clear? Can you think of a better comparison or a better example?
Can your meaning be made clearer, or be more effectively presented, by
arranging your material in a different order?)

+67. General Description.+--We may often make clear the meaning of a term
by giving details. In describing a New England village we might enumerate
the streets, the houses, the town pump, the church, and other features.
This would be specific description if the purpose was to have the reader
picture some particular village; but if the purpose was to give the reader
a clear conception of the general characteristics of all New England
villages, the paragraph would become a general description.

Such a general description would include all the characteristics common
to all the members of the class under discussion, but would omit
any characteristic peculiar to some of them. For example, a general
description of a windmill includes the things common to all windmills. If
an object is described more for the purpose of giving a clear conception
of the class of which it is a type than for the purpose of picturing the
object described, we have a general description. Such a description is in
effect an enlarged definition, and is exposition rather than description.
It is sometimes called scientific description because it is so commonly
employed by writers of scientific books.

Notice the following examples of general description:--

1. Around every house in Broeck are buckets, benches, rakes, hoes, and
stakes, all colored red, blue, white, or yellow. The brilliancy and
variety of colors and the cleanliness, brightness, and miniature pomp of
the place are wonderful. At the windows there are embroidered curtains
with rose-colored ribbons. The blades, bands, and nails of the gayly
painted windmills shine like silver. The houses are brightly varnished and
surrounded with red and white railings and fences.

The panes of glass in the windows are bordered by many lines of different
hues. The trunks of all the trees are painted gray from root to branch.
Across the streams are many little wooden bridges, each painted as white
as snow. The gutters are ornamented with a sort of wooden festoon
perforated like lace. The pointed facades are surmounted with a small
weathercock, a little lance, or something resembling a bunch of flowers.
Nearly every house has two doors, one in front and one behind, the last
for everyday entrance and exit, the former opened o