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Spongy   /spˈəndʒi/   Listen
Spongy

adjective
1.
Easily squashed; resembling a sponge in having soft porous texture and compressibility.  Synonyms: spongelike, squashy, squishy.
2.
Like a sponge in being able to absorb liquids and yield it back when compressed.  Synonym: spongelike.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spongy" Quotes from Famous Books



... loud and the lightning so vivid that it seemed for a while as if another mighty combat were raging. Then the rain came in a deluge, and the hoofs of horses and the wheels of cannon sank so deep in the spongy soil of the Wilderness that it became practically ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... accustomed to the country than was Jack's. After having gone a considerable distance, he left Jack some way behind. The marks of the horse's feet had immediately been lost, by the spongy ground returning to its former state. Jack, however, thought there could be no difficulty in pushing on directly behind him. He had not, however, gone far before he found that, instead of following Burdale's direction ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... fourth day they reached a vast swamp, probably near the Estauhatchee river. This swamp was bordered by a gloomy forest, with gigantic trees, and a dense, impervious underbrush, ever stimulated to wonderful luxuriance by an almost tropical sun and a moist and spongy soil. Through this morass the Indians, during generations long since passed away, had constructed a narrow trail or path about three feet wide. This passage, on both sides, was walled up by thorny and entangled vegetation almost as impenetrable as if it were ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... the incomplete model of the rectum, or rather sleeve, you observe circular muscular bands or fibres which it is necessary to cover with soft spongy or fatty substance in whose meshes are nerves, blood-vessels, etc. This is called the areolar layer or coat. One more layer or coat upon this—the mucous coat—completes the structure. This latter possesses the power of accommodating itself to the distention and contraction of the muscular tube. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... perverse ill-luck. The weather was terribly inclement, alternating between extremes. Heavy snowstorms and hard frosts were followed by thaws and drenching rains. The difficulties of transport continued supreme. Roads, mere spongy sloughs of despond, were nearly impassable, and the waste of baggage-animals was so great that soon ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... likely, Howat ... October, in seventeen fifty. Years of virility, of struggle and conquest, of iron—iron, James Polder had shown him, still uncorrupted, better than the metal of to-day—and iron-like men. The ledger slipped to the floor, tearing the spongy leather and crumbling the sere leaves. He recovered it, dismayed at the damage wrought. A sheet apparently had come loose, and he bent forward with difficulty, a swimming head. Howat made an attempt ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... mushroom that grows on the trunks of old oaks, ashes, beeches, etc.; many other kinds of fungus, and, I believe, all kinds of puff-balls, will also make tinder. "It should be gathered in August or September, and is prepared by removing the outer bark with a knife, and separating carefully the spongy yellowish mass that lies within it. This is cut into thin slices, and beaten with a mallet to soften it, till it can easily be pulled asunder between the fingers. It is then boiled in a strong solution ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... until one whole book is gathered and collated, and the process is repeated so long as any sheets remain. Next, the books are thoroughly pressed or "smashed" as it is called, in a powerful smashing-machine, giving solidity to the book, which before pressing was loose and spongy. Then the books are sawed or grooved in the back by another machine, operating a swiftly moving saw, and sewed on cords by still another machine, at about half the cost of hand-sewing. Next, they are cut or trimmed on the three edges in a cutting-machine. The backs of the books are ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... harder, the more they are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather. This hardness may, with good reason, be ascribed to the salt of nitre, which contracts a certain viscidity from the rain wherewith it is mixed, and which easily penetrates into these stones, because their substance is spongy and cretaceous, and adheres to the tongue ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... slices half an inch thick, peel and remove the spongy portion; fry in hot dripping or butter, pepper and salt; also nice to make a light batter and dip the slices in, afterwards ...
— My Pet Recipes, Tried and True - Contributed by the Ladies and Friends of St. Andrew's Church, Quebec • Various

... father's possession and use of the German Exegetics. After my mother's death I slept with him; his bed was in his study, a small room,[13] with a very small grate; and I remember well his getting those fat, shapeless, spongy German books, as if one would sink in them, and be bogged in their bibulous, unsized paper; and watching him as he impatiently cut them up, and dived into them in his rapid, eclectic way, tasting them, and dropping for my play such a lot of soft, large, curled ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... back of the mountain upon which Slide, considered as an isolated peak, is reared. After a time we entered a dense growth of spruce which covered a slight depression in the table of the mountain. The moss was deep, the ground spongy, the light dim, the air hushed. The transition from the open, leafy woods to this dim, silent, weird grove was very marked. It was like the passage from the street into the temple. Here we paused awhile and ate our lunch, and refreshed ourselves with water ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... spite of my faith in winter, I began to grow anxious—something no one on a hill in Hingham need ever do. Since New Year's Day unseasonable weather had prevailed: shifty winds, uncertain skies, rain and snow and sleet—that soft, spongy weather when the ice soaks and grows soggy. By the middle of January what little ice there had been in the pond was gone, and the ice-house ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... I had arrived at the locked door of the kitchen garden, at a small wood or wilderness of endless delights (including a broken swing), and at a dilapidated summer-house. I had wandered over the spongy lawn, which was cut into a long green promenade by high clipt yew-hedges, walking between which, in olden times, the ladies grew erect and stately, as plants among brushwood stretch up to ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... something like a shield, with a hole at the top for hanging it up. Upon the board nail a wire pocket made of an ox-muzzle flattened on one side; or make something of the kind with stiff wire. Line this with a sheet of close moss, which appears green behind the wire net-work. Then you fill it with loose, spongy moss, such as you find in swamps, and plant therein great plumes of fern and various swamp-grasses; they will continue to grow there, and hang gracefully over. When watering, set a pail under for it to drip into. It needs only to keep this ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... given to a swelling of the mucous membrane covering the hard palate and projecting in a more or less prominent ridge immediately behind the upper incisors. The hard palate is composed of spongy tissue that fills with blood when the horse is feeding, which causes the ridges to become prominent, and they then help to keep feed from dropping from the mouth. This swelling is entirely natural and occurs in every healthy horse. Where there is some irritation in the mouth, as in stomatitis ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... the main watercourse, of which the ponds we were upon last night were only a branch. In the larger channel, there were many fine pools of water, connected by a strongly running stream in a deep narrow bed, and which wound at a course of E. 25 degrees S. through a valley of soft, spongy, peaty formation, and over which we had much trouble in getting our horses, one having sunk very deep, and being with difficulty extricated. After travelling two miles and a half, we obtained a view of Bald Island, bearing S. 15 degrees W.; and in two miles ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... drawn-thread cloth was laid diagonally on the table (because Alice had seen cloths so laid on model tea-tables in model rooms at Waring's), the strawberry jam occupied the northern point of the compass, and the marmalade was antarctic, while brittle cakes and spongy cakes represented the occident and the orient respectively. Bread-and-butter stood, rightly, for the centre of the universe. Silver ornamented the spread, and Alice's two tea-pots (for she would never allow even Chinese tea to remain on the leaves for more than ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... days, I made injections, into the depth and cavities of the ulcers, of Aegyptiacum dissolved sometimes in eau-de-vie, other times in wine, I applied compresses to the bottom of the sinuous tracks, to cleanse and dry the soft spongy flesh, and hollow leaden tents, that the sanies might always have a way out; and above them a large plaster of Diacalcitheos dissolved in wine. And I bandaged him so skilfully that he had no pain; and when the pain was gone, the fever began ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... swollen biscuits, gaping to disgorge, blankets beaten into the soil by the rain, rifles with bent barrels or splintered stocks, waist-belts, hats and the omnipresent sardine-box—all the wretched debris of the battle still littered the spongy earth as far as one could see, in every direction. Dead horses were everywhere; a few disabled caissons, or limbers, reclining on one elbow, as it were; ammunition wagons standing disconsolate behind four or six sprawling mules. Men? There were ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... companions went on board the little schooner. She had no feeling of horror at the loneliness of her own situation, for her solitary life had made every woodland thing dear and familiar to her. She was cowering down, on a loose, spongy bed of moss, which was all threaded through and through with the green vines and pale pink blossoms of the mayflower, and she felt its fragrant breath streaming up in the moist moonlight. As she leaned forward to look through a rocky crevice, her arms rested ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the curd particles have failed to cement, as is seen in Fig. 19. If gas-producing bacteria are very prevalent in the milk, the conditions under which the test is made cause such a rapid growth of the same that the evidence of the abnormal fermentation may be readily seen in the spongy texture of the curd (Fig. 20). If the undesirable organisms are not very abundant and the conditions not especially suited to their growth, the "pin holes" will be ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... with the addition of carbonate of magnesia, rise well in the oven; and after being baked, the bread is light and spongy, has a good taste, and keeps well. In cases when the new flour is of an indifferent quality, from twenty to thirty grains of carbonate of magnesia to a pound of the flour will considerably improve the bread. When the flour is of the worst quality, forty grains to a pound of ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... You champ on spongy toadstools, hateful treat! Fearful of poisons in each bit you eat: He feasts secure on mushrooms, fine as those Which Claudius for his special eating chose, Till one more fine, provided by his wife, Finished at once his feasting ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... tree was felled by sawing close to the roots; the interior was hollow for several feet up the stem, and two of the main roots were hollow as far as we could poke canes, and no doubt further. The dark-colored rotting mass around the hollow was wet and spongy, and consisted of disintegrated wood held together by a mesh work of the rhizomorphs. Further outward the wood was yellow, with white patches scattered in the yellow matrix, and, again, the rhizomorph strands were seen running in all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... the Tertiary and Mesozoic ages are grouped under one name; but it is evident that they are as different from each other as the new and spongy from the old and well-rotted peat in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... night found them in something of a hollow between two ranges of hills. The trail was soft and spongy, and the horses frequently sank ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... share of soil moisture that is thus left for the clover plants. Pasturing clover sown thus should be avoided when the ground is so wet as to poach or become impact in consequence. Unless on light, spongy soils which readily lose their moisture, such grazing should not begin until the plants have made considerable growth, nor should it be too close, or root development in the pastures ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... mountains and on the northern slopes that hold snows in their shadows for the summer's use; and dark mountain meadows, where fogs and rains soak every particle of sod, and waters percolate through the spongy root and soil to form bubbling streams; and the pines, whose shadows make a cool retreat where streams may not be drained dry by the sun; the silver threads of tributary brooks; the sponge of mountain ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... tell you very much about the storage battery but you ought to know a little about it if you are to own and run one with your radio set. When it is all charged and ready to work, the negative plate is a lot of soft spongy lead held in place by a frame of harder lead. The positive plate is a lead frame with small squares which are filled with lead peroxide, as it is called. This is a substance with molecules formed of one lead atom and ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills

... fellow!" twice. In reply to this, Mrs. Muddles, the skin of whose hands was crimped up into patterns like sea-weed, from the amphibious nature of her employment, and whose general appearance was, from the same cause, moist and spongy, expressed much gratitude for the contents of the basket, made a pathetic apology to the night-cap, tried to ignore the imbibing propensity of her better half; but, when pressed home upon the point, declared that when he was not engaged in the Circe-like ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... patients suffering from scurvy, and is characterised by its prominent granulations, which show a marked tendency to bleed, with the formation of clots, which dry and form a spongy ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... arranged to go to our next River Luena, and ascend it till we found it small enough for crossing, as it has much "Tinga-tinga," or yielding spongy soil; but another plan was formed by night, and we were requested to go down the Loou. Not wishing to appear overbearing, I consented until we were, after two hours' southing, brought up by several miles of Tinga-tinga. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... and a species of fir, that grows tall and straight to the height of 20 or 25 feet. There are within the body of the brush several clear spots, where the ground is partly rocky or sandy, partly wet and spongy. These are somewhat enlivened by beautiful flowering heath, and low shrubs, but have upon the whole a dark sombrous aspect, too much resembling ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... infusion produces only one hundred and seventeen and a half,—the additional nineteen and a half pounds serving only to deteriorate the leather, and causing it to contain much less textile animal solid. Leather thus highly charged with tanning is so spongy as to allow moisture to pass readily through its pores, to the great discomfort and injury of those who wear shoes made of it. The proper mode of tanning lasts a year, or a year and a half, according to the quality of the leather wanted and the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... sound could he now hear to indicate which way the fugitive had taken. Moreover, the tracks completely disappeared from sight when the boy had taken a few paces into the shallow water and spongy moss. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... vapour, exactly in the same manner as water is made to boil over the edge of a vessel when steam has been generated at the bottom by heat. Large quantities of the lava are also shot up into the air, where it separates into fragments, and acquires a spongy texture by the sudden enlargement of the included gases, and thus forms SCORIAE, other portions being reduced to an impalpable powder or dust. The showering down of the various ejected materials round the orifice of eruption ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... were posted the grenadiers of the 60th regiment, with the marines which had been landed from the warships. On the left of the line near the river were two redoubts, strongly constructed, with a massy frame of green spongy wood, filled in with sand, and mounted with heavy cannon. The centre, or space between these groups of redoubts, was composed, as has been said, of lighter but nevertheless very effective ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... buoyant; easy, inoppressive; active, nimble, deft, fleet, swift, spry; spongy, porous, well-leavened; incompact, loose, porous; gossamery, sleazy, flimsy, thin, unsubstantial; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... burned like a procession of golden flames passing in magic sequence amid yellowing woods and over the brown and spongy gold of salt meadows which had been sheared for stable bedding. And everywhere over their land lay the dun-coloured velvet squares of freshly ploughed fields awaiting unfragrant ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... least possible amount of thickness. The scales of Holoptychius giganteus may be selected as representative of those of the family to which it belonged. It consisted of three plates, or rather, like the human skull, of two solid plates, with a diploe or spongy layer between. The outer surface was curiously fretted into alternate ridges and furrows; and hence the name of the genus,—wrinkled scale; and these imparted to the exterior plate on which they occurred, and which was formed of solid bone, the strength which results from ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... Hence old bee-hunters look for bee-trees along creeks and near spring runs in the woods. I once found a tree a long distance from any water, and the honey had a peculiar bitter flavor, imparted to it, I was convinced, by rainwater sucked from the decayed and spongy hemlock-tree in which the swarm was found. In cutting into the tree, the north side of it was found to be saturated with water like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a bitter flavor. The bees had thus found a spring or a ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... seen prowling over the morass, and wild cats also clamber amid its woods. Even in summer, the air, instead of being hot and pestiferous, is especially cool, the evaporation continually going on in the wet spongy soil generating an atmosphere resembling that of a region considerably elevated above the level of the ocean. Canals have been cut through this swamp. They are shaded by tall trees, their branches almost joining ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... him across refused to proceed further, under the influence of some fear, real or pretended, and he was obliged to submit. But the most interesting, though not the most pleasant, thing about the lake, was the ooze or sponge which occurred frequently on its banks. The spongy places were slightly depressed valleys, without trees or bushes, with grass a foot or fifteen inches high; they were usually from two to ten miles long, and from a quarter of a mile to a mile broad. In the course of thirty geographical miles, he crossed ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... sent through all his being thrills of pain, he bore it hidden from the world, and went about his work again. Working comforted him. The baking of bread is an employment that is at once soothing and sustaining. As a man kneads the spongy dough he has good exercise and wholesome time for thought. While the baking goes on he may smoke and meditate. The smell of the newly-baked bread is a pleasant smell, and brings with it pleasant thoughts ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... who was in temporary command of the regiment, and away they went once more, to suddenly find themselves on spongy soil which speedily let them down to their ankles. In the meantime the insurgents' fire became thicker than ever, and it looked as if they were caught in ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... wagons, a dozen perhaps, one right behind another. We watched until we could make out our own white horse, Bob, and then we slid down the hickory pole that leaned against the stack, and made our way across the spongy sod to the burying-ground that stood on a knoll half a ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... the sea, they bring only clear, pure water, because, as they filter for miles through the dense jungle of reeds, ferns, and shrubs which grow round the marsh, all the earth is sifted out and left behind. In this way the spongy mass of dead plants remains free from earthy grains, while the water and the shade of the thick forest of trees prevent the leaves, stems, etc., from being decomposed by the air and sun. And so year ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... isinglass, and, as this substance is not allowed in vegetarian cookery, we shall be able to dispense with cream served in this form, nor are we losers by so doing. The ordinary mould of cream is too apt to taste like spongy liver, and, so far as palate is concerned, is incomparably inferior to the more delicate whipped creams. Just in the same way a good rich custard made with yolks of eggs is spoilt by being turned into a solid custard by the addition of gelatine. In ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... on the other side of the valley the party left the road and made their way across a spongy field, Ukridge explaining that this was a short cut. They climbed through a hedge, crossed a stream and another field, and after negotiating a difficult bank topped with barbed wire, found themselves in a ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... flood-washing, handsome bogs are formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow sphagnum picturesquely ruined with patches of kalmia and ledum which ripen masses of beautiful color in the autumn. Between these cool, spongy bogs and the dry, flowery meadows there are many interesting varieties which are graduated into one another by the varied conditions already alluded to, forming a ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... day; the ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along, and the lowering gloom was only enlivened by the occasional driving rush of the tempest. Earth and sky were pretty much the same ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... they had imagined for every man to be his own Fruiterer; and that gardening was a craft which, like others, required great study, long practice, and early experience. Unable to supply themselves, the majority became the victims of quack traders. They sickened of spongy apricots, and foxy pears, and withered plums, and blighted apples, and tasteless berries. They at length suspected that a nation might fare better if its race of fruiterers were overseen and supported by the State, ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... feet, for her dress did not reach the ground. They were bare, as the feet of the dead ought to be, which are about to tread softly in the realm of Hades, But how stained and mouldy and iron-spotted, as if the rain had been soaking through the spongy coffin, did the dress show beside the pure whiteness of those exquisite feet! Not a sign of the tomb was upon them. Small, living, delicately formed, Hugh, could he have forgot the face they bore above, might have envied the floor which in their nakedness they seemed to caress, so lingeringly ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... and then we both started apart. Behind us we could hear the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching, soft quick footsteps, muffled and almost noiseless upon the spongy turf. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... reduced to the metallic state by heating in a current of hydrogen. Then it is dropped into the tank of oil and hydrogen gas is blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of the electrical current, or by passing steam over spongy iron which takes out the oxygen. The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil converts the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into stearic. If you figured up the weights from the symbols given above you would find that it takes about one ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... battery of only fifteen stamps was put in motion for the first time. On the occasion when the fires under the first set of retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did not retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet bare frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lump of silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the dark depths of the Gould Concession; she had laid her unmercenary hands, with an eagerness that made them tremble, upon the first silver ingot turned out still ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... I can distinguish by mine art) Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, And to my wily trains: I shall ere long Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl My dazzling spells into the spongy air, Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, And give it false presentments, lest the place And my quaint habits breed astonishment, And put the damsel to suspicious flight; Which must not be, for that's against my course. I, under fair pretence of friendly ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... one hundred miles north-west of Monrovia, a short and sluggish river, hearing this well-known name, oozes lazily into the Atlantic; and, carrying down in the rainy season a rich alluvion from the interior, sinks the deposit where the tide meets the Atlantic, and forms an interminable mesh of spongy islands. To one who approaches from sea, they loom up from its surface, covered with reeds and mangroves, like an immense field of fungi, betokening the damp and dismal field which death and slavery have selected for their grand metropolis. A spot like this, possessed, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... and couldn't stand ridicule any better than other people. He talked high, and his splotchy face lighted itself up with all the shifting tints and signs of evil pleasure and promised triumph—purple, yellow, red, green—they were all there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... truth is this wherewith ingenious Memphis has supplied all the offices in the world. The plants of Nile arise, a wood without leaves or branches, a harvest of the waters, the fair tresses of the marshes, plants full of emptiness, spongy, thirsty, having all their strength in their outer rind, tall and light, the fairest fruit of a ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... Crabs: Wash always in cold water—hot water spoils the flavor. Remove all sand, also the sand-bag between the eyes, the apron, and the spongy growths under the side points. Rinse well again in cold water, and dry thoroughly with a clean towel. Season a pint of rich milk well with pepper and salt. Season the crabs also, lay them in the milk, rubbing them so that it may impregnate them throughout. Take out, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... could not make very rapid progress. To turn aside into the jungle meant to fight his way through thick, thorny bushes. To leap down into the dry water-course was even worse. There, as he knew, the spongy, shifting sand bottom would prevent even the ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... murder, and its intended victims often manage to get away from it. Built on a very different model is the bladderwort, busy in stagnant ponds near the sea coast from Nova Scotia to Texas. Its little white spongy bladders, about a tenth of an inch across, encircle the flowering stem by scores. From each bladder a bunch of twelve or fifteen hairy prongs protrude, giving the structure no slight resemblance to an insect form. These prongs hide a valve which, as many an unhappy little ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... construct their skeletons; whilst some plants form hard structures within their tissues in a precisely similar manner. We do meet with some calcareous deposits, such as the "stalactites" and "stalagmites" of caves, the "calcareous tufa" and "travertine" of some hot springs, and the spongy calcareous deposits of so-called "petrifying springs," which are purely chemical in their origin, and owe nothing to the operation of living beings. Such deposits are formed simply by the precipitation of carbonate of lime from water, in consequence of the ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... depression on the summit of the berg, La Salle laid out a parallelogram about eight feet square, and motioning to Peter, proceeded to sink a square shaft into the solid ice, which, at first a little spongy, rapidly became hard and flinty. Aided by the natural shape of the berg, in the course of an hour a cavity had been cleared out to the depth of about six feet. Over this was inverted the box belonging to Davies, and this was kept in place by fragments of ice ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... well as other purposes. I have several Thomas black walnuts which I set about 1938. Three of these have grown quite rapidly and are beginning to produce nice crops of nuts, although the kernels have a tendency to be spongy at times. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... tolling. Then the fires were all out, the ship full of water, and gradually breaking up, wriggling with every swell like a willow basket—the sea all round us full of the floating fragments of her sheeting, twisted and torn into a spongy condition. In less than an hour the boat returned, saying that the beach was quite near, not more than a mile away, and had a good place for landing. All the boats were then carefully lowered, and manned by crews belonging ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... become very numerous, and whole fleets of medusae have passed us; some we have picked up, besides a very beautiful purple sea-snail. This fish has four horns, like a snail, the shell is very beautifully tinted with purple, and there is a spongy substance attached to the fish which I thought assisted it to swim: it is larger in bulk than the whole fish. One of them gave out fully a quarter of an ounce of purple fluid from the lower part of the fish. A fine yellow locust and a swallow flew on board; and as we believe ourselves ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... If we take a leg bone of a sheep, or a large end of beef shin bone, and saw it lengthwise in halves, we see two distinct structures. There is a hard and compact tissue, like ivory, forming the outside shell, and a spongy tissue inside having the appearance of a beautiful lattice work. Hence this is called cancellous tissue, and the gradual transition from one to the other ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... earlier again. He betimes had out more than one wagon of his own; and Battersleigh, cavalryman, became Batty, scouter for bones, while Franklin remained at the market. It was Franklin who, bethinking himself of the commercial difference between hard black horn and soft, spongy bone, began the earliest shipments of the tips of the buffalo horns, which he employed a man to saw off and pack into sacks ready for the far-off button factories. Many tons of these tips alone he came to ship, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... either side of the median line are similar. And the structure which occupies the median line is itself double, or duality fused into symmetrical unity. The osseous nasal septum is composed of two laminae laid side by side. The spongy bones, X W, are attached to the outer wall of the nasal fossa, and are situated one above the other. These bones are three in number, the uppermost is the smallest. The outer wall of each naris is grooved by ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... The bottle of cream he had begged from Ma Briskow he now put to use. With this soothing liquid he first washed out their eyes, the membranes of which were raw and spongy, and excruciatingly sensitive to light, then he bandaged them as best he could with compresses, wet ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... ago by the reported discovery of the prints of human feet in a stone quarry on the coast of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. The footprints are remarkably sharp and distinct; one seems that of a little child. The stone in which they are impressed is a spongy volcanic tuff, and the layer superimposed upon them in the quarry was of similar material. These prehistoric footprints were doubtless accidentally impressed upon the volcanic stone, and would seem to throw back the age of man on the earth to a most remote antiquity. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... the rod the stone became spongy and flaked away. Dandtan and the flyer caught the door and eased it to the floor. With one quick movement Thrala caught up Garin's cloak and swirled it about her, hiding the glitter of her ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North

... exposed flanks to retire at nightfall, and the Battalion was then holding the line without anyone in front. Rain commenced to fall, and the ground having been churned up by countless shells, the whole area soon became dissolved into a morass of spongy earth pitted with innumerable shell craters half full of water. The trenches that had been dug soon filled, and the men were wet through. They were utterly exhausted, and some of them had to get what sleep they could, huddled up in these wet trenches, with their feet several ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts

... choleric or watery, which the other subordinate parts convey. The gall placed in the concave of the liver, extracts choler to it: the spleen, melancholy; which is situate on the left side, over against the liver, a spongy matter, that draws this black choler to it by a secret virtue, and feeds upon it, conveying the rest to the bottom of the stomach, to stir up appetite, or else to the guts as an excrement. That watery matter ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... pina into the retort, in which position the tank is then supported by a cross-beam. The sublimed mercury is condensed and collected in the water; and on the completion of the process the tank is lowered, and the spongy or porous cone of silver is withdrawn from the retort. The subliming furnaces are ranged in a row, and communicate by lines of rails ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... Spongy meads, that soughed under the feet and grew steeper as one rose, took up the first few hundred feet. Little rivulets of mere dampness ran in among the under moss, and such very small hidden flowers as there were drooped with the surfeit of moisture. The rain was now indistinguishable from ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... had therefore to make a detour to avoid it, but as the tall trees which grew on the surrounding hills would not allow me to get a view of the country, I could not determine in what direction to steer my course. I did not perceive an important circumstance. Owing to the spongy nature of the ground, into which my feet sank at every step, the marks were soon obliterated, while I still supposed that my trail was sufficiently defined to enable Manley and ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston

... the landscape in that quarter. They came in yet greater volumes, and indolently crept across the intervening valleys, and around the withered papery flags of the moor and river brinks. Then their dank spongy forms closed in upon the sky. It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had their roots in the neighbouring sea, and by the time that horse, man, and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent workings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... You travel all over the region in the canals, and all the productions are conveyed upon them. The roads are for the most part built on the tops of the dikes, but they are not solid enough to permit their use by heavily-loaded wagons. Many of them are paved with bricks, on account of their spongy nature, which answers very well for the passage ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... never observed ecchymoses, nor in more than a single instance any the minutest red specks upon the cutis, which might be thought to resemble petechiae. The patients never fainted; the gums were never spongy, nor did they bleed more than those of any other child would have bled, under an equal degree of violence. I however requested my friend, Dr. HARRIS, who has had ample opportunities of making himself acquainted with scorbutus, to see some patients with me. He complied, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... planted near every peasant's house. The Trapa or water-caltrops grew in the ditches, the nuts of which, with the seeds and the roots of the Nelumbium, generally furnished out our desert; to which, indeed, sometimes were added tolerably good peaches, dry spongy apples not unlike quinces in appearance, and pears of an immense size but of a harsh ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... than two-thirds of its silver. An alloy of 1 part gold and 1.7 parts of silver gives up practically the whole of its silver under similar treatment. The gold is left in a coherent, though easily broken, sheet retaining the shape of the original alloy. The gold thus left is quite spongy and porous, so that the acid can penetrate into its innermost portions. But if the silver is in large excess in the alloy, the removal of the silver is less complete, and the residual gold, instead of holding together in a form easy to ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... opening her heart to her kind companion; and even now there were times when she would lie looking at her, with such a still, watchful, almost dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and change her place, as persons do whose breath some cunning orator has been sucking out of them with his spongy eloquence, so that, when he stops, they must get some air and stir about, or they feel as if they should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... first. Bring to boil, lay fruit in, and simmer gently. Souffles should be very light and spongy. Eggs form a large part of souffles, more whites than yolks are used and the former are beaten to a stiff froth. All souffles should be served quickly. Omelets are composed mainly of eggs. They can be savory or sweet. If over-cooked an omelet will be tough. To prevent milk running ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... of what the islanders call the base of the mountain. With the exception of a mile and a half at the end the climbing was now done, and the rest of the way little more than walking up-hill. The first mile from the edge of the base was fairly flat, but over spongy ground thickly studded with stout ferns which came up above our knees. Then we got on to a grassy slope, and from that descended into a gulch, up which we went for about a mile. Getting out of this we next trudged ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... loveliness; or one of those magnificent Australian lakes that show nothing at first but the greenest grass, tall and luxuriant as under the equator; then, as he attempts to ride through the grass, he suddenly finds his horse's feet growing moist and the spongy vegetation getting fuller and fuller of water, till he discovers that he has entered a lake so wide and deep that his only safety lies in a quick retreat. This phenomenon is repeated on a small scale all through the jungle-lands, little tufts of grass here and there, known readily ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... or chinampas, far-famed of Mexico, are encountered upon this canal. But, alas! the "floating gardens" do not float, nor is it possible to prove that they ever did, in plain, prosaic fact. They consist of areas of spongy soil intersected by numerous irrigation ditches, where the traveller may observe the Indian owners industrially watering them and tending their profuse array of flowers and vegetables. New "floating gardens" are sometimes made by the method of driving stakes into the shallow bottom of the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... now as he strode across the spongy sod toward the lighted windows of the shanty. The air was damp and chill, for the ice was not yet out of the ponds or swamps of tall grasses. An occasional prairie-cock sent forth a muffled, drowsy "boom"; low-hung flights of geese, gabbling anxiously, or the less-orderly ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... the room should not be allowed to vary. I attended a case of it some three or four miles from here, but the damp of the cabin was so great that it was impossible to combat the disease. The cottage, or rather hovel, was built on the edge of a soft spongy bog, and so wet was it that the woman had to sweep the water every morning from the floor, where it collected in great pools. I am now going to visit an evicted family, who are living in a partially roofed shed fenced up by the roadside. The father is down with fever, and lies ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... peat, especially amongst rural populations, has, in all ages, been regarded as an excellent fuel. It is one of the most important productions of an alluvial soil, and belongs to the vegetable rather than the mineral kingdom. It may be described as composed of wet, spongy black earth, held together by decayed vegetables. Formerly it covered extensive tracts in England, but has greatly disappeared before the genius of agricultural improvement. Charcoal is a kind of artificial ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... tramp went the camels, their soft spongy feet making a noise as they trod the ground. The camel-drivers laughed, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... the Nymphae and the Clitoris, the former of which is a membrany and moist substance, spongy, soft and partly fleshy, of a red colour and in the shape of two wings, which are joined at an acute angle at their base, producing a fleshy substance there which covers the clitoris, and sometimes they extend so far, that an incision is ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... had, in her great bounty, provided him with a nose, which, if it equalled not that of Smellfungus in length, might, in height and breadth, have laughed it utterly to scorn. Neither, was it a single, but a double nose—two excrescences, equalling in bulk a moderate sized lemon, and of the spongy nature of a mushroom, bulging out, and lending an expression of owlish wisdom to his otherwise heavy features. As on that of the Memnon, not a vestige of a hair was to be seen on the head of Split-log. His lips were, moreover, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... with pieces of plantain stalk. Through the porous substance of these stalks the molasses or treacle slowly drained off. As the wet sugar was placed in the cask, layers of slices of plantain stems were laid upon it, as the spongy substance draws the dark colouring matter out from the sugar. The plantain grows freely in South America, and Mr. Hardy had planted a number of this graceful tree near his house; but these had not been advanced enough to cut, and he had therefore procured ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... circumstances, however, forced others to seek for trade the whole year through. In a recent winter fifty-seven schooners were lost on the New England coast, most of which were unfit for anything but summer breezes. As by a miracle, others have been able to renew their youth, to replace spongy planking and rotten stems, and to deck themselves out in white canvas ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... tree—also spelled sibucao—grows to a height of twelve or fifteen feet. Its flowers grow in clusters, their calyx having five sepals. The pod is woody and ensiform and contains three or four seeds, separated by spongy partition-walls. The wood is so hard that nails are made of it, while it is used as a medicine. It is a great article of commerce as a dye, because of the beautiful red ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... between the beautiful spring of Dornajito and Caravela, are black masses, altered by decomposition, sometimes porous, and with very oblong pores. The basis of these lower lavas is rather wacke than basalt; when it is spongy, it resembles the amygdaloids* of Frankfort-on-the-Main. (* Wakkenartiger mandelstein. Steinkaute.) Its fracture is generally irregular; wherever it is conchoidal, we may presume that the cooling has been more rapid, and the mass has been exposed ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... some detail. Mental depression, debility, syncope, petechiae, livid patches, spongy gums, lesions, swellings, and so on to things that are worse. He passed to some of the theories held and remedies tried in accordance with them. Ralph came nearest the truth in discovering decrease of chlorine and alkalinity of urine. Sir Almroth ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... rather undecided. It was a morning of gusts and of showers. The rooks swayed in the elm tops, or flew up under the scudding clouds of a treacherous sky. There was a strong smell of damp earth, and the turf of the wide spreading lawns looked spongy. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... find a spring radish or an early turnip that has sent up a flower stalk, blossomed and produced seeds. If you are successful, cut the root in two and notice that instead of being hard and fleshy like the young radish or turnip, it has become hollow, or soft and spongy (see Fig. 6). Evidently the hard, fleshy young root was packed with food, which it afterwards gave up to ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... five thousand without cannon." The English landed their cannon near Flat Point; and before they could be turned against the Grand Battery, they must be dragged four miles over hills and rocks, through spongy marshes and jungles of matted evergreens. This would have required a week or more. The alternative was an escalade, in which the undisciplined assailants would no doubt have met a bloody rebuff. Thus this Grand ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... it is possible high water would make it easier. Where there was driftwood it was in tremendous piles, wedged together in inextricable confusion; hundreds of tree-trunks, large and small, battered and cut and limbless, with the ends pounded into a spongy lot of splinters. The interstices between the large logs were filled with smaller stuff, like boughs, railroad-ties, and pieces of dressed timber which had been swept away from the region above the Union Pacific ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... little he drove back across the field, sending the car forward again at reckless speed. Some vision of her grandfather, watching the machine careening over the still soft and spongy turf and leaving deep tracks behind it, made her smile. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... engine flew with throbbing heart of steel and breath of fire like a panting demon. Back and forth over the spongy rails she swayed, her mighty ribs cracking as she lurched and jumped and plunged. But the fireman in his flannel shirt, dripping with perspiration, never paused, as with steady stroke he fed her roaring mouth; and the engineer, with his hand ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... mercury. The solvent used is acetone, and the quantity of fulminate is between 75 to 85 per cent. of the entire compound. If desired, the compound can be made less sensitive to shocks by giving it a spongy consistency by agitating it with air while it is still in a syrupy condition. The nitro-glycerine, especially in this latter case, may be omitted. In some cases, when it is desirable to add a deterring medium, nitro-benzene or ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... squarer than those of the fingers. Keep them a moderate length—long enough to protect the toe, but not so long as to cut holes in the stockings. Always cut the nails; never tear them, as is too frequently the practice. Be careful not to destroy the spongy substance below the nails, as that is the great guard to prevent them going ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... well mixed the resultant product is emptied directly into wheel-frames placed underneath the outlet of the pan. It is important that the blades or worm of the agitating gear be covered with soap to avoid the occlusion of air and to prevent the soap becoming soft and spongy. ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... last course of his heterogeneous meal, was adjusting his gold eye-glasses for a glance at the paper when Undine trailed down the sumptuous stuffy room, where coffee-fumes hung perpetually under the emblazoned ceiling and the spongy carpet might have absorbed a year's crumbs ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... by tubes that run from the skin to tanks of useful fluids, that would heap up and are no longer of use in the body. No doubt nerves exist in the fascia, that change the fluid to gas, and force it through the spongy and porous system as a delivery by the vital chain of wonders, that go on all the time ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... sultry, the forest air heavy, close, and filled with hosts of mosquitoes, "so thick," says the chief sufferer, "that we could scarcely draw breath, and it was wonderful how cruelly they persecuted us." Through black mud, spongy moss, water knee-deep, over fallen trees, among slimy logs and entangling roots, tripped by vines, lashed by recoiling boughs, panting under their steel head-pieces and heavy corselets, the Frenchmen struggled on, bewildered ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... as they made their way through the valley. Even the run in the bottom failed to stir him, though he loved the little mountain streams passionately. Yet he did notice that here, beneath the lofty pines, where the forest mold lay deep and spongy, the brook flowed strongly. It sang as it rushed along between its rugged banks. But there was no music in its song for Charley. So alluring was the stream that Lew wanted to fish, but Charley had no heart even to try for a trout; though it was practically ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... and sometimes delicate, is worth considering on account of its bulk. The orchestration is heavy and noisy; and the brass dominates and roughly gilds the rather sombre colouring of the great edifice. The underlying idea of the composition is neo-classic, and rather spongy and diffuse. Its harmonic structure is composite: we get the style of Bach, Schubert, and Mendelssohn fighting that of Wagner and Bruckner; and, by a decided liking for canon form, it even recalls some of Franck's work. The whole is like a showy ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... takes a whirl at 'em; him with the spongy whiskers on each side of his face, and a jaw like the vestibul of ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... large blue hairy lupines eighteen inches high, parnassia, phlox, solidago, dandelion, white-flowered bryanthus, daisy, pedicularis, epilobium, etc., with grasses, sedges, mosses, and lichens, forming a delightful deep spongy sod. Woodchucks stood erect and piped dolefully for an hour "Chee-chee!" with jaws absurdly stretched to emit so thin a note—rusty-looking, seedy fellows, also a smaller striped species which stood erect and cheeped and whistled like a ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... A tall, glabrous tree; pods eight or nine inches long, about two inches broad; the valves hard and thick, the spongy substance inside dividing it into three to five cells each, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... side walked his favorite daughter Charlotte,—his dear companion, the confidant and sharer of all his sylvan pleasures. She was tired and dusty; and her short printed gown showed traces of green, spongy grass, and lichen-covered rocks. But her face was a joy to see: she had such bright eyes, such a kind, handsome mouth, such a cheerful voice, such a merry laugh. As they came in sight of the wide-open front-doors, she looked ruefully down at her feet and her grass-and-water-stained skirt, and ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... breathing stertorously, with a dark flush over a pouched and flaccid countenance. Opposite him, sitting formally upright, was a negro in a carefully brushed gray suit, with a crimson satin necktie surcharged by vivid green lightning. His bony face, the deep pits of his temples, were the dry spongy black of charcoal, and behind steel-rimmed glasses his eyes rolled like yellow agates. He glanced about, furtive and startled, when Elim Meikeljohn entered, but he was immediately reassured by Elim's disordered uniform. He made a ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes, Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense, And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-ray A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk, Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey, Or a drift of muddy leaves, or a banded snake ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... Duck Island fire or six miles away. The island was reached. It was a dismal affair little more than an elevated marsh. When the tide was out on Duck Island, its extended dreariness was potent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay were all hard facts. Occasionally, here and there, could be seen a few green tussocks, with their scant blades, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... anthers. Anthers dorsal, unilocular. Ovary pedunculate, lanceolate, unilocular, with many ovules in 2 series, inserted on the parietal placent. Fruit a pod terminating in a beak, 3-valved. Seeds numerous, very large, winged, embedded in a spongy substance. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... are going to whiten it. The water that is contained in the clay will filter gradually through the sugar, and will drive before it the molasses that is left round the crystals; and this operation, several times repeated, will produce that spongy kind of sugar which is well known to retain a flavor of the cane, rather disliked by Europeans accustomed to the finer products ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... consequently go best pace to their places forward after each beat. What with running at a jog-trot down the rides, shooting hard when in place, and then getting on quickly to the next stand, often along spongy or clayey rides on a nice, warm, moist November day, this is by no means the armchair work which people are fond of calling wood shooting. The variety of scenery in the wood added much to the charm. Sometimes we were in the narrow rides covered ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... helping ourselves along by the roots and branches of the trees, the more stunted growth of which at length showed the height we had reached. We now emerged from the forest, when the ground above us appeared covered with spongy moss, the walking over which we found comparatively easy, saturated though it was with snow-water, which fell in every direction in tiny cascades over the side of the mountain. Even the grass and moss were at length left behind, and we found ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... given them by the glacier that brought them into relief. On the upper portion of the basin broad moraine beds have been deposited and on these fine, thrifty forests are growing. Lakes and meadows and small spongy bogs may be found hiding here and there in the woods or back in the fountain recesses of Mount Hoffman, while a thousand gardens are planted along the ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... figures he had observed near the building, which had deterred his first attempts at landing, must have been his wife and his friend. He knew that a long tongue of the slough filled by the rising tide followed the marsh, and lay between him and the hacienda. The sinking of his horse's hoofs in the spongy soil determined its proximity, and he made a detour to the right to avoid it. In doing so, a light suddenly rose above the distant horizon ahead of him, trembled faintly, and then burned with a steady lustre. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... knew from whom it came. It was Gilby's voice, and she stopped, her soul ravished by the music. All the way along, bobolinks, canaries, and song-sparrows had been singing to her, the swallows and red-throats had been talking; everywhere among the soft spongy mosses, the singing frog of the Canadian spring had been filling the air with its one soft whistling note. Zilda had not heard them, but now she stopped suddenly with head bent, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... were picnicking in the big forest. It was a day of spongy dampness underfoot, sweet and wild with breezes, blue of sky, and still cold in the shade, if it was heavenly warm in the sun. Alix, who was hot and panting from the scrambling and slipping downhill, hung ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... called "nuggets" are found by miners. The largest one known was found in Australia. It weighed 190 pounds and was worth $42,000. Sometimes spongy lumps of gold are found; but as a general thing gold comes from the little specks scattered through veins in rock, and much work has to be done before it can be made into coins or jewelry. It is too soft for such uses unless some alloy, usually copper or silver, is mixed with it to make it harder. ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... be imagined that a dense spongy mass which completely closed the river would act as a filter: thus, as the water charged with muddy particles arrived at the dam where the stream was suddenly checked, it would deposit all impurities as it oozed and percolated slowly through the tangled but compressed mass of vegetation. This ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... had no further attention to bestow on him, and immediately led Josephine away over the damp and spongy sod to that portion of the ground at the rear of the house which showed, by a few lingering signs, that it once had been a proud and ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... easeful of mind, I sat down to munch a piece of damper. Close by a patch of vivid green moss indicated the existence of moisture and the further possibility of water. Sure enough, twenty yards down spongy moss and fern spread over a lip of rocks, and from dangling tufts and drooping fronds water dripped in melodious splashes into a shallow depression, and overflowed in a fan-shaped film. The facets and apex of the crystal ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... and spongy arm chair opened its arms before a stove. There the owner of the ship had passed his last years, sick at heart and with swollen legs, directing from his seat a course that was repeated every week across the foggy winter waves tossing bits of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... qt. of sifted flour, 1 teaspoonful of salt and 3 level teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Work into these ingredients 2 tablespoonfuls of butter and then mix to a dough with milk or milk and water. Cut the dough until light and spongy, then pat out into a rectangular sheet with the rolling-pin; spread with maple sugar and roll up like a jelly roll. Cut from the end in rounds. Bake in a buttered pan and serve ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous

... made impressively perceptible to the four as they emerged upon the open road, after passing the Lighthouse of Genoa and the long straggling suburbs of San Pier d'Arena, Pegli, and Voltri. The horses splashed through channels of water which filled the spongy ruts, smoking, and toiling, and plunging on; while the whoops and yells of the postilion urging them forward, together with the loud smacks of his whip, made a savage din. This was farther increased as we crashed along a ledge road, cut in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... croaking hoarsely at the sight of intruders. On and on over what seemed an interminable reach of coarse grass and whinberry-bushes, jumping tiny brooks, and skirting round sometimes to avoid bogs, for much of the ground was spongy, and though its surface of sphagnum moss looked inviting, it was treacherous in the extreme. At last they had rounded the corner of Glyder Garmon, and there, far away to the right, like a sheet of silver, Llyn Gwynedd lay ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... in the daughter was in the parent magnified to an appalling panic, an instinctive, acute agony that had crushed everything but a thin, tormented spark of life. He passed his hand over a brow as dry as the spongy limbs of the cypress, brushing a scant lock ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... side, started on their tortuous way, here and there turning to the right and to the left to follow the course of some tidal stream, or avoid the swampy places. The faint odour of wild lavender was mingled with the brackish scent of the sea. The ground was soft and spongy beneath their feet, and a breeze as soft as a caress blew in their faces. Up before them always, gaunt and bare, surrounded by its belts of weather-stricken trees, stood the Red Hall. Andrew ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... however, that by his directions the principal canal was much improved; indeed it was in reality cut in a more convenient and suitable place; for the soil where it had been originally cut was soft and spongy, so that much labour and time were required to restore the waters to their course, and secure its mouth in a safe and firm manner. A little lower down, the soil was much more suitable, being strong and rocky; here then Alexander ordered the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... connected by wires to a dynamo. Above the jar was a Life Ray projector. Lilith slid aside a metal portion of the jar, disclosing through the glass underneath the squirming, kicking body of a baby, resting on a bed of soft, spongy substance, to which it was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... hundredweight each. These are successively removed from the pool of the puddling furnace, and subjected to the energetic blows of the steam hammer, which drives out all the scoriae lurking within the spongy puddle-balls, and thus welds them into compact masses of malleable iron. When reheated to a welding heat, they are rolled out into flat bars or round rods, in a variety of sizes, so as to ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... the case in connection with the autopsy it is quite evident that the different suppurating surfaces, and especially the fractured, spongy tissue of the vertebrae, furnish a sufficient explanation of the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson

... As generally understood, it is a spongy mixture made light with eggs and baked, the foundation of which may be meat, fish, cheese, ...
— 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

... hour. Strain and put in saucepan with a tumbler fresh water and 5 ozs. loaf sugar. Stir till gelatine is dissolved. Add juice of 2 lemons, and strain through sieve. When cool add the whites of two eggs, and switch till quite light and spongy throughout—about three quarters of an hour. Put in mould, or when set pile up in ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... and brake head high, through sumac, willow, elder, buttonbush, gold-yellow and blood-red osiers, past northern holly, over spongy moss carpet of palest silvery green up-piled for ages, over red- veined pitcher plants spilling their fullness, among scraggy, odorous tamaracks, beneath which cranberries and rosemary were blooming; ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... that met above the orbs beneath, And nose that like a soaring hawk appeared, And lifted lip, uncovering his teeth, The Mamikellikiller coldly sneered: "O, so you don't! Well, how will you assuage Your spongy passion for the blood ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... after pointing derisively at them, it withdrew; whereupon all the fruit shook, as if convulsed with unseemly laughter. They then saw between the foremost branches of the tree a big eye. The white of it was thick and pasty, the iris spongy in texture, and the pupil bulging with a lurid light. It stared at them with a steady stare—insolent and quizzical. Hamar and his friends stared back at it in fascinated horror, and would have continued staring at it indefinitely, had ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... The number of blades of grass was prodigious. A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass—each slender stalk crowned with a tuft. Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid the darker mass of spongy moss which gave them sustenance. Amid the numberless shafts thus raised toward heaven a thousand paths crisscrossed, each full of obstacles-chips of bark, juniper-berries, beech-nuts, tangled roots, hills raised by burrowing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... through every part of it. I had seen some trees, from which the natives had so often stripped the bark that the lower part was two or three inches in diameter less than the higher portion which they could not reach. The wood was of a particularly spongy and soft nature; and I was able to cut off enough with my knife to assist in ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... which, even in its incipient and early stages, when its presence is often unsuspected, is most injurious to the skin and complexion. It usually commences with unnatural sallowness, debility, and low spirits. As it proceeds, the gums become sore, spongy, and apt to bleed on the slightest pressure or friction; the teeth loosen, and the breath acquires a foetid odor; the legs swell, eruptions appear on different parts of the body, and at length the patient sinks under general emaciation, diarrhoea, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... is the common coal of this country, is submitted to heat it is subject to melt more or less, and emits smoke which is composed of water and oil. If it be thus completely distilled, it becomes a perfect coal of a porous or spongy texture. Such a substance as this is extremely rare among minerals; I have however found it. It is in the harbour of Ayr, where a whinstone dyke traverses the coal strata, and includes some of that substance in the state of coals or cinder. I pointed this ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... aquarium of phantom fish, Goggling in on me through the misty panes; My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains; My few clear quiet autumn ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... an immense peat bog of about twelve square miles in extent. Unlike the bogs or swamps of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, which consist principally of soft mud or silt, this bog is a vast mass of spongy vegetable pulp, the result of the growth and decay of ages. The spagni, or bog-mosses, cover the entire area; one year's growth rising over another,—the older growths not entirely decaying, but remaining partially preserved by the antiseptic ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... Think of all the horrors of a quicksand, which, embracing, sucks down into its cruel bosom the despairing victim of its insatiable greed. Think of a thin, solid crust, spread like icing upon a cake and concealing the soft, spongy matter beneath, covering every portion of the cruel plain; a crust which yields a crop of luxurious, enticing grass of the most perfect emerald hue; a crust firm in itself and dry looking, and yet not strong ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... winterers; it was chiefly salt meat. The effect of this was seen as early as December. Some of the party became listless and sluggish, their faces turned sallow and their eyes appeared sunken. They found it difficult to breathe and their gums were swollen and spongy. Macdonell, a veteran in hardship, saw at once that scurvy had broken out among them; but he had a simple remedy and the supply was without limit. The sap of the white spruce was extracted and administered to the sufferers. Almost immediately their health showed ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... the Bowery, which cuts through like a drain to catch its sewage, Every Man's Land, a reeking march of humanity and humidity, steams with the excrement of seventeen languages, flung in patois from tenement windows, fire escapes, curbs, stoops, and cellars whose walls are terrible and spongy with fungi. ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... don't seem fair," Julia mused. She presently went on an errand for her grandmother, and came back with sausages and fresh pulpy bread and large spongy crullers from the grocery. By this time the windy summer twilight was closing in, and the homegoing labourers and factory hands were filing home through the dirty streets. Julia found her two cousins in the lamp-lighted kitchen, Evelyn rather heavy ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... river at once. But somehow every step seemed to lead the seekers into greater difficulties. It was plain enough that the river must be near, for their steps were in and out among the dense patches of cane and over soft spongy soil into which their feet sank slightly, the earth being springy and elastic; but though Murray expected to see the dense foliage open out and the brake look lighter from the presence of the river, he was disappointed again and again, and to all intents ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... industrious habits of this animal those large open tracts of land called beaver meadows, covered with long, thick, rank grass, which he cuts down and uses as hay. These beaver meadows have the appearance of dried-up lakes. The soil is black and spongy; for you may put a stick down to the depth of many feet; it is only in the months of July, August, and September, that they are dry. Bushes of black alder, with a few poplars and twining shrubs, are scattered ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... is a straight, tall tree, with a tuft of branches and palm leaves at its top. The new growth is the centre as it first expands somewhat resembles a cabbage. It is often used for boiling and pickling. The wood of the tree is spongy, and is used for building wharves, as it is impervious to the sea-worm. It is said that a cannon ball will not penetrate it. It is a paltry emblem for a State flag, as its characteristics accurately indicate pride and poverty. When used for wharves, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... his breath; the torrents of water, dashing in his face, kept him blinking and gasping, and still that wild thing pawed and snorted. Fascinated, Piang gazed into the vicious, bleary eyes, and finally he realized that they were losing some of their fury; the tusks sank into the spongy earth; the head fell lower. The babui was a prisoner, pinioned to the ground by a fallen tree! Relief was Piang's first sensation, but pity for the animal and fear for himself, roused him to the realization of new dangers yet to be faced. He must plunge into the dense jungle; it was ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... spring upwards and onwards in the direction of the mark. They who threw farthest won the game, and had a repast of food at the expense of those who lost it. In more direct spear-throwing they set up the stem of a young cocoa-nut tree, with the base upwards, which is soft and spongy. One party threw at it, and filled it with spears. The other party threw, and tried to knock them down. If any remained after all had thrown they were counted until they reached the number fixed for the game. In another of these amusements a man stood in the distance ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... shoulder. He couldn't see the distant blotch of fire against the low stars—he didn't want to. He couldn't mark the silent drift of the sea gardens in the pass, but he gloated in the thought that they were riding to their death. The pitiless sun, the salt tides drunk up to their spongy bulbs, and their glory passed—they would be matted refuse on the shores and a man could trample them. Yes, the sea was with Tedge, and the rivers, too; the flood waters were lifting the lilies from their immemorable strongholds ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... it satisfies the demands of dietetics. Food containing water, as cooked meat oozing with its own gravy is a more palatable thing than dried meat-powder to which boiling water has been added. In the same way, a dry, hard biscuit plus liquid is a different thing from a spongy loaf of yeast bread with its high percentage of water. One must reckon with the psychic factor in eating. When sledging, one does not look for food well served as long as the food is hot, nourishing and filling. So the usage of weeks and a wolfish ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... with frequent lesser risings and descents, and having for surface a mixture of stones and heath. The stones are fixed in the earth, being very large and unequal, and generally are as deep in the ground as they appear above it; and where there are any spaces between the stones, there is a loose spongy sward, perhaps not above five or six inches deep, and incapable to produce any thing but heath, and all beneath it is hard ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson



Words linked to "Spongy" :   absorptive, sponge, squashy, sponginess, absorbent, soft



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