Arbaces

“ Seeing his beauty, in love with it fell.
The flower and fruit of the Arbutus, or Strawberry-tree, are represented in the following plate. We have few shrubs which contribute so much and so constantly to the adornment of our gardens and lawns as this. Its deep glossy ever-green leaves are alone beautiful; but when in Autumn these are gemmed with its clusters of delicate flowers, and the richly-hued ripening fruit (which is a year in attaining maturity, and so appears with the succeeding blossoms) , I know few objects so beautiful as a fine Arbutus. ”

“ Bat-like, out of the holes, and caverns, and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam pool ”

“ The leaf, the bark, and the wood of the plant are all coarse, in comparison to the flower. Now, as nothing is made in vain, there must be some reason for this. The leaves and bark, as well as wood, of plants, all have vessels through which sap flows, and this sap nourishes, sustains, and builds up the plant, as our blood does our bodies. ”

“ Seeing my condition, he took pity upon me, for I was covered with mud and paler than death, and asked me whether I had seen anyone in the place. “Not a soul,” I replied, whereupon he kindly conducted me to the high road, where he met two of his companions, who informed him that they had beaten along every path in the forest without having found anything except a tunic, which they showed him. ”

“ Let him mark the wondrous luxuriance of grass, leaf, weed and flower. The arbutus grows so large that it becomes a tree. Ferns of such gigantic proportions may be found in shady nooks that they seem to belong to some far-back geological age. ”

“ When the weapon is flung, the barb alone sinks into the creature’s flesh, the staff coming unloosed from the iron, and the line rapidly unwinding from the bobwood, as the stricken creature dives in its agony and fear. ”

“ Texture of bark, anatomy of muscle beneath, reflected lights in recessed hollows, stains of dark moss, and flickering shadows from the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the human hand can mark them. ”

“ A particle of soft bone, horn or iron, in anywise lodged in the body, assumes an arched shape; whereas bits of wood, grass-stems, or chips of bamboo-bark, under the same circumstances, putrify the blood and the local flesh, if not speedily extracted from their seats of lodgment. ”

“ An imperceptible breeze, makes the iron, brass, zinc, or wooden arrow revolve, just in the same manner as some imperceptible influence, some undiscernible impression moves the female heart, and urges it on to resolutions, and it does not matter whether they belong to town or country, the suburbs or the desert. ”

“ If, instead of using a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to {215} represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—a remnant of my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a sacred tree, or a nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the tree—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity ”

“ Each year the bark of a tree divides, and distributes itself two contrary ways, the outer part gives towards the skin, till it becomes skin itself, and at length falls off; the inner part is added to the wood. The bark is to the body of a tree, what the skin of our body is to the flesh. ”

“ He stated that a man with a wound, which he explained to mean a cut, would go and stand in the well within the wall, and there he would untie the rag that had been used to tie up the wound and would wash the wound with it: then he would tie up the wound with a fresh rag and hang the old one on the tree. The more respectable people whom I questioned talked more vaguely, and only of tying a rag to the tree, except one who mentioned a pin being thrown into the well or a rag being tied to the tree. ”

“ The witch doctor always possesses a lupong or medicine box, generally made of bark skin, which is filled with charms, consisting of scraps of wood or bark, curiously twisted roots, pebbles and fragments of quartz. ”

“ It has become my earnest desire to plant things, and grow things, and chop things with axes; to mow things with scythes. I dream of pastures, and ploughs, of pails and pitchforks, by night; and, by day, reaping-hooks, hoes, and rakes, are in my thoughts continually,—which all goes to show the effect of this wonderful air of Arcadia. ”

“ As soon as thy feet are on the moss, cut the rope, stop not to untie it, fall on thy breast, and crawl into that hole—my finger shows it now—where slab of stone leans unto stone, and the body of a large heart may lie hidden. ”

“ In the eyes of the botanist and entomologist this seemingly arid region is more attractive than the most beautiful gardens of the valley. Among these grasses and these stones lie hid the beautiful Alpine flowers of which no species exist in the lowlands. Only the arbutus, which puts forth its pink-and-white flowers earliest of all, and is warmed into life by the snows, at all resembles them in its habits. ”

“ Let a rack be instantly prepared, and let a tree be erected without loss of time, whereon his tortured limbs, whilst their fibres shall yet have hardly ceased to feel, may be hung as tender food for the ravens. His throat shall be squeezed by the hangman’s rope, until all he hath gained by his espial be disgorged or closed up for ever within it. ”

“ For the parts of wood split and contract, skins become shrivelled, and not only that, but, if the spirit be emitted suddenly by the heat of the fire, become so hastily contracted as to twist and roll themselves up. ”

“ A thousand years ago, you understand, men rode over the earth, clad in heavy iron armor, like hard-shell crabs. Every joint had to be tightly covered, lest a flying arrow should pierce the crack; and when they built themselves homes they were moved by this same terror of swift arrows, so they made the windows narrow and deep. ”

“ At the bottom of many precipitous abysses, where man’s foot had never descended, he saw hundreds of enormous trunks, hurled down by time, and heaped upon each other in decay; while at their foot, or between their crumbling branches, young ones were shooting up and flourishing. ”

“ Butchers and perfumers are born under the Balance, and all who think that it is their business to straighten things out. Poisoners and assassins are born under the Scorpion. Cross-eyed people who look at the vegetables and sneak away with the bacon, are born under the Archer. ”

“ Out of the ceaseless winds that drive them, the carnal look at us, and we watch the heretic rending his flesh, and the glutton lashed by the rain. We break the withered branches from the tree in the grove of the Harpies, and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds with red blood before us, and cries aloud with bitter cries. ”

“ The Ribhus, or Arbhus, again, were the sunbeams or the lightning, who forged the armour of the Gods, and made their thunder-bolts, and turned old people young, and restored out of the hide alone the slaughtered cow on which the Gods had feasted. ”

“ Would there be an acre in Europe, to-morrow, which had not seen human remains decaying beneath the beaks of carrion crows, or which did not contain them in its depths, infecting the sources of their poisoned juices? ”

“ The petrifaction of an animal form or structure has always appeared to me a most singular process in Nature. The change of such substances as cellular tissue, or fish-bone, or cartilage, or a light, leathery skin, into minerals such as silex and agate, seems at first like magic. ”

“ All suitable natural objects have been brought into requisition—animal, vegetable, and mineral. Shells from the sea, precious stones from the mountains, and fruits from the forest have been utilized; and claws of birds, teeth of animals, and even the nails of the human hand have been worked into ornaments to gratify the barbaric vanity of the "untutored savage." ”

“ The blood is poured into bamboo reeds, and in the course of time, being corked up, it hardens. The filled reeds are hung under the roofs of the huts, and when a person desires to treat his friends very hospitably the reeds are broken and the contents devoured. ”

“ Selecting some bough which may be conveniently lopped away without destroying the symmetry of the tree, he draws his knife across the bark, and inflicts on it a wound, from which, though death may not ensue for some two or three twelvemonths, it cannot ultimately recover. ”

“ Again, just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem as it were to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage. ”

“ Every morning each person, man or woman, to whom is allotted a certain number of trees, goes the round of the whole and collects in a large vessel the milky sap which trickles from gashes made in the bark on the preceding evening, and which is received in little clay cups, or in ampullaria shells stuck beneath the wounds. ”

“ The violent gymnastics take place in a large apartment of no special structure, without cement or glaze. The big grub, by rolling its rump to and fro, has simply pushed back all around it the powdery ligneous matter produced by its crumbled or even digested provisions. ”

“ Numerous tentacles, too, of exceeding length and tenuity, and throwing off branches, spring from the stem throughout its length, all the extremities of each forming tiny oval knobs of spiral coils, the whole capable of being thrown into the most beautiful and graceful convolutions, now bent at right angles, and again thrown out in a series of light airy-looking arches. ”

“ Only at the copious wells can one satisfy their apparently unbounded desires, and see, not without amusement, how they swallow without ever looking up, and then hasten from the well to the not less eagerly desired pasture, forced by their hobbles to grotesque and clumsy movements, which make their stomachs rumble like half-filled casks. ”

“ When he is called the embryo of trees or of trees as well as plants, there may be a side-glance at the fire produced in forests by the friction of the boughs of trees.”738 In some Australian languages the words for wood and fire are said to be the same.739
Trees that have been struck by lightning are deemed by the savage to be charged with a double portion of fire. ”

“ By the experiments related by Beccaria, it appears that four or five times the quantity, taken by the mouth, had about equal effects with that infused into a wound. The male flowers of the nettle are separate from the female, and the anthers are seen in fair weather to burst with force, and to discharge a dust, which hovers about the plant like a cloud. ”

“ Through a hole at the top of the globe issues a wick which passes through a sort of reed of brass, drawing the nut-oil held in the globe through its own length coiled like a tape-worm in a surgeon's phial. ”

“ Eve is handing her husband an apple from the Forbidden Tree, amid whose branches is seen the head of the serpent, his body being twisted into a large initial S, and then tapering away into the upper section of the border, where it becomes a branch, among the leaves of which appear emblems of the seven deadly sins. ”

“ Should {56} any one examine the inside of the bark of a cut tree, when corruption has just begun with the bark, and see how thoroughly it is undermined by insects, he will, we think, admit the strong probability, that the insect is only subordinate in the destruction of those fine old elms around London. ”

“ For as for those many pretended intricacies in the instance of the efformation of Wasps out of the Carcase of a Horse, I say, the Archei that framed them are no parts of the Horse's Soul that is dead, but several distinct Archei that do as naturally joyn with the Matter of his body so putrefied and prepared, as the Crowes come to eat his flesh. ”

“ In the open country and especially in hilly places laid bare by the woodman's axe, the favourite sites are tufts of bracken, rock-rose, lavender, everlasting and rosemary cropped close by the teeth of the flocks. ”

“ In front of us the calamitous plain is resurrected, where hummocks vaguely appear from their immersion, the steel-like plain that is rusty in places and shines with lines and pools of water, while bodies are strewn here and there in the vastness like foul rubbish, prone bodies that breathe or rot. ”

“ For ordinary experience shows us on all sides that the operative cause and the material cause are quite distinct: we invariably have on the one side clay, gold, and other material substances which form the material causes of pots, ornaments, and so on, and on the other hand, distinct from them, potters, goldsmiths, and so on, who act as operative causes. ”

“ Bark then is the outside, and is separable from the substance which it covers. Core is that which forms the middle of the wood, being third [38] in order from the bark, and corresponding to the marrow in bones. ”