"Concave" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the concave lines of his tall, lean figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top hooks of his wife's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a burette form what is called a meniscus at their upper surfaces. In the case of liquids such as water or aqueous solutions this meniscus is concave, and when the liquids are transparent accurate readings are best obtained by observing the position on the graduated scales of the lowest point of the meniscus. This can best be done as follows: Wrap around the burette a piece of colored paper, the straight, smooth edges of which are held evenly ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... them was successful. Singularly enough it was not the same plan as the Dutch optician's: it was another mode of achieving the same end. He took an old small organ-pipe, jammed a suitably chosen spectacle glass into either end, one convex, the other concave, and, behold! he had the half of a wretchedly bad opera-glass capable of magnifying three times. It was better than the Dutchman's, however: it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... no waking; no renewal; it is always with me. I am it; the fact of my existence expresses it.After a long interval I came to the hills again, this time by the coast. I found a deep hollow on the side of a great hill, a green concave opening to the sea, where I could rest and think in perfect quiet. Behind me were furze bushes dried by the heat; immediately in front dropped the steep descent of the bowl-like hollow which received and brought up to ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the dripping pan. For broiling, the bars of the gridiron should be perfectly clean, and greased with lard or butter, otherwise the meat will retain the impression of the bars. The bars of the gridiron should be concave, and terminate in a trough, to catch the juices, or they will drop in the fire and smoke the meat. A good fire of hot coals is necessary to have the meat broil as quick as possible without burning. The gridiron should be put on the fire, and ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... astonished countenance. His big chest heaved. Like many another wounded giant before him, he experienced the insufficiency of interjections to solace pain. For them, however, the rocks were handy to fling, the trees to uproot; heaven's concave resounded companionably to their bellowings. Relief of so concrete a kind is not to be obtained in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... structure to which William III. had added a higher story, built by Wren. There are two roads by which coaches could approach the house: 'one,' as the famous John, Lord Hervey, wrote to his mother, 'so convex, the other so concave, that, by this extreme of faults, they agree in the common one of being, like the high road, impassable.' The rumbling coach, with its plethoric steeds, toils slowly on, and reaches the dismal pile, of which ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding on the farther side under the railway bridge bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. he passes, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... made of a branch of the incense cedar (Libocedrus decurrens), or of the California nutmeg (Tumion Californicum [Torreya]), made flat on the outer side, and rounded smooth on the inner or concave side when the bow is strung for use. The flat, outer side was covered with sinew, usually that from the leg of a deer, steeped in hot water until it became soft and glutinous, and then laid evenly and smoothly over the wood, and so shaped ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... the main agent, both in ordinary and extraordinary respiration. In its quiescent state it presents its convex surface towards the thorax, and its concave one towards the abdomen. The anterior convexity abuts upon the lungs; the posterior concavity is occupied by some of the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... is made by describing on the ground an arc of a circle of 8 ft. radius and on the arc driving 10 pickets, 8 ins. apart, covering 6 ft. out to out, Fig. 15. Brush is then woven in and out and well compacted. The concave side of a hurdle should be placed next the earth. It wraps less than if ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the same effect can be had by using a double concave lens. The picture is not reversed, but it is reduced, and the ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... protested with swaying arms; but as the shadows stole upwards, and cabin after cabin and tunnel after tunnel were swallowed up, a complete silence followed. Only the sky remained visible—a vast concave mirror of dull steel, in which the stars did not seem to be set, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... walked along the beach in the direction of the tower. His feet, shod in hempen sandals, crunched on the gravel at the edge of the wash from the surf. Among the azure pebbles were fragments of pottery; portions of earthen handles; concave pieces of bowls bearing vestiges of decoration, which had, perhaps, belonged to swelling urns; small, irregular spheres of gray clay in which one seemed to make out, despite the corrosion of the salt water, human features worn by the passing centuries. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of glass. Now how can we suppose burning mirrors to have been made of glass without supposing the magnifying powers of glass to have been known? The Greeks, as Plutarch affirms, employed metallic mirrors, either plane, or convex, or concave, according to the use for which they were intended. If they could make burning mirrors of glass, they could have given any of these forms to glass. How then could they have avoided observing that two glasses, one convex and the other concave, placed at a certain distance ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... one glimmering lamp, that rather served to add to the horror of the vault, discovering its hollowness and ruins. At his entrance, he was saluted with a noise like the rushing of wind, which whizzed and whistled in the mighty concave. Anon a more silent whispering surrounded him, without being able to behold any creature save the old German. Anon came in old Fergusano, who rolling a great stone, that lay at one corner of the cave, he desired the Prince to place himself on it, and not be surprised ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... difficult to test the top camber without a set of templates,[18] but a fairly accurate idea of the concave camber can be secured by slowly passing a straight-edge along the ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... will be as red as Bloud, therewith wash the Sores morning and evening, laying a thin Plate of Lead over, in a short time, as in ten or twelve days the Sores will be whole; and give him every day the quantity of a Wheat-Corn, in warm wine till he be well. If they be Fistulaes or other concave Holes, that you cannot come at them, to wash them, then take a Silver Syringe, and inject of that wine into them, it ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... months without being much influenced by the weather. After the great glowing ends fronting each other have burned so far apart that their rims cease to burn, the fire continues to work on in the centres, and the ends become deeply concave. Then heat being radiated from side to side, the burning goes on in each section of the trunk independent of the other, until the diameter of the bore is so great that the heat radiated across from side to side is not sufficient to keep them burning. It appears, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... were fashioned in figures typifying fish, serpents, etc. One side of each was painted red and had dots burned in with a hot iron. The brass pieces were circular having one side convex and the other concave. The convex side was bright, the concave dark or dull. The red pieces were the winning pieces and each had an arithmetical value. Any number of players might play. A wooden bowl, curiously carved and ornamented, was used. This form of the game may have been modified ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... hulls to the floor below. The disc is supported by a 1-3/8 inch diameter shaft that runs through the disc and is held central as it revolves in a flange containing a 3/4 ball bearing that fits into the end of the concave in the shaft. Up four feet from the disc is a link self aligning bearing that allows the shaft and disc to turn like a gyroscopic top. The shaft's pulley has 'V' belts connected to a 3/4 h.p. motor. I have hulled ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... to increase, though a thick reddish haze overspread the sky; but as yet not a vapour floated in it. Suddenly, as if by magic, from all quarters came hurrying up dark lowering clouds, covering the whole concave of heaven, a lurid light only gleaming out from near the horizon. Then, amidst the most terrific roars of thunder, the brightest flashes of lightning, and the rushing, rattling, crashing sound of the tempest, there ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... well-known "long sight," or hyperopia), we put a plus or bulging glass before the eye and thus correct its shape. But if the eye is too round and bulging, producing the familiar "short sight," or myopia, we put a minus or concave lens before the eye, and thus bring it back to the normal. By a curious paradox, however, it often happens that the headache due to eye-strain is caused not by the grosser defects, such as interfere with vision so seriously as absolutely to demand the wearing of glasses to see decently, but ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... hold them," he said with evident chagrin. "As soon as I heard of the arrest I started up myself with the finger-print records to help Burke. It was the same man, all right - I'll swear to that on a stack of Bibles. So will Burke. I'll never forget that snub nose - the concave nose, the nose being the first point of identification in the 'portrait park.' And the ears, too - oh, it was the same man, all right. But when we produced the London finger-prints which tallied with the New York finger-prints which we had made - believe it or not, but it is a fact, the Riverwood ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the globes ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... are so named from their resemblance to ships. The construction is similar to that of the talayots. The outer wall has a considerable batter. The famous Nau d'Es Tudons is about 36 feet in length. The facade is slightly concave. A low door (a) gives access through a narrow slab-roofed passage (b) to a long rectangular chamber (c), the method of whose roofing is uncertain. All the naus are built with their facades to the south or south-east, with the exception ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... which encircled the soldier's wrist and having thus formed a cushion to receive the pressure and protect the raw flesh, he closed his switch again and gently subjected the manacle to the revolving wheel, holding it upon the edge of the concave tire bed. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... older forms of the water-jar is that they are invariably flat or round-bottomed, while more recent and all modern types of the olla (see Fig. 534) are concave or hollowed at the base (see Fig. 535) to facilitate balancing on the head. Outside of this concavity and entirely surrounding it (Fig. 536, a) is often to be observed an indentation (see Fig. 536, b) usually slight although ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... to be worn as a pendant, and being cut in concave facets it sparkles brilliantly with every movement of the ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... feet deep. The front end of the beam is provided with a mud or stone boat to prevent sinking in the mud, and with a jack screw for regulating on uneven ground. Attached to it, and following the mole, is a carrier 200 feet long, made concave in form. On this the tile are laid and carried into the ground. A start is made at an open ditch or hole of required depth; when the carrier is drawn in full length a hole is dug just back of the coulter, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... from under each of which, as we neared it, descended the shoulder of a mighty mountain, dim and gray. Nearer still the gray changed to purple; lowlands rose out of the sea, sloping upwards with those grand and simple concave curves which betoken, almost always, volcanic land. Nearer still, the purple changed to green. Tall palm-trees and engine-houses stood out against the sky; the surf gleamed white around the base of isolated rocks. A little nearer, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... linear leaves and small lilac flowers, in little umbels of 10 to 20 blossoms each. The six-ribbed, elongated "seeds" in appearance resemble caraway seeds, but are straighter, lighter and larger, and in formation are like the double seeds of coriander, convex on one side and concave on the other. They bear long hairs, which fold up ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... a stagnant calm in a line almost vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated in a heaven of exquisite blue. Below us, by some trick of eyesight, the country had grown concave, its horizons curving up like the rim of a shallow bowl—a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with sea-fog, but to our eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow. Upon it the travelling shadow of the balloon became no shadow but a stain: an amethyst ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said to be falling when the mercury in the tube is sinking, at which time its upper surface is sometimes concave or hollow. The barometer is rising when the mercurial column is lengthening; its upper surface being then, as in general, ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... about two inches in diameter and thirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near another table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and on this table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whose optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once that this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electric waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... several tall arched doorways on the other. The spaces between the doors were covered with sculpture, its material being a blue-gray stone combined or inlaid with a yellow metal, the effect being indescribably rich. The floor was mosaic of many dark colors, but with no definite pattern, and the concave roof was deep red in color. Though beautiful, it was somewhat somber, as the light was not strong. At all events, that is how it struck me at first on coming in from the bright sunlight. Nor, it appeared, was I alone in experiencing such ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... graceful folds of a serape, looked singularly romantic and picturesque, and reminded Joshua Rylands—whose ideas of art were purely reminiscent of boyish reading—of some picture in a novel. The heavy black columns of the pines, glancing out of the concave shadow, also seemed a fitting background to what might have been a scene in a play. So strongly was he impressed by it that but for his anxiety to reach his home, still a mile distant, and the fact that he was already late, he would have penetrated the wood and the seclusion of the stranger ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the upper surface of a watch-glass, the contents are in a state of decomposition; the bulging being occasioned by the gases generated during the chemical changes. If the contents of the canister be sound, the top and bottom will be either quite flat, or slightly concave. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... the back, and the head and thorax of the imago are freed from it (fig. 8 a), then the legs clasp the empty cuticle, and the abdomen is drawn out (fig. 8 b, c). After a short rest, the newly-emerged fly climbs yet higher up the water-weed, and remains for some hours with the abdomen bent concave dorsalwards (fig. 8 d), to allow space for the expansion and hardening of the wings. For some days after emergence the cuticle of the dragon-fly has a dull pale hue, as compared with the dark or brightly metallic aspect that characterises ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... solitary and untrodden did it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch Gall, a mountain deservedly the especial pride of the district, its lofty pinnacle piercing the sky, whilst a vast sheet of thick, pure snow hung straight and smooth down its concave sides, a huge mountain-buttress linking the lower portion of this snow pyramid to the white, glittering expanse of the Gross Lengstein Glacier—a buttress of many thousand feet, standing prominently forth like an antediluvian monster, on whose gigantic pachydermatous flanks the shattered, blasted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... cruel, but, barring perhaps the immense Asiatic butcheries, Nero contrived then to surpass anything that had been done. Bloated and hideous, his hair done up in a chignon, a concave emerald for monocle, in the crowded arena he assisted at the rape of Christian girls. Their lovers, their brothers and fathers were either eaten alive by beasts or, that night, dressed in tunics that had been soaked in oil, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... day. We reached the Lower Glacier Depot three and a half days after. The lower part of the glacier was very badly crevassed. These crevasses we had never seen on the way up, as they had been covered with three to four feet of snow. All the bridges of crevasses were concave and very wide; no doubt their normal summer condition. On Christmas Day we made in to the lateral moraine of the Cloudmaker and collected geological specimens. The march across the Barrier was only ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the base of the cartilage so it may be spread as nearly flat as possible and lay on the lead, drawing around its outline with a nail point. Cut out the lead ears with a pair of metal-shears. Hammer into natural concave shape with a bit of heavy wood rounded into a ball at one end for the purpose. (For details of ear making see ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... powerful action, and the rarefaction high, the ball would be covered over half its surface with glow, and then, upon a hasty observation, would seem to exhibit no dark space: but this was a deception, arising from the overlapping of the convex termination of the negative glow and the concave termination of the positive stream. More careful observation and experiment have convinced me, that when the negative glow occurs, it never visibly touches the luminous part of the positive discharge, but that the ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... flowers and her lighted taper before her. In front of all were a number of my younger pupils, the royal children, in circles also. Close by the altar, on a low square stool, overlaid with a thin cushion of silk, sat the high-priest, Chow Khoon Sah. In his hand he held a concave fan, lined with pale green silk, the back richly embroidered, jewelled, and gilt. [Footnote: The fan is used to cover the face. Jewelled fans are marks of distinction among the priesthood.] He was draped in a yellow robe, not unlike the Roman toga, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... would march overland with five hundred men and attack Fort Caroline while its defenders were absent. First he ordered a mass; then he called a council. Doubtless, it was in that great Indian lodge of Seloy, where he had made his head-quarters; and here, in this dim and smoky concave, nobles, officers, priests, gathered at his summons. There were fears and doubts and murmurings, but Menendez was desperate. Not the mad desperation that strikes wildly and at random, but the still red heat that melts and burns and seethes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... in light, vaporous black that completes the resemblance. The house, the rooms, are almost absolutely the same; there may be changes of detail, but they don't modify the general effect. There are the same precious pictures on the walls of the salon—the same great dusky fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... a softness in the prismatic lymph that give a new form and color to the common and familiar objects it has printed in its still, pellucid depths. Every little basin of clear water by the roadside is a magic mirror, and transforms all that it encloses. There is a vastness of depth, too, in that concave hemisphere, through which the vision sinks like a falling star, that excites and fills the imagination. What it shows is only a shadow, but all things seen are mere shadows painted on the retina, and you have, at such times, a realistic sense of the beautiful and bold imagery ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... contains three of our hours, and each gree is equal to 22-1/2 of our minutes.] These are measured, according to an ancient custom, by means of water, dropping from one small vessel into another, beside which there always stand servants appointed for the purpose, who strike with a hammer upon a concave plate of metal, like the inner portion of a plate, hung by a wire, thus denoting the pores and grees successively as they pass.[238] Like the mother and her seven sons, mentioned in the Maccabees, such is the temperance of many, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Baltimore, and its convex shape, enabling troops to reinforce with celerity any point of the line from the centre, or by moving along the chord of this arc, was probably the cause of our final success. The enemy, on the contrary, having a concave order of battle, was obliged to move troops much longer distances to support any part of his line, and could not communicate orders rapidly, nor could the different corps co-operate promptly with each other. It was Hancock's recommendation that caused ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... and walked down the aisle, listening for awhile to the grand choral, while the clustered tapers under the dome quivered and trembled, as if shaken by the waves of music which burst continually within its lofty concave. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... search of coolness among the weedy stones at the bottom of the sea. Of all living creatures the jelly fish alone seemed to retain any spirit. Immense crowds of them drifted past the Tortoise, swelling out and closing again their concave bodies, revolving slowly round, dragging long purple tendrils deliriously through the warm water. They swept past Priscilla's drooping hands, touching them with their yielding bodies and brushing them softly with their tendrils. Now and then she lifted one ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... ordures de son siecle;" but the crust of superstition that enveloped his powerful mind, though it may have dimmed, could not obscure the brightness of his genius. To him, and apparently to him only, among all the inquiring spirits of the time, were known the properties of the concave and convex lens. He also invented the magic-lantern; that pretty plaything of modern days, which acquired for him a reputation that embittered his life. In a history of alchymy, the name of this great ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... result, perceived form not as an appearance, but as a reality; saw with the eye the complexities of projection and depression perceivable by the hand. His craft was that of measurements, of minute proportion, of delicate concave and convex—in one word, of planes. His dull, malleable clay, and ductile, shining bronze had taught him nothing of the way in which light and shadow corrode, blur, and pattern a surface. His fancy, his skill, embraced the human form like the gypsum of the moulder, received the stamp of its ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... convex outside curve of wings allowed the wind to escape over them, while the under side, being concave, held every breath. Thus the upward stroke did not simply counterbalance the downward and keep him stationary. Moreover, she showed him how the feathers underlapped each other so that the downward stroke pressed them closely together to hold the wind, whereas ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... badly. My female neighbour insisted on using the edge of my hammock for a foot-rest, and, to add to my general discomfort, my hammock persisted in assuming a convex shape rather than a more conventional and convenient concave, which put me in constant danger of being thrown headlong into the river, only a few inches away. Finally, I took my hammock down from its fastenings and went aft where I found a vacant canoe among those still trailing behind. I threw my hammock in the bottom and with ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... strong, firm hold on my arm, I could not have stood it. As it was I dared not think. Suddenly we turned a sharp angle and found ourselves in a curious semicircular place, almost level and fifty or sixty feet deep in the concave, as if a great piece had been gouged out of the mountain by the glacier which must once have ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... came to the dark stairway of a little public hall over a feed-store. He ascended the steps with a respectful tread and entered the hall. It was furnished with crude unpainted benches and lighted by kerosene lamps in concave-mirrored brackets on the white walls. At the end stood a table holding a pitcher of water, a goblet, and a Bible, and behind the table sat an earnest-eyed, middle-aged evangelistic preacher, who bowed and smiled in agreeable surprise at the new-comer. The room held fifty or sixty men and women, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... the tribe of Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group which ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... exactly like the front set of wings of the dragon fly, was the large, main plane, with the concave turn toward the ground. There was the usual propeller in front, operated by a four cylinder motor, the cylinders being air cooled, and set like the spokes of a wheel around the motor box. The big gasolene tank, and other ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... apartment, and it now formed an abutment to the edifice, all on one side of it being ancient, and the other modern. It was lighted by one narrow, high, Gothic window, the panes of which were very small, lozenged, and many of them still stained. The roof was groined and concave, and still gay with tarnished gold. The mouldings and traceries sprang up from the four corners, and all terminated in the centre, in which grinned a Medusa's head, with her circling snakes, in high ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... fully an inch in diameter when open, cup-shaped, and striped in two shades of rose colour; the unopened flowers are bell-shaped and drooping; they are borne on long naked pedicels, bent and wiry, oftentimes two on a stem; calyx five-cleft, segments concave; petals five, equal and evenly arranged. The leaves are produced on long, bent, wiry stalks, the outline is circular, but they are divided into five or seven lobes, which are sub-divided and irregular, both ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... Water and Charcoal; the last of which to be reduc'd into Ashes, requires the being farther calcin'd then it can be in a close Vessel: Besides having kindled Amber, and held a clean Silver Spoon, or some other Concave and smooth Vessel over the Smoak of its Flame, I observ'd the Soot into which that Fume condens'd, to be very differing from any thing that I had observ'd to proceed from the steam of Amber purposely (for that is not ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... of beauteous flowers, Far stretched the dale of Balder with its sighing groves. Its song of birds, a home where peace might reign supreme. High rose the copper-bolted portal, and within Two colonnades supported on strong omoplates The vaulted canopy, and beautiful it hung Above the temple, like a concave shield of gold. At farthest end stood Balder's altar. It was hewn From one huge block of northern granite: round it coiled A graven serpent, covered o'er with written runes, - Profoundest thoughts from Vala ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... looked round at a lower level. Not far from his left elbow, in the concave of the outer wall, was a slit for the admission of light, and he perceived at once that through this slit alone lay his chance of communicating with the outer world. At first it seemed as if it were to be done ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... ocean lay. 135 Its broad and silent mirror gave to view The pale and waning stars, The chariot's fiery track, And the grey light of morn Tingeing those fleecy clouds 140 That cradled in their folds the infant dawn. The chariot seemed to fly Through the abyss of an immense concave, Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite colour, 145 And semicircled with a belt ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... through the air, but the mechanism of the act we may not be able to analyze. I do not know how a butterfly propels itself against a breeze with its quill-less wings, but we know that it does do it. As its wings are neither convex nor concave, like a bird's, one would think that the upward and downward strokes would neutralize each other; but they do not. Strong winds often carry them out over large bodies of water; but such a master flyer as the monarch beats its way back to shore, and, indeed, the monarch habitually ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... be kept all winter by laying them in a heap in the cellar, with the concave side upwards to hold in the liquor. Sprinkle them every day with strong salt and water, and then with Indian meal. Cover them with ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... said he, and his voice seemed to boom against the concave vault. "As far as my experience goes, it is unique. Bring the lantern over, Burger, for I want ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with leaves alternate, lanceolate, glabrous, and petioles very short. Flowers very sweet, axillary, solitary. Petals 6, fleshy, concave at the base. Stamens indefinite, closely packed, overlapping. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... Plagiolophus are similar to those of Anchitherium, and their crowns are as thinly covered with cement; but the grinders diminish in size forwards, and the last lower molar has a large hind lobe, convex outwards and concave inwards, as in Palceotherium. The ulna is complete and much larger than in any of the Equidae, while it is more slender than in most of the true Palaeotheria; it is fixedly united, but not ankylosed, with the radius. There are three toes in the fore limb, the outer ones being slender, but ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... concave glasses, Learned in lore of printed pages, Dig into the mounds and gather Spear and arrow heads and axes, Broken weapons and utensils Made of flint, or bone, ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... the way obscure, and deepening the shadows about the doorways and under the frequent arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first showed me the scene you may behold from the Public Gardens at the end of the long concave line of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Lounging there upon the southern parapet of the Gardens, I turned from the dim bell-towers of the evanescent islands in the east (a solitary gondola gliding across the calm of the water, and striking its ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... roof that the touch of distinction appeared. For this, Jacques had modelled after his memory of an old Canadian roof. There was a delicate concave sweep in it, as it sloped downward from the peak, and the eaves projected pleasantly over the front door, making a strip of shade wherein it would be good to rest when the afternoon ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... the Russian line drew back about twenty miles. For the defense of Lemberg the front ran in a concave form from along the River Tanev, five miles from Rawa-Ruska, down to Grodek and Kolodruby; then eastward behind the Dniester to Zuravno and Halicz. The marshes of the Dniester, then swollen by heavy rains, formed a good natural ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no stirrup or fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he gripped as tightly as be could with his knee, and he tried to sway backwards and forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large, very concave Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing about on it with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a tea-tray. He gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself steady. The creature ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grinning grimace: where Field sighs, Chopin groans; where Field shrugs his shoulders, Chopin twists his whole body; where Field puts some seasoning into the food, Chopin empties a handful of Cayenne pepper...In short, if one holds Field's charming romances before a distorting concave mirror, so that every delicate expression becomes coarse, one gets Chopin's work...We implore Mr. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... from the sun is sufficiently concentrated upon inflammable material, the latter will ignite. Such concentration may be achieved by means of a convex lens or a concave mirror. This method of producing fire does not antedate the more primitive methods such as striking quartz or rubbing wooden sticks, because the materials required are not readily found or prepared, but it is of very remote origin. Aristophanes in his comedy "The Clouds," which is ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... hope not," sighed the old fellow. "I still love it, and I've merely stopped until I can find a concave lady for ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... yet, as the mines of science have been diligently opened, and their treasures widely diffused, there may be parts chosen, which, by a proper combination and arrangement, may contribute not only to entertainment but use; like the rays of the sun, collected in a concave mirror, to serve particular purposes of light ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... across by the cliff, the moon being behind this. The other quarter, on the side of the trees, is brilliantly lit up by her beams, showing the timber thick and close along its edge, to all appearance impassable as the facade of rugged rock frowning from the opposite concave of the enclosed circle. Communicating with this are but two paths possible for man or horse, and for either only in single file. One enters the glade coming up the river bottom along the base of the bluff; the other debouches ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of production and consumption will, in the evolution of a wholesome industrial society, be found inseparable: not merely will they be seen to be organically related, but rather will appear as two aspects of the same fact, the concave and the convex of life. For the justly ordered life brings the identification of life, a continuous orderly intake and output of wholesome energy. This judgment, not of "sentimentalism" but of science, finds powerful but literally accurate expression in the saying of a great living thinker, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... action developed, the great strength of the second line of defence gradually revealed itself. It ran along the crest of the plateau, which rises about a thousand yards from the edge in a series of beautiful smooth grassy slopes of concave surface, forming veritable glacis for the musketry of the defence to sweep; and it consisted of a line of low rock and earth redoubts and shelter trenches, apparently provided with overhead cover, and cleverly ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... somewhere, but over his head the coast was rearing its stark bulk,—a concave and inaccessible wall. It would be impossible to get away from this spot. He had saved himself from the sea only to die stationed in front of it. His corpse would never float to an inhabited shore. The only ones that were going ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... conjunction with the Doric. The column was from eight to ten diameters in height, against four and one-third to seven for the Doric. It stood on a base which was usually composed of two tori (see p.25 for definition) separated by a scotia (aconcave moulding of semicircular or semi-elliptical profile), and was sometimes provided also with a square flat base-block, the plinth. There was much variety in the proportions and details of these mouldings, which were often enriched by flutings or carved guilloches. The tall shaft bore twenty-four ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the shores of Acheron. However, he was just about to start upon that passage—for the spirit of his race was up—when a dull grating sound, as of footsteps crunching grit, came to his prettily concave ears. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf, into rubies and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the sea over which, nearly at right angles, the hostile columns were advancing. Instead of this, embarrassed by both lack of wind and lack of skill, their manoeuvres resulted in a curved line, concave to the enemy's approach; the horns of the crescent thus formed being nearer to the latter. Collingwood noted that this disposition facilitated a convergent fire upon the assailants, the heads of whose columns were bearing down on the allied centre; ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... top of a head in shape. Cabochon cut stones usually have a flat base, but sometimes a slightly convex base is used, especially in opals and in moonstones, and some stones of very dense color are cut with a concave base to thin them and thus to reduce their color. The contour of the base may be round, or oval, or square, or cushion shape, or heart shape or of any regular form. The top is always smooth and rounding and unfacetted. The relation of the height or thickness to the length or width may be varied ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... their colouring. Blue and red clay had washed down upon them in streaks and patches; where certain faults in the rock occurred, and bars of iron-yielding stone were seen, the rust had washed down also, so that upon flat facets and concave and convex surfaces a great variety of colour and tint, and light ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... sharp point. Cones from 6 to 10 cm. long, ovate-conic, symmetrical; apophyses dull pale nut-brown, rarely lustrous, elevated along a transverse keel, the whole umbo forming a stout triangular spine with slightly concave sides. ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... hyphae occur in the rhizoids and in the cells of the lower region of the thallus of many liverworts, as in the endotrophic mycorhiza of higher plants. Colonies of Nostoc are constantly found in the Anthocerotaceae and in Blasia. In the latter they are protected by special concave scales, while in the Anthocerotaceae they occupy some of the mucilage slits between the cells of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... son trying to make a telescope out of the pieces of a bell, he became interested in telescopes. He studied all about them in order to help the boy with his work. He helped his son grind the metal disc into a concave mirror; that is, a mirror that is a little dish-shaped. With this they made a telescope with which they could see the rings of Saturn, and the little moons that ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... numerous vertebrae of various forms,—some with long spinous processes rising over the body or centrum of the bone,—which I found in every instance, unlike that of the Ichthyosaurus, only moderately concave on the articulating faces; in others the spinous process seemed altogether wanting. Only two of the number bore any mark of the suture which unites, in most reptiles, the annular process to the centrum; in the others both centrum and process seemed anchylosed, as in quadrupeds, into one bone; ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... cut its way through deep layers of conglomerate hundreds of feet thick. This country was an elevated plateau, intersected by deeply cut creeks, which had left the various strata quite bare, with curious concave recesses in which the natives took shelter during the wet season. One of the nuggets I picked up in the creek I have just mentioned weighed several pounds, and was three or four inches long; it was rather more than ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the pond we had just left was ascertained to be the only one in the little channel. I sought a good position for a depot camp on the newly-discovered river, and found one extremely favourable, on a curve concave to the N. W., overlooking, from a high bank, a dry ford, on a smooth rocky bed; and having also access to a reach of water, where the bottom was hard and firm. We approached this position with our carts, in the midst of smoke and flame; the natives having availed ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Makam Souleman, the Place of Solomon. A similar one upon the left is named El Makam Daoud, the Place of David. A cavity or niche on the south-west side of the rock is called El Makam Ibrahim, the Place of Abraham. A similar concave step at the north-west angle is described as El Makam Djibrila, the Place of Gabriel; and a sort of stone table at the north-east angle is denominated El Makam el Hoder, the Place of Elias. In the roof of the apartment, exactly in the middle, there ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... by the ancient Romans, on a precisely similar occasion, by means of a concave mirror of polished metal. The Incas, in order to preserve purity of race, married their own sisters, as did the kings of Persia and other Oriental nations, urged by a like feeling of pride. Among the Peruvians, Mama, signified 'mother,' while Papa, was applied to the chief priest. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are not regarded as monstrosities but only as the most natural of artificialities; for they are a part of a horticultural whole. To walk into a Japanese garden is like wandering of a sudden into one of those strange worlds we see reflected in the polished surface of a concave mirror, where all but the observer himself is transformed into a fantastic miniature of the reality. In that quaint fairyland diminutive rivers flow gracefully under tiny trees, past mole-hill mountains, till they fall at last into lilliputian lakes, almost smothered for the flowers that grow ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... entrancing efforts in your services, then? It is in this way that you reward my exceedingly unconscientious recommendations of your very inferior and unendurable clay idols, with their goggle eyes and concave stomachs! Before I go, however, I request to be inspired to make the following remark—that I confidently predict your ruin. And now this low and undignified person will finally shake the elegant dust ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... number of Gill's "Technical Repository," contains a simple mode of consuming the smoke that ascends from the turner of an argand lamp. It consists of a thin concave of copper, fixed by three wires, at about an inch above the chimney-glass of the lamp, yet capable of being taken off at pleasure. The gaseous carbonaceous matter which occasionally escapes from the top of lamps, is thus arrested beneath the concave cap, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... adapted for groups of sculpture. The pediment is protected above by a "raking" cornice, which has not the same form as the horizontal cornice, the principal difference being that the under surface of the raking cornice is concave and without mutules. Above the raking cornice comes a SIMA or gutter-facing, which in buildings of good period has a curvilinear profile. This sima is sometimes continued along the long sides of the building, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... A convex lens is not the only thing that can magnify. A concave mirror, which is one that is hollowed out toward the middle, does the same thing. When light is reflected by such a mirror, it acts exactly as if it had gone through ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... pushed their enquiries no farther. Of pneumatics, hydrostatics, electricity, and magnetism, they may be said to have little or no knowledge; and their optics extend not beyond the making of convex and concave lenses of rock crystal to assist the sight in magnifying, or throwing more rays upon, small objects and, by collecting to a focus the rays of the sun, to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... rather thick at the center, the margin thin, sometimes sterile, incurved. In color it runs from ecru drab to hair-brown with streaks of the latter, and it is very viscid when moist. When dried the surface of the pileus is shining. The tubes are plane or concave, adnate, tawny-olive to walnut-brown. The tubes are small, angular, somewhat as in B. granulatus, but smaller, and they are granulated with reddish or brownish dots. The spores are walnut brown, oblong to elliptical, ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... region on the other side birds soar suddenly into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the indifference of long familiarity. Their forms are white against the tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from expected stress of weather. As the birds rise behind the fort, so do the clouds rise behind the birds, almost as it seems, stroking ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... to the arms of the vanquished; so, quickly dispatching him, and sawing off his Toledo, I bore it away for a trophy. It was three-sided, slightly concave on each, like a bayonet; and some three inches through at the base, it tapered from ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... flattened or lenticular, beneath plane or concave, variously colored, yellow, greenish yellow, rusty orange, stipitate, nodding; the peridium splitting irregularly or reticulately; stipe variable in length and color, through various shades of red and yellow, subulate; capillitium ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... do not consider the laws of acoustics: a whisper becomes a peal of thunder in the focus of reverberation. Allow me to explain this: sounds striking on concave surfaces are reflected from them, and, after reflection, converge to points which are the foci of these surfaces. It follows, therefore, that the ear may be so placed in one, as that it shall hear a sound better than when situated ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... below. He had just landed on a bit of white tableland wantonly carved in the naked cliff. The rough gradients which up to now had guided him in his descent ceased abruptly. Behind him the cliff rose upwards, in front and, to his right, and left a concave wall, straight down to ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... violence, and had an illness which lasted more than three weeks. The trick put upon him may be shortly described by the fact that the female choristers were placed in an adjoining room, and that he only fired at their reflection thrown forward into that in which he slept by the effect of a concave mirror. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... how man tried to solve it. A magnifying lens will collect the rays from any distant object, and convey them to a point called the focus. Then suppose we put this glass in the tube of an opera-glass, or pocket spy-glass, and look through the eye-hole and the concave lens, properly adjusted, in front of it, we shall see the image of the object considerably magnified. But suppose the object draws very near, we see nothing distinctly; for the rays reflected from ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... woman is not to be judged by exceptions, nor is she to be measured by the standard of public sentiment. Public sentiment has often condemned the right. It ridiculed Columbus; put Roger Bacon in jail because he discovered the principle of concave and convex glass; condemned Socrates, and jeered Fulton and Morse. It pronounced the making of table forks a mockery of the Creator who gave us fingers to eat with, and broke up a church in Illinois because a ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... admitted, "yet I have found the comfortable, convex and concave characters often really more difficult in the long run. You must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping away and threatening to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... host of stars, Stood marshall'd in their bright array, While, far across the concave blue, Lay ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... "feels the presence and the power of greatness," and "in its fixed and steady lineaments he sees an ebbing and a flowing mind." The philosopher[128] lifts his eyes to "the starry heavens" in all the depth of their concave, and with all their constellations of glory moving on in solemn grandeur, and, to his mind, these immeasurable regions seem "filled with the splendors of the Deity, and crowded with the monuments of his power;" or he ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... The Egyptians in the time of Moses used mirrors of polished brass. Euclid in the third century before the Christian era is said to have written a treatise in which he discussed the reflection of light by concave mirrors. John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury in the thirteenth century, described mirrors of polished steel and of glass backed with lead. Mirrors of glass coated with an alloy of tin and mercury were made by the Venetians in the sixteenth century. Huygens in the seventeenth ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the Encantadas tortoise. But next evening, strange to say, I sat down with my shipmates, and made a merry repast from tortoise steaks, and tortoise stews; and supper over, out knife, and helped convert the three mighty concave shells into three fanciful soup-tureens, and polished the three flat yellowish calipees ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... and very even; these I fix very strongly together by the help of very hard Cement, and then fit the whole Glass ABCDEF into a long Board, or Frame, in such manner, that almost half the head AB may lye buried in a concave Hemisphere cut into the Board RS; then I place it so on the Board RS, as is exprest in the first figure of the first Scheme; and fix it very firm and steady in that posture, so as that the weight of the Mercury that is afterwards ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... how Saturn wrecks, And bends, and corkscrews all the frame about, Doubles the hams, and crooks the straightest necks, Draws in the nape, and pushes forth the snout, Makes backs and stomachs concave or convex: Witness those pensioners called In and Out, Who all day watching first and second rater, Quaintly unbend themselves—but grow ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... but the first time I want to make hay to advantage, I'll send for you," said Owny, laughing, as he entered his house, and nodding at Andy, who returned a capacious grin to Owny's shrewd smile, like the exaggerated reflection of a concave mirror. But the grin soon subsided, for men seldom prolong the laugh that is raised at their own expense; and the corners of Andy's mouth turned down as his hand turned up to the back of his head, which he rubbed, as he sauntered down the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... her charges; they, laughing, quickly followed her, the major and the other gentlemen bringing up the rear. They found themselves in a circular vestibule about twenty feet in diameter and fourteen in height, with an irregular concave ceiling covered, as were the sides, with innumerable glittering stalactites, reflecting on their polished surfaces the light of the torches held by the guide and the young book-keepers, who stood round in a circle, flourishing them over their heads. Several columns of stalactite forming ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... strung along the road. The modern pattern has a convex angle in the roof, and dormer-windows; it is a rustic adaptation of the Mansard. The antique pattern, which is far more picturesque, has a concave curve in the roof, and the eaves project like eyebrows, shading the flatness of the face. Paint is a rarity. The prevailing colour is the soft gray of weather-beaten wood. Sometimes, in the better class of houses, a gallery is built across the front and around one side, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... of gridirons should be made concave, and terminate in a trough to catch the gravy and keep the fat from dropping into the fire and making a smoke, which will spoil ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... drain, but it was necessity's labour lost. We were not provided with proper drain pipes but made an open conduit. We had to go to the quarry to get the stone, which we broke into small pieces, and these were set out in concave form at the bottom of the trench we had excavated after the manner in which cobble stones are laid. I believe it was considered to be an excellent piece of work, but unfortunately it was of little use. The first wind and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally inexhaustible in forms;—each exterior is the physiognomy of the being within,—its true image reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror;—and even such is the appropriate excellence of her chosen poet, of our own Shakspeare,—himself a nature humanized, a genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even than ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the money they receive (though the fare is only ten Kowrie shells for each individual) furnishes a considerable revenue to the king in the course of a year. The canoes are of a singular construction, each of them being formed of the trunks of two large trees, rendered concave, and joined together, not side by side, but end-ways, the junction being exactly across the middle of the canoe; they are, therefore, very long and disproportionately narrow, and have neither decks nor masts. They are however, very roomy, for I observed in one of them four horses and several people ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the depredations of animals. During the following day we completed our work upon Chinantecs. The type is one of the best marked. In the child, the nose is wide, flat at the tip, with a straight or even concave bridge; the eyes are widely separated and often oblique; the mouth is large, the lips thick and the upper lip projects notably beyond the lower; the face is wide, and flat at the cheek-bones. With age, this ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... suit-case, by a messenger, shortly before, and I was about to read it when an agitated knock was heard at our door. The visitor, whom I admitted, was a rather haggard and dishevelled elderly gentleman, who, as he entered, peered inquisitively through his concave spectacles from one of ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... also its concave and convex lenses, which magnify some things and minify others. The self-satisfied man sees every one's faults in giant proportions; and every one's virtues, but his own, dwarfed into insignificance. To the fretful man others seem fretful; to the envious man, envious; and so with ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... their large heavy heads, for as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears they must have large heads to contain them. Large eyes, I presume, are necessary to collect every ray of light, and large concave ears to command the smallest degree ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Concave mirrors are the reverse of convex; the latter being rounded outwards, the former hollowed inwards—they render rays of light more converging—collect rays instead of dispersing them, and magnify objects ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... stand on any point of the earth and look up, the heavenly bodies appear as though they were situated upon the surface of a vast hollow sphere, of which your eye is the center. Of course this apparent concave vault has no existence and we cannot accurately measure the distance of the heavenly bodies from us or from each other. We can, however, measure the direction of some of these bodies and that information is of tremendous value to us in helping ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... "lay of the country" sloped generally to the line from both sides, and the angle between the inspector's horse, the fencing party, and the culvert was well within a clear concave space; but a couple of hundred yards back from the line and parallel to it (on the side on which Dave's party worked their timber) a fringe of scrub ran to within a few yards of a point which would be about in line with a single tree on the ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... limestone from neighboring mountains. The blocks are small and badly cut, the stone courses being concave, to offer a better resistance to downward thrust and to shocks of earthquake. When breaches in the masonry are examined, it can be seen that the external surface of the steps has, as it were, a double stone facing, each facing being carefully dressed. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... details connected with the forms of these shelter dykes, their arrangements so as to present a series of settling basins, etc., a description of which would only complicate the conception. Through the larger part of the river works of contraction will not be required, but nearly all the banks on the concave side of the beds must be held against the wear of the stream, and much of the opposite banks defended at critical points. The works having in view this conservative object may be generally designated works of revetment; and these also will be largely of brushwood, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what was coming to pass. In a minute more we saw a ruddy rim rise out of purple dusk; and with that almost incredible quickness in which the miracle is accomplished, the whole moon was up, red and slightly concave, for it ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... indeed a strange room—everything in it had an odd shape: the ceiling sloped, the floor was concave, the corners were round, upon the walls were incomprehensible pictures and unfamiliar hieroglyphics. In one corner was a dark, flat object in a carved frame of ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub |
