Picrochole

“ Touchfaucet was presented unto Grangousier, and by him examined upon the enterprise and attempt of Picrochole, what it was he could pretend to, or aim at, by the rustling stir and tumultuary coil of this his sudden invasion. Whereunto he answered, that his end and purpose was to conquer all the country, if he could, for the injury done to his cake-bakers. It is too great an undertaking, said Grangousier; and, as the proverb is, He that grips too much, holds fast but little. ”

“ For even as arms are weak abroad, if there be not counsel at home, so is that study vain and counsel unprofitable which in a due and convenient time is not by virtue executed and put in effect. My deliberation is not to provoke, but to appease--not to assault, but to defend--not to conquer, but to preserve my faithful subjects and hereditary dominions, into which Picrochole is entered in a hostile manner without any ground or cause, and from day to day pursueth his furious enterprise with that height of insolence that is intolerable to freeborn spirits. ”

“ Chapter 1.XXXV. How Gymnast very souply and cunningly killed Captain Tripet and others of Picrochole’s men. Chapter 1.XXXVI. How Gargantua demolished the castle at the ford of Vede, and how they passed the ford. Chapter 1.XXXVII. How Gargantua, in combing his head, made the great cannon-balls fall out of his hair. Chapter 1.XXXVIII. How Gargantua did eat up six pilgrims in a salad. Chapter 1.XXXIX. How the Monk was feasted by Gargantua, and of the jovial discourse they had at supper. Chapter 1.XL. Why monks are the outcasts of the world; and wherefore some have bigger noses than others. ”

“ She then saw above the arms and hands of the head, (thus she chose to call the antennae,) two shining eyes, like two black buttons—naturalists discover three with a microscope. "He has no trunk," said Piccolissima, as she looked at a formidable mouth. At this moment, the insect disengaged one of his legs, and twisting himself with fury, and biting the finger which held him, he showed two jaws, which worked like a pair of pincers. Piccolissima was not sufficiently hardened to natural history. She shook her hand violently, and uttered a cry that brought her brother to her in a moment. ”

“ Occasionally they present transitions towards picrite, as in the sheet overlying the lowest limestone at Kirkton, and in the lowest lava of King Alexander's Crag, Burntisland. These puy lavas exhibit considerable variety of structure as seen in the field. Some are solid, compact, black rocks, not infrequently columnar and weathering into spheroidal exfoliating forms. Others are somewhat granular in texture, acquiring green and brown tints by weathering, often showing amygdaloidal kernels, and even passing into well-marked amygdaloids. ”

“ The young, inexperienced fly was disposed to take Piccolissima, the dictionary, and the barley sugar for a chain of mountains. However, when the little girl turned her gentle, child-like face towards him, the insect felt the pleasant warmth of her breath; it reanimated him, and gave him courage, and with one bound he flew upon the arm of Piccolissima. With a sudden familiarity he murmured in a low voice, "Art thou, perhaps, an elder sister of mine? Thou warmest me. Art thou placed in the sun to strengthen thy wings? ”

“ Six months ago, no one dared to leave a drawer in the house open; now every thing remains quiet in its place; she is neither more nor less than a reasonable being; she is a waxen image, I tell you."
"Did I say any thing else, Madam Scold?" answered the school boy; "she is a real Liliputian statue, fit for nothing but to watch the flies fly. Ah! come, Piccola, Piccolissima!" ”

“ Fragments of minerals (plagioclase and pyroxene) corresponding in size to the glass fragments are as a rule well represented, forming a fourth or a third of the mass. A little fine detritus of a semi-vitreous basic rock also occurs. Tested in an acid several of the tuffs either do not effervesce or give an indication of a small percentage of carbonate of lime; whilst others effervesce freely. They usually display a few minute tests of foraminifera of the “Globigerina” type, the cavities of which are filled with fine palagonitic debris. ”

“ The joy of Piccolissima was so great at the sight of this mutual kindness, that she made one of her old leaps, and shook the frail stalk. Immediately there was a violent commotion among the ants, who in great crowds blackened the end of the twig. They ran hither and thither in the greatest terror, striking their antennae one against the other. Many of them caressed the grubs more eagerly, in a violent and impetuous manner, as if to urge them to some exertion. Some of the grubs submitted to be taken gently into the jaws of the ants ”

“ Even if for some reason the predators died in areas other than within the fissures, thereby accounting for the absence of large bones, coprolites should appear in the deposits if, in fact, the fissures were feeding places. In view of the nearly undamaged condition of many of the bones recovered from the fissures, it is reasonable to expect that fecal material would be preserved.
The character of the matrix of the deposits varies from a homogeneous clay to clay interrupted by layers of soft, limey, conglomeratic rock, to a hard, well-cemented, calcareous conglomerate. ”

“ Her mind grew, and she learned that, small as she was, she was superior to the best informed fly. She studied the habits and doings of the ants, and learned a great deal about their different tribes and nations. Sometimes her brother would take his sister's toilet cushion and put it on the table before him, and seating Piccolissima upon it, say to her, "Now, Piccola, dear, listen with both of your little ears to my big words, and I will read some wonderful stories to you." ”

“ The term coprolites has been made to include all kinds of phosphatic nodules employed as manures, such, for example, as those obtained from the Coralline and the Red Crag of Suffolk. At the base of the Red Crag in that county is a bed, 3 to 18 in. thick, containing rolled fossil bones, cetacean and fish teeth, and shells of the Crag period, with nodules or pebbles of phosphatic matter derived from the London Clay, and often investing fossils from that formation. ”

“ Pickwick.
“Fact, my dear sir, fact. Five-and-forty green parasols at seven and sixpence a-piece. All women like finery—extraordinary the effect of those parasols. Secured all their husbands, and half their brothers—beat stockings, and flannel, and all that sort of thing hollow. My idea, my dear sir, entirely. Hail, rain, or sunshine, you can’t walk half-a-dozen yards up the street without encountering half-a-dozen green parasols.” ”

“ Since you have kept your trunk in its case, I perceive above it your lips closed, and I do not see them move." Piccolissima, fearing she might be laughed at, did not dare to add, that she had supposed that the voice of the fly came from under his wings.
"I speak as all well-formed people speak," answered the haughty insect, "with four voices;" and four puffs of air issued from the oval breathing holes on both sides of his breast, giving a tremulous motion to his two little egg-shell wings, his two balance wings, and the roots of his two other wings. ”

“ The plagioclase phenocrysts are usually 2 to 3 mm. in size, but they may be smaller (1 to 2 mm.) or larger (3 to 5 mm. or more) when the rock has a porphyritic appearance. [111] They are often cross-macled and at times show zoning. In many slides two kinds are distinguished by the extinctions which indicate in one case medium andesine (15° to 22°) and in the other acid labradorite (27° to 32°) . They contain inclusions of the magma and are often eroded. The pyroxene phenocrysts are of pale brown augite, scanty and small, and give extinctions of 30° to 40°. ”

“ In other cases the rock is of an intermediate grade, as in the enstatite-diorite of Penmaen-mawr, the pyroxene-andesite of Carn Boduan, and the quartz-augite-syenite of Llanfoglen. [213] A few bosses of still more basic material occur in the Sarn district, including hornblende-diabase and hornblende-picrite. Sometimes both the acid and the more basic rocks are found in the same boss, as in the large mass of Y-foel-frâs. ”

“ It lies in wait for its prey on the bottom, perfectly motionless like a waterlogged stick, watching everything that moves, with fierce, hungry eyes. Oftentimes when we were fishing for some other kinds over the edge of the boat, a pickerel that we had not noticed would come like a bolt of lightning and seize the fish we had caught before we could get it into the boat. The very first pickerel that I ever caught jumped into the air to seize a small fish dangling on my line, and, missing its aim, fell plump into the boat as if it had dropped from the sky. ”

“ Brown hornblende often occurs as marginal growths around the pyroxene, and may be so abundant as to replace augite to a large extent; rocks of this class are known as hornblende-picrites. Bright green or pale-green hornblende are less frequently present, and in many cases are really of secondary origin. Deep brown biotite is a frequent accessory mineral and both biotite and hornblende sometimes enclose olivine. A small amount of basic plagioclase occurs in many picrites; apatite, iron oxides, chromite and spinels are minor ingredients seldom altogether absent. ”

“ The prevailing rock exposed on the surface, where it is usually much decomposed, is a bluish-grey hypersthene-andesite with a specific gravity of 2·54, and displaying in a cryptocrystalline groundmass, where the felsitic texture can be recognised, abundant phenocrysts of plagioclase and rhombic pyroxene. As high as 500 feet above the sea it is occasionally capped by patches of palagonitised clays and tuffs scantily foraminiferous, and at one place I noticed a patch of agglomerate, the subangular blocks six to eight inches across being formed of the same acid andesite. ”

“ Flying as he did like an arrow from a bow, Pike used to hit his beloved river at an elbow, some furlong below Crocker's Hole, where a sweet little stickle sailed away down stream, whereas for the length of a meadow upward the water lay smooth, clear, and shallow; therefore the youth, with so little time to spare, rushed into the downward joy.
And here it may be noted that the leading maxim of the present period, that man can discharge his duty only by going counter to the stream, was scarcely mooted in those days. ”

“ Her brother, in jumping out of the window, had broken off some ripe strawberries, which the little girl had cherished for her mother, and Piccolissima went sorrowfully to examine the havoc, and pick up the fruit.
She no longer supported herself upon the flexible stalks of the nasturtiums and the convolvulus, which Mr. Tom Thumb cultivated, and who more than once had complained at finding them broken. She no longer seated herself on the branches of the mignonette, and then let the wind blow her at its will, backwards and forwards, a dangerous and monotonous amusement, which soon wearied. ”

“ Proceeding along the coast from Ngara-vutu to Navetau, the Buli’s town of the Tunuloa district, one observes blocks of basic rocks. Farther to the eastward for a distance of two or three miles basic agglomerates and basic tuff-agglomerates prevail along the sea-border, being often extensively exposed in the cliff-faces of the hills. The rock composing the blocks is a hemi-crystalline pyroxene-andesite remarkable for the prismatic pyroxene in the groundmass, and referred to genus 17 of the hypersthene-augite sub-class. ”

“ The Picariæ are highly characteristic of tropical faunas, for while no less than 15 out of the 25 families are exclusively tropical, none are confined to, or have their chief development in, the temperate regions. They are best represented in the Ethiopian region, which possesses 17 families, 4 of which are peculiar to it; while the Oriental region has only 14 families, none of which are peculiar. The Neotropical region has also 14 families, but 6 of them are peculiar. The Australian region has 8, the Palæarctic 9 and the Nearctic 6 families, but none of these are peculiar. ”

“ Phacoid shell two and a half times as broad as the medullary shell, with eight pores on its radius, surrounded by one perfect chambered ring. Arms nearly lanceolate, in the middle part one and a half times as broad as at both ends, twice as long as the phacoid shell, at the distal end with a strong pyramidal terminal spine. Through the spongy framework of each arm shine sixteen to eighteen transverse bars (as septa of the joints) and six to eight longitudinal piercing beams. ”

“ Hatch found an abundant brown mica, as in the rock at Camas Malag, Skye. In others, a pyroxene occurs, which he observed in minute greenish grains, sometimes completely enclosed in the quartz. In a third variety, the dark constituent - 369 - is hornblende, the most remarkable example of which is one to be seen at Ishriff, in the Glen More of Mull, where the ferro-magnesian mineral takes the form of long dirty-green needles, conspicuous on a weathered surface of the rock. A fourth variety is distinguished by containing plagioclase in addition to or instead of orthoclase. ”

“ Plicatula, is another genus of this family, of which there are three British fossil species. A delicate shell, with slender depressed spines (P. inflata. Foss. South D. pl. xxvi.) , occurs in the Chalk Marl. The recent species are natives of the seas of warm climates.
Pecten.—The common scallop-shell will serve as a type of this genus. The animals of these shells, unlike the oysters, have the power of locomotion, and when in the water, may be seen moving with rapidity, and flapping their shells to and fro with great activity. Numerous species are found fossil. ”