Ormolu

“ But one day I ate a lavender berry—as the Ork did—and immediately I grew so small that I was scarcely two inches high. It was a very unpleasant condition and like the Ork I became frightened. I could not walk very well nor very far, for every lump of earth in my way seemed a mountain, every blade of grass a tree and every grain of sand a rocky boulder. For several days I stumbled around in an agony of fear. Once a tree toad nearly gobbled me up, and if I ran out from the shelter of the bushes the gulls and cormorants swooped down upon me. ”

“ Imagine an object resembling the backs of antediluvian monsters, mastodons or elephants, lying in the shade of a great mass of sheltering foliage. Heavy folds in the grey rind denote a growing limb, a rounded shoulder, a gigantic head half concealed. These are the tremendous roots of the ombu, whose delight it is to issue forth from the soil in the form of astonishing animated objects. When by foot and stick you have ascertained that these living shapes are in reality mummified within a thick bark, you turn your attention to the trunk itself and find it hollow, with a crumbling surface. ”

“ The ormer adheres to the rocks like the limpet tribe, but is seldom seen above low water-mark, like the limpet, who loves to be exposed to the sun and air twice a day.
The flesh of the ormer, when grilled, is something like a veal cutlet cooked in a fishy frying-pan, and I cannot say I was greatly enraptured with the uncommon univalve. ”

“ The stars were all invisible. The croton bushes, by day hideous things like jaundiced laurels, were changed by the moon into jagged black and white designs like fantastic wood-cuts. By the compound fence two Dravidian coolies were walking down the road, transfigured, their white rags gleaming. Through the tepid air the scent streamed from the frangipani trees like some intolerable compound out of a penny-in- the-slot machine.
'Look at the moon, just look at it!' Flory said. 'It's like a white sun. ”

“ In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the name of Ormazd, the God with the name, 'Who always was, always is, and always will be'; the heavenly amongst the heavenly, with the name 'From whom alone is derived rule.' Ormazd is the greatest ruler, mighty, wise, creator, supporter, refuge, defender, completer of good works, overseer, pure, good, and just. ”

“ On the geographical significance of sun-worship, D’Orbigny has made a remark, suggestive if not altogether sound, connecting the worship of the sun not so much with the torrid regions where his glaring heat oppresses man all day long, and drives him to the shade for refuge, as with climates where his presence is welcomed for his life-giving heat, and nature chills at his departure. ”

“ All my memories of that time are memories of scrambling up and down the almost perpendicular slopes, over the jagged limestone that knocked one's boots to pieces, pouncing eagerly on tiny twigs of wood. Three people searching for a couple of hours could collect enough fuel to keep the dug-out fire alight for about an hour. The eagerness of our search for firewood turned us all into botanists. ”

“ The wise benevolence of Ormusd formed man capable of virtue, and abundantly provided his fair habitation with the materials of happiness. By his vigilant providence, the motion of the planets, the order of the seasons, and the temperate mixture of the elements are preserved. ”

“ Woe to us, woe! the thunders have spoken,
The first of the mystical seals hath been broken.
II.
Through the cleft thunder-cloud the weird coursers are rushing—
Their hoofs will strike deep in the hearts they are crushing;
And the crown'd and the proud of the old kingly races
Fall down at the vision, like stars from their places:
Oremus! Oremus! The pale earth is heark'ning;
Already the spirit-steeds round us are dark'ning.
III.
With crown and with bow, on his white steed immortal,
The Angel of Wrath passes first through the portal ”

“ Then Winter ends; the Sun, seated on the Bull and accompanied by Orion, blazes in the Heavens. All nature rejoices at the victory; and Order and Harmony are everywhere re-established, in place of the dire confusion that reigned while gloomy Typhon domineered, and Ahriman prevailed against Ormuzd. ”

“ In the empire of Ormuzd it is in the first place the Amschaspands, as the seven principal lights of heaven, which receive adoration as Divinity, inasmuch as they are the essential particular existences of Light, and for this reason constitute as a pure and spacious empeopled heaven, the existence of the Divine itself. ”

“ Cœlogyne coronaria, Lindley, Botanical Register, 1841, misc. 178.
Eria coronaria, Reichenbach, in Walpers’ Annales Botanices Systematicæ, vi., 271.
The Orchid, of which we now submit a figure, is a very pretty free-growing species; it is also distinct from any other Orchid, and one well worthy a place in any collection. Almost every one who sees it in flower admires it, not, perhaps, so much for its showy character, as for its neat pleasing inflorescence and fragrant flowers. There are admirers of small flowered Orchids as well as of those with larger and more showy blossoms. ”

“ Then I got her a fine big brass Crucifix from the Passionist Fathers at Mount Argus, and left her to her wonder-working and merciful Master. But she has impressed Ormsby profoundly. "The weak things of the world hast Thou chosen to confound the strong." ”

“ Place an Odontoglossum beside a rose, and what a distorted unholy thing it looks!"
"Unholy?" laughed Myra.
"Unholy,—yes!—they are products of feverish swamps and deathly jungles. I hate orchids. The atmosphere of an orchid-house cannot possibly be clean and healthy. One might as well spend one's time in a bacteriological laboratory!" ”

“ There was no lawn, but instead a shrubbery of native trees and bushes--gold mohur trees like vast umbrellas of blood-red bloom, frangipanis with creamy, stalkless flowers, purple bougainvillea, scarlet hibiscus and the pink Chinese rose, bilious- green crotons, feathery fronds of tamarind. The clash of colours hurt one's eyes in the glare. A nearly naked mali, watering-can in hand, was moving in the jungle of flowers like some large nectar- sucking bird. ”

“ One had to admire the man's impudence. He tucked his great stick under his arm and strolled beside Flory in an almost patronizing manner, while the doctor dropped behind, abashed in spite of himself. At the Club gate all three men halted. It was now extraordinarily dark, and the moon had vanished. Low overhead, just visible, black clouds were streaming eastward like a pack of hounds. A wind, almost cold, blew down the hillside and swept a cloud of dust and fine water-vapour before it. There was a sudden intensely rich scent of damp. ”

“ As she knelt there in the heat, the sweet odour and the drowsy hum of insects, it seemed to her that she could momentarily hear the mighty anthem of praise that the earth and all created things send up everlastingly to their maker. All vegetation, leaves, flowers, grass, shining, vibrating, crying out in their joy. ”

“ The striking headland of the Great Orme as well as Little Orme’s Head is composed of carboniferous limestone, containing corals and large Productus shells. A narrow strip of the same formation runs along the Menai Straits for several miles south of the tubular bridge. At the southern extremity of the limestone a small patch of coal measures is found. ”

“ The Roman Orcus holds the pallid souls, rapacious Orcus, sparing neither good nor bad. 81Gloomy is the Greek land of Hades, dark dwelling of the images of departed mortals, where the shades carry at once their living features and their dying wounds, and glide and cluster and whisper, and lead the shadow of a life. Like the savage hunter on his ghostly prairie, the great Orion still bears his brazen mace, still chases over the meadows of asphodel the flying beasts he slew of yore in the lonely mountains. ”

“ As the light conquers the darkness and ushers in the day, so the darkness conquers the light and ushers in the night. Thus Ormuzd and Ahriman are equal to the confines of eternity and God and Satanael become equal in the blended stories.
Of the many variations of these creation myths which have taken root especially among Slavic peoples in the Caucasus, across southern Russia and the Balkans, I have wilfully chosen those parts which have a geological flavor, and illustrate or parody, in quaint and naive manner, many earth forms or earth-forming processes. ”

“ The Paradise of Indra had five trees, under the refreshing shade of which the gods reclined and enjoyed life-inspiring draughts of Ambrosia or Amrita. The chief of these trees was the Pârijâta (usually identified with the Erythrina Indica) , and this was deemed the Ambrosia-tree.——The Greeks knew a herb which they named Ambrosia, the food of immortals, and it was so called by the ancients because they believed that a continued use of it rendered men long-lived, just as the ambrosia of the gods preserved their immortality. ”

“ We here present a picture of one of our oldest cultivated Orchids, and one which, we believe, is a universal favourite, for no person who is fortunate enough to see this grand old plant in flower, can fail to admire its beauty. The flowers make their appearance, too, when Orchid blossoms are scarce, and at our autumn exhibitions it becomes invaluable on this account. ”

“ The ombu is a very singular tree indeed, and being the only representative of tree-vegetation, natural to the soil, on those great level plains, and having also many curious superstitions connected with it, it is a romance in itself. It belongs to the rare Phytolacca family, and has an immense girth—forty or fifty feet in some cases; at the same time the wood is so soft and spongy that it can be cut into with a knife, and is utterly unfit for firewood, for when cut up it refuses to dry, but simply rots away like a ripe water-melon. ”

“ It is astonishing to me that so few people grow orchids. Every modern book on gardening tells how five hundred varieties at least, the freest to flower and assuredly as beautiful as any, may be cultivated without heat for seven or eight months of the year. It is those "legends," I have spoken of which deter the public from entertaining the notion. An afternoon at an orchid sale would dispel them. ”

“ Orm and Aslog stood for some time dubious, and looked on with a certain degree of awe, but at last, overcome by hunger, they took up the food and ate. When they had satisfied their appetites, and still in the last beams of the setting sun, which now streamed over the island far and wide, discovered no human being, they gave way to weariness, and laid themselves in the beds to which they had been so long strangers. ”

“ Travelling towards its future prison-house in the flesh, the spirit which leaves the presence of Ormuzd descends by the gate of Cancer, through the spheres of the seven planets, and in each acquires a new faculty appropriate to its earthly state. ”

“ The sweet-smelling Ornatus narcissus is now at its best, and its perfume fills the air. Arum-blossoms, thousands of them in a single field, stand stiffly waiting to be cut, while in the more exposed places late daffodils linger, nodding their yellow heads in the breeze that comes in from the sea. Everywhere there are flowers, flowers, flowers—such a wealth of flowers as one never saw before; and every one is either picking flowers, tying flowers, packing flowers, selling flowers, buying flowers, or talking of flowers. ”

“ CHAPTER II STRUCTURE OF ORCHID FLOWERS
Most people are familiar with the regular arrangement of the segments of the flowers of Amaryllids and Lilies, with their prominent pistils and anthers. The first stage in the advance of the Orchid family is shown in the Apostasieæ, comprising Apostasia, Neuwiedia and Adactylus, in which the perianth segments are more or less regular and the anthers in some degree prominent, Neuwiedia, with its free stamens and prominent style, appearing at first sight nearer to some of the Amaryllids than to the Orchideæ commonly seen in gardens. ”

“ The purple fringed orchis, one of the most showy and striking of all our orchids, blooms in midsummer in swampy meadows and in marshy, grassy openings in the woods, shooting up a tapering column or cylinder of pink-purple fringed flowers, that one may see at quite a distance, and the perfume of which is too rank for a close room. ”

“ For a time they lost sight of the sun’s orb, that, rising behind their backs, was hidden by the mountain mass, and casting a purple shadow over the forest-clad country before them. Soon, however, the bright orb, soaring into the sky, sent its beams before them, and they continued their journey under the cheering light. ”

“ Ormulum (ôr ́mū-lum) .—The Ormulum is a collection of metrical homilies, one for each day of the year; but the single existing copy gives the homilies for thirty-two days only. There are very few French words in the poem, but Scandinavian words and constructions abound. The writer, Orm, or Ormin, belonged to the east of England, and he and his brother Walter were Augustinian monks. He makes no use of rhyme, but his verses are smooth and regular.
Osbaldistone (os-bâl ́dis-ton) .—Rob Roy, Scott. ”

“ In short, the whole country affords a most beautiful prospect, being diversified with hills and valleys, and these covered with thick shady woods stocked with great variety of trees, many of which our people were quite strangers to: of these there was one of a particular nature, the leaves of which, when cut, sent forth a kind of balsam. The trees used in dyeing scarlet grow here in great plenty and to a great height. The soil likewise produces the most useful plants.
Of Ormuz, near Arabia:
The name of the island seems to be taken from the ancient city of Armuza in Caramania ... ”