Various

“ The mind feels the beauty of emphasis and cadence in muscular motion, just as much as in musical notes. Then, the figure of the dance is frequently a circle or some more graceful curve or series of curves,—a fact which satisfies the dancer as well as the eye of the spectator. But all such effects are intensified by the use of music, which not only brings a perfectly distinct set of pleasurable sensations to dancer and spectator, but by the control of dancing produces an inexpressibly sweet harmony of sound and motion. ”

“ She is the mother of beef, the source of butter, the original cause of cheese, to say nothing of shoe-horns, hair-combs and upper leather. A gentle, amiable, ever-yielding creature, who has no joy in her family affairs which she does not share with man. We rob her of her children that we may rob her of her milk, and we only care for her when the robbing may be perpetrated. ”

“ In any attempt to estimate the average value of the manure derived from the consumption of food for the production of milk, the difficulty arising from the very wide variation in the amount of milk yielded by different cows, or by the same cow at different periods of her lactation, is increased by the inadequate character of information concerning the difference in the amount of the food actually consumed by the animal coincidently with the production of such different amounts of milk. ”

“ If France has been the nursery and school of the art of dancing, Spain is its true home. There it is part of the national life, the inevitable expression of the gay, contented, irresponsible, sunburnt nature of the people. The form of Spanish dances has hardly changed; some of them are of great antiquity, and may be traced back with hardly a break to the performances in ancient Rome of the famous dancing-girls of Cadiz. The connexion is lost during the period of the Arab invasion, but the art was not neglected, and Jovellanos suggests that it took refuge in the Asturias. ”

“ There were men of stronger build than the weak Ishbaal and the crippled son of Jonathan, the survivors of Saul’s house, and it is only to be expected that David’s first care must have been to cement the union of the north and south. The choice of Jerusalem, standing on neutral ground, may be regarded as a stroke of genius, and there is nothing to show that the king exercised that rigour which was to be the cause of his grandson’s undoing. ”

“ This is primitive dancing; and it embraces all movements of the limbs and body expressive of joy or grief, all pantomimic representations of incidents in the lives of the dancers, all performances in which movements of the body are employed to excite the passions of hatred or love, pity or revenge, or to arouse the warlike instincts, and all ceremonies in which such movements express homage or worship, or are used as religious exercises. Although music is not an essential part of dancing, it almost invariably accompanies it, even in the crudest form of a rhythm beaten out on a drum. ”

“ In Virgil we are apparently intended to see the symbol of what Dante calls philosophy, what we should rather call natural religion; Beatrice standing for theology, or rather revealed religion. Under Virgil’s escort Dante is led through the two lower realms of the next world, Hell and Purgatory; meeting on the way with many persons illustrious or notorious in recent or remoter times, as well as many well enough known then in Tuscany and the neighbouring states; but who, without the immortality, often unenviable, that the poet has conferred on them, would long ago have been forgotten. ”

“ The only true national dances of Scotland are reels, strathspeys and flings, while in Ireland there is but one dance—the jig, which is there, however, found in many varieties and expressive of many shades of emotion, from the maddest gaiety to the wildest lament. Curiously enough, although the Welsh dance often, they have no strictly national dances.
Dancing in present-day society is a comparatively simple affair, as five-sixths of almost all ball programmes consists of waltzes. ”

“ This latter, probably his first attempt to expound natural selection, cannot be surpassed as a clear statement of the theory. Darwin explained at the outset, what he insisted on elsewhere, that the facts of adaptation or contrivance in nature are the real difficulty to be explained by a theory of evolution, the stumbling-block of every previous suggestion. Until he could explain “the mistletoe, with its pollen carried by insects, and seed by birds—the woodpecker, with its feet and tail, beak and tongue, to climb the tree and secure insects,” he was “scientifically orthodox.” ”

“ Country roads, exposed to the wear and tear of a comparatively new traffic, are lively at morn and eve with the rattle of vehicles conveying fresh milk from the farms to the railway stations. Most of these changes were brought about within the limits of the last third of the 19th century. ”

“ The fisherman, the woodsman, the canoe-builder, has each his trade song, which on public occasions at least is illustrated by dancing. But the accompaniment is often consciously intended, by an appeal to the ear, to regulate and sustain the excitement of the muscles. And a close relation will be found always to exist between the excellence of a nation’s dancing and the excellence or complexity of its music and poetry. ”

“ An English or a Bohemian dance, practised only amongst peasants, would be taken to France, polished and perfected, and would at last find its way back to its own country, no more recognizable than a piece of elegant cloth when it returns from the printer to the place from which as “grey” material it was sent. The fact that the terminology of dancing is almost entirely French is a sufficient indication of the origin of the rules that govern it. The earliest dances that bear any relation to the modern art are probably the danses basses and danses hautes of the 16th century. ”

“ In order to demonstrate to producers what is the ideal to aim at, there is nothing more effective than a competitive exhibition of products, and the approach to uniform excellence of character in cheese and butter of whatever kinds is most obvious to those who remember what these products were like at the first two or three dairy shows. ”

“ Thus, as compared with fattening increase, which may in a sense be said to be little more than an accumulation of reserve material from excess of food, milk is a special product, of a special gland, for a special normal exigency of the animal. Further, whilst common experience shows that the herbivorous animal becomes the more fat the more, within certain limits, its food is rich in carbohydrates, it points to the conclusion that both the yield of milk and its richness in butter are more connected with a liberal supply of the nitrogenous constituents in the food. ”

“ The drama of the nine months between the expulsion of the Girondins and the execution of Danton turns upon the struggle of the committee to retain power—first, against the insurrectionary commune of Paris, and second, against the Convention, from which the committees derived an authority that was regularly renewed on the expiry of each short term.
Danton, immediately after the fall of the Girondins, had thrown himself with extraordinary energy into the work to be done. The first task in a great city so agitated by anarchical ferment had been to set up a strong central authority. ”

“ Under the Civil Procedure Act 1833, the jury is allowed to give interest by way of damages on debts or sums payable at a certain time, or if not so payable, from the date of demand in writing, and in actions on policies of insurance, and in actions of tort arising out of conversion or seizure of goods.
In the United States, interest is in the discretion of the court, and is made to depend on the equity of the case. In both England and America compound interest, or interest on interest, appears to have been regarded with the horror that formerly attached to usury. ”

“ Every dairy farmer has some idea, as to each of his cows, whether she is a good, a bad or an indifferent milker, but such knowledge is at best only vague. By the simple means indicated the character of each cow as a milk-producer is slowly but surely recorded in a manner which is at once exact and definite. Such a record is particularly valuable to the farmer, in that it shows to him the relative milk-yielding capacities of his cows, and thus enables him gradually to weed out the naturally poor milkers and replace them by better ones. ”

“ If a maker has learnt how to rennet the milk properly, and how to secure the right amount of acidity at the time of hooping—that is, when the broken and salted curd is put into the wooden hoops which give the cheese its shape—he has acquired probably two of the most important details necessary to success. It was formerly the custom to add cream to the milk used for making Stilton cheese, but the more general practice now is to employ new milk alone, which yields a product apparently as excellent and mellow as that from enriched milk. ”

“ In Scotland the law of compensation for breach of contract is substantially the same as in England. In cases of delict or quasi-delict, the measure of reparation is a fair and reasonable compensation for the advantage which the sufferer would, but for the wrong, have enjoyed and has lost as a natural and proximate result of the wrong, coupled with a solatium for wounded feelings. The claim for reparation vests as a debt when it arises and survives to the representatives of the sufferer, and against the representatives of the delinquent. ”

“ A witness who kept a herd of 100 milking cows expressed the opinion that improvement in the quality of milk can be effected by feeding, though not to any large extent. On the other hand, it was maintained that the fat percentage in the milk of a cow cannot be raised by any manner or method of feeding. It is possible that in the case of cows very poorly fed the addition of rich food would alter the composition of their milk, but if the cows are well-fed to begin with, this would not be so. ”

“ In the temperate regions of the earth many pastoral tribes subsist mainly upon the milk of the sheep. In some rocky regions the goat is invaluable as a milk-yielder; and the buffalo is equally so amid the swamps and jungles of tropical climates. The milking of ewes was once a common practice in Great Britain; but it has fallen into disuse because of its hurtful effects upon the flock. A few milch asses and goats are here and there kept for the benefit of infants or invalids; but with these exceptions the cow is the only animal now used for dairy purposes. ”

“ No census of cows in the United States was taken until the year 1840, but they have been enumerated in each subsequent decennial census. From 23 to 27 cows to every 100 of the population were required to keep the country supplied with milk, butter and cheese, and provide for the export of dairy products. The export trade, though it has fluctuated considerably, has never exceeded the produce of 500,000 cows. At the close of the 19th century it was estimated that there was one milch cow in the United States for every four persons, making the number of cows about 17,500,000. ”

“ Hungary had also its partisans; for in the Dalmatian city-states, like those of Greece and Italy, there were almost invariably two jealous political factions, each ready to oppose any measure advocated by its antagonist. The origin of this division seems here to have been economic. The farmers and the merchants who traded in the interior naturally favoured Hungary, their most powerful neighbour on land; while the seafaring community looked to Venice as mistress of the Adriatic. ”