskirts of the Mexican valley. Besides this, traces of more recent volcanic action abound, in the shape of numerous extinct craters in the high plateaus, and immense "pedrigals" or fields of lava not yet old enough for their surface to have been disintegrated into soil. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

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

... remarkable in Uncle Bat's appearance was included in his nose. It had always been a generous, weighty, self-confident nose, inviting to itself more observation than any of its brother features demanded. But in latter years it had spread itself out in soft, porous, red excrescences, to such an extent as to make it really deserving of considerable attention. No stranger ever passed Captain Cuttwater in the streets of Devonport without asking who he was, or, at any ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... among them—they came down and drew their drinking-water from the river, either beside the camels or down-stream of them, with complete indifference. It is true this water percolates drop by drop through large, porous clay pots before it is drunk, but even so, it would have seemed that they would have preferred its coming from up-stream of the derelict "ships of the desert." On the third day, to their mild surprise, we managed with infinite difficulty to tow the camels out through ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... potters; their earthenware being limited to these crucibles and a few unornamented water-jars; and it is probably in consequence of their inexperience in the ceramic art that their crucibles are not durable. After being put in the fire two or three times they swell and become very porous, and when used for a longer time they often crack and fall to pieces. Some smiths, instead of making crucibles, melt their metal in suitable fragments of Pueblo pottery, which may be picked up around ruins in many localities throughout ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews

... to adopt the greater economy of the allegory. So great is the multitude of things that we cannot keep them vividly in mind. Usually, then, we name them, and let the name stand for the whole impression. But a name is porous. Old meanings slip out and new ones slip in, and the attempt to retain the full meaning of the name is almost as fatiguing as trying to recall the original impressions. Yet names are a poor currency for thought. They are too empty, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

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

... knowing ill. Southward through Eden went a river large, Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown That mountain as his garden-mould high raised Upon the rapid current, which, through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Watered the garden; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome passage now appears, And now, divided into four main streams, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... experiments which we have already described, Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian chemist, succeeded in making, with hydrogen gas, soap-bubbles which rose in the air. Previous to this he had experimented with bladders and paper bags; but the bladders he found too heavy, and the paper too porous. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... else, and we were overlooked in the hurry to get away. Since the quarrying of the rock had commenced, my work had been overseeing the native help, of which we had some fifteen cutting and hauling. In numerous places within a mile of headquarters, a soft porous rock cropped out. By using a crowbar with a tempered chisel point, the Mexicans easily channeled the rock into blocks, eighteen by thirty inches, splitting each stone a foot in thickness, so that when hauled to the place of use, each piece was ready ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams



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



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com