"Conformation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a result of the difficulty of detecting small effusions in this situation. The elbow was to a certain extent protected by the possession of a degree of fixity somewhat resembling that already mentioned in the case of the hip-joint, although here depending on the conformation of the bones alone. I think this explained the absence of free effusion in many cases of fracture of the humeral shaft, but when the latter affected the lower third effusion into the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... command an army, or govern a state. An ourang-outang may eat, and drink, and dress, and move like a man; but he could never write an ode, or learn to relinquish his own good for the good of his species. The human conformation, however it may be altered by the operation of physical or moral causes, differs from that of all other beings, and on this ground, the negro's claim to be ranked as a man, is ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... considered Romans; but, with that exception, a relationship with every population of the British Isles has been claimed for them. As Germans on the strength of Tacitus' description of their physical conformation of the Caledonian, and as Germans on the strength of the supposed Germanic origin of the Belgae, the Picts have been held the ancestors of the present Lowland Scotch. They have been considered Scandinavians also. On the other hand, they have been made Gaels, in which case it is ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... its conquest; once its top has been reached, the incentive declines. Much exploring work is yet to do on Denali; the day will doubtless come when all its peaks and ridges and glaciers will be duly mapped, but our view from the summit agreed with our study of its conformation during the ascent, that no other route will be found to the top. When first we were cutting and climbing on the ridge, and had glimpses, as the mists cleared, of the glacier on the other side and the ridges that arose from it, we thought that perhaps they might afford a passage, ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... America.] The increasing Chinese immigration already intrudes upon the attention of American statesmen questions of the utmost social and political importance. What influence will this entirely new and strange element exercise over the conformation of American relations? Will the Chinese found a State in the States, or go into the Union on terms of political equality with the other citizens, and form a new race by alliance with the Caucasian element? These problems, which can only be touched upon ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... hat, or a piece of black cloth, for example—previously cooled below the freezing-point. At any one time the crystallizations are usually alike, but different snow-falls seem to have each its own special conformation. Sometimes, however, a change takes place from one style of flake to another in the course of the same storm or shower, and during the period of transition both varieties fall together from the air. Persons ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the anatomical conformation of the joints involved, especially the manner in which the head of the second metatarsal (Fig. V. C) projects upwards into the tarsus, and is locked between the cuneiform bones, renders disarticulation in the healthy foot rather difficult; but it must be remembered that ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... own leg to escape. Do they die in consequence? no, they live and do well; but could a man live under such circumstances? impossible. If you don't believe me, gnaw your own leg off and try. And yet the conformation of the Mammalia is not very dissimilar from our own; but man is the more perfect creature, and therefore has not ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the conformation rather than any facet of its technical or social significance that strikes the eye; perhaps the most decorative of tools are early dividers and calipers which, prior to their standardization, existed in seemingly endless variety. The great dividers used by the ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... and the drum, A, continuing to revolve, the punches rise a little owing to the conformation of the cam-wheel, and through the action of the springs, b, and allow the moistener to move forward to dampen the little circles which remain at the orifice of the punches. The moistener or dampener is a sort of pad equal in length to the field of action of the punches, and is affixed to a cross-bar, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... over all men; and the first sense of pain was the wild signal for general lamentation and horror. The first sense of pain lay in a rigorous construction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable dryness of the skin. It could not be denied that our atmosphere was radically affected; the conformation of this atmosphere and the possible modifications to which it might be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. The result of investigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest terror through the universal heart ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... general conformation of the three skulls, it would appear that No. I, was that of the most intelligent person of the three and No. III of the least No. ...
— A New Hochelagan Burying-ground Discovered at Westmount on the - Western Spur of Mount Royal, Montreal, July-September, 1898 • W. D. Lighthall
... hollows of the old inland cretaceous sea. Paradoxical as it sounds to say so, the Celtic kingdom of the Regni, the South Saxon principality of AElle the Bretwalda, the modern English county of Sussex, have all had their destinies moulded by the geological conformation of the rock upon which they repose. Where human annals see only the handicraft and interaction of human beings—Euskarian and Aryan, Celt and Roman, Englishman and Norman—a closer scrutiny of history ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... felted covering, moulded to the top of the wearer's cranium, appeared an elderly profile, half-official, half-soldierly, with a comical admixture of arrogance,—altogether something like caricatures of the Constitutionnel. The sometime official finding that age, and hair-powder, and the conformation of his spine made it impossible to read a word without spectacles, sat displaying a very creditable expanse of chest with all the pride of an old man with a mistress. Like old General Montcornet, that pillar of the Vaudeville, ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... the incapacity of their enemies afforded them, the Greeks derived also from the geographical conformation of their country those same advantages with which nature had blessed their great ancestors, and which had contributed mainly perhaps to the formation, as well as maintenance, of their high national character. Islanders ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... incapable of being touched or proved, but which can be perceived by the mind and understood; as if you were to define usucaption, guardianship, nationality, or relationship; all, things which have no body, but which nevertheless have a certain conformation plainly marked out and impressed upon the mind, which I call the notion of them. They often require to be explained by definition while we ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... the enemy's advanced detachments have begun to register ranges and destroy possible observation posts across the river with such artillery as they have so far had the time to bring up. Whether the Piave line and the rest of the Italian front to the westward, which has had to be modified in conformation with the general movement of retreat, can be held indefinitely, will probably be a question of heavy guns. If the enemy can bring up his larger artillery before reinforcements of the same character arrive from France and England, a further retreat ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... called together as many of them as he could find, when he had reached the northern shores of France, to inquire about the modes of crossing the Channel, the harbors on the English side, the geographical conformation of the country, and the military resources of the people. He found, however, that the merchants could give him very little information. They knew that Britain was an island, but they did not know its extent ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... annually wasted by the government for the military," said he, in a ringing voice. "Scarcely have millions upon millions been voted for the introduction of new rifles and new guns; scarcely have new regiments been formed and the conformation of existing ones altered, when all these measures are found to be worse than useless. Errors of calculation are discovered when it is too late to retrieve them, and new sums of enormous size are demanded in order to overcome innovations conceived ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... The first, they said, was produced when I was an infant, by dipping me in milk; and they insisted that my nose had been pinched every day, till it had acquired its present unsightly and unnatural conformation. On my part, without disputing my own deformity, I paid them many compliments on African beauty, I praised the glossy jet of their skins, and the lovely depression of their noses; but they said that ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... respect mated with a number of equally well bred typical bitches would produce on an average a comparatively uniform type of pups. Nothing could be further from actual results. The same dog bred, say to four females practically alike in style, size, conformation, color and markings, and from common ancestry, will give perchance in one litter two or three crackerjacks, and the other three will contain only medium pups. This same thing will occur every time the ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... agreeably relieved from the monotony of too great uniformity by numerous mountains of fantastical shapes and appearance, entirely unconnected with each other, and all varying in the primitive matter of their conformation. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Jacques-Emile Blanche's portrait of the Spanish painter explains other things. There is the physique of a man who can work many hours a day before an easel; there are the penetrating eyes of an observer, spying eyes, slightly cruel; the head is an intellectual one, the general conformation of the face harmonious and handsome. The body is that of an athlete, but not of the bull-necked sort we see in Goya. The temperament suggested is impetuous, controlled by a strong will; it has been fined down by study and the enforced renunciations of poverty-haunted youth. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... tree qualities have been determined, it is then necessary to consider the nut itself. The nut must be of fair size, of good flavor, thin to medium thickness of shell, well filled, and of good cracking quality—that is, the conformation of the shell and kernel must be such that a large percentage of the kernels can be taken out as whole halves, and the convolutions of the kernels must be wide enough that the partitions do not adhere to them. When all of these qualities, both of the tree and nut, can be ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... as soon as the prepuce is drawn behind the glans penis, and cicatrizes in a line scarcely visible; so that the prepuce acquires in breadth what it loses in length. M. CLOQUET has, in this way, perfectly cured many patients; the prepuce appearing to possess its natural conformation.—La Propagateur des ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... tortuous and rugged descent, the Mochuelo commanded a halt. The place where this occurred was in a narrow gorge between two lines of hills, or it should rather be said of mountains; for although their altitude was only here and there very considerable, their cragged and precipitous conformation and rocky material entitled them to the latter denomination. The passage between them continued narrow only for a few hundred yards, after which, at either of its extremities, the mountains receded, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... we show the difference in the conformation of the forehead in various races. The upper dotted line, A, represents the shape of the European forehead; the next line, B, that of the Australian; the next, C, that of the Mound Builder of the United States; the next, D, that ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... small, thin, and unwholesome looking; his red face, covered with an eruption, told of tainted blood; and he had, moreover, a trick of continually scratching his right arm. A wig pushed to the back of his head displayed a brick-colored cranium of ominous conformation. This person rose from a cane-seated armchair, in which he sat on a green leather cushion, assumed an agreeable expression, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... is purely geographical, and applied from time immemorial to the persons living in those valleys of Piedmont which have ever formed part of the Italian territory, and are not to be confounded with the Swiss Canton de Vaud, bearing a name so like because of the similarity of geographical conformation. ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... usefulness of harbours is one which I must not omit, but must explain by what means ships are sheltered in them from storms. If their situation has natural advantages, with projecting capes or promontories which curve or return inwards by their natural conformation, such harbours are obviously of the greatest service. Round them, of course, colonnades or shipyards must be built, or passages from the colonnades to the business quarters, and towers must be set up on both sides, from which chains can be ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... acknowledged having had frequent connection. The woman declared that she had had no commerce with any other man for three years, and the man did not deny this assertion. The idea of cohabitation with another man was further negatived by the circumstance that the infant had the same conformation of the genital organs as the father. How did fecundation take place? The three openings in the penis were probably the orifices of the excretory ducts of Cowper's glands. But might not these have been the openings of the ejaculatory ducts? It is to be regretted ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of the boat was a favorable one for observing the conformation of the country, and Mrs. Sedley improved the opportunity to point out the various divisions ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... 75,000, and it was suffering from a famine at the time. And more of the same kind.[115] Froude was perfectly aware of the utility of criticism, and he was even one of the first in England to base the study of history on that of original documents, as well unpublished as published; but his mental conformation rendered him altogether unfit for the emendation of texts; indeed, he murdered them, unintentionally, whenever he touched them. Just as Daltonism (an affection of the organs of sight which prevents a man from distinguishing correctly between red and green signals) incapacitates ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... opposite the fluted columns of gray granite that once had borne aloft the suburbs of Englewood. Stern recognized the conformation of the place; but though he looked hard, could find no trace of the Interstate Park road that once had led from top to bottom of the Palisades, nor any remnant of the millionaires' ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... operating upon material in the earthy condition, which petrified after receiving its form. Indeed, this same instrument is at present nowise restricted by that condition in Colorado, and is not only, year by year, altering the conformation of all sand and clay bluff's on the Plains, but is tearing down, rebuilding, and fashioning on its facile lathe many rock-strata of the solidity of the more friable grits, wherever exposed to its action. Water at the East does hardly more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... from the Lodge on the rim where the automobile-stage has left you, the most vivid impressions of detail are those of the conformation of the inner rim, the cliffs which rise above it, and the small volcano which emerges from the blue waters of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... osteological characters of the human skull from Engis, near Liege, mentioned in the last chapter and described by Dr. Schmerling, it will be desirable to say something of the geological position of another skull, or rather skeleton, which, on account of its peculiar conformation, has excited no small sensation in the last few years. I allude to the skull found in 1857 in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the Dussel, near Dusseldorf, which is called the Neanderthal. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... distribution of the reef-building corals, but there are some very interesting and singular circumstances to be observed in the conformation of the reefs, when we consider them individually. The reefs, in fact, are of three different kinds; some of them stretch out from the shore, almost like a prolongation of the beach, covered only by shallow water, and in the case ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... lacks the streams and wooded valleys which open upon the latter. The country is but partially cultivated, except around the town of Dardanelles, near the mouth of the strait. The site of the bridge of Xerxes is easily recognized, the conformation of the different shores seconding the decision of antiquarians. Here, too, are Sestos and Abydos, of passionate and poetic memory. But as the sun dipped towards the sea, we passed out of the narrow gateway. On our left lay the plain of Troy, backed ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Alleghanies, a youth is seen employed in the manly and invigorating occupation of a surveyor, and awakening the admiration of the backwoodsmen and savage chieftains by the strength and endurance of his frame and the resolution and energy of his character. In his stature and conformation he is a noble specimen of a man. In the various exercises of muscular power, on foot, or in the saddle, he excels all competitors. His admirable physical traits are in perfect accordance with the properties of his mind and heart; ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... to be extended physical objects to which the idea of motion cannot be applied. They may not be thought of as consisting of particles which allow themselves to be separately tracked through time. In Minkowski's idiom this is expressed as follows:—Not every extended conformation in the four-dimensional world can be regarded as composed of world-threads. The special theory of relativity forbids us to assume the ether to consist of particles observable through time, but the hypothesis ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... believe, or fancy that they believe such things, must be able to do so only through some peculiar conformation either of brain or heart. Only want of imagination to conceive the consequences of such doctrines can enable them, if they have any love and pity for their fellow-men, to preach those doctrines without pity and horror. They know not, they know not, of what they rob a mankind already ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... knew only one such place which would be near enough to the Chief's town. It was on the koppie itself, about fifty feet above the level of and overhanging the river, where he had noted there was always a breeze, even on the hottest day, since the conformation of this hill seemed to induce an unceasing draught of air. He added that if his Lordship were well enough, they might go to ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... height of a tall man's waist, and was long and gaunt and sinuous, with a tawny coat striped with black, and with white throat and belly. In conformation it was similar to a cat—a huge cat, exaggerated colossal cat, with fiendish eyes and the most devilish cast of countenance, as it wrinkled its bristling snout and ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precipitous dent above her chin. He liked that chin. There was courage there and strength, softened at once by the curve of the throat, flowing to where it joined the fine deep breast. Yesterday she had seemed like a boy. To-day she was a woman grown, feminine in every graceful conformation, on tiptoe at the very ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... became Mysie's favorite resort, was at once singular and beautiful in its conformation. About three feet above the water's edge lay a level plateau, its floor of loose, sandy, black conglomerate, abounding in sparkling bits of quartz and sulphate of iron; beneath this lay a bed of beautifully marbled and variegated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... singularly conferred on me, in which I was interrupted by the most inexplicable fits of yawning, I at length, in a sort of despair, communicated them to our village club, from whom they found a more favourable reception than the unlucky conformation of my nerves had been able to afford them. They unanimously pronounced the work to be exceedingly good, and assured me I would be guilty of the greatest possible injury to our flourishing village, if I should suppress what threw such an interesting ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... child is individually equipped, by the complex set of factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that result in walking. Indeed, the very conformation of these muscles and of the appropriate parts of the nervous system may be said to be primarily adapted to the movements made in walking and in similar activities. In a very real sense the normal human being is predestined to walk, not because his elders will assist him to learn the art, but because ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... conformation of my thesis, is, that they were not by themselves of sufficient strength, to support the weight of administration. It is certainly a melancholy consideration, that there should not be virtue enough left in a people to support an administration ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... quote only the greatest and the last—The troops of Frederick! How illustrious under him! How contemptible under his successors! Yet his system was there; his double lines of march at full distance; his oblique order of battle; his simple lines of manoeuvre in the presence of an enemy; his wise conformation of an etat-major;—all, in short, that distinguished his practice from that of ordinary men, survived him; but the head that truly comprehended and knew how to apply these, died with Frederick. ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... his healthy florid color, and the well-trimmed black moustache, which gave his face an unusually youthful appearance for a man of his age, went with a fine stalwart physique and a general bodily conformation apparently in keeping with the ideas of early rising, cold ablutions and breakfasts of oatmeal porridge that the ingenuous mind is apt to associate with Scotch descent and bringing-up. His daughter was ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... powers in man, which I know, that are conversant about external objects, are the senses; the imagination; and the judgment. And first with regard to the senses. We do and we must suppose, that as the conformation of their organs are nearly or altogether the same in all men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the same, or with little difference. We are satisfied that what appears to be light to one eye, appears light ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is no change of conformation to note, except that the intestinal tube is naturally much longer than ours, on account of the difference of food: as a general rule, it is ten or twelve times the length of the body. The sheep, who is able to pick up a living ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Ohio. It is a large nut of rather unusual shape being higher than it is long. It has good cracking quality and deserves further testing. The fourth walnut, the Chase, is growing in a dooryard at Oberlin, Ohio. It is larger than any of the others, with good shell conformation. It has the reputation of not always filling out the kernels, a condition which may be seasonal or possibly an inherent defect. Grafts of all four of these walnuts are growing at Ithaca and at Geneva and will be available after a year ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... inhabitant remains there at the same age as he was when he quitted the world above. This latter view is most like the South West one. The former is possibly only an attempt to make Srahmandazi into a heaven in conformation with Christian teaching, which it is not, any more than ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... at this time"—he wanted to know—"about the physical conformation of this world? What I mean is, when you came out of this tunnel were you on the inside or the outside of ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the source and mouth of the brook is about 190 feet. The sharpest descent is just above the hatchery and rearing troughs, which therefore receive well-aerated water. The conformation of the ground offers good facilities for the distribution ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... acute; he had never before felt with such gratification the warmth of the sun or known the ecstasy of motion. He saw every flower in the roadbank, every small glacial brook, every new conformation of the snow clouds hanging above the ragged peaks of the Argentieres. He sniffed with delight the pungent wind from off the glaciers, the short, warm puffs of grass-scented air from the fields in the Valley of Trient. He noticed the flight of birds, the lazy swinging of pine boughs, the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... little beauty. Now, if you plant seedlings, that is what you are likely to get on your lawn. You may have something that is not pretty except as a trunk, but the tree that produces these very remarkable nuts is also one of the most beautiful in its conformation. It is shaped just like an umbrella, rather low, very spreading, and very frequently with a very much larger number of limbs than almost any black walnut tree that I have ever seen, and its habit of growing in the nursery confirms that opinion—that it ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... the seat of all the greatest disturbances, this part naturally manifests the greatest number of anomalies, which extend from the external conformation of the brain-case to ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... work done by the men who have laid bare so many of the secrets of the interior, and by deductions to be drawn from the physical conformation and climatic peculiarities already revealed, we may, to some extent, conjecture the possibilities of the future. With every variety of climate between temperate and tropical, with enormous mineral treasures—the extent of which, even at the present time, can only be conjectured—boundless ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... line was reformed to my right and rear, my division was at length drawn through the cedars and debouched into an open space near the Murfreesboro' pike, behind the right of Palmer's division. Two regiments of Sill's brigade, however, on account of the conformation of the ground, were obliged to fall back from the point where Woodruff's brigade of Davis's division had rallied after the disaster of the early morning. The division came out of the cedars with unbroken ranks, thinned by only its killed and wounded—but ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... The Bay of Fundy is remarkable for its high and violent tides, owing to the peculiar conformation of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Eastern superstition, not less determined, and not less remarkably fulfilled, occurred some years before to Dr. Madden, who travelled pretty much in the same route as Lord Lindsay. The doctor, as a phrenologist, had been struck with the very singular conformation of a skull which he saw amongst many others on an altar in some Syrian convent. He offered a considerable sum in gold for it; but it was by repute the skull of a saint; and the monk with whom Dr. M. attempted to negotiate, not only refused his offers, but protested that even for the doctor's sake, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... nations have sprung from it, as the Persians, the Ph[oe]nicians, the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, and, in modern times, the Turks. All the nations of this race, whether European or African, have been distinguished by the same physical marks in the conformation of the head and the color of the skin, and still more by those traits of character—the intellect, the energy, the spirit of determination and pride—which, far from owing their existence to outward circumstances, have always, in all ages, made all outward circumstances bend to them. That there ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as well as animals. The latter, however, have no consciousness anterior to their physical births, and very little, indeed, for some time afterwards; whereas a different law prevails as respects us; our mental conformation being such as to enable us to refer our moral existence to a period that embraces the experience, reasoning and sentiments of several generations. As respects logical inductions, for instance, the linum usitatissimum draws as largely on the intellectual ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... fancy, or accident, or skill—it is unnecessary to decide which—has associated symmetry with quality and conformation, as a point of great importance in animals calculated for fattening; and there is no doubt that, to a certain extent, this is so. The beast must be a system of mathematical lines. To the advocate of symmetry, the setting-on of a tail will be a condemning fault; ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... proprietor in Oceanica. Before setting out on his exploring expedition into the interior he tried to interest the government in a plan for cisterns to supply the city with water—a project easy of execution from the natural conformation of the locality. But his scheme received no encouragement from the old-fogyish authorities. They were at that moment entertaining one which for simplicity reminded Garnier of the egg problem of Columbus. This was to distill the sea-water. He made a calculation of the cost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... The future conformation of parties under the union is difficult to forecast. At present the Dutch parties—they may be called so for lack of a better word—have large majorities everywhere except in Natal. In the Transvaal General Botha's party—Het Volk, the Party of the People—is greatly in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... more, it almost seems to try to resume its old condition. This will be borne out by watching the effect of much wet upon any wood that has been previously bent into shape, or upon the separated ribs of a violin. The efforts of the wood to return to its original conformation will be apparent in the instance of the ribs, perhaps provoking, as the re-bending without injuring the varnish, which may happen to be of the most lustrous and delicate description, is often a matter of great difficulty, and ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... be heated and salted. The Gulf Stream is simply the stream of equatorial hot water that flows towards the pole through the Atlantic. Its fountain-head is the region of the equator, not the Gulf of Mexico; but it is carried, by the conformation of the land, into that gulf and deflected by it, and from it out into the ocean in the direction of Europe. This stream in the Atlantic is well defined, owing to the comparative narrowness of ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... developments. Indeed, so little did any distinct type predominate in some of the bewildering results, that you could only have guessed at any known animal as the original, and even then, what likeness remained would be more one of general expression than of definable conformation. But what increased the gruesomeness tenfold was that, from constant domestic, or indeed rather family association with the goblins, their countenances had grown in ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... Gold Coast, owing to the conformation of the country, will be a far simpler and less expensive process than in California or Australia. In the latter water has first to be bought, and then to be brought in pipes, flumes, leats, or races from a considerable distance, sometimes extending over ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... The Mandya's cranial conformation differs, according to Montano, from that of the Manbo only in one particular, namely, in the straightness of the middle part of the antero-posterior curve of the cranium. In other respects his cranium is similar to that of the Manbo. The face is oval rather than lozenge-shaped and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Buckland . . . writing of a species of rock-fish, says—'I found that it had a beautiful contrivance in the conformation of its mouth. It has the power of prolongating both its jaws to nearly the extent of half-an-inch from their natural position. This is done by a most beautiful bit of mechanism, somewhat on the principle of what are called 'lazy tongs.' The cat-fish possesses a like feature, but ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in the older formation of any series that we come upon the oils and tars and asphaltum, while the marsh gas exists in later and more recently formed deposits. Further geological research shows us that the American gas fields exist each as an inverted trough or dome, a conformation due, of course, to the bending and twisting of the rocks by the great underground heat forces of the world. The porous part of the dome may be sandstone or limestone, and above this portion lie shales, which are the opposite of porous in texture. The dome, further, contains gas above, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... time all bore an accidental character. Eendrachtsland was discovered by accident in the year 1616, and after that time a number of Dutch ships unexpectedly touched at those shores, thus continually shedding additional, though always imperfect light on the question of the conformation of the coast-line. How was it, we may ask, that it was especially after 1616 that this coast was so often touched at, whereas there had never been question of this before that time? The question thus put ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... almost osteological. If the physiognomies of his companions offered more or less analogy to that of the tiger, the vulture, or the fox, the form of his retreating forehead, and his bony, lank, and protruding jaws, supported by a neck of immense length, resembled entirely the conformation of a serpent's head. Total baldness increased this resemblance still more, for, under the rough skin of this reptile-shaped forehead, could be distinguished the slightest protuberances, the smallest sutures of his skull; as to his visage, let one imagine some old parchment drawn over the face, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... the three hours of infinite effort he had expended, the moon had risen, and its radiance shone down the length of the gorge like some dull yellow search-light. The wood-lined walls were lit till their conformation was vaguely discernible. The swift stream reflected the yellow rays on the crests of its surging ripples. Then, far in, beyond the mouth of the canyon, the long low foreshore stood out almost plainly to ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... is left of Shakespeare's bodily frame, the thought of doing reverently and openly what she would have done by stealth has been entertained by psychologists, artists, and others who would like to know what were his cranial developments, and to judge from the conformation of the skull and face which of the various portraits is probably the true one. There is little doubt that but for the curse invoked upon the person who should disturb his bones, in the well-known lines on the slab which covers him, he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... some rich mines near here soon. Stay; it can do you no harm. I will tell you something: three days ago I followed up the river, and about twenty miles above this spot I became attracted by the conformation of the country, and remarked it as being very similar to some very famous spots in South America. 'Here,' I said to myself, 'Maximilian, you have your volcanic disturbance, your granite, your clay, slate, and sandstone upheaved, and seamed with quartz;—why should you not ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to be stiff and ungainly, and to turn herself, or allow herself to be turned, as though she were made of wood; she was somewhat flat in her figure, looking as though she had been uncomfortably pressed into an unbecoming thinness of substance, and a corresponding breadth of surface, and this conformation did not assist her in acquiring a graceful flowing style of motion. The elder sister, Lactimel, was of a different form, but yet hardly more fit to shine in the mazes of the dance than her sister. She had her charms, nevertheless, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... conformation of the site on which the village has been built has produced an unusual irregularity of arrangement, yet even here an imperfect example of the typical inclosed court may be found, at one point containing ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... mistake was holding their position on the ridge of the Aisne. It could not have retreated without fearful loss as that ridge was the last conformation of any military value in the practically flat country ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... to Portsmouth, and within this inclosed sea, is a place where the water is just of the right depth, and the bottom of just the right conformation for the convenient anchoring of ships of war. This place is called Spithead, and it forms one of the most famous anchoring grounds in the world. It is here that the vast fleets of the English navy assemble, and here the ships come to anchor, when returning ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... much at ease in his clothing as a dry almond in its shell. A long, dark, yellow coat usually hung about the calves of his legs, which were covered with long, blue woollen stockings, and looked more like vine-poles than human legs; a conformation which furnished daily jokes for the other servants, to which the old man deigned no response save a disdainful smile, grumbling through his teeth, "Menials, peasants without education." This latter speech expressed the late gardener's ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... of forms which he has brought together carries us from the top to the bottom of the Tertiaries. Firstly, there is the true horse. Next we have the American Pliocene form of the horse (Pliohippus); in the conformation of its limbs it presents some very slight deviations from the ordinary horse, and the crowns of the grinding teeth are shorter. Then comes the Protohippus, which represents the European Hipparion, having one large digit and two small ones on each foot, and the general ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... those I do. It is a fault I know well, and I should neglect no means to correct myself of it; but as a certain gloomy air I have tends to make me seem more reserved than I am in fact, and as it is not in our power to rid ourselves of a bad expression that arises from a natural conformation of features, I think that even when I have cured myself internally, externally some bad ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... to observe the peculiarity which the consciousness of superior knowledge impressed upon the conversation and personal appearance of this decaying race. Whatever might have been the original conformation of their physical structure, it was sure, by the force of acquired habit, to transform itself into a stiff, erect, consequential, and unbending manner, ludicrously characteristic of an inflated sense of their extraordinary knowledge, and a proud and commiserating ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... construction of a flat line, or one of comparatively easy gradients, except by the expenditure of a much larger capital than was placed at the engineer's disposal. Heavy works could not be executed; it was therefore necessary to form the line with but little deviation from the natural conformation of the district which it traversed, and also to adapt the mechanical methods employed for its working to the character of the gradients, which in ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... is the great event of the voyage. It is always rough there, from the peculiar conformation of the land, and the conflict of the waters from the Gulf of Georgia, and other inlets, with the ocean-tides. Our captain had been sailing on this route for fifteen years, but said he had never seen a worse sea than ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... understands the conformation of the brain, and the general character of its different regions. It is important that he should as soon as possible begin the study of heads, and learn to judge correctly their development. When he can do this, he has an inexhaustible source of knowledge ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... distinguish at a glance the elegant shape and nameless something that tells of natural nobility. The face of the young man, which was rather ordinary at first sight, soon attracted the eye by the conformation of certain features which revealed a soul capable of great things. A bronzed skin, curly fair hair, sparkling blue eyes, a delicate nose, motions full of ease, all disclosed a life guided by noble sentiments ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... pick out on the map the headquarters of all the more notable peoples, not merely as they are now, but also as they were at various outstanding moments of the past. His next business is to master the main facts about the natural conditions to which each people is subjected—the climate, the conformation of land and sea, the animals and plants. From here it is but a step to the economic life—the food-supply, the clothing, the dwelling-places, the principal occupations, the implements of labour. A selected list of books of travel must be consulted. No less important ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... "The conformation of the shores indicate that. It can generally be determined in this way: If the sides of the ground near the shore are steep, it is pretty sure to make a contracted channel, and that means depth. On the other hand, if the beach is sloping the stream may be ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... insectivorous forms, which therefore, considering Mr. Wallace's zeal and powers of observation, we may conclude do not exist. Moreover, even if there ever has been an abundance of such, it is by no means certain that they would have succeeded in producing the conformation in question, for the effect of this peculiar curvature on flight is by no means clear. We have here, then, a structure hypothetically explained by an uncertain {88} property induced by a cause the presence ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... body is being exercised, care should be taken that the other parts remain quiet as far as the conformation of the body will allow. The men must learn to exercise any one part of the body independent of the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... possession (for which I am indebted to Mr. Charles Holloway) weighing eight grains less than nine ounces. This sort is also termed amas lichin or smooth gold, and appears to owe that quality to its having been exposed, in some prior state of the soil or conformation of the earth, to the action of running water, and deprived of its sharp and rough edges by attrition. This form of gravel is the most common in which gold is discovered. Gold-dust or amas urei is collected either in the channels of brooks running ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... accept his word that the path by which we had come was the only one by which we could reach the spot where we stood. The circles of black rocks above the tops of the highest trees, though indescribably beautiful, were strangely repellent in their weird conformation. They struck us as the walls of a prison from which the only way to liberty lay across ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... meaning of the word. We say things feel hard or soft, the varying density of the objects being the cause of the varying sensations they awaken. Smoothness and roughness are varying outlines of surface, existing as physical conformation; the pleasurable or disagreeable sensations awakened in us by contact being due to the greater or less irritation of the nerves of feeling that attrition with it occasions. Motion is absolutely necessary to give us an ides of the density or configuration of an object. The mere touch of that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... distinguished as Dandie Eassil-gate, Dandie Wassil-gate, Dandie Thumbie, and Dandie Dumbie. The two first had their names from living eastward and westward in the street of the village; the third for something peculiar in the conformation of his thumb; the fourth from ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... brighter world in this land of fogs. We went far in over the flats, but came only to sheets of water, with low spits running out into them, and ridges between. We often heard the cry of loons on the water, but could never catch sight of one. All these lakelets were of a remarkable, exactly circular conformation, with steep banks all round, just as if each had dug out a hole for itself ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... few staples, as needed, as he walked along. The pasture partook of the general conformation of the farm—it was ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... an innate quality; over it he has no authority; for its acts he cannot be held responsible. It cannot be permanently changed or even modified. No power can keep it modified. For it is inherent and enduring, as unchanging as the lines upon the thumb or the conformation of the skull. Throughout his life, circumstance seemed like a watchful spirit, switching his temperament into those channels of experience and development leading unerringly to the ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... hundred and twenty feet in length: it lies in an east and west direction, the head towards the west, with the arms and legs extended. The body or trunk is thirty feet in breadth, the head twenty-five, and its elevation above the general surface of the prairie is about six feet. Its conformation is so distinct, that there can be no possibility of mistake in assigning it ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the objects of beauty that make grand the environs of that noble Bay, open to her astonished eyes, she contrasts them favorably or unfavorably with some familiar object in Charleston harbor. There is indeed a similarity in the conformation. And though ours, she says, may not be so extensive, nor so grand in its outlines, nor so calm and soft in its perspective, there is a more aristocratic air about it. Smaller bodies are always more select and respectable. The captain, to whom she has ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... leave to propose an extravagant conjecture of mine, viz. That since we have some reason (if there be any credit to be given to the report of things that our philosophy cannot account for) to imagine, that Spirits can assume to themselves bodies of different bulk, figure, and conformation of parts—whether one great advantage some of them have over us may not lie in this, that they can so frame and shape to themselves organs of sensation or perception, as to suit them to their present design, and the circumstances of the object they would consider. For ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... guess what they are for. The unsophisticated young ladies, with that swift intuition which is one of lovely woman's salient mental traits, immediately jumped at the conclusion that the projections covered some peculiar conformation of the Yankee anatomy—some incipient, dromedary-like humps, or perchance the horns of which they had ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... together with iron, and constituted the boom or chief water defence of Hamburgh. We passed through, and found an entire regiment under arms, close by the Custom—house. Somehow or other, I had drank deep of that John Bull prejudice, which delights to disparage the physical conformation of our Gallic neighbours, and hugs itself with the absurd notion, "that on one pair of English legs doth march three Frenchmen." But when I saw the weather—beaten soldierlike veterans, who formed this compact battalion, part of the elite of the first corps, more commanding in its, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of the persons most nearly allied to them. This argument, doubtless, might be pressed further, and made to prove much more. It would be eminently desirable that other things besides reading, writing, and arithmetic could be made necessary to the suffrage; that some knowledge of the conformation of the earth, its natural and political divisions, the elements of general history, and of the history and institutions of their own country, could be required from all electors. But these kinds of knowledge, however indispensable to an intelligent use of the suffrage, are not, in this ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... their characteristics in full and vigorous development, may still be met, but these are merely isolated survivors of a once widespread family. The Americans that one meets to-day in Europe, both those who travel and those who reside there, are of a different conformation and belong to a different type. The crudeness which so shocked Europeans in their predecessors they have, with characteristic adaptability, readily and gracefully outgrown. But whether they have improved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... the edge of the boat—or at the foot of the slide, as the conformation of the landing indicated—heavy cotton-hook in hand, they watch the descending bale, as it bounds fiercely toward them; and just at the right moment two men, with infinite dexterity of hand and certainty of eye, strike their hooks firmly into the bagging—holding ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... it was not an occasion for formalities, was it?' He gave a sudden, mirthless laugh. I thought him flushed and excitable: yet, seen in a normal light, he was in some respects a pleasant surprise, the remarkable conformation of the head giving an impression of intellectual power and restless, almost ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... kjoekkenmoedding (kitchen remains) of Denmark, of the same epoch, we find the remains of a dog, which, according to Rutymeyer, belongs to a breed which is constant up to its least details, and which is of a light and elegant conformation, of medium size, with a spacious and rounded cranium and a short, blunt muzzle, and a medium sized jaw, the teeth of which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... be conceived that by submitting themselves to such gymnastics from infancy, certain men, already predisposed by atavism or a peculiar conformation, might succeed in doing things that would seem impossible to the common run of mortals. Do we not daily see acrobats remaining head downward for a length of time that would suffice to kill 99 per cent, of their spectators through congestion if they were to place themselves in the same posture? ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... prominency of his nose. They insisted that both were artificial, the first they said, was produced when he was an infant, by dipping him in milk, and they insisted that his nose had been pinched every day, till it had acquired its present unsightly and unnatural conformation. On his part, without disputing his own deformity, he paid them many compliments on African beauty. He praised the glossy jet of their skins, and the lovely depression of their noses; but they said, that flattery, or as they emphatically termed it, honey-mouth, was not esteemed ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... take her stand upon that. So our god, or gods rather, till we were twelve years old, were hell, the rod, the ten commandments, and public opinion. Yet under them, not they, but something deeper far, both in her and us, preserved us pure. Call it natural character, conformation of the spirit,—conformation of the brain, if you like, if you are a scientific man and a phrenologist. I never yet could dissect and map out my own being, or my neighbour's, as you analysts do. To me, I myself, ay, and each person round me, seem one inexplicable ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... it be, navigable for anything but the smallest canoes. The only thing remarkable about it is that it abounds in crocodiles, but not one hippopotamus was seen; which may be taken as another evidence of its shallowness. The bays to the east of the Rusizi are of the same conformation as those on the west. Carefully judging from the width of the several bays from point to point, and of the several spits which separate them, the breadth of the lake may be said to be about twelve or fourteen miles. Had ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... three kinds of impotency—viz., that which proceeds from frigidity; that which is caused by sorcery (ligature or point-tying), and that which proceeding from some defect of conformation is properly designated as impotentia coeundi. The different lends of impotency may be thus classed—1. Those which are proper to men; 2. Those proper to women, and 3. Those ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... continues M. Ronsard's report: "M. Ronsard croit devoir penser, d'apres la conformation generale et la couleur de la partie du continent voisine, qu'elle est d'une nature semblable et volcanique. C'eut ete, sans doute un objet d'autant plus important a verifier, que, jusqu'alors, nous n'avions rien pu voir de volcanique sur ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... The peculiar conformation of the Roman empire, while it facilitated in many respects its growth and final settlement under the dominion of the Capitol, led by a process not less certain, and still more rapid, to its ruin, when that empire was fully extended. If any one will look at the map, he will see that ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... which dished this, as they have dished ninety-nine out of every hundred of schemes which were undertaken during the guerilla war. The first of these three lay in the fact that the strategy was a conformation to the enemy's movements. This naturally gave him time to think and to develop his counter-move, with all advantages in the balance. No. 2 is to be found in the timidity of certain of the column commanders. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... very brief notice of the above varieties of fish sufficient,—they have been described over and over again by much abler pens than mine, and I advise all those who are desirous of minute details, as to their conformation and habits, to have recourse to one of the published Histories of British Fishes,[2] indeed all the above fish and their varieties have been faithfully and naturally described in (I take it for granted) every angling ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... a long clutch forward and grasped the upper jaw of the gavial. During the struggle this had been frequently wide agape, almost pointing vertically upward, as is customary with reptiles of the lizard kind, the singular conformation of the cervical vertebrae enabling them to open their jaws thus widely. One might have supposed that, in thus taking hold, the gorilla had got its hand into a terrible trap, and that in another instant its fingers would be caught between the quickly-closing teeth of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... destroy Northern commerce, the advantage was clearly with the South. From Cape Henry to the Rio Grande the Navy of the United States was called upon to create an effective blockade against all ingress and egress. The conformation of the coast, which along great distances prevented the entrance and exit of ocean-going vessels, materially aided in the task, but it was still such a one as had never before been attempted in the naval history of the world. The line to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the boss of pirouettiveness is strangely wanting in human conformation, and that there is consequently all the excuse of ignorance for the wild enthusiasm lavished by London on the operative class. Ten guineas per night—five hundred for the season—is the price exacted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various |
