Paving

“ If you, dear reader, dwell in any northern town, you will almost certainly see paving courts and alleys, and sometimes—to the discomfort of your feet—whole streets, or set up as bournestones at corners, or laid in heaps to be broken up for road-metal, certain round pebbles, usually dark brown or speckled gray, and exceedingly tough and hard. ”

“ Fig. 3 will make this form clear at a glance. The fifth variety described by De Zeltner is quite extraordinary in construction. His account is somewhat confusing in a number of respects, and the section given in Fig. 4 cannot claim more than approximate accuracy in details and measurements. Near the surface a paving, perhaps 19 of river stones, was found covering an area of about 10 by 13 feet. This paving was apparently the surface of a pack about 2 feet thick, and covered the mouth of the main pit, which was some 6 or 7 feet deep. ”

“ Paving is perfectly unknown; and the consequence is, that in winter, when the deluging rains, which fall for three months almost without leaving off, have saturated the ground, these streets become veritable sewers, in which pedestrians sink up to the knee. ”

“ They crowd, elbow, and shoulder one another, and some make stalls of paving-stones. Here an angle of the wall is in the way, and it is avoided; there is a redan which may offer protection, and they seek shelter in it. ”

“ When that is accomplished the ground must be sown by hand without delay, with paddy which has already sprouted, and being merely scattered lightly on the surface of the thick mud, will grow at once. The preparation of the paddy for this purpose is one of the duties of the women, who soak it in water, and spread it a few inches thick on large mats laid on the floor of the shed or the veranda. ”

“ Try yourself, dear reader, and make experiments, with running water, pebbles, and mud. If you try for seven years, I believe, you will never contrive to make your pebbles lie about in your mud, as they lie about in every pit in the boulder clay. ”

“ A mud-house is being built near by, and between the cooking and attending to passing travelers, two women are digging the earth and filling up the baskets, while the men are mixing the mud, filling in the oblong wooden trough, and thus building the wall. At my elbow a man—old and grizzled and dirty—is turning back roll upon roll of his wadded garments, and ridding it of as many as he can find of the insects with which it is infested. ”

“ Every step is a labour: each leg is pulled out of one hole, even in the harder plots, and placed on the edge of another into which it slips down by aid of the lubricating mud upon the surface; and in many instances the poor animal rests upon its chest or its belly, the hole being too deep for its legs to fathom. ”

“ Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe.
There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. ”

“ Of course I know the native habit of cleaning a house by putting down a fresh layer of mud mixed with a little dung, which in time raises the floor considerably. But I was not to be put off by that. Below the smearing of the old man’s time might be a layer of earth thrown in to hide something. I glanced round. ‘May I borrow a spear?’ I asked. ”

“ He fumbled with his hands in the swamp, dug holes, measured, sniffed,—till he invented a strange thing. He ordered the bailiff to hire labourers daily to dig peat, to heap barrow-loads of the mud on to the fields, and to go on digging a hole until it was large enough for a pond. ”

“ He placed the plank flat upon the mud, and with the right knee resting on it, and kicking the mud with the left foot, he shot along the surface with great rapidity, the sharp-pointed nails transfixing the little creatures before they could succeed in burying themselves sufficiently deep to avoid it. ”

“ To Pitch, in the West of England, is not synonymous with to pave. To pave, means to lay flat, square, and hewn stones or bricks down, for a floor or other pavement or footway. A paved way is always smooth and even; a pitched way always rough and irregular. ”

“ If the plash be of a great, and extraordinary age, wind it at the neather boughs all together, and cutting the sets as directed, permit it rather to hang downwards a little, than rise too forwards; and then twist the branches into the work, leaving a set free, and unconstrain’d at every yard space, besides such as will serve for stakes, abated to about five foot length (which is a competent stature for an hedge) and so let it stand. ”

“ But if the bed of the lake should happen to be made of mud or clay, or something into which neither air nor water can penetrate, the body of the creature which has got stuck in swimming, or has been somehow caught fast and held, will gradually sink down till he is entirely covered. ”

“ When a body of clay is encountered and there is reason to suspect that a body of water is being approached, a long drill is used with which to feel the way in advance of the drift, and let the water out, if any there be, in a controllable stream. ”

“ Up in Stephen Parrish’s lovely garden in Cornish I once saw a bird bath which we’ll try to duplicate, here on the lawn, so the birds will have the water handy to wash down the grass seed they are eating so fast. Let’s see; we’ll need bricks, sand, cement, a mason’s trowel, a spade, a hoe, a level, a box to mix in, and a box for a frame. ”

“ When, however, a river-bed consists of silt, sand or other soft materials extending down to a considerable depth, brickwork wells are gradually sunk to a firm stratum by removing the material within them with grabs, and on them the piers are built out of water ”

“ Lastly, as mud and dirt cannot take hold of a singed coat, and consequently as little or no grooming is required, the animal, on reaching his stable, soon enjoys rest, instead of being for an hour or two teased, excited, and irritated, by being tied up, hissed at, and cleaned. ”

“ Let us consider for a moment the differences which obtain between the conditions of life in water or in soft mud at the bottom of pool or river, and those which are undergone by a dweller in stiff soil or vegetable débris. In the first case the medium is fluid or at most very soft, while the soil is at least stiffer and harder to traverse. ”

“ Nest.—A large, amply cupped structure of grasses, weeds, and other materials, sometimes strengthened with mud, usually built in a coniferous tree, in a yard, or on a campus, from 20 to 60 feet from the ground, but also built in willows, in bridges, high buildings, and rarely among cat-tails. ”

“ Yes, a good workman in the construction of mud walls does no more than rock-martins have done in all the ages of their nest-building. When these birds make their nests they use wet loam stiffened with bits of straw, and each layer is allowed to harden before another is put on in a thickness of about half an inch for a day’s work. ”

“ While my wife was employed making harness for the cow and ass, I went with my sons to the shore, to look for wood fit for our use next day. We saw a great quantity of wreck, but none fit for our purpose, till Ernest met with a heap of bamboo canes, half buried in sand and mud. ”

“ A passage is left where she enters or first begins to bore, and another at the other end of the pipe. As the industrious animal proceeds in her employment, she clears away the wood that she detaches, throwing it out upon the ground, where it appears like a small heap of saw-dust. ”

“ Here a pavement built of stone is walled in with an opening on two sides, so that when it rains the water may pass through, and wash off the pavements placed below the surface of the ground for the purpose of protecting them from sudden gusts of wind that come down and sweep away the whole crop, the more easily after the leaves are dried. ”

“ The operation of digging, as performed by a gardener, consists in thrusting the iron part of the spade, which acts as a wedge, perpendicularly into the ground by the application of the foot, and then using the long handle as a lever, to raise up the loosened earth and turn it over. The quantity of earth thus raised is called a spitful, and the gardener, when he has turned it, chops it to break the clods, with the sharp edge of his spade, and levels it with the back. ”

“ A bound, leap, or skip, such as a flat piece of stone makes, when thrown obliquely along the surface of a pond: The bounds, which are made by balls, fired with small charges, and under angles of little elevation, either upon land, or water: Fire-works, which leap or roll on the ground. ”

“ I encountered in a path on the downs several of those poor fishermen who pass nearly the whole day in water up to their waists, gathering shells which are used to make a certain kind of cement, or are sprinkled in the garden-paths instead of sand. ”

“ Should the earth adhere to the spade while digging, dipping the blade in water occasionally, will be found to facilitate the operation.
The purposes for which digging is applied in gardening are: simple digging for loosening the soil in order to prepare it for a crop; pointing; burying manure; exposing the soil to the action of the weather; trenching; [Pg 14] ridging; forming pits for planting trees and shrubs, or for filling with choice soil for sowing seeds; and taking up plants when they are to be removed. ”

“ To obtain a proper depth of running water, with a surface varying little in height, they build a dam on a stream to make a pond, in which to build houses for winter, using trees and branches mixed with stones and mud. ”

“ Filth, odors, activity, jewelry, dirty little heaps and packets of food,—all are handled over and over again, and each one is content with a lick of the fingers for the handling. Then when quite worn out one may rest his bones on the pavement covered with straw or mat, or if more fortunate, may have a hovel or a house in which to breed. ”

“ We breathed an air heavy with mortality, on pavements made slimy by countless naked feet, in a shaft, in a pit, between dank walls. Shapes drifted by like sheeted corpses, peering, floating up, melting away ”

“ He builds by choice on low ground, beside a quiet stream, because he finds there alders for building material, abundant mud for mortar, soft banks for refuge burrows, and broad levels through which to run his transportation canals. ”

“ If you step carefully to the edge of a pond or river, where this crow-foot covers the shore-water with its floating foliage and thousands of snow-flakes, you will not be in a hurry to disturb it, it is so truly beautiful. ”

“ Sometimes after cutting a large limb into the right length to be used in the construction of a dam, the animal, finding he does not need it immediately, floats it out into the middle of a stream and sinks it to the bottom. ”

“ If the mud is deep, or there is snow on the ground, he also leaves the mark of his claws, but as a rule these are not observable, as he puts his weight on the sole of his foot—his tracks are usually almost in a line. ”

“ All this time they’re working at the dam and raising the water, and all this time, too, they are packing sticks up on top of the house, raising it higher and higher, and perhaps bringing mud, which they get along the bank, and putting this among the sticks on top of the house so as to bind the whole together and make it tight and warm for winter. ”

“ We know no better course for you to take than to dig a deep ditch all around the trees, say three feet wide and as many deep, and just within the outer reach of the limbs, and fill this in with half the earth removed and the other half made up of vegetable matter, ashes, road dirt, and such manure from the barn and stable as you can spare. ”

“ There is something in the glimpse she has just caught of her young neighbour, and in the sight of the little trinkets she has offered in pawn, that seems to have awakened in this woman’s mind some slumbering recollection, and to have changed, for an instant, her whole demeanour. ”

“ Having found where a fish is lying, probably under an overhanging branch or beneath the grass jutting out from the bank, you lie down silently as close to the edge of the water as you can get, and slip one paw in, ever so gradually, behind the fish, and move it towards him gently—gently. If he takes fright and darts away, you leave your paw where it is, or move it as close to the spot where he was lying as you can reach, and wait. ”

“ After a week of work in the soil, feeling for delicate things in a way that no tools can do, the skin almost wears through, and the nails break down. But a week or two more at it, and the excavator grows his gloves, and is in a fit state for business, with the skin well thickened, and ready to finger through tons of grit and sand. ”

“ The commonly received opinion of these pavements having been the floors of baths, as founded on the circumstance of their being discovered three p. 39or four feet under the surface of the earth, is not conclusive; for the soil has been raised by accidental accumulation ”

“ When the ground has been cleared, the farmers wait for the rain, which falls in torrents, and in due course makes the ground soft enough to permit of ploughing. The plough is made of wood, and consists of a bent stick stuck in a pointed wooden block. ”

“ Rudely constructed of trunks of trees lashed together with flexible branches, and caulked with a mixture of bark and mud, they offer but a slight resistance to the waves; hence accidents are frequent, although they seldom venture far from the shore. ”

“ He worked each day on his little motel, painting and hammering, while his wife, always with a cigarette in one hand, planted shrubs, lined the driveways with big rocks which she painted white, and did the watering--an important job in this part of the country. Our own shrubs, the islands of grass and the geraniums beneath our sign needed a thorough watering every day. We discovered that watering every other day was not enough; the grass would turn brown and die in spots unless it received a daily watering. ”