Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We passed one huge fellow swimming slowly down the stream, with a number of birds on his back, to which also was attached a whole forest of boughs, reeds, and water-plants, so that he had the appearance of a floating island.
There were once horses even as is the horse of the prehistoric Dordonian artist. Such clumsy, big-headed brutes, dun in hue and striped down the back like modern donkeys, did actually once roam over the low plains where Paris now stands, and browse off lush grass and tall water-plants around the quays of Bordeaux and Lyons.
Everything had a radiance of its own in this delightful picture, from the sparkling mica-stone to the bleached tuft of grass hidden away in the soft shadows; the spotted cow with its glossy hide, the delicate water-plants that hung down over the pool like fringes in a nook where blue or emerald colored insects were buzzing about, the roots of trees like a sand-besprinkled shock of hair above grotesque faces in the flinty rock surface, all these things made a harmony for the eye.
No current was perceptible: the lilies and other beautiful water-plants, little bladderworts, and bright blue flowers with curious leaves and swollen stalks, floated unmoved on the surface, with occasionally large circular leaves and flowers of a gigantic size, which were new to all of us when we first entered this region.
Hence to explain their appearance, it was thought that they were water-plants, ramifying the mud in every direction, and finally becoming overwhelmed and covered by the mud itself. On botanical grounds, Brongniart and Lyell conjectured that they formed the roots of other trees, and this became the more apparent as it came to be acknowledged that the underclays were really ancient soils.
As the navigation had been nearly killed by the railway, the canal was allowed to fill itself with water-plants, which were interesting to me, but exceedingly hurtful to the temper of the bargees.
Its entrance is in the floor the hole which has already been made and thus is kept open during the whole season of frost, by the care and watchfulness of the inmates, and by their passing constantly out and in to seek their food the water-plants of the lake.
Our natural history manias in their respective directions came upon us like fevers. We "sickened" at the sight of somebody else's collection, or because we had been reading about butterflies, or birds' eggs, or water-plants, as the case might be.
This may be a familiar practice, but I never met with it elsewhere. Another wild scheme I recollect. Water-plants need no attention. The most skilful horticulturist cannot improve, the most ignorant cannot harm them. I seriously proposed to convert my lawn into a tank two feet deep lined with Roman cement and warmed by a furnace, there to grow tropical nymphæa, with a vague "et cetera."
You can pass from it into the house without going outside; but, nevertheless, it boasts an entrance door of its own, and a short flight of steps that brings you to a deep well, and a very rustical-looking pump, half hidden by water-plants and savin bushes and tall grasses.
Word Of The Day