If you look down at the Punjab from an aircraft, you will see here and there below you, splotching the green fields like mold on the wall of an old house, patches of gray decay, rising patternless and ominous across the landscape. This is salination, a rotting of the land caused by a rise in the level of the underground water table, which forces the salts of the earth to the surface and gradually turns fields back to desert.

… seeing that they were fremd in heart, if they were kin in blood.

Some foliaceous corals are unifacial, the polyp mouths being confined to one surface.

Ever been to a meeting before, sir? No, said Malone. Don't know much about it, I expect. No, I don't. Well, well, we must expect a slating.