Sling

“ In the sling, with the head fairly raised the gravitation is the other way and the head is depleted. If the patient is too ill to be maintained in the sling, he may be packed up with bundles of straw on each side, so that his breast may lie on a thickly littered bed, and his head may be elevated. ”

“ This sling serves for rock work like an ordinary sling, and, in addition, is looped round the wrist when step-cutting, thus preventing the loss of the axe, which to a party of climbers engaged in difficult work might be a source of danger. ”

“ An excellent sling is formed by placing one handkerchief around the neck, and knotting the two ends over the breast-bone, then placing the other in triangle under the arm, to be supported with the base near to the hand ”

“ When all is ready for business, a sling is passed under the horse’s belly, and also supports his chest and quarters; the ropes attached to this sling meet over the middle of the horse’s back, and are hitched to the chain of the windlass or crane. Two soldiers have each hold of a rein attached to the head-stall on either side of his head, while they soothe and allay his fears by hand and voice, or, if he violently resist, hold him by main force, until he is snatched from the ground and swung over that portion of the sea which intervenes between the beach and the vessel. ”

“ When the Esquimaux sees a bird flying so that it will pass tolerably near him, he whirls the sling round his head and flings it at the bird. As it leaves his hand, all the weights fly apart, on account of the rotatory motion which has been communicated to them, so that the weapon covers a space of five feet. Should one of the weights or strings strike the bird, the whole of the sling becomes wrapped round it, and the bird falls helpless to the ground. The reader will doubtless see that this sling is in fact a modification of the Patagonian bolas. ”

“ Each day we’ll put more weight on his feet until finally the sling will just be there to keep him from lying down and for him to use when he wants to rest. Now some horses never lie down to sleep. I’ve had farmers tell me that some of their horses have stood as long as a couple of years without lying down other than to roll when they were in the pasture. Still there’s danger when you force a horse to stand for six weeks in a sling that he might get laminitis, or founder. ”

“ It was often necessary for the mother to adjust her baby in the sling whenever it was leaning uncomfortably too far to one side or the other, but she did it skillfully, always with a shrug of the shoulders, for both hands were full. ”

“ On account of its sense, however, Schlinge is not to be derived from this MidHG. word, but from the ModHG. vb. —
schlingen, vb., ‘to wind, twine, twist, sling,’ from MidHG. slingen, OHG. slingan, ‘to wind, entwine, swing to and fro,’ MidHG. also ‘to creep,’ OHG. ‘to move’; comp. Du. slingeren, ‘to hurl, swing,’ AS. slingan, E. to slung, OIc. slyngva, ‘to throw’; Goth. *slingwan (or rather *sleihwan) is wanting. The prim. idea of the root slingw, to which both schlenkern and Schlange are allied, was ‘a revolving, swinging motion.’ The Teut. root slingw (*slinhw) originated in pre-Teut. ”

“ Slings (fig. 32) .—This is simply the bight of a rope turned up over its own part; it is frequently made of chain, when a shackle (bow up) takes the place of the bight at s and another at y, connecting the two ends with the part which goes round the mast-head. Used to sling lower yards. For boat’s yards it should be a grummet with a thimble seized in at y. As the tendency of all yards is to cant forward with the weight of the sail, the part marked by an arrow should be the fore-side—easily illustrated by a round ruler and a piece of twine. ”

“ No sling-bullets have, so far as I am aware, been discovered in Great Britain. There are, however, peculiar leaden objects, bearing devices and inscriptions, which have been found at Felix-Stowe, in Suffolk, and at Brough-upon-Stanmore, in Westmoreland. ”

“ Slings, talvava, in the Banks' Islands were used chiefly in defence against a night attack; when such was expected, men would from time to time sling stones down the paths by which the enemy would approach ”

“ I paid Slingsby five pounds ten shillings for his stock in trade, cart, and pony—purchased sundry provisions of the landlady, also a wagoner’s frock, which had belonged to a certain son of hers, deceased, gave my little animal a feed of corn, and prepared to depart.
“God bless you, young man,” said Slingsby, shaking me by the hand, “you are the best friend I’ve had for many a day: I have but one thing to tell you, Don’t cross that fellow’s path if you can help it; and stay—should the pony refuse to go, just touch him so, and he’ll fly like the wind.” ”

“ Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as Aquila vulgaris, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode. ”

“ Also, leather straps made fast to both ends of a musket, serving for the men to hang them by on their shoulders, that both hands may be free.—Boat-slings. Strong ropes, furnished with hooks and iron thimbles, whereby to hook the tackles to keel, stem, and stern bolts, in order to hoist the boats in or out of the ship.—Buoy-slings are special fittings adopted in order that a buoy may securely ride on the wave, and mark the position of the anchor, the buoy-rope being attached to an eye in the slings.—Butt-slings are those used in slinging casks ”

“ Above all, he exhorted the pedagogue to abstain from the use of birch, an instrument of instruction which the good squire regards with abhorrence, as fit only for the coercion of brute natures, that cannot be reasoned with.
Mr. Slingsby has followed the squire's instructions to the best of his disposition and abilities. He never flogs the boys, because he is too easy, good-humoured a creature to inflict pain on a worm. ”

“ A dark stall, with no straw litter, the rustling of which often excites the patient, but rather a little chaff, saw dust or even earth to prevent noise from the feet, and the exclusion of all visitors are essential. As a rule slings should be put under the patient so that he cannot lie, nor drop down, and this becomes more imperative as the disease advances. The aggravation of the spasms when down, and the danger of their extension to the respiratory muscles are far more to be dreaded than the temporary excitement caused by the application of slings. ”

“ It is said, those people bore three kinds of slings, some longer and others shorter, to be used as their enemies were nearer or more remote; the first served them for a head band, the second for a girdle, and the third they always carried in their hands. In fight they threw large stones with such violence, that they seemed to be projected from some machine, and with such exactness, as rarely to miss their aim; being constantly exercised from their infancy, their mothers not allowing them to have any food, until they struck it down from the top of a pole with stones thrown from their slings. ”

“ They are content to straddle the crawling, leather-jointed circumspection that they call knowledge. The bird flutters to his mate, sings, soars, and is taken before night by the fowler. The snail creeps his rheumy round covered with the slime and slobber of prudence, to rot in the end under a tree-stump, unless some good throstle cracks him prematurely on a stone. ”

“ In the woods you see yellow ones with several black bands wound round them in regular order.”
“The creature we call the spiral snail—isn’t it a slug that finds an empty shell and lives in it?” asked Emile.
“No, my friend; a slug remains always a slug without becoming a snail; that is to say, it never has a shell. The snail, on the contrary, is born with a tiny shell that grows little by little as the snail grows. The empty shells you find in the country have had their inhabitants, which are now dead and turned to dust, only their houses remaining.” ”

“ Up goes his head, lifting the snail high in the air, and then, smash! the shell comes down on the stone with all the force he can use. About two such blows break the shell, and he then coolly chips the fragments off as you might from an egg, and makes very few mouthfuls of the contents. On the stone and round about it lie the fragments of many such shells—relics of former feasts. Sometimes he will do this close to the bay-window—if all is quiet—using the stone-flags for an anvil, if he chances to find a snail hard by; but he prefers the recess behind the box-hedge. ”

“ A few disordered movements betray a brief excitement on the part of the Snail, and then everything ceases: the foot no longer crawls, the front-part loses its graceful curve, the tentacles become limp and give way under their own weight, dangling feebly like a broken stick. ”

“ Yet even then he carried a house on his back, a tiny, perfect shell, into which he could creep when danger threatened.
“Some people say I am very slow,” said the snail, “but they forget I have only one foot and carry my house on my back. Yet I am not complaining, for I have a head in which [268] are my eyes, mouth, feelers, and organs of smell, while my relative, the oyster, having no head, has to wear his eyes, ears, and feelers on his mantle and his mouth near his hinge, poor fellow! Even my own cousin, the land-snail, has her eyes on long feelers, and has to draw them in if danger is near. ”

“ As we returned down this inlet, going at a slower rate than usual, a seal was seen ahead. In an instant the dogs, which were very hungry, bounded off at a rate of not less than twelve miles an hour. The seal, frightened, made a plunge down into its hole; the dogs, flying onward so furiously, passed it, but the wind, carrying the smell of the seal to their noses, made them turn sharply round in a second. The consequence was that the sledge-runner caught in the snow-crust, and sent me heels over head off the sledge, to which my Innuit companions clung with all their might. ”

“ Snipe, when bleating, fly round and round in a wide irregular circle, and for a long time one will not over-step the invisible boundary so as to encroach upon the domain of the other. It seems—but the illusion will be broken after a time—as though each bird had his allotment in the fields of air and knew that he would be guilty of a rudeness in entering that of another. ”

“ It seems funny to be looking over a ledge, all day long, and to eat one's lunch whilst so doing. But I just look up to make my notes, and on looking down again, almost right under me, I see a seal hanging lazily in this quiet shore-pool of the sea; for to-day there is hardly a foam-line round the stacks and rocks. ”

“ When drawing a sledge, the dogs have a simple harness (annoo) of deer or seal skin, going round the neck by one bight, and another for each of the fore-legs, with a single thong leading over the back and attached to the sledge as a trace. ”

“ We had ocular demonstration the other day concerning a matter of which doubts have been expressed, namely, the skinning of their prey by seals. Not only do they skin their fish, but each shred of skin is greedily swallowed as soon as stripped. The skinning entails a good deal of trouble, as the fish is pushed away from the seal at every mouthful, and consequently sinks, so that a dive is necessary each time in order to resume operations. ”

“ THE SPIRAL SNAIL “WHEN the snail crawls, it bears aloft, as you know, four horns.”
“Horns that come out and go in at will,” added Jules.
“Horns that the animal turns every way,” said Emile, “when you put the shell on the live coals. Then the snail sings be-be-be-eou-eou.”
“Stop that cruel play, my child. The snail does not sing; it is complaining, in its own way, of the fiery tortures. Its slime, coagulated by the heat, first swells and then shrinks, and the air that escapes by little puffs produces that dying wail. ”

“ At length, with a mighty yawn and stretch, he turns full upon his vasty stomach, and immediately, by virtue of the different appearance which his fur has when wet or dry, becomes a much smaller seal that « 326 » has climbed up upon a buoy—the lower, wet part of him looks like that; the upper, alone, is himself. Then gradually he soaks all over, till he is, again, huge and indivisible, a great, naked, blue, greasy, oiled bladder,—yet firm still, as though he grew to the rock. ”

“ I have been employed the whole of the day in skinning a young lion, and it is not yet finished. I am taking the skin off complete. It is the first seal I have skinned in this way, and I find it a very tedious job. I don't know any other animal that would be so difficult to skin. ”

“ Hence in German Schnecke, a snail, is a term applied to the pudendum muliebre. And as anything significant of fertility, generation, and sexual enjoyment was supposed to constitute a charm or amulet against witchcraft, i.e., all evil influences, which are allied to sterility, chastity, and barrenness, a snail's shell forms a powerful fetish for a true believer. ”

“ In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red, blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over them. ”

“ In the sleighs sit ladies clothed in sable, beaver, and blue fox. The horses toss their heads, enveloped in a cloud of steam which rises from them, while their manes are covered with ice-drops. The sleighs dart along, the snow flying about them like silver foam. ”