Albacore

“ MACKEREL, pelagic fishes, belonging to a small family, Scombridae, of which the tunny, bonito, albacore, and a few other tropical genera are members. Although the species are fewer in number than in most other families of fishes, they are widely spread and extremely abundant, peopling by countless schools the oceans of the tropical and temperate zones, and approaching the coasts only accidentally, occasionally, or periodically. ”

“ Both the bonito and the skip-jack are subject to being devoured by the albacore, whose voracity,327 swiftness, and size make him the terror of all his smaller congeners.
Occasionally after a few days’ calm some delicate little fish, also belonging to the mackerel tribe—a species of caranx—will be seen huddling timorously around the rudder of a ship, as if in momentary dread of being devoured, a dread which is exceedingly well founded. The wonder is how any of them escape the ravenous jaws of the larger fish since they must find it well-nigh impossible to get away from such pursuers. ”

“ There are stately and elegant shafts of alabaster from floor to ceiling, coloured stalactites and stalagmites nearly meeting. At every glance the eye is pleased with new and curious forms and rich combinations of colour. Masses of the formation are fringed with contorted threads and pipes, and on the foreground are some curiously-shaped masses like snow, with delicate frost work and projections like frosted hairs all over their surface. These are for the most part opaque, but the predominant features are crystal. ”

“ The native has taken his fish in the early morning, before the breeze has ruffled the surface of the bay, without the help of dynamite or of water glass, and with only a slender, iron-tipped spear of his own rude contriving with which he has speared his fish alive.
The dynamiting work is, perhaps, the most fascinating of the collecting activities of the Albatross. Through the small, square, pane of the water glass, one sees the rough and jagged ledge of coral, gray or brown in the background, with encrusting forms of blue, purple, sea-green, brown, orange and varying shades of red and pink. ”

“ When sulphate of lime or gypsum assumes the opaque, consistent, and semi-transparent form of alabaster, it is worked like marble. The pure white and harder varieties are usually employed for the sculpture of statues and busts; while the softer kinds are cut into vases, boxes, lamps, and other ornamental objects. The alabaster quarries in the neighbourhood of the ancient Etruscan town of Volterra are the most famous in Europe, and have afforded employment for many centuries to her industrious population. ”

“ Albertus was troubled by many subtle problems connected with the souls of plants, such questions, for instance, as whether in the case of the material union of two individuals, such as the ivy and its supporting tree, their souls also united. Like Theophrastus, and other early writers, Albertus held the theory that species were mutable, and illustrated this view by pointing out that cultivated plants might run wild and become degenerate, while wild plants might be domesticated. ”

“ One, purely white as the most immaculate alabaster, has an inexhaustible wealth of buds, and blossoms and flowers, on every one of its many spreading branches. The other, less white and less spreading, has also its whole world upon its branches. ”

“ This species varies much in size, and still more in colour and plumage, which is more or less mixed with grey or brown, and sometimes even entirely white; this depends doubtless on the season, the sex, and the age.
2nd. The epauletted albatross, Diomedea epomophera, which is smaller than the common albatross. His head, neck, body, back, and rump are snowy white, while the feathers of his wings are perfectly black, with the exception of a large white lozenge-shaped spot on each; the beak is yellowish. Some naturalists believe these to be only the young of the ordinary kind. ”

“ The colour of the greater proportion of alpaca imported into the United Kingdom is black and brown, but there is also a fair proportion of white, grey and fawn. It is customary to mix these colours together, thus producing a curious ginger-coloured yarn, which upon being dyed black in the piece takes a fuller and deeper shade than can be obtained by piece-dyeing a solid-coloured wool. In physical structure alpaca is somewhat akin to hair, being very glossy, but its softness and fineness enable the spinner to produce satisfactory yarns with comparative ease. ”

“ The road to the main albatross rookery is of the same white coral sand that covers almost the whole island. The glare is exceedingly trying to the eyes, and the heat would be oppressive to one who found time to think of it. Birds are everywhere, and so tame that they actually have to be shoved aside with the foot. The road was dotted with the young of the white albatross, with a sprinkling of adults. ”

“ At least those pretty little alabaster figures that are shown in the shop windows of Pisani on the Prato, and Bazzanti on the Lung'Arno, those I should be able to do with time and study and a firm will. For after all, it is only a question of changing the material, of substituting alabaster for wood, a seraphim or an angel for a little Venus or Apollo—there is nothing to create. Those who make these figures, also copy them from others in alabaster, plaster, or bronze, as I do ”

“ The arbutus, the most ornamental of all that class of flowering shrubs, grows in profusion all along the coast. The pale silvery green of the olive shows well when mixed with the richer tints of other foliage; and everywhere the eye rests on a profusion of luxuriant vegetation that language would wholly fail to do justice to. It is indeed a land richly endowed by Nature; for the smallest possible amount of cultivation causes the teeming earth to put forth her abundance. ”

“ The Alba roses bloom abundantly, and form in masses a beautiful contrast, in their chaste and delicate hues, with the deeper colors of the French and Hybrid China roses. They rarely bear seed freely.
Original
Rosa Gallica.—This rose draws its origin from the south of Europe, where its wild progenitor still grows abundantly in the hedges. It is one of the best known, and longest under cultivation, of all the species. We confess our strong partiality for it. It is perfectly hardy, compact in growth, abundant in bloom, beautiful in form, and rich and various in coloring. ”

“ And as the swift-winged procession skims through the starry skies, and the hoarse cry of the aerial voyagers resounds over head, then do the dwellers in eastern Albemarle know for a surety that the year is far spent, and the winter days close at hand.
Guided by unerring instinct, the feathered tribes of the North pursue "through the boundless sky their certain flight" till the shallow waters of Currituck Sound and its reedy shores greet their eager sight. There they find the wild celery and other aquatic plants upon which they love to feed, growing in abundance ”

“ It is a stand-by for cut flowers for bouquet work. Because of its compact habit it is a very desirable plant for edging the border.
It is difficult to imagine anything more daintily charming than the herbaceous Spireas. Alba, white, and rosea, soft pink, produce large, feathery tufts of bloom on stalks six and seven feet tall. The flowers of these varieties are exceedingly graceful in an airy, cloud-like way, and never fail to attract the attention of those who pass ordinary plants by without seeing them. ”

“ C. alba-plèna, common double white, is admired by the most casual observer, and is generally considered a very superior flower, from the purity of its whiteness, and the abundance of its large flowers, which are thickly and regularly set with round petals. The foliage is large, and the plant grows freely; we have seen one shoot grow two feet in one summer. It was imported into Europe from China, amongst the first of the varieties, about eighty years ago. ”

“ There were orchards of almond-trees that seemed from a distance to be bearing a crop of snowflakes, till one came nearer and could distinguish the delicate pinks and mauves of their blossom; there were bushy algobras with rich green foliage; oranges, bearing the last of that juicy crop which, when fresh gathered, melts in the mouth like ice; olive-trees, with dry gray leaves and trunks so grotesquely gnarled as to suggest arboreal pain. The hot sun above, dappling the young corn and filling the stone water-conduits with soft tree-shadows; the tinkling twitter of unseen birds ”

“ The algarroba, carob tree, grows in the vicinity of Lambayeque in great abundance, and is of such utility, that a law exists to prevent the owners from cutting them down: they grow to the size of our largest oaks; the wood is very hard, the leaf small, and the branches bear an abundance of clusters of pods, about four inches long and three-quarters of an inch broad, containing five or six black seeds, like small beans. ”

“ This alabaster growth is found only in a few places throughout the cave; when it is in chambers or spaces in which the atmosphere is very dry, it invariably has a beautiful fibrous texture like wood or celery, and the curved form; but if the atmosphere is damp, it forms on the ceiling in round nodules, from two to three inches in diameter, as in the Snowball Room. ”

“ The most interesting specimens of ancient alabaster are the very beautiful vase of Alabastro cotognino, prolate in form, and in colour white, streaked with very light pink, which contained the ashes of Augustus, found in the ruins of his mausoleum, and now in the Vatican; the bust of Julius Cæsar, made of the variety tartaruga, from the resemblance of its brownish-yellow markings to tortoise-shell, in the Museum of the Capitol ”

“ She died at Florence in 1824, where she was buried at the Church of Sta Croce, by the side of Alfieri, whom she is supposed to have married secretly.
Alba′ta, a name sometimes given to German silver.
Wandering Albatross (Diomēdea exŭlans)
Al′batross, a large marine swimming bird of several species, of which the wandering albatross (Diomedēa exŭlans) is the best known. The bill is straight and strong, the upper mandible hooked at the point and the lower one truncated; there are three webbed toes on each foot. The upper part of the body is of a greyish brown, and the belly white. ”

“ The Spaniards must have had the fruit in Martial's time, but they do not take the name immediately from the Latin, but through the Arabic, and call it albaricoque. The Italians, again, copy the Spanish, not the Latin, and call it albicocco. The French, from them, have abricot. The English, though they take their word from the French, at first called it abricock, then apricock (restoring the p) , and lastly, with the French termination, apricot. ”

“ The different species or varieties of the albatross, [49] are but little understood; in the course of a long voyage but few opportunities occur to any person acquainted with natural history to examine specimens, and consequently our knowledge respecting them is limited to a very few facts. It is not in many instances that a new species can be defined; age and sex often producing differences which are frequently regarded as specific characters. If persons, who may feel an interest, or have studied this interesting science, would note down the differences of plumage, size, and sex, &c. ”

“ Land that has been well manured and contains abundant humus, and land that is light and friable will usually respond to the bacterial life attached to the alfalfa seed. Most farmers who have established fields will sell soil to their neighbors, which should be from the top six or eight inches, and include roots, stubble and earth. Both Sweet clover and Bur clover are found in almost every neighborhood in the northern states, while the latter is very general in the South. ”

“ It takes the earth, air, moisture and sunshine, and transmutes them into nourishing feed stuffs and into tints of green and purple, and into nectar and sweet perfumes, alluring the busy bees to visits of reciprocity, whereon they caress the alfalfa blossoms, which, in their turn, pour out secretions of nectar fit for Jupiter to sip. ”

“ The ancients obtained large blocks of alabaster from quarries in Thebes in Egypt, in the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on Mount Taurus. They imported some kinds also from Cyprus, Spain, and Northern Africa. They obtained varieties nearer home, in different parts of Italy, such as the beautiful Alabastro di Tivoli, employed by Hadrian in his villa, and which appears to have been brought from Terni, where it still exists in abundance. From the quarry near Volterra the Etruscans obtained the alabaster for their cinerary urns. ”

“ Alopecurus is very characteristic, and should be carefully examined as a type. A. pratensis is a valuable grass and said to be often adulterated with the undesirable A. agrestis, Holcus, &c. Arrhenatherum and Avena are easily distinguished by the basal hairs, rachilla, &c.
Fig. 68. Alopecurus pratensis. a, “seed," nat. size, and b, c, ditto, × 8; d, caryopsis, × 7. The “seed" here consists of the two glumes, connate below and hairy on the keel and ribs, including the caryopsis enveloped in a single palea with a dorsal awn. Note remains of stigma in d. ”

“ Alba (white) , Alporti (crimson) , aurea (golden leaved) , tenuis (red) , pygmæa, and hypnoides (both dwarf) .
Dabœcia polifolia (St. Dabeoc's Heath) is a lovely little shrub, a close relative of the Heaths, and found wild in the west of Ireland. It grows a little over 1 foot high, and bears bell-shaped flowers rather [Pg 239] abundantly on erect terminal spikes. They are purple or white, and sometimes have both colours in one flower, and the plants continue to produce them from July or August till the frosts come. It is quite as plentiful as the dwarf Heaths. Alba is a white variety. ”