Soaring

“ This striking species is a common resident in the swamps and brackish lagoons of Argentina, where the islands of the intricate morasses often hold flocks of more than a hundred individuals, the separate pairs being said to mate for life. The flight is slow, with powerful strokes of the wing, the birds being greatly addicted to soaring in spiral circles until they are hardly visible, and at times floating lazily upon the breeze. They rise noisily from the ground with laboured action, and are occasionally seen to perch in trees ”

“ For these animals, in the time of the year which we call spring, when the air has more humidity, and the grass and meadows are juicy and moist, are first filled with blood, as is shown by the distension of the veins of the swollen vessels; and from the blood the milk flows more copiously. ”

“ I thought I was in a place where there was a well, and the well was fed from a spring, the water of which cured all diseases. Even the dying were restored to health on drinking that water, and the dead who were sprinkled with it came to life again. For the last twenty years the well has run dry. ”

“ And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. And every garment and every skin whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even. The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even. And if any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days ”

“ The first consideration is to correct the unwholesome conditions of life, purify the building and its surroundings, and allow a free range on pasture. Subject each patient to a thorough soapy wash, and if possible allow clean running water in which a bath may be taken at will. ”

“ Sheep eating wool in winter. Pigs eat bristles. Puppies swallow marbles, etc., wantonly. Solipeds swallow hair, plaster, earth, sand, and lick manger or rack. Fowls eat their feathers. Causes: soil exhaustion, lack of lime, soda, potash, phosphorous; relation to osteo malacia; granitic or sandy soils, peat, muck, causative; digestive disorder; faulty food; yearly breeding and heavy milking; constant stabling; dry seasons. Course: chronic. Lesions; emaciation; anæmia; serous exudate; catarrh of the bowels. Treatment: soil; good fodder; salts of soda, potash and lime, phosphates; tonics ”

“ That Flesh takes more than thirty months to grow to maturity, and besides is often scarce? That each of these miraculous grains of corn, which they bury in the earth, gives back to them more than a hundredfold? That Flesh has four legs upon which to run away, and we have only two to overtake them? That the Corn remains and grows where the white men sow it; that the winter, which for us is a time of toilsome hunting, is for them the time of rest? ”

“ Nothing man did seemed more interesting than this tilling and sowing. She noted how even snow had its use in catching and holding seed against the wind, and watched the sower marking his own progress and regulating the distribution by his tracks. ”

“ Nor yet in their pastures will they ever drink at any but the usual watering-place, and they make it their care to find some dry path by which to get at it. They will not pass over a bridge either, when the water can be seen between the planks beneath.1936 Wonderful to relate, too, if their watering-places are changed, though they should be ever so thirsty, they will not drink without being either beaten or caressed. ”

“ Others, placed near refreshing waters, and near trees loaded with fruit, are ever devoured with unquenchable thirst and hunger. If they stoop to drink the water flies from their mouth, and a stinking mire sticks to their lips. If they lower a limb to cull a fruit, the limb slips from their hand. ”

“ Each strikes inwards and works outwards. The whole of a life may be set forth in the pregnant figure, 'A sower went forth to sow,' and 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' The seed may lie long dormant, but the green shoots will appear in due time, and pass through all the stages of 'first the blade, and then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear.' The sower has to become the reaper, and the reaper has to eat of the bread made from the product of the long past sowing. Shall we have to reap a harvest of poisonous tares, or of wholesome wheat? ”

“ The washing consists, [259] first, in the performance of the ordinary ablution that is preparatory to prayer, with the exception of the cleansing of the mouth and nose, and secondly, in an ablution of the whole body with warm water and soap, or with water in which some leaves of the lote-tree have been boiled. The jaw is bound up, the eyes are closed, and the nostrils, etc., are stuffed with cotton; and the corpse is sprinkled with a mixture of water, pounded camphor, dried and pounded leaves of the lote-tree, and sometimes other dried and pulverized leaves, and with rose-water. ”

“ And when the heat of summer comes, when cruel thirst is drying leaf and bud, there comes a twilight hour when hose is brought and tiny pots are filled and full libations poured. Then later in the darkness you may walk and smell once more the odor of damp earth, and you can really hear the little thankful noises of the plants. ”

“ That there is dew in this sense day and night, (as well as in the morning,) and in all seasons of the year; and therefore a constant supply of moisture and spirits to their perpetual flying, which they more copiously imbibe by reason of their exercise: That the thicker parts of this moisture stick and convert into flesh, and that the lightness of their feathers is so great, that their pains in sustaining themselves are not over-much. ”

“ All the refuse of the garden, in the shape of roots, leaves, and stalks, should be placed in a corner of his pound or feeding-chamber, for the delectation of his leisure moments; and once a week, on the family washing-day, a pail of warm soap-suds should be taken into his sty, and, by means of a scrubbing-brush and soap, his back, shoulders, and flanks should be well cleaned, a pail of clean warm water being thrown over his body at the conclusion, before he is allowed to retreat to his clean straw to dry himself. ”

“ The work of sowing and the joy of reaping advance simultaneously on the spiritual field. The labour of the husbandman in the natural sphere is all and only sowing at one season, all and only reaping at another: the seed of the word affords a different experience; in the kingdom of God there is no period of the year when you must not sow, or may not reap. ”

“ As it is probably to be sought in some individual constitutional peculiarity, the feeding and method of life should be changed and the skin stimulated by washing with lukewarm water and soap and by dry friction. ”

“ Here it is kept until the next sowing, when on an appointed day all those who have died since last year’s sowing are brought out, their withered bodies broken up, and their bones picked out and counted by a number of persons of both sexes, not fewer than a fixed minimum, slightly less for a woman than a man. ”

“ I have seen sores in a horse's mouth into which one could put two fingers, the flesh eaten away by these vicious little seeds. When turned out on this kind of grass, horses' mouths should be cleaned every day. ”

“ Fallowing, or ploughing the soil while at rest from yielding a crop, prepares it for the growth of seed by pulverizing it, exposing it to the influences of the atmosphere, and destroying the weeds: and is of essential use in recovering land that had been impoverished and exhausted by a succession of the same crops. ”

“ The nursing is effected by licking the surface of the eggs, which under the influence of this process increase in size, or grow. In about a fortnight, during which time the workers carry the eggs from higher to lower levels of the nest, and vice versâ, according to the circumstances of heat, moisture, &c., the larvæ are hatched out, and require no less careful nursing than the eggs. The workers feed them by placing mouths together and regurgitating food stored up in the crop or proventriculus into the intestinal tract of the young. ”

“ To determine whether she is to have a son or daughter, dig two small pits; put barley in one, and wheat in the other; let the enceinte lady urinate into both; then cover up the vessels with earth; if the wheat sprout first, it is to be a son; if the barley sprout before the wheat, it is to be a daughter.”— (Paullini, p. 163.)
Or, throw a pea into each parcel of urine ”

“ Afterwards they pass out in the excreta and, favored by heat and moisture, develop in the soil in about three days into minute larvæ. These larvæ have a most extraordinary power of attaching themselves to and penetrating into the human skin and body. They may also enter the human body in a drink of water or on unwashed vegetables. ”

“ That they may subsist while they move, their roots, instead of being fixed in the soil, are turned within a cavity, or receptacle, called the stomach, into which, appropriate soil, or aliment, is introduced by the industry of the creature; and, that their powers of loco-motion may be exerted with safety and advantage, they are provided with senses for smelling, tasting, feeling, and seeing their food ”

“ They sow in secret the seed of which we pluck the flower and eat the fruit, and know not that we pass the sower daily in the street; perhaps some humble, ill-dressed woman, earning painfully her own small sustenance. ”

“ The water, with the nasty chill off, is put ready for them; they wash their little hands and faces, all by themselves! Then they are shaved and have their hair done; their little hands are manicured, their little corns cut for them. ”

“ Prevention: drainage, mature horses for damp lands, liming soil, get fodder from dry locality, don’t breed in cloudy regions, good diet and regimen, avoid corn, wheat and buckwheat, Glauber salts, pure dry stable, exclude debilitating diseases and parasites, keep in hard muscular condition, change to dry locality, don’t breed from blind stock, legislation. ”

“ The sudden chill from passing out of the warm barn into the frosty air, from plunging into icy water, from standing in cold rain or sleet, from standing in a draught of cold air especially when perspiring, is a fruitful source of many diseases. ”

“ Wholesome and nutritious food then must be a main stay whenever the health threatens to be undermined by insufficient or unwholesome pasture, by dried or withered grass, ferns or heather, by the watery grass of recent and rapid growth, by frosted and partially decayed herbage, or by pasture exhausted by overstocking or drought. ”

“ The husbandman has in the course of years, by drainage and manuring, to bring his ground into a fertile state; in the autumn he must plough, harrow, and sow, for his next year's crop; must subsequently hoe and weed, keep out cattle, and scare away birds; when harvest comes, must adapt the mode and time of getting in his produce to the weather and the labour market ”

“ If raised in such a soil, and transplanted to that which is thin and poor, they seem to receive a shock from which with difficulty they recover. As a gentleman once remarked, it is like feeding a calf with all the milk he will take till he is six months old, and then suddenly turning him off to live on a short pasture. ”

“ Owing to the non-existence of home facilities for cleanliness among the working class, the accumulations of soil and exudation during the long fall, winter, and spring months are so great that their bodies become too rank and malodorous for the nostrils of the refined. ”

“ If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. If a shower drives us for shelter to the maple grove or the trailing branches of the pine, yet in their recesses with microscopic eye we discover some new wonder in the bark, or the leaves, or the fungi at our feet. ”

“ If he sows early (as he may if he will) in light Land, he must not sow dry, for 4. fear the Poppies and other Weeds should grow, and devour his Crop; and if his Land be strong, 5. let it be sown early, wet or dry (tho’ [264] wet is worst) , ’tis apt to grow so stale and hard by Spring, that his Crop is in Danger of starving, unless the Land be very rich, or much dung’d: and then the Winter and Spring proving kind, it may not be in less Danger of being so big as to fall down, and be spoil’d. ”

“ Where the crop is distended with hard food, and is not passing off, and help is required, pour some milk-warm water down the throat, and then, holding the head downward, quietly manipulate or knead the distended crop with the hand, so as to soften the mass. ”

“ If the night has been an extremely cold one we make it a practice of going through the Houses with boiling water, emptying out what may be in the cups, and refilling them from the hot water can, thus giving any bird which may desire a large quantity, warm water to drink at this time in the morning. ”

“ Watering, which, except during the resting period, should generally be copious, is best done in the forenoon; while syringing should be done early in the morning before the sun becomes too powerful, and late in the afternoon to admit of the foliage drying moderately before night. ”

“ No water is allowed for washing, and the tubs containing the allowance of foul drinking water are placed close to those which are provided for the accumulation of night soil, etc., the contents of which are only removed once a fortnight. ”

“ A plentiful supply of clear cold water should always be within their reach; the food left in the trough after the animals have done eating, should be removed, and the trough thoroughly rinsed out before any more is put into it. ”

“ In all cases the general health must be carefully attended to. Keep the patient in a dry, clean, airy building without draughts of cold air; give moderate exercise in the open air; and good grooming; and allow nutritious food of mildly laxative properties,—as occasional bran mashes and roots in winter and succulent grasses in summer. ”