Crossword-Solution: EXCAVATES 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 21

Yoked to machinery of almost infinite variety, the results of vast ingenuity and labour, the Steam-engine pumps water, drives spindles, thrashes corn, prints books, hammers iron, ploughs land, saws timber, drives piles, impels ships, works railways, excavates docks; and, in a word, asserts an almost unbounded supremacy over the materials which enter into the daily use of mankind, for clothing, for labour, for defence, for household purposes, for locomotion, for food, or for instruction.

Another nearly allied but much larger species, the Monedula signata, whose habits I observed on the banks of the Upper Amazons, sometimes excavates its mine solitarily on sand-banks recently laid bare in the middle of the river, and closes the orifice before going in search of prey.

The Anthophora digs corridors and cells in the road-side banks hardened by the sun; she does not erect, she excavates; she does not build, she clears.

The Scolia does not bore the soil through which she passes: she excavates and ploughs it with her legs and forehead; and the stuff shifted remains where it lies, behind her, forthwith blocking the passage which she has followed.

The current of a stream follows the outer side of all curves or bends in the channel, and on this side it excavates its bed the deepest and continually wears and saps its banks.