There is no way to make a strong and vigorous powder of saltpetre, without the admixtion of sulphur.

Everyone knows that a main line running through a coalfield is prone to speed restrictions because of land subsidence. … The rate of subsidence may vary from less than an inch a month in the case of a deep seam of coal, to as rapid a decline as 16in a month above a shallow seam. The effect of subsidence on permanent way and civil engineering structures needs no emphasis.

Upon arrival at the campsite, they discovered that they had forgotten the tent pegs; they had to use rocks and logs to tether the tent instead.

This protoracism, however, was only one component of early German romanticism; of equal importance, in the subtext of much of the legendary material collected and published during the period around 1800, are religious devotion (antirationalist and proclerical), barter economies (anticapitalist), loyalty to monarchs and nobles (antidemocratic), and nationalistic views of a new Germany restored to its lost unity, military might, and territorial hegemony.