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George Sandys
George Sandys 1578-1644, English poet and traveler, b. Yorkshire, son of Archbishop Edwin Sandys. He was educated at Oxford and in 1610 began an extended tour of Europe and the Middle East, which he wrote about in A Relation of a Journey (1615). In 1621 he became a treasurer of the London Company...
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Sir Edwin Sandys
Sir Edwin Sandys 1561-1629, English statesman, leading promoter of the colony in Virginia; son of Archbishop Edwin Sandys. He studied law and was first returned to Parliament in 1586. His Europae Speculum (1605), published after an extended tour abroad beginning in 1593, revealed a remarkably tol...
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loam
loam soil composed of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter in evenly mixed particles of various sizes. More fertile than sandy soils, loam is not stiff and tenacious like clay soils. Its porosity allows high moisture retention and air circulation. The popular confusion of loam with humus is proba...
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fulminate
fulminate , any salt of fulminic acid, HONC, a highly unstable compound known only in solution. The term is most commonly applied to the explosive mercury (II) fulminate, also called fulminate of mercury, Hg(ONC) 2 . The pure compound forms white cubic crystals. It is made by the action of nitric ac...
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furze
furze any plant of the genus Ulex of the family Leguminosae ( pulse family), low, densely branched shrubs with spiny leaves (when present) and fragrant yellow blossoms. U. europaeus, the common furze (also called gorse and whin), thrives in sandy soil; naturalized from Europe, it is used as a ...
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Ili
Ili or Ile , river of China and Kazakhstan, 590 mi (950 km) long, rising in the Tian Shan, NW Xinjiang, and flowing W across the China-Kazakhstan border, through the sandy Sary Ishikotrau Desert and into Lake Balkash. Yining (Kuldja), in Xinjiang, is the largest city on the river. The Ili is use...
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Jaisalmer
Jaisalmer , former principality, Rajasthan state, NW India. Its terrain is largely a sandy or stony waste and constitutes a section of the Thar Desert. Jaisalmer was brought under the Mughal empire by Akbar in 1570. It became a British protectorate in 1818. In 1949 the region was incorporated into...
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Melville Island
Melville Island 2,240 sq mi (5,802 sq km), Northern Territory, N Australia, in the Timor Sea 16 mi (26 km) off the coast. It is 65 mi (105 km) long and 45 mi (72 km) wide and is separated from Bathurst Island by Apsley Strait. This aboriginal reservation consists largely of mangrove jungle with san...
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beach grass
beach grass or marram grass , any species of the genus Ammophila, perennial grasses used to control the shifting of sand dunes, thereby protecting sandy coastal areas. The European beach grass ( A. arenaria ) has been used to hold dunes in Europe and was early planted at Cape Cod to bind the s...
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emu
emu or emeu , common name for a large, flightless bird of Australia, related to the cassowary and the ostrich . It is 5 to 6 ft (150-180 cm) tall and a very swift runner. The head and neck are feathered. The six or seven dark green eggs, laid in a sandy pit, are sometimes incubated by the mal...
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