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Spongy   Listen
adjective
Spongy  adj.  
1.
Soft, and full of cavities; of an open, loose, pliable texture; as, a spongy excrescence; spongy earth; spongy cake; spongy bones.
2.
Wet; drenched; soaked and soft, like sponge; rainy. "Spongy April."
3.
Having the quality of imbibing fluids, like a sponge.
Spongy lead (Chem.), sponge lead. See under Sponge.
Spongy platinum. See under Platinum.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spongy" Quotes from Famous Books



... emigrant. Guiding his course by the sun, and ever facing the West, he went slowly on. When that luminary set, his parting rays lit the faces of the pioneer family, and when it rose it threw their long shadows before them on the soft, spongy turf of the forest glades. Sweating through the undergrowth; climbing over fallen trees; sinking knee-deep in marshes; at noon they halted to take a rest in the shade of the primeval forest, beside a brook, and there eat their mid-day ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... larger 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 ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... abusing him you will only frighten him into obstinacy. When you have got the animal under perfect subjection, examine the foot carefully, and you will find the heels, at the back part of the frog, entirely free from that member, which is soft and spongy. When the foot is down, resting on the ground, grasp the heels in your strong hand, press them inwards towards the frog, and you will immediately find that they will yield. You will then see that what yields so easily to the mere pressure of the hand will expand ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley

... 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 ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... stood beside The hideous stream, and toward the whispering prow Held forth his tender tremulous hands, and cried, Now to the awful ferryman, and now To her that battled with the shades in vain. Sometimes impending over all her sight The spongy dark and the phantasmal flight Of things half-shapen passed and ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... path by which they entered it, and had neglected, in their eagerness to look for the strawberries, to notice any particular mark by which they might regain it. Just when they began to think of returning, Louis noticed a beaten path, where there seemed recent prints of cattle hoofs on a soft spongy ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... as to raise the 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

... I reached it, proved to be one of an enormous size. It must have been quite 150 feet across. The place had been converted into a miniature fort. I noticed how spongy the ground was. When walking it seemed as if one was treading upon rubber. I casually enquired of an officer the cause of it. "Dead bodies," said he; "the ground here is literally choked with them; we dare not touch it with a spade; the condition is awful. There are thousands of them for yards ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... vertebrae of the skeletons were missing; the cave-man, having despatched his victim, bad evidently taken only the more succulent parts into his retreat. Beasts of prey merely gnaw the comparatively tender and spongy tops of the bones, leaving the hard, compact parts untouched. In the caves that were inhabited by man, however, we find the apophyses neglected, whilst the diaphyses are split open. We cannot, therefore, make any mistake on this point, or attribute to the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... two light spongy bodies filling up the greater part of the chest. The heart lies between the lungs. The lungs are formed largely of thousands of thin-walled sacs and two sets of tubes. One set of tubes carries air into and out of the ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... of the rigid Puritanism which was the affliction and at the same time the making of New England; it is a fast, an aggravated fast, a scourge to indulgence, a reproach to gluttony; it comes Saturday night, and is followed Sunday morning by the dry, spongy, antiseptic, absorbent fish-ball as a castigation of nature and as a preparation for the austere observance of the Sabbath; it is the harsh, but no doubt deserved, punishment of the stomach for its worldliness during the week; inured to suffering, the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... his sagacious disposition and peculiar habits, impart to him an interest in the eyes of the hunter which no other animal can call forth. The pace of the elephant, when undisturbed, is a bold, free, sweeping step; and from the peculiar spongy formation of his foot, his tread is extremely light and inaudible, and all his movements are attended with a peculiar gentleness and grace. This, however, only applies to the elephant when roaming undisturbed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... 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 operation of "making a beast of hisself," ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

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

... to the country than was Jack's. After having gone a considerable distance, he left Jack some way behind. The marks of the horse's feet had immediately been lost, by the spongy ground returning to its former state. Jack, however, thought there could be no difficulty in pushing on directly behind him. He had not, however, gone far before he found that, instead of following Burdale's direction to turn neither to the ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... canal maker. Mr. Chambers says that when Yarranton's scheme was first brought forward, it met with violent opposition and ridicule. The undertaking was thought wonderfully bold, and, joined to its great extent, the sandy, spongy nature of the ground, the high banks necessary to prevent the inundation of the Stour on the canal, furnished its opponents, if not with sound argument, at least with very specious topics for opposition and laughter.[10] Yarranton's plan was to make the river ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... sunshine. It was not more than fifty yards away, and, 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 away cleaner than the Great Russians! They make the most delicious bread here—I over-ate myself with it at first. The pies and pancakes and fritters and the fancy rolls, which remind one of the spongy Little Russian ring rolls, are very good too.... But all the rest is not for the European stomach. For instance, I am regaled everywhere with "duck broth." It's perfectly disgusting, a muddy-looking ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... an inveterate smoker, is never without igniting apparatus, carried in a pocket of his pilot-coat. But where are they to find firewood? There is none on the islet—not a stick, as no trees grow there; while the tussac and other plants are soaking wet, the very ground being a sodden spongy peat. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... food, good or bad. More than that, the sluggish water-course that served as their reservoir crept across their pen foul and thick with the debris of the Rebel camp above, and in the centre filtered through the spongy ground, and creamed and mantled and spread out loathsomely into a hateful swamp; and the fierce sun, beating down on its slimy surface, drew from its festering pools and mounds of refuse a vapor of death, and the prisoners breathed it; and the reek of unwashed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... when I almost despaired of escaping from this tangle of spongy banks, and of hazy creeks, and reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh of a fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon which the other, having lost its rider, came up and pricked his ears at ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... a fashion 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

... rapidly, the deposit is likely to be spongy or loosely adherent and falls off on subsequent treatment. This places a practical limit to the current density to be employed, for a given electrode surface. The cause of the unsatisfactory character of the deposit is apparently sometimes to be found in the coincident liberation ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine barrens, where the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log causeways, through long cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy ground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss, while ever and anon the loathsome form of the mocassin snake might be seen sliding among broken stumps and shattered branches that lay here and there, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... turned back nearly to her elbows, showing a pair of white and shapely arms. Now and then she deftly dusted the kneading board with flour to prevent the dough sticking, and as she pressed her open palms into the smooth, white, spongy mass, the table groaned protestingly. She cut the roll with a knife into lumps that were patted into shape, and placed side by side, like hillocks of ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... its trip from Southern Missouri to this city without change. Another strange specimen in the novel collection is a portion of the Yucca tree, an abnormal growth of the lily family. The trunk, about 2 feet in diameter, is a spongy mass, not susceptible of treatment to which the other specimens are subjected. Its bark is an irregular stringy, knotted mass, with porcupine-quill-like leaves springing out in place of the limbs that ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... remain these tricksy elves. Though yet indeed some quips and pranks they play, 'Tis but a jest, men know, when far away The flickering marsh-fires swift they light And children follow their false tapers bright Among the spongy bogs. The ship-lad smiles, When distant 'mid the waves the phantom isles Rise green. 'Tis but a harmless jest that sets On lonely plains, domes, mosques, and minarets, And o'er the desert sands, mirage uplifts When glimmering waves shine through deep rifts Of ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... the formidable artillery that had swept the plateau of Austerlitz, the vales of Marengo, the cemetery of Eylau, was rendered useless for the time being because up in the inscrutable kingdom of the sky a cloud had chosen to burst—or had burst by the will of God—and water soaked the soft, spongy soil of Belgium and the wheels of artillery wagons sank ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... with him. It did not disturb him. Whatever was here was not alien to him or the forest. His eyes probed the mist that slithered through the ancient mossy trees and hanging vines. He listened, looked, but found nothing. Birds chittered, but that was all. He sat down, his back against a spongy tree trunk, fondled ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton

... miles of weary marching before them. Much of the country beyond the Platte was "Bad Lands," where the grass is scant and poor, the soil ashen and spongy, and the water densely alkaline. All this would tell very sensibly upon the condition of horses that all winter long had been comfortably stabled, regularly groomed and grain-fed, and watered only in pure running streams flushed ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... horrified eyes. His spongy hands were pointing down to the floor. There was an underground world to this beautiful palace, a shadow that was ever close to the light, a region of dimly-lit passages, of shadowed corners, of noiseless, tongueless slaves, of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... may resemble the severe grade of purpura, has a different history, a recognizable cause, usually a peculiar distribution, and is accompanied with general weakness and a spongy, soft and bleeding ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... more example. The feather of a bird is a marvellous structure, and no one will deny that as a whole it depends upon adaptation. But what part of it DOES NOT depend upon adaptation? The hollow quill, the shaft with its hard, thin, light cortex, and the spongy substance within it, its square section compared with the round section of the quill, the flat barbs, their short, hooked barbules which, in the flight-feathers, hook into one another with just sufficient firmness to resist the pressure ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... 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 ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... whose fine fingers fill the organic cells, With virgin earth, of woods and bones and shells; Mould with retractile glue their spongy beds, And stretch and strengthen all their fibre-threads.— Late when the mass obeys its changeful doom, 570 And sinks to earth, its cradle and its tomb, GNOMES! with nice eye the slow solution watch, With fostering hand the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... 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

... 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, if their skill and their market were alike secured. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... syrup 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 ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... steep ravine he went, finding the going easier than through the spongy swamps below. About half-way up, just where the juniors ten hours ago had decided to turn back, as he looked up, he saw what seemed like clear sky through a frame in the mist. Was it clearing after all? Yes. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... freezing at the bottom of rivers is to be found in the fact that water when kept still may be cooled down below the freezing- point without being congealed; but if the vessel in which it is kept be shaken, a portion of it will be converted into a porous, spongy ice, and the temperature immediately rises to 32 degrees. In the deeps of rivers the same cooling below the freezing-point takes place without congelation, but as soon as this water reaches the stream below, the agitation immediately converts a portion of it into ice, which collects ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... being changed into blood, which is a liquor apt to penetrate everywhere, and to thicken into flesh in the extreme parts, in order to repair in all the members what they lose continually both by transpiration and the waste of spirits. The lungs are like great covers, which being spongy, easily dilate and contract themselves, and as they incessantly take in and blow out a great deal of air, they form a kind of bellows that are in perpetual motion. The stomach has a dissolvent that causes hunger, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

... 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 pound of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... surest around the case. Nothing was disturbed, yet it seemed to Freckles that he could see where prying fingers had tried the lock. He stepped behind the case, carefully examining the ground all around it, and close beside the tree to which it was nailed he found a deep, fresh footprint in the spongy soil—a long, narrow print, that was never made by the foot of Wessner. His heart tugged in his breast as he mentally measured the print, but he did not linger, for now the feeling arose that he was being watched. It seemed to him that he could feel the eyes of some intruder at his back. ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... with great rapidity, 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 ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... thinner on the wire design than on the other parts of the sheet. When the water has run off through the sieve-like face of the mould, the new-born sheet of paper is "couched," the mould gently but firmly pressed upon a blanket, to which the spongy sheet clings. Sizing is a subsequent process, and, when dry, the water-mark is plainly discernible, being, of course, transparent where the substance is thinnest. The paper is then dried, and made up into reams of 500 sheets each, ready for press. The water-mark in the notes of the Bank of England ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... eggs, take the same weight of sugar and one-half the weight of flour; the grated rind and juice of one lemon to five eggs. For mixing this cake, see the directions given in "To Bake Cakes"; the mixture should be very light and spongy, great care being used not to break down the whipped whites. The oven should be moderate at first, and the heat increased after a time. The cake must not be moved or jarred while baking. The time will be forty to fifty minutes according to size of cake. Use ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... 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 ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

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

... dissolving view of a "good old-fashioned barn-raisin' "—and the old man doing all the "raisin' " himself, and "grubbin'," and "burnin' " logs and "underbrush," and "dreenin' " at the same time, and trying to coax something besides calamus to grow in the spongy little tract of swamp-land that he could stand in the middle of and "wobble" and shake the whole farm. Or, if you can't recall the many salient features of the minor disadvantages under which the old man used to labor, your pliant limbs may soon overtake ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... 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" ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... alone, but they had stared at Winter and Furneaux from the instant their regularity became apparent. They represented a stride considerably shorter than the average length of a man's pace, and were strongly marked when the surface was spongy enough to receive an impression. Except, however, in the slight hollow already described, the ground was so dry that traces of every sort were lost. In the vicinity of the rock, too, the only marks left were the scratches in the moss adhering ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... it; it will get undermined by the wash of the breakers, until, being top-heavy, it will speedily capsize. Then the war between the ice and the elements will begin afresh, until the once stately ice-mountain will become the 'bergy bit,' as whalers call the slowly-lessening mass of crumbling, spongy ice, until it finally disappears in the waters; but only to rise again in the form of vapour, which the cold of the north will convert into snow, the parent of that inland ice about the polar regions which forms the source of subsequent icebergs afresh—the ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson

... call the Wilson's thrush in New England, is merely a voice, a sylvan mystery, reflecting the sweetness and wildness of the forest, a vocal "will-o'-the-wisp" that, after enticing us deeper and deeper into the woods, where we sink into the spongy moss of its damp retreats and become entangled in the wild grape-vines twined about the saplings and underbrush, still sings to us from unapproachable tangles. Plainly, if we want to see the bird, we must let it seek us out on ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... you know. Seems they are the result of violent concentrations of energy that cause the birth of atoms. Thrygis doped out a collector of these rays that takes 'em from their paths and concentrates 'em in a retort where there's a spongy metal catalyst that never deteriorates. Here there is a reaction to the original action out in space and new atoms are born, simple ones of hydrogen. But what could be sweeter for use in one of our regular atomic motors? ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... patient, and many of her sex, that noble and divinely framed bellows is crippled and confined by a powerful machine of human construction; so it works lamely and feebly: consequently too little air, and of course too little oxygen, passes through that spongy organ whose very life is air. Now mark the special result in this case: being otherwise healthy and vigorous, our patient's system sends into the lungs more blood than that one crippled organ can deal with; a small quantity ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... and wild character of the several scenes! It may be worth while here to mention (not as an object of beauty, but of curiosity) that there occasionally appears above the surface of Derwent-water, and always in the same place, a considerable tract of spongy ground covered with aquatic plants, which is called the Floating, but with more propriety might be named the Buoyant, Island; and, on one of the pools near the lake of Esthwaite, may sometimes be seen a mossy Islet, with trees ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Downs cattle station on the Gilbert River in the far north of North Queensland, was riding slowly over his run, when, as the fierce rays of a blazing sun, set in a sky of brass, smote upon his head and shoulders and his labouring stock-horse plodded wearily homewards over the spongy, sandy soil, the lines of Barcroft Boake came to his mind, and, after he had repeated them mentally, ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke

... calculations from the sons of men to works of fiction, then indeed he might stand forth the prophet of a striking truth. The extensive plain over which this flood is spread seems even to be extending its limits, and a spongy soil of unlimited capacity is ready ever to absorb the fresh advance of waves. It is indeed striking to observe how authors and men of talent have increased, so vastly out of all proportion with other classes of men. Observing it, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... is sometimes the name of an organ, sometimes of a disease. As an organ it is spongy and loose in texture, and attracts and retains the superfluities of the black-bile, expelled from the liver for its own cleansing. Hence it is a servile and insensitive organ, and accordingly suffers different ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

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

... destructive power. Again, where also the river basin is covered by a dense mantle of forests, the ground beneath which is coated, as is the case in primeval woods, with a layer of decomposing vegetation a foot or more in depth, this spongy mass retains the water even more effectively than the open-textured glacial deposits above referred to. When the woods, however, are removed from such an area, the rain may descend to the streams almost as speedily as ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... 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 ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... herbage that grow scantily along the withered sides and the steeps of the Cordilleras. The structure of its stomach, like that of the camel, is such as to enable it to dispense with any supply of water for weeks, nay, months together. Its spongy hoof, armed with a claw or pointed talon to enable it to take secure hold on the ice, never requires to be shod; and the load laid upon its back rests securely in its bed of wool, without the aid ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... hidden nook of the mountain-forest she made her home. With branches and stones and turf she walled in the open hollow of the rock. In marshy places she gathered the thick spongy mosses, yellow and red, and dried them in the sun for warmth at night in the cold weather. She lived on roots and berries, acorns and nuts and wild fruit, and these in their time of plenty she stored against the winter. Birds' eggs she found in the spring; in due season the hinds, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... larger, and lie more in a body than in other parts of the State over which we passed; and it is a curious fact, often remarked, that there is no rock or gravel here. The soil is seldom black, but usually a yellow clay of a spongy texture. North of the North Edisto river, the country begins to assume a stony and gravelly appearance, and rises in ridges of hills until it becomes very broken indeed. There is a peculiarity in the soil of this part of the country which deserves ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear

... had been built of logs of palmetto wood, and was looked upon with some distrust by its defenders, who did not know how well that material could withstand cannon-shot; but the opening volley of the fleet re-assured them. The balls penetrated deep in the soft, spongy wood without detaching any of the splinters, which, in a battle, are more dangerous than the shot themselves. The fort soon replied to the fire of the fleet; and the thunder of three hundred cannon rang out over the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... 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 ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

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

... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... 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 out from ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... moment my eye caught in the spongy bottom a thin mark cut clearly crescent-wise upon the turf. There was something strangely familiar about the horseshoe curve. Then I remembered the unshod roan of ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... strength from the 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, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... figure of speech. That the tones of the voice are reinforced by the resonance of the air in the chest cavity, is an utter absurdity. In the acoustic sense, the thorax is not a cavity at all. The thorax is filled with the spongy tissue of the lungs, not to mention the heart. It is no better adapted for air resonance than an ordinary spherical resonator would be, if filled with ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... ft. above the level of the sea, has no crater, and is covered with a long tufted grass, with here and there a rough spongy rock cropping out, of volcanic origin, and called trachyte, of which the variety found here, and almost here alone, has been named domite. It is grayish-white, fine grained, compact, earthy, often friable, and with flakes ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... of foot. As he sped across the gray-green levels, at this season of the year spongy with rains, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the abbe, with his companions, just quitting the log cabin which served as the quarters of Boishebert. The boy's brow took on a yet darker shadow. When he ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts

... toes through the leather of his boot. He kicked again and again with all his might. The German rolled over heavily. He had no face. Chrisfield felt the hatred suddenly ebb out of him. Where the face had been was a spongy mass of purple and yellow and red, half of which stuck to the russet leaves when the body rolled over. Large flies with bright shiny green bodies circled about it. In a brown clay-grimed hand ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... on gradually (insidiously). There is loss of weight, progressively developing weakness and pallor, very soon the gums are swollen and look spongy and bleed easily. The teeth may become loose and fall out. The breath is very foul. The tongue is swollen, but it may be red and not coated. The skin becomes dry and rough and (ecchymoses) dark spots soon appear, first on ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... shrubs for both nut and fruit production, as 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

... of Bone. 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

... 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

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

... foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

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

... the lake, I saw that the ground on its farther side was damp and marshy, overgrown with rank grass and dismal willows. The water, which was clear enough on the open sandy side, where the sun shone, looked black and poisonous opposite to me, where it lay deeper under the shade of the spongy banks, and the rank overhanging thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw here, lying half ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... wheezed over through the soggy atmosphere, seeming to leave an unseen arc in the darkness above. It would terminate with a sullen thump in some spongy, water-soaked mound behind us. Then an answering missive of steel would whine away into the populated invisibility in front ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... went were light, spongy masses of greenery. Their footprints filled at once behind them with clear dark water; there were glistening little pools everywhere about them; the ground was so covered with mats of brilliant blossoms that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... first out of the earth, not farre from the said hanging rocke, and running a while in one entire current, continueth so, till it commeth almost to the brim of the cragg; where being opposed by a damme (as it were artificiall) of certaine spongy stones, is afterwards divided into many smaller branches, and falleth from on ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... from the nest. After the young are hatched both old and young disport themselves about the water until moulting time. She advises: "Do not let the Phoebes build under the hoods of your windows, for their spongy nests harbor innumerable bird-lice, and under such circumstances your fly-screens will become infested ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various

... 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 ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... people one knew. Neither of them was for nightingales. "You are very foolhardy," James said. "I can't help you with nightingales." Lord Considine, in a black Spanish cloak, with the staff of a pilgrim to Compostella, offered his arm. "We'll go first to the oak Spinney," he said. "It's rather spongy, I'm afraid, but who minds a little cold water?" Vera assured him that she did for one, and James added that he was rather rheumatic. "Come along, Mrs. Macartney," said the lord. "These people make me sorry for them." So they went down the ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... the company about the fountain, and took his seat with some emphasis on a stone bench, while the handmaid hastened to bring him a glass of sparkling water. He sipped it deliberately and with a relish, tempering it with one of those spongy pieces of frosted eggs and sugar so dear to Spanish epicures, and on returning the glass to the hand of the damsel pinched her cheek ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... this turn, taking a branch trail that slanted through the thicket, wet leaves slapping against him, the horse's hoofs sucking into the spongy turf. It was still and dark, the air drenched with the odors of mossed roots and pungent leaves. When he emerged, the lights of Columbus shone below, a small sprinkling of yellow dots gathered about the central brightness ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... different names. Pretty near one of these villages was discovered a silver mine, which was found to be rich, and of a very pure metal. I have seen the assay of it, and its ore is very fine. This silver lies concealed in small invisible particles, in a stone of a chesnut colour, which is spongy, pretty light, and easily calcinable: however, it yields a great deal more than it promises to the eye. The assay of this ore was made by a Portuguese, who had worked at the mines of New Mexico, whence he made his escape. He appeared to be master of his business, and afterwards ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... grow. They have an outer husk, or rind, which when green is hard and has a very pleasant smell; the tree then seems to be covered with green balls. As the nuts ripen this outer part becomes so dark that it is almost black and grows soft and spongy. A rich brown dye is made from it. Black-walnut wood has long been famous for its beauty, and it grows deeper and darker with age. It is handsomely shaded and takes a fine polish, and this, with its durability, makes it very valuable for furniture. Posts made ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... spongy, the scarce-green grass plot Dents into pools where a foot has been. Puddles lie spilt in the road a mass, not Of water, but steel, with ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... is a brown, round fruit; the skin rather crisp and hard, and of a dull earthy colour, not unlike that of a common boiled potato. The inside is a stringy, spongy-looking mass, with small seeds embedded in a gummy viscid substance. The taste is exactly like an almond, and it forms a pleasant ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... and kill fish for food, saw them carve the thick, spongy hearts from certain giant growths and eat them. I saw a pair of killer sharks swoop down on the band, and the quick, deadly accuracy with which both men and woman met the attack. One man, older than the rest, was injured before the sharks ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... rheumatic Complaints, had Blotches appear on his Legs, complained of great Weakness, and fainted away in attempting to walk; which made me suspect his Disorder to be the Scurvy; and, on examining him, I found his Gums soft and spongy, attended with the other Symptoms of the true Scurvy. I put him nearly on the same Course as in the last-mentioned Case: He used a low Diet, with the Addition of Greens for Dinner, which he eat with a little Butter and Vinegar; and he had a ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... her and plodded away across the grass, sinking ankle-deep in the spongy moss among the roots of it When he had grown scarcely distinguishable in the haze he ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... at both sides and remove the spongy substance found on the back. Then pull off the "apron," which will be found on the under side, and to which is attached a substance like that removed from the back. Now wipe the crabs, and dip them ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... fears the Greeks than I, As far as toucheth my particular, Yet, dread Priam, There is no lady of more softer bowels, More spongy to suck in the sense of fear, More ready to cry out 'Who knows what follows?' Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th' bottom of the worst. Let Helen go. Since the ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... Mozambique, Zanzibar, West Africa, Brazil, and the Philippines. The best of the Copals is said to be the Kauri gum, originally exuded from the Kauri pine tree of New Zealand. The tree is still existent and produces a soft, spongy sap, but the resin used in varnish is dug up from a few feet under ground in regions where there are now no trees. A commercially important copal and one noted for its hardness is the Zanzibar or East African Copal. It is found imbedded in the earth at a depth not greater than four feet ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... it 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 and coarse looking, Marguerite reedy and thin, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... vision of the water-but had often flashed upon his inner eye, and it had not been the bliss of his solitude. He deserted his post in the hope of finding something to eat, and had not had a mouthful of anything but spongy turnip, and dried-up mangel-wurzel, or want-root. If he had been minding his work, he would have had a piece of good bread—so good that he would have wanted more of it, whereas, when he had eaten the turnip and the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... decks. Many of the scurvy stricken had not been out of their berths for six weeks. The fearful depression and weakness, that forewarn scurvy, had been followed by the pains, the swollen limbs, the blue spots that presage death. A spongy excrescence covered the gums. The teeth loosened. The slightest noise was enough to throw the patient into a paroxysm of anguished fright; and some died on the decks immediately on contact with the cuttingly cold ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... the channels, fastened the painter, and peered over the rail. There was no one in sight, and they sprang down, finding themselves on a deck that was soft and spongy with time and weather. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... then washed, a process requiring much attention and great skill and judgment; for if it be not washed long enough, although strong and of good body, will be coarse and of little value; if washed too long it will afford a white paper, but will be spongy and unfit for writing upon. Having been washed until it becomes a soft and woolly pulp, it is spread upon a table and beat fine with a mallet. It is then put into a tub with an infusion of rice and breni root, when the whole is stirred until the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... Morris, 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 ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... other than iron which is not so. Soft iron we do not bring together by fusion, but by a process which is analogous to the one that was followed in the case of platinum, namely, welding; for these divided grains of spongy platinum having been well washed and sunk in water for the purpose of excluding air, and pressed together, and heated, and hammered, and pressed again, until they come into a pretty close, dense, compact mass, did so cohere, ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... a solitary wolf is 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 ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... at his own expense, to his dairy. Anyicska and Masinka, the two bridesmaids of last evening, met me at the gate, and were very officious in showing me in, and while Anyicska brought me a cup of excellent sweet milk, Masinka brought some spongy rye bread, fresh from the oven, upon a salver. Of course, this was offered as a bribe for my secrecy on the topic of last night, and I promised them not to tell Countess Diodora how they had been employed at the mock wedding. Poor things, why should I betray ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... but they were no richer Until they found a ragged piece of sheet, Which served them as a sort of spongy pitcher, And when they deemed its moisture was complete, They wrung it out, and though a thirsty ditcher[133] Might not have thought the scanty draught so sweet As a full pot of porter, to their thinking They ne'er till now had known ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... I had a curious encounter. An early spring had set in abruptly; at midday the heat rose to eighteen degrees Reaumur. Everything was turning green, and shooting up out of the spongy, damp earth. I hired a horse at the riding-school, and went out for a ride into the outskirts of the town, towards the Vorobyov hills. On the road I was met by a little cart, drawn by a pair of spirited ponies, splashed with mud ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... of this element had caused the chief impediment to our progress through the country at that time, we were obliged to pass a night most uncomfortably from the total want of it at the base of Mount Napier. The spongy-looking rocks were however dry enough to sleep upon, a quality of which the soil in general had been rather deficient, as most of us felt in our muscles. I perceived a remarkable uniformity in the size of the trees, very few of which were dead or fallen. From ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

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

... notice it was complicated with the symptoms of a previous debilitating disease, the diagnosis was difficult. During the patient’s recovery from one of the abdominal attacks above mentioned, the gums were observed to be spongy, separated from the teeth and reverted, bleeding, and in various parts presenting the livid appearance of scorbutic gums. At the same period arose pains of an anomalous description, and of considerable severity about the shoulders and thorax. These gradually yielded as he recovered strength, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... spongy plums on trees wide-spreading hang; Bell apples here, suspended, shade the ground; Plump granadillas and guavas gray, With melons, in each plain ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George

... Wart or Cauliflower Disease, the latter term being attributable to the Cauliflower-like appearance of the outgrowth of the fungus. This outgrowth first shows in the eyes of the young Potato in the form of small wrinkled warts. These multiply and combine, thus creating a dark spongy scab which eventually decomposes. Where the disease is very rife it attacks haulm as well as tubers, and a yellowish-green mass may sometimes be found just above or just below the surface of the soil. As a rule, however, no outward indication of its existence is to be seen ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... you will listen, in the soft tread of these hundred horse-hoofs upon the spongy vegetable soil. They are trotting now in 'common time.' You may hear the whole Croats' March (the finest trotting march in the world) played by those iron heels; the time, as it does in the Croats' March, breaking now and ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... full of anger for the tragedy of the inaction. At the moment he gave small attention to his own life, its heights or depths, past or future. He saw Stafford, but he could not be said to consider him at all. He turned from the road into the wood, and pushed the great bay over spongy ground toward the isolated 65th. Stafford saw that he gave him no thought, and it angered him. On the highroad of his life it would not have done so, but he had left the road and was lost in the jungle. There were few ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... winding downwards to within twenty-four feet of the ground; the rest was a sheer wall of rock. Down he dashed, faster and faster as he got to where the track ended, and then losing his footing he fell swiftly to the earth, but luckily dropped on a deep spongy turf and was not hurt. After witnessing this reckless act I knew how he had come by those frightful bruises on a former occasion. He had doubtless fallen a long way down a cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones. But the lesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that where rabbits and foxes ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... Spenser; but MR. HALLIWELL (Monograph Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 425.) finds no authority to support such an interpretation. MR. COLLIER'S anonymous annotator writes "tilled;" but surely this is a very artificial process to be performed by "spongy April." Hanmer proposed "peonied;" Heath, "lilied;" and MR. HALLIWELL admits this is more poetical (and surely more correct), but appears to prefer "twilled," embroidered or interwoven with flowers. A friend of mine suggested that "lilied" was ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... structures situated on 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 three fossae, called meatuses, and these ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... pause to rest or eat, without backward glance, with eye ever piercing through the long leafy vistas of the forest on the watch for the fresh-chipped bark of the trees that guided his course, or the narrow indurated path over the spongy mould worn by running warriors. And when night filled the forest with the hoot of owl, and the far, weird cries of wild creatures on the rove, there sped through the aisled columns of star light and shadow, the ghostly figure of the French boy slim, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... partake of this increase, but become flat and hard, the substance of the gland losing its spongy structure. The legs and arms lose their roundness of outline, and, where they do not grow fat, dry up, and resemble those of the other sex. The abdomen enlarges, even to the extent occasionally of leading the wife to believe that she is to be ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... across the fields, through the woods. In the starlight, the great world lay dim and lovely before him—it belonged to him! He felt the joyous buffet of the night wind upon his face, the brush of boughs against his shoulder, the scent of young ferns, and the give of the spongy earth under his feet; he sprang in long leaps over the grass, the tears were wet upon his fresh cheeks, he sang aloud. But he did not know what he sang; in his young breast, Love, like some warm living thing, stirred, and lifted glorious wings and drove his voice throbbing and exultant ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... them is frying them in plenty of butter and lard mixed; prepare them the same as frying fish. The spongy substance from the sides should be taken off, also the sand bag. Fry a nice ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... and shoots them when they come to the surface. Their burrows are usually in the high banks of the river, with the entrance under water, and rising within to above the level of high water. Sometimes their nests, composed of dried meadow grass and flags, may be discovered where the bank is low and spongy, by the yielding of the ground under the feet. They have from three to seven or eight ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... lank wet grass and soft spongy soil, he found himself suddenly confronted with a great barrier of fallen rocks; as though, at some period of its existence, the north end of the island had tapered to a gigantic peak which, in the fulness of its time, had come ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... dogs, also some native tracks, all fresh. On the north-west side there is one solitary gum-tree, and about half a mile in the same direction is another bed of reeds, and a spring with water in it. All the banks round the lagoon are of a spongy nature. I am very glad I have found this; it will be another day's stage with water nearer to the Spring of Hope. We can now make that in one day, if we can get an early start. By the discovery of springs ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... 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 produce ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... tip of 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

... a degree of fastidiousness that seemed to me ill-timed, was for picking out the minute particles of tobacco with which the spongy mass was mixed; but against this proceeding I protested, as by such an operation we must ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... stated making my own bread from my own at-home-ground flour I was puzzled by variations in the dough. Sometimes the bread rose well and was spongy after baking like I wanted it to be. Sometimes it kneaded stickily and ended up flat and crumbly like a cake. Since I had done everything the same way except that I may have bought my wheat berries from different healthfood stores, I began to investigate the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... I recognized the metal immediately, and repressing a strong inclination to hunt for the lead and stake out my claim, I took my find home with me. Surprised at its diminishing weight as the moisture dried out of the spongy mass, I endeavored to saw into it. The pure metal inside tore off every tooth of the saw, and now convinced that it was a hollow cylinder of hardened copper, I brought it to America and gave it to a machinist to open. He ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... to behave to me in this manner," he said, at length, lifting his head with a spasmodic jerk, and raising to mine his mottled, angry eyes, now cold and hard as pebbles, "seeing that you are, so to speak, in the hollow of my hand;" and, suiting the action to the word, he extended his long, spongy, right hand, and closed it crushingly, as though it contained a worm, while he smiled and sneered—oh, such a sneer! it seemed ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... when he reached the place. With what a roar the Wan Water came down its rocks, rushing from its steeper course into the slow incline of the Glamour! A terrible country they came from—those two ocean-bound rivers—up among the hill-tops. There on the desolate peat-mosses, spongy, black, and cold, the rain was pouring into the awful holes whence generations had dug their fuel, and into the natural chasms of the earth, soaking the soil, and sending torrents, like the flaxen hair of a Titanic Naiad, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... 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 ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson

... that there are various kinds of Sponges in the market; some are large and flat, others small and cup-shaped; some are soft, and others rather hard. They are all somewhat horny and elastic. This "spongy" material is the skeleton of the Sponge animal, cleaned and dried for your use. Some kinds of Sponge would tear your skin if you tried to use them, for they have a hard skeleton. It is made of lime, ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... various Martian containers for Rodan. In spare moments he classified those scarce and incredibly hardy lunar growths that he found in the foothills of the Arabian Range. Some had hard, bright-green tendrils, that during daylight, opened out of woody shells full of spongy hollows as an insulation against the fearsome cold of night. Some were so small that they could only be seen under a microscope. Frank's interest, here, however, palled quickly. And Lester, in his mumbling, studious preoccupation, was ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... The straw shoes tied with wisps round the pasterns are a great nuisance. The "shoe strings" are always coming untied, and the shoes only wear about two ri on soft ground, and less than one on hard. They keep the feet so soft and spongy that the horses can't walk without them at all, and as soon as they get thin your horse begins to stumble, the mago gets uneasy, and presently you stop; four shoes, which are hanging from the saddle, are soaked ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... 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



Words linked to "Spongy" :   sponge, absorbent, squishy, sponginess



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