Field winding

“ A copper wire ran from pole to pole down the slope of the hill and glittered in the sun like a thread of gold. A little to our right two circular mirrors, glancing obliquely at each other, stood on a tripod, and a graduated sequence of flashes came and went, under the hands of the signallers, with the velocity of light itself. A few yards behind us on the crest of the hill stood a windmill, its great sails motionless as though it were a brig becalmed and waiting for a wind, and [Pg 227] astride one arm, like a sailor on a yard, a carpenter was busy, with his mouth full of nails. ”

“ Beginning with a low hum, the separator’s tone arose gradually to a whirr and thence in a crescendo to a high-pitched droning whine, steadily, monotonously, on and on.
All through the day the big machine kept up its ceaseless whine. Several times snow-squalls swept by, and one or two crossed the field, but it had grown colder during the day and the dry snow did little or no damage. ”

“ Fields may approximate each other from three causes: First, If the lighter ice be to windward, it will, of necessity, be impelled towards the heavier; secondly, As the wind frequently commences blowing on the windward side of the ice, and continues several hours before it is felt a few miles distant to leeward, the field begins to drift before the wind can produce any impression on ice, on its opposite side ”

“ And when they arrive at the field, what do they see? The entire field is unharmed. The stalks of grain lift their heads up bravely, as if they too would give thanks for the beautiful rain which has so refreshed them. But on both sides of the field a whole stream has poured down from the hill, and nothing is to be seen but a wild mass of rocks and stones. Whose is the strong hand which seized the rain flood, and parted it just before it came to the field, and so gently led it down on both sides of the field? ”

“ The light steel windmills tremble throughout their frames and tug at their moorings, as they vibrate in the wind that often blows from one week's end to another across that high, active, resolute stretch of country. ”

“ The wind blows around each side of the hill, the opposite currents meeting, perchance, or it falls over the hill so that you have a field of ever-varying color, dark blue, blackish, yellowish, light blue, smooth sky-blue, purplish, and yellowish foam, all at once. Sometimes the wind visibly catches up the surface and blows it along and about in spray four or five feet high. The requisites are high water, mostly clear of ice, ground bare and sufficiently dry, weather warm enough, and wind strong and gusty. ”

“ But even as we searched the landscape with our field-glasses an aeroplane rose from behind our own position and made for the distant ridge, its diaphanous wings displaying red, white, and blue concentric circles to our glasses like the scales of some huge magpie-moth, while a long streamer of petrol smoke made faint pencillings in the sky behind it. As it hovered above the ridge seven or eight little white clouds like balls of feathers suddenly appeared from nowhere just below it. They were German shrapnel. ”

“ It has been explained that in a wave-motion each one of a series of contiguous objects executes some identical movement in turn. We have all seen the wind blowing on a breezy day across a cornfield, and producing a sort of dark shadow which sweeps along the field. This is clearly caused by the wind bending down, in turn, each row of cornstalks, and as row after row bows itself and springs up again, we are presented with the appearance of a wave-motion in the form of a rift rushing across the field. ”

“ Raindrops hung on the copper wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy clay of the fields was scooped and moulded by the rain into little saucer-like depressions as if by a potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches, their clay walls shored up with wickerwork, and their outskirts fringed with barbed wire whose intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown. [Pg 61] The village behind whose walls we now sheltered lay in a No Man's Land between the enemy's lines and our own, and the sodden fields were not more desolate. ”

“ They have the start. It is your wit against their impulse, your strategy against their momentum. The cloud thins and expands as it moves away from the hive and you are puzzled to know whither the main stream is moving in these ever widening folds of motion. The first indeterminate signs of direction to-day were towards the beech woods behind the cottage, but with the aid of a syringe we put up a barrage of water in that direction, and headed them off towards a row of chestnuts and limes at the end of the paddock beyond the orchard. ”

“ Wind is worse for bees than too much sun. Bless the pioneers of the windy country if, by reason of their forethought, you have a real evergreen windbreak on your place. If you have not this ideal windbreak, a building will serve, or your hedge or high board fence should be on the windy side.
If you start, as many have, with one or two colonies let them face the south or east and leave space enough between the hives to run a lawn mower. As your number increases, your original plan may be changed, but it always pays to make the plan. ”

“ When the wind continues to blow from the same quarter while the delinquent travels thirty, or six and thirty miles, if he be of a good constitution, he certainly survives. But what proves the most destructive is, that there is no dependence on the wind in that part of the world for any length of time.—There are no regular land-winds; and the sea-wind is not perceived there at all, the situation of the tree being at too great a distance, and surrounded by high mountains and uncultivated forests. ”

“ These meadows, like all the rest, are one great field of ice a foot thick, to their utmost verge far up the hillsides and into the swamps, sloping upward there, without water under it, resting almost everywhere on the ground, a great undulating field of ice, rolling, prairie-like, the earth wearing this dry icy shield or armor, which shines in the sun. ”

“ Where winds are irregular, frequently reversing their direction, of course the local effects will be less obvious, and the transportation of material actually occurring will often not be noticed. Yet there can be no doubt of the importance of wind action in soil formation, and there are cases in which no other agency can explain the facts observed over widely extended areas. ”

“ It is ordinarily better to break the force of the winds than to stop or deflect them. That is, the Windbreak may be thin enough to allow the wind to take its normal direction, but its force is broken. A stone wall or a very dense hedge of evergreens may cause the wind to rise over the plantation or to be deflected to one side; and this, in many cases, as already said, may be a decided disadvantage. The philosophy of a good Windbreak for fruit plantations may be summed up in this way: the force of heavy winds should be broken ”

“ The country round is as flat as the sea, and there is not a house or tree near it to make the wind unsteady, so this was an ideal practising ground; for practising on natural hills is generally rendered very difficult by shifty and gusty winds.... ”

“ A wind that blows a tree down in the narrow right-of-way cut through the forest—for we were come to forest again—or a heavy snowfall that loads branches until they fall across the wires, a post that comes up out of its hole as the thawing of spring heaves the ground around it, or the caving of the bank of a stream along which the line passes—any one of a dozen such happenings anywhere along its thousand miles of course, may put the entire inland telegraph system out of operation ”

“ When the storm that had uprooted the trees forming the windfall cut its wide swath through the forest the ridge of interlocking trunks and branches formed a barrier that most of the ground-inhabiting animals could not cross; also, the broad, open space between the wall of trees on each side was impassable to those dwellers of the treetops lacking wings or too timid to descend from the security of their aerial homes. ”

“ The wind that bloweth where it listeth wall work windmills well-planted to catch its breath, the stream flowing ever unhasting, unresting, wall work watermills well-placed to meet its current; but mill-sails cannot direct the wind, nor mill-wheels engender rivers. ”

“ The wind and sleet are going to make a night of it, and we shall gain nothing by waiting.”
The start was begun again—this time cautiously and on all-fours. Even so the wind seemed once or twice as if it would sweep them from the ledge. Yard by yard they crawled on. The driving mist fell like a pall over the mountain, and in a few minutes they could not even see a yard in front of them. Had the wind blown crosswise, or in any other way than that in which it came, they would have been swept off before twenty yards were accomplished. ”

“ The lowland wind, at first a mere breeze playfully teasing the north wind, like a child that kicks the bed-sheets before falling asleep, increased its force and swiftness, and scattered huge mountains of snow, but the steadily rising drone of the north wind soon mastered the situation. ”

“ The wind scampers ahead and back, jumps up at you and tugs at your clothes, for all the world like a terrier. Farm houses, fields, fences and poles vanish behind, while clouds and the distance race one up the road. The exercise sends the blood coursing through the veins, and the dizzy eyes behold the skies swirling and rushing as though composed of matter. Stop a minute and see the fields and skies whirling along while you steady yourself. ”

“ These are the causes above and below ground which are at work. By compression they rouse the winds; they strive in narrow gorges; in that close strife their channel strangles them. As when a wave, drawn up again and again from the deep, has drunk full of the East Wind's violence, the billows redouble their number and the first are pushed on by the last, in that same way the (volcanic) wind feels the impact of the struggle which compresses it, wraps its own strength within its heavy mass and impels its close-packed particles through fiery passages. ”

“ However resolutely they march, few men can resist on a long tramp the impulse of snow or wind on their faces to swing unconsciously one way or the other for protection. A shift of wind in a mist may take a party, steering by it on snow, through a complete circle. I have known of men, attempting a descent on the sheltered side of a level but interrupted ridge, who were led, by a spinning wind in mist, through the ridge and back along its other side to their starting-point, and all in twenty minutes. ”

“ The forest is incessantly aggressive and [Pg 52] eternally vigilant to hold its territory and to advance. Winds are its most terrible and effective foe. To them is due its weird and picturesque front. Occasionally they rage for days without cessation, blowing constantly from the same quarter and at times with the rending and crushing velocity of more than one hundred miles an hour. ”

“ But even this is done by the wind itself. There is a contrivance by which the mill is made to turn itself so as to face always in the right direction towards the wind; and not only so, but the mill is sometimes so constructed that if the wind blows too hard, it takes in a part of the sails by its own spontaneous action, and thus diminishes the strain which might otherwise be injurious to the machinery. ”

“ The need of irrigating prairies, inundating vines, drying marshes, and accumulating electricity cheaply has, for some time past, led to a search for some means of utilizing the forces of nature better than has ever hitherto been done. Wind, which figures in the first rank as a force, has thus far, with all the mills known to us, rendered services that are much inferior to those that we have a right to expect from it with improved apparatus; for the work produced, whatever the velocity of the wind, has never been greater than that that could be effected by wind of seven meters per second. ”

“ If the current of air which it resists moves horizontally, it would prevent the access of cold or parching blasts to the ground for a great distance; and did the wind even descend at a large angle with the surface, still a considerable extent of ground would be protected by a forest to the windward of it. ”

“ In such half-civilized regions, too, windfalls are more frequent than in those where the forest is unbroken, because, when openings have been made in it for agricultural or other purposes, the entrance thus afforded to the wind occasions the sudden overthrow of hundreds of trees which might otherwise have stood for generations and have fallen to the ground, only one by one, as natural decay brought them down. ”

“ Now, the distance that a windbreak will protect a field has been studied out and measured and demonstrated by a great number of men. Mr. McGee, at Indian Head, gave a great deal of thought and study to the windbreak proposition and measured the distances that the shelter-belt would shelter the crops, and he came to the conclusion that for every foot in height there would be an absolute protection for a rod in distance, and outside of that actual protection there would be a long distance that would be partially protected. ”