Boche

“ I have learned since that if a few ounces or whittlings of wood in a tree are chipped out in a ring around it under the bark, cords of wood in the limbs all up across the sky would die in a week—if one chips out those few little ounces of wood. ”

“ The apparently solid logs of which the rest of the house is built are now mere cylinders of bark, and through the thickest of them you could push your little finger. Furniture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers, everything made of wood is inevitably attacked, and in a single night a strong trunk is often riddled through and through, and turned into match-wood. ”

“ In a good part of the Radicle ’tis one entire Trunk; towards the Basis thereof, ’tis divided into three main Branches; the middlemost runneth directly into the Plume; the other two on either side it, after a little space, pass into the Lobes; where the said Branches dividing themselves into other smaller; and those into more, and smaller again, are terminated towards the Verges of each Lobe; in which manner the said inner Body being distributed, it becomes in each Lobe, a true and perfect Root. ”

“ Make a wooden mould, and put the clay on it: then the inside will be smooth, and just the shape of the mould, and you can make the outside just as you like; and when you put it in the fire the wood will burn out. Or you can do as the Indians do,—make a basket, and put the clay on the inside of the basket; and the basket will burn off. ”

“ The Sphere would willingly have continued his lessons by indoctrinating me in the conformation of all regular Solids. Cylinders, Cones, Pyramids, Pentahedrons, Hexahedrons, Dodecahedrons, and Spheres: but I ventured to interrupt him. Not that I was wearied of knowledge. On the contrary, I thirsted for yet deeper and fuller draughts than he was offering to me.
“Pardon me,” said I, “O Thou Whom I must no longer address as the Perfection of all Beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy servant a sight of thine interior.”
Sphere. My what?
I. Thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines. ”

“ The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew-tree
And the land where the yew-tree grows.
What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love ”

“ The cubit is a cubit and an hand breadth; even the bottom shall be a cubit, and the breadth a cubit, and the border of it by its edge on every side shall be a span: and this shall be the higher place of the altar. [372] [373] 14 And from the bottom upon the ground even to the lower ledge shall be two cubits, and the breadth one cubit; and from the smaller ledge even to the greater ledge shall be four cubits, and the breadth one cubit. 15 So the altar shall be four cubits; and from the altar and upward shall be four horns. ”

“ They project their cable-like, flexible roots in every direction horizontally, interlacing continually until a fabric is woven on the surface of the soft earth like the tangled web of a gigantic basket. ”

“ Now this very contradiction should have taught Mr. Buckle that he was involved in a fallacy. In nature totals are made up of parts similar to the whole. A block of stone is made up of stony molecules ; a kidney of several little kidneys ; a wave is an accumulation of little waves. Every chip of wood has the same construction as the block. ”

“ The several pieces of wood were not only of different shapes and sizes, but they were as thin as the thinnest veneer; yet the box had been formed by simply joining them together. The man who made that box must have been possessed of ingenuity worthy of a better cause.
I perceived how the puzzle had been worked. ”

“ A scantling of wood placed on its edge will support a much greater weight than one placed on its side; so, in laying a floor, instead of laying all the boards on their sides, which would not be strong enough, or placing them all on their edges, which would use too much wood, the plan is to place on edge a sufficient number, and on these to lay the floor of boards on their sides. ”

“ The face of the rock which contains the arch, rises immediately in front, and would effectually prevent the eye from ranging beyond its mighty barrier, did not its center open into the above-mentioned arch, through which is seen a small part of the opposite side of the dale, consisting of a mass of gloomy wood, from the shade of which a huge detached rock, solitary, cragged, and pointed, starts out to a great hight, and forms an object truly sublime. ”

“ At the sight of a large spherical form rising abruptly from the surface of some shaft of a pillar, you step back, and discover that it forms part of the posteriors of a corpulent cherub, as large as the column itself, which he has thus unmercifully annihilated, in order to save himself the trouble of passing a few inches to the left or right. ”

“ A beech or elm might have suggested the same thought, for in the trunk of every forest-tree the material is so disposed that the greater portion pertains to the base of the column; that part, especially, which [Pg 199] rises from the root is thickest, and why is this? not only because a tapering column is far more beautiful than one of equal girth, but because the disturbing force at the top, acts more powerfully on the lower sections, than on the higher. ”

“ In most cases the surface of the slab is so weathered and carious, that the most careful rubbing with heel-ball or black-lead presents but an indistinct representation, for by these means every accidental cavity appears on the paper as clearly as the lines, and confusion is the result. ”

“ To secure heavy objects in a mixed box, an inverted rough stool is the best, the cross piece on the object below, and the sides coming up to the lid. If cross bars are nailed in a box, damage may be done to an object in forcing the bars loose. ”

“ In the middle of the box is a partition, extending nearly the whole length of the box, and on the inside, on each side, is a ledge or piece of moulding to support slates to be laid over the entire surface of the box. ”

“ If we draw black outlines, such as represent the edges of a cube seen in perspective, certain of the lines will cross each other; and we may make this cube appear to assume two different positions, by determining in our own mind that the lines which belong to one end of the cube shall be understood to be before or to be behind those which they cross. ”

“ But the boys who have not yet reached manhood going in through the shafts into the excavations in the rock, laboriously cast up the rock that is being thrown down bit by bit, and convey it to the place outside the mouth of the shaft into the light. ”

“ She wheeled about and pointed at the other side of the alcove, where stood the metal box, sullen, defiant, secure.
“By Jove, that's so, tool Why, I'd all but forgotten that! You're a brick, Beta! The box, by all means. Perhaps the most important things of all are still in safety there. ”

“ In making large statues, a skeleton framework of wood was often employed, called κίνναβος, or κάναβος, which was covered with solid material,—clay, plaster, brick, pitch, etc., all welded together to form a solid core over which the surface was finished in clay, plaster, pitch, ivory, or gold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the inner Body is branched out in the Lobes, so is it in the Plume: For if you cut the Plume athwart, and from the Basis proceed along the Body thereof, you’l find therein, first, one large Trunk or Branch, and after four or five very small Specks round about it, which are the terminations of so many lesser Branches therewith distributed to the several parts of the Plume. ”

“ We also make an end squeeze that no one can tell from a square box, as the end of box is immovable, the metal of the end being thinner than rest of box, being able to spring or give as it is pressed, and doing the work. ”

“ But tell me, what other division of salt-boxes do you recollect?
Stu. They are further divided into substantive and pendant : a substantive salt-box is that which stands by itself on the table or dresser ; and a pendant is that which hangs upon a nail against the wall. ”

“ This being so, the glands of the investing fleshy tissue secrete lime from the sea-water, which holds it in solution, and constantly deposits it, after a determinate and orderly pattern, on every part of the surface of each shelly piece; the inner face, the outer face, and each of the sides and angles of the polyhedron grow together, and all so evenly, that while the dimensions [Pg 179] increase, both of thickness and superficies, the form characteristic of that individual piece is maintained with immutable mathematical precision. ”

“ If we suppose that we are putting up the cubes in one room while another person is putting up cubes in an adjoining room; if we can tell him what we are doing, using the words right and left, he will be able to put up a block exactly like ours. ”

“ Then the priest said to Na-nefer-ka-ptah, 'This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in an iron box; in the iron box is a bronze box; in the bronze box is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box, and in that is the book. ”

“ On the tops of the barest hills and buried in the deepest bogs are to be found the roots, stems and other remains of these ancient woods, mostly of oak and pine, some of the bogs being literally full of stems, the splinters of which burn like matches. ”

“ They are to be rolled about in play, and thus develop ideas of color, material, form, motion, direction, and muscular sensibility. A sphere, cube, and cylinder of hard wood compose second, the second ‘gift.’ Here, therefore, are found a known factor in the sphere and an unknown one in the cube. A comparison is made of the stability of the cube with the movability of the sphere, and the two are harmonized in the cylinder, which possesses the characteristics third, of each. ”

“ The Liber or Fibrous Bark, the Inner Bark. This contains some wood-cells, or their equivalent, commonly in the form of bast or bast-cells (411, Fig. 444) , such as those of Basswood or Linden, and among herbs those of flax and hemp, which are spun and woven or made into cordage. It also contains cells which are named sieve-cells, on account of numerous slits and pores in their walls, by which the protoplasm of contiguous cells communicates. In woody stems, whenever a new layer of wood is formed, some new liber or inner bark is also formed outside of it. ”

“ Information exists about flat surfaces and curved surfaces, and also about cubes—that is, two or more sides of any rectangular box or girder upon which the wind acts in a more or less diagonal direction. ”

“ Like many another indispensable thing, it is of simple construction, being nothing more than a wooden bucket with a bottom of glass. By placing it on the surface of the water and inserting one’s face in the open top, it is possible to see distinctly whatever may be beneath. ”

“ If you take a branch of a tree, and cut it across, you will find curious markings caused by vessels of various structure, all necessary to the existence of the plant. In the centre will be found either a hollow tube, or a space occupied by a soft substance called pith. Each hair of your head is as curiously formed as the branch of a tree, and in a manner not dissimilar, though its parts are so minute that the unaided eye cannot discern them. ”

“ In the spring they approach toward the surface, and each one forms for itself a little cell, of an oval shape, by turning round a great many times, so as to compress the earth, and render the inside of the cavity hard and smooth. ”

“ I took the two pieces to my working table near our tambo, and examining the dirty-yellow heart with my magnifying glass, I found the following: A central mass about one cubic inch in size, containing a quantity of yellowish grains measuring, say, one thirty-second of an inch in diameter, slightly adhering to each other, but separating upon pressure of the finger, and around this a thick layer of hard clay or mud of somewhat irregular shape. ”

“ Again, if we throw a solid cube foot of floatable timber into water, it will float with one corner upwards and the opposite corner downwards, the particular corner being determined by the density of one part of the material over the rest. ”

“ The bones are spread in a large room, where you can work at your leisure, undisturbed by any mortal, from morning till night, taking your breakfast and dinner with us. It is a precious collection, consisting of upwards of three hundred bones, few of them of the large kinds which are already possessed. ”

“ The smaller folds, or such as may be seen in hand specimens and even in considerable blocks of stone, are commonly called contortions, and it is interesting to observe that they are, in nearly everything except size, precisely like the large folds, so that they answer admirably as geological models. ”

“ This new speculum consists of ten mirrors, placed within a box, in a sort of polygonal form, with one of the sides of the polygon open. Architectural columns, pictures, gems, pearls, coloured birds, etc., are all placed within the box, and their images are seen heaped together in inextricable disorder, as a whole, but so as to astonish the spectator by their number, and by the arrangement of individual groups. ”

“ A box has been made of proper dimensions, free within from all outside disturbance or motion of air. In this box is placed a steel frame, which moves like a gate on a very delicate hinge, so as to avoid all possible friction. ”

“ No box of bricks that can at present be bought for money will build anything that can satisfy an imaginative child. An ordinary box of bricks—a really handsome one—measures, say, 12 by 8 by 2 in. If anything admirable is to be built from this amount of material the material ought to be presented in very small cubes, oblongs and arches—say 1 in. ”