Embellishment

“ The embankments are simply earth, stones, or a mixture of the two, in their natural condition, thrown up from the material which is nearest at hand. There is no instance of walls built of stone that has been hewn or otherwise artificially prepared, of the use of mortar, of even rough stones laid with regularity, of adobes or earth otherwise prepared, or of material brought from any great distance. The material was taken from a ditch that often accompanies the embankment, from excavations or pits in the immediate vicinity, or is scraped up from the surface of the surrounding soil. ”

“ When the last quavering note has come from the great circular horn, the man walks slowly across the wet cobblestones to the obelisk, where I watch him wind another blast just like the first, and then another, and then a third, immediately after which he walks briskly away and disappears down a turning. ”

“ Often after a heavy job of clearing out and heaving-up mullock, water, and slabs, all the time in imminent peril of a ‘fall’ from some part of the shaft, would we discover, on exploring the drives, that they were simply groves of props—not a natural support left standing. ”

“ The Greeks and the Romans, among whom we have particularized some examples of embalming, practised it in a coarse and imperfect manner. The examination of their method would be here without interest.
In order to recover some traces of this art, we must refer to De Bils, Ruysch, Swammerdam, Clauderus, &c. They only boast of their astonishing success, without giving us the means of studying their methods. What we do know of them suffices only to make us doubt, as we have seen, the perfection of their processes. ”

“ No leakage or marked weeping of such an embankment should be disregarded, as unless arrested it will gradually deteriorate the earth until the equilibrium becomes so affected that the embankment fails. ”

“ In embankments one of the chief precautions is to obviate any flow of water upon or at a few feet beneath the land upon which an embankment has to be deposited, as it will disturb the feet of the slopes and the base, reduce the adhesion to and the friction of the tipped earth upon the ground and form a sliding surface. ”

“ So much for the strength of the blast; its delicacy is illustrated by this beautiful example of line-engraving, etched on glass by means of the blast.
This power of erosion, so strikingly displayed when sand is urged by air, will render you better able to conceive its action when urged by water. The erosive power of a river is vastly augmented by the solid matter carried along with it. Sand or pebbles caught in a river-vortex can wear away the hardest rock ”

“ In an embankment of moderate height the day’s excavation from a cutting will increase its length several yards, and the material from each set of waggons will only be exposed to the weather for a short time. ”

“ These people had established invariable rules and a certain method for the process of embalming. We remark, in effect, that the labour of those who were charged with embalming the dead, consisted in two principal operations, very distinct: the first, to subtract from the interior of the corpse all that might become a cause of corruption during the time allotted to dry it; the second, to secure the body from any cause that might subsequently occasion its destruction. ”

“ By this process, the clay, the sand, the stones, and the gravel were separated one from the other. It seemed as if they expected human beings to come and live on the earth. These mighty forces, of heat and cold, were working for the fairies, so as to have everything in order and ready when men should come, so that they could plow and coax flowers out of the ground. ”

“ We may indeed accept the implements as being truly characteristic fossils of a certain class of deposits. The character of the beds, consisting as they do, of gravel, sand, and fine silt, brick-earth or loess, and their manner of deposition, are also absolutely in accordance with the river-hypothesis.
On the higher levels above but near the valleys, we frequently find these beds at a considerable distance from the existing stream; we find them at all levels on the flanks of the valleys, and occasionally almost at their bottom, or even below it. ”

“ Here and there amorphous piles of trees, beams, carts, stacks, and remnants of every description of building, were hurled against some fragment of rock, or other natural obstacle, forming, in many cases, it was too evident, the grave-mound of human victims soddening beneath. ”

“ Tho interesting and important subject of embalming, and of preserving and preparing anatomical objects, though much improved of late, is by no means exhausted. It has long been our desire to turn our attention in a special manner to such researches, and to have instituted numerous experiments, but imperative duties, and unexpected events, have interfered with such views for the present—we are not without a hope, however, that some one of our countrymen, more fortunately situated, will push his discoveries in a direction which affords so admirable a field for distinction. ”

“ BEVELLING. Any alteration from a square in hewing timber, as taken by the bevel, bevelling rule, or bevelling boards.—A standing bevelling is that made without, or outside a square; an under-bevelling within; and the angle is optionally acute or obtuse. In ship-building, it is the art of hewing a timber with a proper and regular curve, according to a mould which is laid on one side of its surface. ”

“ But to return—to cut into so hard a rock the contractors have to adopt the process of blasting, which is carried on upon a magnitude which has never been equalled. To penetrate the rocks sets of workmen, in twos, are employed in different parts of the face of the mountain, and these men drive a heading or gallery into the solid rock, about five feet high and three wide, for a distance of 30 to 40 feet, which is accomplished chiefly by blasting. ”

“ What obdurate Hearts and pitiless Eyes can then bear such a miserable Object, when Embalming so easily prevents it, by rendring the Body sweet and decorous, retaining still its natural Form, Feature and Shape? Again, if we consider the natural and innate Desire most People have of being bury’d in their own Tombs and Countries, |Necessary for Transporting Bodies.| we shall find there is a necessity of Embalming such Bodies, the better to convey those that die in Foreign Parts to their Native Soil. ”

“ The boulders, however, which we find scattered over the plains and less elevated hill-sides, with beds of the washed gravel or sand interposed between them and the clay, must have been cast down where they lie, during the elevatory ages. ”

“ The numerous facts which we have brought together in this chapter, appears to us most calculated to fix all the questions relative to embalming which long discussions and reasonings have lost sight of. They prove that bodies, placed in the bosom of the earth, covered only with a few feet of sand have been preserved for ages ”

“ That layer of plaster and brick-dust lies on the age that has gone, as final, as fatal, as the layer of flints that covers the top of the chalk and marks the end of an epoch and some unknown geologic catastrophe. ”

“ I have long believed that the practice of embalming arose only from tenderness to the remains of relations or friends, and to this opinion I am more inclined, because it seems impossible that this care should have been general: had all the dead been embalmed, their repositories must in time have been more spacious than the dwellings of the living. ”

“ Such I conceive to have been the origin of the sand, gravel, and imbedded plants of our boulder. It may be well, however, in going into the details of the subject, to take a wider view of this interesting branch of geology, and look for a little at the forms and modes of the decomposition of rocks, and the varied manner in which new sedimentary accumulations are formed.
All over the world, wherever a land surface spreads out beneath the sky, there goes on a process of degradation and decay. ”

“ Conspicuously crowning a rocky bluff high to one side, at the cataract's verge, is the ruin of an old saw-mill, built in those primitive times when vast pines and hemlocks superabounded throughout the neighboring region. ”

“ A thorough examination of the site of a slip and the slipped earth is absolutely necessary before the most effectual and economical means of restoration can be determined, for weakness or the presence of a disturbing agent in the upper or lower portion of a cutting or embankment may be the cause of movement. An embankment may be solid in the mass and only portions may slip and subside, but then may become unstable and require different treatment, or local restoration may alone be necessary, and the slipped earth to be removed be small in quantity. ”

“ Disintegration has penetrated the rock far below the surface and the large crystals are held together with but little more tenacity than prevails in a bed of gravel. Moisture and even roots penetrate it deeply and readily and the crystals fall apart with thrusts of the knife blade, the rock crumbling with the greatest freedom. ”

“ They tumble into holes, whirl and toss and heave among loose boulders, or rocks in situ, down hill and up, trembling sometimes like a ship struck by mighty waves, but never springing a leak, or shivering a timber, or loosening a brace. ”

“ The unstratified drift may be described as a heterogeneous mass of clay, with sand and gravel in varying proportions, inclosing the transported fragments of rock, of all dimensions, partially rounded or worn into wedge-shaped forms, and generally with surfaces furrowed or scratched, the whole material looking as if it had been scraped together. ”

“ In the process of embalming used by the middle class, which cost about £250, the body was syringed with a decoction of herbs and oil of cedar, then put into salt for seventy days, after which it was enveloped in bandages of fine linen, which had been dipped in myrrh and asphaltum, and the designer, who was called the scribe, covered the wrapping with a painted cloth, on which were represented the rites of their religion in hieroglyphics, and the animals which the dead loved most. There was a third process of embalming used by the poorer people, in which a mixture of pitch and bitumen was used. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The usual slopes adopted for cuttings and embankments may be said to range from 1 to 1 for firm earth, having particles not seriously affected by water or weather, to 4 to 1, and the most frequent, 1 to 1 TO 11⁄2 to 1 in cuttings and 11⁄2 to 1 in embankments. ”

“ The granules which have been cut across or bruised in the cutting and polishing process are first attacked, and removed in solution or drop out of the stone. An obelisk in Greyfriars Churchyard, erected in memory of a lady who died in 1864, has so rough and granular a surface that it might readily be taken for a sandstone. So loosely are the grains held together that a slight motion of the finger will rub them off. In the course of solution and removal, the internal structure of the marble begins to reveal itself. ”

“ By the hypothesis of such a slow and gradual subsidence of the land we may account for the fact that almost everywhere in N. America and Northern Europe the boulder formation rests on a polished and furrowed surface of rock,—a fact by no means obliging us to imagine, as some think, that the polishing and grooving action was, as a whole, anterior in date to the transportation of the erratics. ”

“ Ruins in stone, too, in districts where the most we expect is the embankment or tumulus, strike even the cautious observer with surprise; and fragments of art, however imperfect, create wonder when they represent an industry different from what is found amongst the existing populations of their locality. ”

“ Ugly gravel heaps, staring mounds of 'pipe-clay,' deposits of sludge, a surface filled with holes, broken windlasses, the wrecks of whims, all combine to make a hideous picture as they stand revealed in the pitiless sunshine. ”

“ The mechanic’s instrument known as a bevel consists of a rule with two arms so jointed as to be adjustable to any angle. In heraldry, a bevel is an angular break in a line. Bevelment, as a term of crystallography, means the replacement of an edge of a crystal by two planes equally inclined to the adjacent planes. ”

“ The stream of rubble seems in a living rage; it thrusts its way on, tearing down other masses with it—crowding, pouring, pouring, fills up a chasm in the valley—and stops. The last few boulders settle slowly into place, and then no more. ”

“ After agreeing about the price, the relatives retire; the embalmers work alone, and proceed as follows, in the most costly embalming. They first withdraw the brain through the nostrils, in part with a curved iron instrument, and in part by means of drugs, which they introduce into the head; they afterwards make an incision in the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone. ”

“ The height or depth at which a slip in an embankment or 51cutting becomes disastrous cannot be ascertained by any rule, but knowledge of the flattest slope at which any particular earth has remained stable in the same state as the embankment or cutting under deliberation, will enable a close approximation to be determined of the point to which a slip in a cutting is likely to reach, and that to which an embankment will subside. ”

“ In what we may call the natural architecture of the earth, the pinnacles and obelisks, such as are formed in many high countries, the effect of these shakings is destructive, and, as we have seen, even the firmer-placed objects, such as the strong-walled cliffs and steep slopes of earth, break down under the assaults. ”

“ The bevel is a depression round the entire side of the stone, which faces outwards, and may be effected either by a sloping cut which removes the right-angle from the edge, or by two cuts, one perpendicular and the other horizontal, which take out from the edge a rectangular bar or plinth. ”