Hoarseness

“ Hoarse, unnatural, long-drawn—such as could not be imagined to proceed from human throat, they seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth, and to be re-echoed by the walls of the great dark lofty kitchens. ”

“ But on actually entering them, you find yourself at once in green twilight, among lofty trunks uprising everywhere like huge pillars wrapped with vines;—and the inter-spaces between these bulks are all occupied by lianas and parasitic creepers,—some monstrous,—veritable parasite-trees,—ascending at all angles, or dropping straight down from the tallest crests to take root again. The effect in the dim light is that of innumerable black ropes and cables of varying thicknesses stretched taut from the soil to the tree-tops, and also from branch to branch, like rigging. ”

“ A prurient eruption formed in a circle, affecting children, and would seem to be the work of insects, according to the theory of Linnæus, who ascribes the itch and dysentery to microscopic animalcula. These animalcula are probably the effect, and not the cause, of these eruptions; as they are to be seen in all putrescent animal fluids. The annular propagation of the ring-worm, and its continuing to enlarge its periphery, is well accounted for by the acrimony of the ichor or saline fluid eroding the skin in its vicinity. ”

“ This vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean: the moving sand is infected with lice; the pure spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue of worms; even in the hard rock the crystal is forming. ”

“ And so the parasitic higher plant tends to lose its division into stem and leaves and roots, and to acquire a compact and amorphous body. The animal has no longer to seek its food, and the lithe segmentation of a body adapted for locomotion becomes replaced by a squat or insinuating form. Jaws give place to sucking and piercing tubes, the alimentary canal becomes simplified, or may disappear altogether, the parasite living in the juices of its host, and absorbing them through the skin. ”

“ The ground and the paving-stones are plastered with mud; the straw scattered for our sleeping is soaked through, by the water that comes through the holes and by the boots that wipe themselves with it. Besides, if you sit down, you freeze; and if you lie on the straw, you are troubled by the smell of manure, and sickened by the vapors of ammonia. Fouillade contents himself by looking at his place, and yawning wide enough to dislocate his long jaw, further lengthened by a goatee beard where you would see white hairs if the daylight were really daylight. ”

“ The sides of ponds and ditches being covered by water during the winter months, in the spring the air becoming warmer and drier, the water diminishes, the decay of vegetable seeds, plants, and all woody fibres enter now into putrefaction, communicating the process to each other, and by the transmission of decomposition from one particle to another, a great number of plants give out various gases to the atmosphere while decaying upon mud, rise into the air, meeting other gases, and then, floating about, they compose and decompose each other. ”

“ Sometimes when you have been walking over the moorland you have run to gather some bright yellow moss, and have suddenly found your foot sinking into wet, black mud, and you have heard stories of men and horses sucked down by just such dreadful slime. ”

“ The organic germs that caused these diseases depended on swamps, stagnant pools, and decaying animal and vegetable matter for nests in which to be cultivated, and from such places they were conveyed by the air or water and so reached the fluids of the human body in which their further cultivation went on, to the great grief of your race. Now there is not a swamp nor any such thing in all the world, and nothing whatever is allowed to decay. Everything that grows is either utilized or cremated. ”

“ Q. Why is hoar-frost seen only after a very clear night?
A. Unless the night has been very clear indeed, the earth will not have thrown off heat enough by radiation, to freeze the vapour condensed upon its surface.
Q. Why does hoar-frost very often cover the ground and trees, when the water of rivers is not frozen?
A. Hoar-frost is not the effect of cold in the air, but the cold of the earth (produced by excessive radiation) ; in consequence of which, the dew (condensed upon it) is frozen.
Q. Why is the hoar-frost upon grass and vegetables much thicker than that upon lofty trees? ”

“ After a period of weeks or months of drouth before any rainfall has occurred at all, the fountains, long dry, often commence to run, and wells begin to fill with water, and this without a drop of rain.
Just here comes the pleasant task of answering the question fully: How can this occur without a soaking rain?
At such times, when the Earth and all nature is thirsting for water, and every fountain seems to have dried up forever, the day will come which will bring these evidences.
The aged will complain of their rheumatism; [47] men’s bones will ache; geese will wash in the dust ”

“ There they lie in state, sharing the sovereignty of the season, with bright-gemmed holly boughs and pearly mistletoe, that deck and garnish every pad, and stall, and bench, and lie heaped up in shining stacks of magnitude that may well suggest to the young novice a question as to how the slow-growing holly and rare parasite could have been found year after year in such profusion. ”

“ During winter the scene may at first sight appear nearly similar; the warm and flickering haze is changed for a light that can be seen into; the noise of the surge comes deeper through the clear air of frost, and with it at intervals hoarse sounds and shrill whistles, to which the ear is unaccustomed; acres of dark masses are seen, which may be taken for low rocks or scalps, and the line of the sea in the bays contains something which rises and falls, and seems as if it were about to be cast on shore with every coming swell. ”

“ The tiny droplets, when spread out into the warm air, become real steam, or ‘water-gas,’ again.
“The outside of this tumbler of cold water was quite dry when I placed it on the table. Run your finger along it and tell me what you find.”
Frank did so, and said, “Why, it is quite wet now.”
“Yes,” said Uncle George, “it is covered all over with very small drops of water. Where did this water come from. It could not come through the glass.”
“It is like dew,” said Tom.
“It is dew—real dew,” said Uncle George. “The water in the glass is much colder than the air around it. ”

“ Similar conditions must prevail in many situations; but, clearly, the more binding and plastic the building material, the longer the nest will withstand the action of the dripping water and the greater chance will there be of the young being reared in safety. Observe, therefore, how far-reaching an effect so small a detail as the nature of the mud can have upon the status of the species in any given locality. ”

“ I only cite them as evidence of the influence of moisture in the soil so far as it is measurable by the proportion of ground-water present. We are more nearly concerned with the relation of the soil to the water which we apply to our own use, which we draw from wells and springs, to water as a vehicle conveying matters out from the soil. When typhus or cholera rages epidemically in any place, two parties immediately set up a contention as to whether the epidemic influence proceeds from the water or the air. ”

“ We have, therefore, only to take notice, by the way, that the hoar-frost is very often of short continuance, changeable, and uncertain, both as to its time and place of failing; and hence all these difficulties are easily resolved. Let the Huntsman, as foon as he is out of bed, examine but the glass windows, which commonly discover whether any hoar-frost has fallen, what time it came, and in what condition of continuance, or going off, it is for the present. ”

“ Why doesn't the mud close in behind the animal? The fact is that the worm is always pouring out from its skin a sticky slime which quickly becomes quite hard and firm. And this binds the sandy mud together as the worm forces its way down, and forms a kind of lining to its burrow, just like the brickwork with which we line our railway tunnels. ”

“ At night, you can only hear them; and their hoarse, complaining voices, lost among the clouds, seem like the salutation and the farewell of souls in torment, striving to find the road to heaven and compelled by an irresistible fatality to hover about the abodes of men, not far from earth; for these migratory birds exhibit strange uncertainty and mysterious anxiety in their aerial wanderings. It sometimes happens that they lose the wind, when fitful breezes struggle for the mastery or succeed one another in the upper regions. ”

“ Flat-leaved, low-growing plants are usually well covered with hoar-frost crystals, while about the edges of certain leaves a heavy decoration of film-like crystals is sometimes seen.
Frequently upon a pond of frozen water we come across a queer moss-like fungus deposit scattered at intervals over the surface of the ice. This is still another type of hoar-frost formation. Still another is the columnar frost crystal, which is formed of clusters of needles, and these loose, needle-like formations we frequently find scattered over the surface of thin brook ice. ”

“ Climbing lianas, which cross from one tree to the other, like ropes passing from mast to mast, help to fill up all the gaps in this treillage; and parasites—not timid parasites like ivy or like moss, but parasites which are trees self-grafted upon trees—dominate the primitive trunks, overwhelm them, usurp the place of their foliage, and fall back to the ground, forming factitious weeping-willows. ”

“ The animal has the instinct to bury itself in the mud of the bottom, on the approach of the droughts, penetrating to a depth of several feet. There it coils itself into a ball, with the tail folded over the nose, but so as to leave the nasal apertures uncovered; and, probably by its wrigglings, it forms a cavity or chamber in the clay, which becomes lined with a membranous slough thrown off from its body. ”

“ Necrosis of the tissues is likely to set in: the flesh corrupts, falls from the bone sometimes in tatters; and the colors of its putrefaction simulate the hues of vegetable decay,—the ghastly grays and pinks and yellows of trunks rotting down into the dark soil which gave them birth. The human victim moulders as the trees moulder,—crumbles and dissolves as crumbles the substance of the dead palms and balatas: the Death-of-the-Woods is upon him. ”

“ In a wild state it will swim the largest rivers, and it delights in morasses, where it rolls in the deep mud like a pig or buffalo, and thus coats its hide with a covering of slime, which protects it from the attacks of flies and the worry of mosquitoes. ”

“ The usual cry of the bittern is, as already mentioned, a hoarse, raven-like croak; and it is only during the breeding-season that the male utters the resounding boom, which has been compared to the bellowing of a bull, and on a still night may be heard at a distance of a mile or more. ”

“ Q. Why is there little or no hoar-frost under shrubs and shadowy trees?
A. 1st—Because the leafy shrubs [Pg 231] and trees arrest the process of radiation from the earth: and
2ndly—Shrubs and trees radiate a little heat towards the earth; and, therefore, the ground beneath is never cold enough to congeal the little dew which rests upon it.
Q. What is the cause of that hoar-frost which arises from frozen fog?
A. The thick fog (which invested the earth during the night) is condensed by the cold frost of early morning, and congealed upon every object with which it comes in contact. ”

“ Modern hygiene has observed that certain variations in the moisture of the soil have a great influence on the origin and spread of certain epidemic diseases, as for instance cholera and typhoid fever—that these diseases do not become epidemic when the moisture in the soil is not above or below a certain level, and has remained so for a time. ”

“ The worst kind of germs are those that come out of earth—such as garden mold, or mud from the road. They cause a terrible disease known as lock-jaw, so great care should be taken if any one gets a deep cut while gardening, for instance. ”

“ The hoar frost is in reality the dew particles or molecules of water in the air, which, when the temperature falls below 32°, freezes and collects, and thus forms a deposit of hoar frost upon nearly all surfaces which it encounters. ”

“ Feeding of grain from the ground is a cause of swallowing sand, earth and pebbles. Licking the soil in acidity of the stomach is another cause. Fodder that has been packed down and mixed with earth, and that which has been blown full of sand or dust, and roots eaten from the ground in wet weather lead to the ingestion of much sand or earth. ”

“ All the creatures referred to above, notwithstanding the differences in their skeletons, resemble each other very closely in their soft parts, and come under the general name of Foraminifera, a name having reference to the openings by which the animal matter within communicates with the water without, for nutrition and respiration. Such creatures may be regarded as the simplest and most ready media for the conversion of vegetable matter into animal tissues, and their functions are almost entirely limited to those of nutrition. ”

“ We relate this little incident to point out the almost certain consequence of getting wet in this climate, and allowing the clothes to dry on the person. Even if we walk in the mornings when the dew is on the grass, and only get our feet and legs wet, a very uneasy feeling and partial fever with pains in the limbs ensue, and continue till the march onwards bathes them in perspiration. ”