Moult

“ The process of moulting, which takes place five or six weeks after they are hatched, is frequently fatal to them. The best remedy yet known is to put a small piece of iron into the water they drink, keeping them warm during the six weeks or two months which generally elapse before they regain their strength. ”

“ Young house-sparrows and hedge-sparrows not only chatter and swear at one another like the full-grown birds at pairing time, but also like the latter the young birds distend their throats, let their wings droop, peck at one another, and in fact behave as exactly as they will next spring when fully grown. Young linnets also begin to sing before losing their youthful plumage, learn to sing well during the moulting season, and often continue to warble right on into the winter ”

“ Setting up the mould with plaster of Paris.
When the model has been completed, the next thing to be done is to make a mould on it. For this purpose the moulders are called in. Some sculptors do their own moulding; but if they are busy men it does not pay them to do so, the moulding of a large group being a long job. It is, moreover, a strictly mechanical operation, although one requiring much manipulative skill and a fine touch. The first thing the moulder does, when the model is handed over to him, is carefully to consider the way in which he is going to accomplish his task. ”

“ Every little rill that flows down the mountain side is charged with finely-powdered sediment which it is ever wearing away from the surface of its own bed. Every great stream, besides the immense quantities of mud and sand which in times of flood it carries along in its turbulent course, has its channel strewn over with pebbles at which it never ceases to work, rounding off the angles and polishing the surfaces; and these pebbles, what are they but the fragments of old rocks and the elements of new,—the rubble-stone of Nature’s edifice on its way from the quarry to the building? ”

“ Plain, or unenriched, mouldings are formed with a running mould of zinc cut to the required profile. Enrichments may be Mouldings. added after the main outline moulding is set, and are cast in moulds made of gelatine or plaster of paris. For a cornice moulding two running rules are usual, one on the wall, the other on the ceiling, upon which the mould is worked to and fro by one workman, while another man roughly lays on the plaster to the shape of the moulding. ”

“ A stuck moulding is worked directly on to the framing it is used to ornament; a planted moulding is separately worked and fixed in position with nails or screws. Beads and other small mouldings should always be stuck; larger ones are usually planted on. In the case of mouldings planted on panelled work, the nails should be driven through the moulding into the style or rail of the framing, and on no account into the panel. ”

“ Our road after this, till six o'clock in the evening, lay through the most exquisite forests, but with terrible footing for the mules—thick, pudding-like, wet mud, and loose, slippery stones, corduroys of hard mud striping some of the most difficult places, where only a surefooted mule can tread. ”

“ These materials had been gradually deposited in the mould formed by the bird's foot, and are therefore independent of this rock, in the same way as the plaster-of-Paris cast of a tooth, or any other body, is independent of the mould to which it owes its form. ”

“ Each chunk of red dirt dislodged by the pick falls into the running water, and if it be hard and will not readily dissolve it must be broken up by pick or shovel to keep the stream clear and unimpeded. The large boulders are picked out by hand and thrown behind us—not in disordered fashion, either. Room in the cut is scarce and must be economized, so the ever-accumulating bowlder pile is “faced up” with a neat wall, laid without mortar, but with some care and skill. The bed-rock is under our feet. ”

“ In the Western Hemisphere, both in Canada and as far south as the 40th and even 38th parallel of latitude in the United States, we meet with a repetition of all the peculiarities which distinguish the European boulder formation. Fragments of rock have travelled for great distances from north to south; the surface of the subjacent rock is smoothed, striated, and fluted; unstratified mud or till containing boulders is associated with strata of loam, sand, and clay, usually devoid of fossils. ”

“ Thus, as the current sweeps along in its course, the sediment which it bears away from the land will be in a manner sorted, and three distinct layers of different materials will be deposited in the bed of the ocean;—first, nearest to the shore, a layer of pebbles and coarse gravel, then a layer of sand, and last of all a layer of fine mud or clay. This is the first step in the construction of stratified rock. To complete the work nothing more is necessary than the consolidation of these loose and incoherent materials. ”

“ And with that a peculiar accuracy; for the mass which bears the light in this moulding is not in good Greek work, as in the frieze of the Erechtheum, merely of the shape of an egg. It is flattened on the upper surface, with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve which it is impossible too highly to praise, attaining exactly that flattened, imperfect oval, which, in nine cases out of ten, will be the form of the pebble lifted at random from the rolled beach. Leave out this flatness, and the moulding is vulgar instantly. ”

“ The road for the most part winds by the brink of precipices,—walled in with masonry of small stones, where Nature has not shored it up with vast monoliths,—and is paved with limestone. It is, of course, merely a mule-path, and it was curious to see, and thrilling to experience, how the mules, vain of the safety of their foothold, kept as near the border of the precipices as possible. ”

“ Mouldings play a prominent part in Gothic architecture, and from the first to the last they varied so constantly that their profiles and grouping may be constantly made use of as a kind of architectural calendar, to point out the time, to within a few years, when the building in which they occur was erected.
A moulding is the architect’s means of drawing a line on his building. If he desires to mark on the exterior the position of an internal floor, or in any other way to suggest a division into storeys, a moulded string-course is introduced. ”

“ It is of great depth and of considerable projection, the hollows of the mouldings being filled with square flowers below and intricate carving above. On this stands a high parapet of traceried quatrefoils, bearing a horizontal moulding from which springs an elaborate cresting; all being almost exactly like the cornice and parapet at Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding. ”

“ The distinction between a rake moulding and a raked or raking moulding should be noted:
A rake moulding is simply a moulding that is inclined to the horizontal. It has the same profile as the horizontal moulding to which it is joined.
A raked or raking moulding is an inclined moulding that joins a horizontal or other moulding that does not lie in the same plane. It does not have the same profile as does the moulding to which it is joined. It takes its name from the fact that its profile must be altered or raked in order to join with the other moulding. ”

“ Label Moulding, a projecting course of stone running round an arch. When not very large it is sometimes cut on the voussoirs, but is usually made a separate course of stone. Often, and especially in the case of door openings, a small sinking is worked on the top surface of the moulding to form a gutter which leads to the sides any water that trickles down the face of the wall. ”

“ There the gravel is lighter. Many of the stones are light and rotten; a blow with the pick dashes them to pieces. This streak just above the ledge and for a few inches in the crevices of the ledge is our “pay streak” where ages on ages ago some stream ran, depositing, as all streams do, the heavier gravel on the bottom and the lighter above. Occasionally the pick strikes a firmly embedded boulder hard and square on its point, in such a way as to send the vibration like a shock along the iron, up the handle and into one’s arm and “crazy-bone.” Our bank of dirt is about eight feet in height. ”

“ Moulding-tā′ble, a table on which a potter moulds his ware; Mould′-loft, a large room in a shipbuilding yard in which the several parts of a ship's hull are laid off to full size from the construction drawings.—Moulding machine, a machine for making wood-mouldings; Moulding plane, a plane used in forming mouldings, a match-plane; Moulding sand, a mixture of sand and loam used by founders in making sand-moulds. [Fr. moule—L. modulus, a measure.]
Moulin, mōō-lang′, n. a cavity formed in a glacier by the running down of surface water, sometimes allowing a cascade to be formed. ”

“ Great skill and discrimination are required in designing and applying mouldings, but that matter falls to the qualified designer and is perhaps outside the province of the practical workman, whose work is to carry out in an accurate and finished manner the ideas of the draughtsman. The character of a moulding is greatly affected by the nature and appearance of the wood in which it is worked. ”

“ In an underground chamber I saw men at work, treading a large flat heap of fire-clay into proper consistency, weighing it into lumps of a given weight; placing these lumps one after the other in a circular mould, and driving in upon them, with a ponderous mallet, a circular block of the same form and height as the mould, but smaller. As the block sinks under the heavy blows, the clay is forced against the sides of the mould; and when the block can descend no further, there appears all round it a dense ring of clay, and the mould is full. ”

“ The women bring water, clay, and earth, and mix a mud mortar, which is used sparingly between the layers of stone. Walls are from eight to eighteen inches thick and seven or eight feet high, above which rafters or poles are placed and smaller poles crosswise above these, then willows or reeds closely laid, and above all reeds or grass holding a spread of mud plaster. When thoroughly dry, a layer of earth is added and carefully packed down. ”

“ But mouldings mitred on the solid had almost entirely replaced the older form of stopped mouldings by the end of the sixteenth century. By returning to the illustration of the screen at Haddon (Fig. 135) , an example may be seen alongside the heavier Gothic work; and another example, with a much deeper and broader moulding, may be seen in an upper room at the same place (Plate XLI.) . It is a provoking characteristic of work of this time that its method of treatment does not give an infallible clue to its chronological sequence. ”

“ The mould is made and lowered into one of these pits, the pit is filled up, the sand being rammed as hard as possible all around it. When all is ready, the top of the mould, with the cross by which it is to be lifted and lowered surmounting it, presents the appearance represented on the right hand lower corner of the engraving below. ”

“ A workman should be placed in each of the three divisions of the mould, the best workman being placed at the angle. He is to direct the work of the other two, and by occasionally applying a plumb-rule, to take care that the mould does not swerve from its upright position. The labourers who dig and prepare the earth must give it in small quantities to the workmen in the mould, who, after having 61 spread it with their feet, begin to compress it with the rammer. They must only receive at a time so much as will cover the bottom of the mould to the thickness of 3 or 4 in. ”

“ The path, besides, has large round stones embedded in it, which are polished by the coolies’ sandals till they shine like porphyry. One day we met dozens of mules going down a breakneck zigzag staircase in the rocks, and we were bespattered by them with mud from head to toe, being compelled to wait while they went past. How they keep their footing it is hard to tell, and it is sad to see their sore backs when their loads are off. ”

“ FIG. 129.Towards the end of the twelfth century the sloping surface was sometimes given to the upper member of interior strings, whether in a spirit of conformity with the changed form that had been adopted in outside mouldings, or for other reasons, it is, of course, impossible wholly to determine. Perhaps the earliest instance of an interior moulding of this form is that of the triforium string of the nave of the Cathedral of Paris (Fig. 120") . The slope has not, of course, the same raison d'être here that it has when the moulding is exposed to the weather ”

“ The rains had softened the trail, until it was of the consistency of very stiff mud. In 58 this mud the first mule had left his tracks. The next mule trod carefully in the first mule’s footsteps; and all subsequent mules did likewise. The consequence was a succession of narrow, deep holes in the clay, into which an animal’s leg sank halfway to the shoulder. No power on earth, I firmly believe, could have induced those mules to step anywhere else. ”

“ The shaft or great body of the mould is a hollow cylinder, finely polished in the inside, and open at both extremities. The top of the mould is a small metallic cup, having a moulding within-side, and a hole to admit the wick. The two parts are soldered together, and when united, as will readily be imagined, have the shape of a moulded candle. A third piece, called the foot, is sometimes added; it is a kind of small funnel, through which the liquid tallow runs into the mould, and, being screwed to the opposite extremity of the shaft, is removable at pleasure. ”

“ Our fourteenth and fifteenth century buildings present nothing in its place but combinations of mouldings, in themselves very beautiful, but by no means so beautiful as to reconcile us to the loss of that which they so entirely supplanted. One consequence of their introduction, to the exclusion of the detached shaft, was, that the art of sculpture deteriorated just in proportion as the art of moulding was developed. ”