Distant Reader - subject-botany-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 11 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,478,302 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 134,391 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 94. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

like, leaues, also, one, many, called, small, floures, colour, root, great, good, long, may, white, two, time, haue, little, much, grow, place, water, seed, first, tree, made, forth, yet, three, vpon, set, high, doth, vnto, plant, will, branches, take, roots, description, places, yellow, round, make, taken, parts, part, wine, groweth

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The herball or Generall historie of plantes. Gathered by Iohn Gerarde of London Master in Chirurgerie very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Iohnson citizen and apothecarye of London, The English physitian, or An astrologo-physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation being a compleat method of physick, whereby a man may preserve his body in health, or cure himself being sick for three pence charge, with such things only as grow in England ... / by Nich. Culpeper., and A collection of curious travels & voyages in two tomes ... / by John Ray ....

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

like vnto, foot high, leaues like, come forth, purple colour, floures grow, set forth, greene colour, whole plant, many small, taketh away, yellow colour, id est, sharpe pointed, riseth vp, distilled water, bringeth forth, last described, white floures, one ounce, high dutch, two ounces, take away, one dram, neere vnto, green colour, rise vp, following manner, shape like, red colour, low dutch, small leaues, two drams, second degree, yellow floures, broad leaues, set downe, one another, galen saith, much like, doe grow, third degree, another sort, many places, cubit high, white colour, womens courses, two foot, somewhat like, many branches

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A collection of curious travels & voyages in two tomes ... / by John Ray ... Some observations made upon the herb cassiny imported from Carolina shewing its admirable virtues in curing the small pox / written by a physitian in the countrey to Esq. Boyle at London., and The compleat herbal of physical plants containing all such English and foreign herbs, shrubs and trees as are used in physick and surgery ... : the doses or quantities of such as are prescribed by the London-physicians and others are proportioned : also directions for making compound-waters, syrups simple and compound, electuaries ... : moreover the gums, balsams, oyls, juices, and the like, which are sold by apothecaries and druggists are added to this herbal, and their irtues and uses are fully described / by John Pechey ....

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

water, tcp, sea, root, sun, sugar, plants, oyl, head, flowers, england, east, country, chapter, bark, wine, west, vessels, ulcers, time, syrup, stone, stomach, stalks, ship, seed, river, ring, powder, plant, pith, north, master, lord, land, island, house, herb, good, flower, english, elder, diseases, description, decoction, branches, body, belly, bay, arabians

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be like, and The English physitian, or An astrologo-physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation being a compleat method of physick, whereby a man may preserve his body in health, or cure himself being sick for three pence charge, with such things only as grow in England ... / by Nich. Culpeper. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

leaues, floures, colour, seed, root, time, tree, place, roots, branches, description, water, places, part, parts, plant, vertues, hath, others, a., stalkes, top, name, foot, ground, manner, fruit, plants, doth, wine, body, taste, leaves, floure, temperature, flowers, way, diuers, vessels, t, side, greene, stalks, end, stalke, reason, figure, 〈, day, kindes

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, are, be, being, called, was, have, do, grow, made, were, set, take, make, taken, had, found, 〈, come, put, did, see, hath, used, growing, been, haue, call, cut, described, said, applied, say, vnto, according, hauing, let, came, stand, brought, go, boyled, having, give, thought, know, eaten, vsed, helpeth, cure

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

◊, 〉, 〈, hath, chap, c., english, haue, i., root, water, d., kinde, time, names, wilde, place, f., b., latine, herb, sea, groweth, england, clusius, vp, bark, whereof, dioscorides, wine, leavs, greeke, french, white, latin, hereof, galen, sun, pliny, oyl, london, flowers, dutch, head, august, stone, herbe, downe, doe, sugar

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, they, them, i, their, his, we, he, you, our, my, him, me, us, her, its, your, themselves, she, vp, himself, one, ‡, vnto, whereof, ours, thy, theirs, thee, mine, us''d, ''em, yours, y, itself, †, thinne, severall, 〈, ♓, yr, ye, wil, whither, whey, vvith, undiscern''d, trye, trodden, serueth

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, many, small, great, good, little, white, long, same, such, first, high, hot, yellow, more, round, common, most, much, second, former, full, large, cold, red, green, dry, old, third, hard, lesser, like, ripe, sweet, several, whole, greater, broad, rough, purple, strong, last, smooth, excellent, haue, true, smaller, few, low, short

not, also, very, so, forth, more, much, then, as, together, well, somewhat, away, thereof, up, there, likewise, out, sometimes, only, especially, most, here, therefore, now, yet, long, first, almost, commonly, onely, rather, down, all, again, in, †, thus, often, neere, far, chiefly, off, groweth, about, formerly, at, before, still, too

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.