"Dorsal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirit; but the foreign builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar feeling in this, and gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of its back, and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like the dorsal fins and spines of a fish: but our spikes have a dull, screwed on, look; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machinery; and our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if they were meant to catch ashes ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... seven days' incubation inject that amount of the culture corresponding to 1 per cent. of the body-weight of a healthy frog, into the reptile's dorsal lymph sac. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... The dorsal ridge of the Hindu Kush has here a mean elevation of some 16,000 feet, and this great mountain of Tirach Mir stands on a southward spur from the main range from which it towers up thus 9,000 feet above the latter. The head of the Dura Pass, which leads to Zebak and Ishkashim, is a little ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... is difficult to believe that the fore-legs are not longer than the hind-legs. They are not so, however, for the greater apparent length results from the remarkable depth of the chest, the great length of the processes of the anterior dorsal vertebrae, and the corresponding length and position of the shoulder blade, which is relatively the longest and narrowest of all mammalia. In the simple walk the neck is stretched out in a line with the back, which gives them an awkward appearance; this is greatly diminished when the animals ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Russell, who was an expert swimmer, volunteered to dive for some conchs and shell-fish; oysters there were none. Asking us to keep a sharp lookout on the surface of the water for sharks, which generally swim with the dorsal fin exposed, he went down and brought up a couple of live conchs about the size of a man's fist. Breaking the shell, we drew the quivering body out. Without its coat it looked like a huge grub, and not more inviting. The general asked ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... the captain, who was now on deck; "he has not yet seen you. The boat, if possible, will get between you and him. Strike out, lads, for God's sake!" My heart stood still: I felt weaker than a child as I gazed with horror at the dorsal fin of a large shark on the starboard quarter. Though in the water, the perspiration dropped from me like rain: the black was striking out like mad ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the Bay of Rainbows, that they were capable of producing works of art and contrivance.... They possessed wings of great expansion, similar in construction to those of the bat, being a semi-transparent membrane united in curvilinear divisions by means of straight radii, united at the back by the dorsal integuments. But what astonished us very much was the circumstance of this membrane being continued from the shoulders to the legs, united all the way down, though gradually decreasing in width' (very much as Fuseli ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... heads while they waited for the carrion, all was still around the camp. But it was different out upon the rose-tinted waters of the central lake. It boiled and heaved with strange life. Great slate-colored backs and high serrated dorsal fins shot up with a fringe of silver, and then rolled down into the depths again. The sand-banks far out were spotted with uncouth crawling forms, huge turtles, strange saurians, and one great flat creature like a writhing, ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... abounds to such a degree, that, as they are not much esteemed, I have known them sold at thirty for a penny. It keeps near the bottom commonly, at no great distance from land; but sometimes multitudes will mount together to the surface; and move along with the first dorsal fin above the water: they will even quit their native element, and spring to the distance of a yard; thus imitating the flying gurnard, though not to the same extent. In summer they are found basking in the sun, perhaps asleep, as they will at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... pertinacious enemy still maintained his hold, and was evidently getting the advantage of him. Much alarm seemed to be felt by the many other whales around. These "killers," as they are called, are of a brownish colour on the back, and white on the belly, with a long dorsal fin. Such was the turbulence with which they passed, that a good view could not be had of them to make out more nearly the description. These fish attack a whale in the same way as dogs bait a bull, and worry him to death. They are armed ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... supply food enough for his growing body. There were times when he felt decidedly hungry. And other changes had come while he lay and waited in the gravel. The embryonic fin which had made his tail so like a paddle was gone, the true dorsal and caudal and anal fins had taken their proper shape, and he looked a little less like a tadpole and a little more like a fish. He was stronger than he had been at first, and he was losing his dread of the sunlight; and so at last he left the gravel-bed, to seek his rightful place in the world ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... crew for he cast many furious and malicious glances at the vessel. Once more he backed off fur a charge to swallow thim an' this toime succeeded in holdin' thim in be a nate trick. Instid av turnin' partly on his side an' showin' his dorsal fin afther he had swallowed he kept bottom up and swam slowly away waggin' av his tail with a gratified air while a huge grin ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... An Anglo-Saxon term for boat or vessel. Also a broad-bodied thoracic fish, with a small head, and distinguished by its large triangular dorsal and anal fins, which exceed the length of the body. It is the Chaetodon ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... nearly to the bone; the forehead is low and receding. A restoration is seen in plate 20, a, b. In addition to the missing portions of the skull, most of the ribs, half of the lower jaw, and nearly all the dorsal vertebrae were absent, probably having been dragged away by ground hogs. The bones are all light and fragile. Lying above the skull, in contact with it but supported by the ashes on both sides, was half of a large ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... as the oribatidae. Many of these he has discovered. The one before you is a full grown nymph of what is known as a palmicinctum. It is deeply interesting as a form; but for us its interest is that it is minute, being only a millimeter in length. But it repeatedly casts the dorsal skin of the abdomen. Each skin is bordered by a row of exquisite scales; and then successive rows of these scales persist, forming a protection to the entire organism. Mark then that we not only reveal the general form of the nymph, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... the profoundest depths, the large fish leave them, and, ascending to the surface, remain under the cool shade of the trees, watching for whatever tit-bit or delicacy the stream may bring with it, while others prefer a quiet saunter, or, with the dorsal fin above the water, lie so still and stationary near some lily or other aquatic plant, that they ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... axolotl, which latter name has remained in use, in Mexico and elsewhere, to the present day. But for its large size—it grows to a length of eleven inches—it is a nearly exact image of the British newt larvae. It has the same moderately long, plump body, with a low dorsal crest, the continuation of the membrane bordering the strongly compressed tail; a large thick head with small eyes without lids and with a large pendent upper lip; two pairs of well-developed limbs, with free digits; and above all, as the most characteristic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the same instant, and I have often seen even small snakes glide as fast as I could walk), seems to involve a vibration of the scales quite too rapid to be conceived. The motion of the crest and dorsal fin of the hippocampus, which is one of the intermediate types between serpent and fish, perhaps gives some resemblance of it, dimly visible, for the quivering turns the fin into a mere mist. The entrance of the two barbs of a bee's sting by alternate motion, "the teeth ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... provisionally to E. grandis. The dentition is larger and heavier, and the ridges and depressions on the dorsal surface of the rostrum are more pronounced than in Recent E. fuscus. The P4-M3 length is 6.1 (approximately 6.1 in the holotype of grandis, less in fuscus); least interorbital constriction, 4.2 (4.3 in the ...
— Pleistocene Bats from San Josecito Cave, Nuevo Leon, Mexico • J. Knox Jones, Jr.
... all my courage, and being tired of holding on by the spar, resolved to mount upon his back, which I accomplished without difficulty, and I found the seat on his shoulders before the dorsal fin, not only secure but very comfortable. The animal, unaccustomed to carry weight, made several attempts to get rid of me, but not being able to sink I retained my seat. He then increased his velocity, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... relieved my mind considerably; and laying aside the bison-skin, I asked him to have the goodness to examine the localities, with some particularity, about the termination of the dorsal bone, in order to ascertain if there were any encouraging signs to be discovered. Captain Poke put on his spectacles, for time had brought the worthy mariner to their use, as he said, "whenever he had occasion to read fine print"; and, after some time, I had the satisfaction ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... beyond the grey Church and Vicarage of Bleakirk it extends, forming the northern arm of the small fishing-bay, and protecting it from the full set of the tides. Towards its end it breaks away sharply, and terminates in a dorsal ridge of slate-coloured rock that runs out for some two hundred feet between the sands we call the Twin Brothers. Of these, that to the south, and inside the bay, is motionless, and bears the name of the 'Dead-Boy;' but the 'Quick-Boy,' ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... flat, oily sea as it was then! So transparent that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... astonished that a woman should show so much intelligence, and so, raising my dorsal spine, I began to rub up against her legs and to purr lovingly with the deepest chords of ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... across the petals and a foot across the dorsal sepal!" said the young man in a kind of gasp, "and a Cypripedium! Sir, surely ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... inoculating-filament, and two side-pieces, which together constitute a scabbard. The two latter are more substantial, are hollowed out like the sides of a groove and, when uniting, form a complete groove in which the filament is sheathed. This bivalvular scabbard adheres loosely to the dorsal part; but, farther on, at the tip of the abdomen and under the belly, it can no longer be detached, as its valves are welded to the abdominal wall. Here, therefore, we find, between the two joined protecting parts, a simple trench in ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... deteriorated in the upper part of the neck, between the great trochanter and its head. A fibula in its natural state. A radius also complete. The os sacrum in bad condition. The coccyx. Two lumbar vertabrae. One cervical and two dorsal vertabrae. Two calcanea. One bone of the metacarpus. Another of the metatarsus. A fragment of the frontal or coronal bone, containing half of an orbital cavity. A middle third of the tibia. Two more fragments of tibia. Two astragoli. One upper portion of shoulder-blade. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... finer development, as a rule, than the white woman. We may, in part, discover the cause for this in the prevalence of the custom, already alluded to, of the mother carrying her offspring on her back, which, with its not undue strain on the dorsal muscles, no doubt, promotes and conserves muscular strength. The Indian woman being commonly a wife and mother before a really full maturity has been reached, or any absolute unyieldingness of form been contracted, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Dos, quelque frequent qu'il soit, n'est guere une maladie proprement dite, mais plutot un symptome de la plus haute importance, comme il indique par le centre dorsal du grand nerf sympathique, qu'il y a une affection des organes generateurs qu'on fera bien de ne point negliger. Aussitot que ces affections ou uterines, ou ovariennes ou renales sont gueries par l'emploi de Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, ce mal de dos ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... water, (the day he laid the sloop ashore) he attempted to get some swans, but met with none that could not fly. He saw several large fish, or animals that came up to the surface of the water to blow, in the manner of a porpoise, or rather of a seal, for they did not spout, nor had they any dorsal fin. The head also strongly resembled the bluff-nosed hair seal, but their size was greater than any which Mr. Flinders had seen before. He fired three musket balls into one, and Bong-ree threw a spear into another; but they sunk, and were not seen again. These animals, which perhaps ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... times been tried of marking the salmon after spawning and watching for their return in after years. After some experiments, the mode finally fixed upon as best was to attach a light platinum tag to the rear margin of the dorsal fin by means of a fine platinum wire. The tags were rolled very thin, cut about half an inch long and stamped with a steel die. The fish marked were dis missed in the month of November. Every time it was tried a considerable number of them ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... body stood erect, radiating on all sides outwards. The appearance of the creature was changed in an instant, and I could perceive that the air was becoming impregnated with a disagreeable odour, which the incensed animal emitted from its dorsal gland. Without stopping longer than a moment, he rushed forward, until he stood within three feet of the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... 2-toothed with the teeth ending in two short awns, densely ciliated at the apex on one side, conspicuously 6- (rarely) 7-nerved, the two lateral being very strong and running into the apical teeth and the intermediate four nerves being shorter and not running up to the apex, and on the dorsal surface there is a depression, where it is membranous and the nerves on its sides sometimes anastomosing at the upper third of the glume. The second glume is shorter than the first, chartaceous to a certain extent, ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, concave, terminating in a fine scabrid ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... which connect the widely differing classes of invertebrate and vertebrate animals. To these animals have been given the name of sack-worms (himatega). They originated out of the worms of the seventh stage by the formation of a dorsal nerve marrow (medulla tube), and by the formation of the spinal rod (chorda dorsalis) which lies below it. It is just the position of this central spinal rod or axial skeleton, between the dorsal marrow on ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... example, if there is no displacement, or if the line of fracture is crossed by the shadow of an adjacent bone. In deeply placed bones such as those about the hip, or in bones related to dense, solid viscera—for example, ribs, sternum, or dorsal vertebrae—it is sometimes difficult to obtain conclusive evidence of fracture in ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... found, when I got back, that he and the sergeant had caught a dozen salmon-trout, between a pound and a pound and a half in weight. Their colour was of a light gray above, and a pale yellow below. The dorsal and caudal fins were dark gray, and the others mostly of a brilliant ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... those of most flowers, around one main vertical axis; it was thus radiate in structure, having neither front nor rear, right nor left side. But our little turbellaria, while still without a head, has one end which goes first and can be called the front end. The upper or dorsal surface is usually more colored with pigment cells than the lower or ventral surface, on which is the mouth. It has also a right and left side. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... into a minute spine curved towards the caudal fin. In the narrowest part of the tail there are not above three or four of these spines in a vertical row, but there are ten or more between the posterior parts of the dorsal and anal. Immediately behind the gill openings there are three roundish scales larger than the others. The scales of the cheeks are studded with points, which are more minute and rounded than the others, and there are no smooth intervening ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... English beluga, a word of Russian origin, signifying white. The Beluga (Delphinapterus leucas), is a real whale with its most striking characteristic the white, or rather cream-coloured, skin described by some writers as very beautiful. Like the narwhal it has no dorsal fin. Though the smallest member of the whale family it is sometimes more than twenty feet long; but usually ranges from thirteen to sixteen feet. The young are bluish black in colour and may be seen swimming beside their mother who feeds them with ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... who sat three places off, who was putting his questions rapidly to the two attending physicians)—"Dr. Meurot examined her himself early this morning. This is just the formal process before she goes to the grotto. The fracture is complete. It's between the eleventh and twelfth dorsal vertebrae." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... tarso-metatarsal or at the ankle joint. If these be passed, it usually spreads up the leg to just below the knee before signs of arrestment appear. Further, it is seen from pathological specimens that the spread is greater on the dorsal than on the plantar aspect, and that the death of skin and subcutaneous tissues extends higher than that of bone ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... an inspiration, generally diving down head-foremost; and another, called the bonto by the natives. When it rises, it first shows the top of the head, and then floating onwards, immediately afterwards dips its head downwards, its back curving over—exposing successively the whole dorsal ridge without showing the tail-fin; the well-known mode in which the sea-porpoise swims, which makes it appear to pitch head over heels. The natives regard the bonto or largest species with especial awe, and will ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... two on the thorax, one on the abdomen, two on the thighs, one near the patella; turn, please." Alfred turned in the water. "A slight dorsal abrasion; also of the wrists; a severe excoriation of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... whale: a name given to a whale which has a dorsal fin. A Finner whale commonly measures from 60 to ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Badger, the Tapir and the Rhinoceros, are respectively members of the same orders. These successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another immensely, in such matters as the proportions and structure of their limbs; the number of their dorsal and lumbar vertebrae; the adaptation of their frames to climbing, leaping, or running; the number and form of their teeth; and the characters of their skulls and of the contained brain. But, with ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... plaster, or by smooth boards, quite to the highest part of the roof, whether your rooms are finished to the top or not,—and provided with an abundant outlet at the top. This may also be as simple as the dorsal breathing-holes of a tobacco barn, gorgeously imposing as an Oriental pinnacle, or it may be a part of the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged that an adverse wind shall not prevent the egress of the rising currents of air. Mind this, ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... majestically over the vessel, and the tropic bird comes near enough to let you have a fair view of the long feathers in his tail. On the line, when it is calm, sharks of a tremendous size make their appearance. They are descried from the ship by means of the dorsal fin, which is above ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... provincially called; a lizard much like the anoles of the houses, of a rich grass-green colour, with orange throat-disk, but much larger and fiercer; or, in the eastern parts of the island, the great iguana (Cyclura lophoma), with it dorsal crest like the teeth of a saw running down all its back, might be seen lying out on the branches of the trees, or playing bo-peep from a hole in the trunk; or, in the swamps and morasses of Westmoreland, the yellow galliwasp (Celestus ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... a man, have the manners of a Chesterfield and the wit of a Balzac; you may, if a woman, be beautiful as Mary Stuart and brilliant as DeStael, and yet, powerless to "entertain," you can fill no lofty pedestal. "Position" in New York means a corpulent purse whose strings work as flexibly as the dorsal muscles of a professional toady. And this kind of toady has an exquisite flair for your greatness and dignity the moment he becomes quite sure of your pecuniary willingness to back both. New York is at present the paradise of parvenus, and these occasionally commit ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... throw your flies, two or three, a yard above the ripple, and wait to strike. But the ripples instantly cease, and on the surface of the water you see the long thin track of a broad back and huge dorsal fin. The trout has been, not frightened—he is in no hurry—but disgusted by your clumsy cast, which would readily have taken in a sea-trout or a loch-trout. They of Kennet and Test know a good deal better ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... portieres would part and through them would advance a huge bosom protruding above an abdomen cruelly corseted. Afterwards, long afterwards, would appear a white and radiant countenance, a face like a full moon, and while her smile like a night star was greeting the little Ulysses, the dorsal complement of her body kept on coming in—forty carnal years, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... swallower of stags. The word uji belongs to the Tamanac language.) To reanimate them, they must be irritated, or wetted with water. Boas are killed, and immersed in the streams, to obtain, by means of putrefaction, the tendinous parts of the dorsal muscles, of which excellent guitar-strings are made at Calabozo, preferable to those furnished by the intestines of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of the typical bicycle "scorcher,"—making each particular vertebra stand out sharply under the tight drawn skin. Dr. Jonnesco quickly ran his finger along the protuberances, and finally selected the space between the twelfth dorsal and the first lumbar vertebrae—in other words, the space just above the small of the back. He then took an ordinary hypodermic needle, and slowly pushed it through the skin and tissues until it entered the small opening ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... straightening" process used in some shires by the British turnip-hoers who on coming to the end of their rows lie down and let the rest of the women in the field walk over their toil-bent spine and cramped dorsal muscles, while as a fact it is as ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Genus, Acerina; Subgenus, Cernua, Flem. or Ruffe; Species, Cernua bidyana mihi, or Bidyan ruffe. Colour, brownish yellow, with the belly silvery white. The three middle pectoral rays are branched. The dorsals confluent. The first dorsal fin has 11 spines, the ventrals having 1 6 rays, and the anals 3 6. See Plate 9. Observation: ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... leaves are depressed below the surface and interrupt the continuity of epiderm and hypoderm. They are wanting on the dorsal surface of the leaves of several Soft Pines, constantly in some species, irregularly in others. In Hard Pines, however, all surfaces of the leaf are stomatiferous. In several species of the Soft Pines the longitudinal lines of stomata are very conspicuous from the white bloom which modifies ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... Northern India who as a means of self-inflicted penance held his arm aloft for the greater part of each day, bending the fingers tightly on the palms. After a considerable time the nails had grown or been forced through the palms of the hands, making their exit on the dorsal surfaces. There are many savage rites and ceremonies calling for the severe infliction of pain on the participants which have been described from time to time by travelers. The Aztecs willingly sacrificed even their lives in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly Lizzie's eye was apt to convey to the beholder. There was no unclean horse's tail. There was no get-up of flounces, and padding, and paint, and hair, with a dorsal excrescence appended with the object surely of showing in triumph how much absurd ugliness women can force men to endure. She was lithe, and active, and bright,—and was at this moment of her life at her best. Her growing charms had as yet ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... when he received his wound: he instantly fell; and was carried to the cockpit, where he lived about two hours.[26] On being brought below, he complained of acute pain about the sixth or seventh dorsal vertebra, and of privation of sense and motion of the body and inferior extremities. His respiration was short and difficult; pulse weak, small, and irregular. He frequently declared his back was shot through, that he felt every instant a gush of ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... to, Aunt Rachel," said Jack, penitently, eyeing his aunt, who was rocking to and fro in her chair. "Besides, I hurt myself like thunder," rubbing vigorously the lower part of the dorsal-region. ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... all but divine power of mastering the loaves and fishes, then would they who followed him believe in him more firmly than other followers who had believed in their leaders. When you see a young woman read a closed book placed on her dorsal vertebrae,—if you do believe that she so reads it, you think that she is endowed with a wonderful faculty! And should you also be made to believe that the same young woman had direct communication with Abraham, by means of some ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... which befell the normally built traveller in the land of hunchbacks is constantly being repeated. It will be remembered that he was so shamefully insulted there, owing to his quaint figure and lack of dorsal convexity, that a priest at last had to harangue the people on his behalf as follows: "My brethren, rather pity this poor stranger, and present thank-offerings unto the gods, that ye are blessed with ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... bones. In the Villevenard Cave one skull was found containing three arrow-beads with transverse points imbedded in the skull, the bone of which had closed upon them. Another arrow was lodged between the dorsal vertebrae. It is probable that these arrows had remained in the wounds; certainly that is the simplest way to account for their position. About two miles from the caves of which we have been speaking, M. de Baye discovered a sepulchre containing thirty skeletons, all of adult and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... Ka-Kow-in has a large dorsal fin shown in a conventional manner in the pictograph between the Thunder Bird and the face of the Indian girl, sister to Shewish. The Killer Whale was often used as a family emblem or crest and as a source from which personal names ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... providence, has ordained the same law to set in movement the immensity of ocean, and to effect circulation in the cockchafer's few drops of blood. In the latter we find the moving agent to be a long tube, which runs the whole length of the back, and is called the dorsal vessel (from the Latin dorsum, back). I told you that the cockchafer had no heart under his cuirass, but I spoke too hastily. The dorsal vessel is a true heart, but a heart devoid of veins or arteries, and thrown ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... a Cubist painter had they not been woven with the softest-toned native dyes—yellow, pale-blue and green and rust. Huge, fierce detached eyes, the Thlinget symbol of intelligence glared from some. Mouths with queer, squared lips and large teeth grinned from others. A school of killer-whales with dorsal fins aloft, disported themselves in rectangles of black on the back of another. From the bottom a two-foot fog-colored fringe dangled ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... admirably with the eel in the pies and other gross preparations which delight the British palate. He hath, moreover, a John Bull-like air in his broad and burly shape, his smooth and unscaly superficies and the noli-me-tangere character of his dorsal fin. Pity he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... along under the surface," he told the others jokingly. "Then wouldn't we wish we'd brought along a few bombs—the kind they dropped on that Hun bridge the night we went with the raiders. Right now I could almost imagine that shark's dorsal-fin was a periscope ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... fire. It seemed to the boy as if he were never going to pull the trigger, but the old gunner knew the exact moment, and just as the whale was about to 'sound' the back heaved up slightly, revealing the absence of a dorsal fin, and thus determining that it was a devil-whale in truth; at that instant ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Leaflets oval, glabrous, entire. Calyx, 5 unequal petaloid segments, imbricated, caducous. Corolla white, 5 unequal petals. Stamens inserted on the border of a disc, unequal, 5 opposite the petals bearing anthers, 5 alternate without anthers. Anthers dorsal, unilocular. Ovary pedunculate, lanceolate, unilocular, with many ovules in 2 series, inserted on the parietal placent. Fruit a pod terminating in a beak, 3-valved. Seeds numerous, very large, winged, embedded ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... immediately fatal (as happens in judicial hanging). When the injury is below the fourth, the diaphragm continues forcibly in action, but the lungs are imperfectly expanded, and life will not be maintained for more than a day or two. When the injury is in the dorsal region, there is paralysis of the legs and of the sphincters of the bladder and rectum, but power is retained in the arms and the upper intercostal muscles act, the extent of paralysis depending on the level of the lesion. In injuries to the lumbar region the legs may be partly paralysed, and ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... coming toward the swimmer like an arrow at its mark, was a great black dorsal fin which bespoke the presence of the ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... meet, the edges cut a hook like nippers. The Ngwesi seems to be a very ravenous fish. It often gulps down the Konokono, a fish armed with serrated bones more than an inch in length in the pectoral and dorsal fins, which, fitting into a notch at the roots, can be put by the fish on full cock or straight out,—they cannot be folded down, without its will, and even break in resisting. The name "Konokono," elbow-elbow, is given it from a resemblance its extended fins are supposed to bear to a man's elbows ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching thoughts and quivering lips. But his sorrow was not for Izz. That evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home. It was neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of her heart, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... appear to be the upper and under surfaces of the sole, are really the right and left sides, and this can easily be proved by a careful examination of the body, which, if it be placed on edge will be found to have a back or dorsal fin, and a pair of breast fins—one on either side, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... first, that he does not wish me to form any connection with Tyrrell; secondly, from Warburton's sarcasm, and his glance of reply, that there is but little friendship between those two, whatever be the intimacy; and, thirdly, that Warburton, from his dorsal positions, so studiously preserved, either wished to be uncivil or unnoticed." The latter, after all, was the most probable; and, upon the whole, I felt more than ever convinced that he was the person I ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inches long; and is of a dirty yellowish colour, veined with purple. On each side of the lower surface, or foot, there is a broad membrane, which appears sometimes to act as a ventilator, in causing a current of water to flow over the dorsal branchiae or lungs. It feeds on the delicate seaweeds which grow among the stones in muddy and shallow water; and I found in its stomach several small pebbles, as in the gizzard of a bird. This slug, when disturbed, emits a very fine purplish-red fluid, which ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Islands there formed during the rains and where the wild ass (Equus Onager, Khar-gadh, in Pers. Gor-khar) still breeds. This would explain the "stallions of the sea" and we find traces of the ass blood in the true Kathiawar horse, with his dun colour, barred legs and dorsal stripe. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... back, posteriority; rear rank, rear guard; background, hinterland. occiput [Anat.], nape, chine; heels; tail, rump, croup, buttock, posteriors, backside scut^, breech, dorsum, loin; dorsal region, lumbar region; hind quarters; aitchbone^; natch, natch bone. stern, poop, afterpart^, heelpiece^, crupper. wake; train &c (sequence) 281. reverse; other side of the shield. V. be behind &c adv.; fall astern; bend backwards; bring up the rear. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... swift-flying terns, the broad shield of the sea, and the purple mountains. Close to the islet what I took to be the tip of a shark's fin appeared. It seemed to be cutting quick circles, rising and dipping as does the dorsal fin when a shark is closely following, or actually bolting its prey. As the boat approached, the insignia of a voracious shark changed to the spent Ulysses, making forlorn and ineffectual efforts to rise. Once again, however, the fearsome presence ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... I remarked as he pursued the lost articles over the floor, that he wore a microscope strapped in a leathern case, and a geological hammer belted to his side. He walked as if habituated to swimming, and when he shrugged his shoulders I expected to see a dorsal fin burst out of the back of his jacket. He might have been sixty years of age, but looked much older, and behaved like a well-born person, though, superficially judged, he might have ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... his nose. He was as handsome a youngster as you would wish to see, slender, gracefully tapering to the base of the broad, powerful tail, wide-finned, radiant in silver and blue-green, and with a splendid crest-like dorsal fin of vivid ultramarine extending almost the whole length of his back. His eyes were large, and blazed with a savage fire. Hanging poised a few feet above the tops of the waving, rose-and-purple sea-anemones and the bottle-green trailers of seaweed, every fin tense and quivering, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... examine them at your leisure. I have thus stood over them half an hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand approached their ova, and have even taken them gently out of the water with my hand; though this cannot be accomplished by a sudden movement, however dexterous, for instant warning is conveyed to them through their denser element, but only by letting ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... that Bianconi was already beginning to think about the matter. When asked, not long before his death, how it was that he had first thought of starting his extensive Car establishment, he answered, "It grew out of my back!" It was the hundred weight of pictures on his dorsal muscles that stimulated his thinking faculties. But the time for starting his great experiment had not ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... horizontal position of the original median plane of symmetry. The principal adaptive characters are: both eyes and the pigmentation on the side which is uppermost in the natural position, lower side without eyes and colourless; dorsal and ventral fins continuous and extending nearly the whole length of the dorsal and ventral edges; dorsal fin extending forwards on the head, not along the morphological median line, which is between the eyes, but between the more dorsal eye and the lower side ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... your hat you need not at the same time bend the dorsal vertebr' of your body, unless you wish to be very reverential, as ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... the submarines show but a foot or two above the surface—a sinister black spot on the water, like the dorsal fin of a shark, that suggests but does not reveal the cruel power below; for an instant the knob lingers above the surface while the steersman gets his bearings, and then it sinks in a swirling eddy, leaving no mark showing ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... the spawning period. Taking his "net and coble," he fished the river for the special purpose, and all the spawned grilse of 4 lb. weight were marked by putting a peculiarly twisted piece of wire through the dorsal fin. They were immediately thrown into the river, and of course disappeared, making their way downwards with other spawned fish towards the sea. "In the course of the next summer we again caught several of those fish which we had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... in weight. The ford has a marly or shaly bottom, and the stream is quick and clear, conditions such as this famous fish, described by Dr. Fleming as the "grey salmon," has a liking for. It has grey longitudinal lines—hence its name—and a violet-coloured dorsal fin barred with brown; it is best in the winter and early spring months, and spawns in those of April and May. The French, who denounce the chub as "un villain," pronounce the grayling "un chevalier." And Gesner says, that in his country, which ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... the parts within, we find the nervous cord, consisting of two chains of swellings, or nerve-knots, resting upon the floor or under side of the body; and the heart, or dorsal vessel, situated just under the skin of the back; and in looking at living caterpillars, such as the cut-worm, and many thin-skinned aquatic larvae, we can see this long tubular heart pulsating about as often as our own heart, and when the insect is held against its will, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... ingredients of the Barwan gravel, many of trap and basalt. Very old and dry grass only, could be had for the cattle. In the pond were small fishes of a different form from any we had seen, having a large forked tail, only two or three spikes in the dorsal fin, and a large jet-black eye within a broad silvery ring. Mr. Stephenson found three crabs, apparently identical with those about the inlets near Sydney. Latitude, 23 deg. 37' 51". S. Thermometer, at sunrise, 46 deg.; at noon, 73 deg.; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... three of the hawksbill kind. The last, I believe, is undescribed: it is certainly not the one (Caretta imbricata) producing the greater part of the tortoise-shell of commerce, and which is not rare in Torres Strait, distinguished by having the posterior angle of each dorsal plate projecting, so as to give a serrated appearance to the margin of the carapace which, in the present species is quite smooth. The green turtle averaged 350 pounds each, and the hawksbills about 250 pounds. Although a strong prejudice existed against the hawksbill as an article of ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... all, this is neither here nor there. You have accustomed yourself to the narrow dorsal strip that is all New York to you. Therein are contained the means of meeting your every need, and of gratifying your every taste. There are your shops, your clubs, your libraries, your schools, your theatres, ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... segment. This luminous aspect of the stern is characteristic of the entire Glow-worm tribe, independently of sex and season. It appears upon the budding grub and continues throughout life unchanged. And we must not forget to add that it is visible on the dorsal as well as on the ventral surface, whereas the two large belts peculiar to the female ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... obtained by Mr. Caldwell at Yen-ping are even more surprising. The old female is coal black, but the young male is distinctly brownish-black with a chestnut stripe from the mane to the tail along the mid-dorsal line where the hairs of the back form a ridge. The horns of the female are nearly parallel for half their extent and approach each other at the tips; their surfaces are remarkably smooth. The horns of the young male diverge like a V from the skull and are very heavily ridged. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... attached to the processes of the vertebrae, and inclose the breast and abdomen. Some kinds, as the rays, have no ribs; whilst others, as the sturgeon and eel, have very short ones. Between the pointed processes of the vertebrae are situated the bones which support the dorsal (back) and the anal (below the tail) fins, which are connected with the processes by a ligament. At the breast are the sternum or breastbone, clavicles or collar-bones, and the scapulae or shoulder-blades, on which the pectoral or breast fins are placed. The bones which ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... I think the answer must ever be in the negative. You might as well talk to a gold-fish in a bowl-and say: 'If you desire to proceed laterally to the right, kindly oscillate gently your sinister dorsal fin, and you will achieve the desired result.' Oh, Art, what sins are committed ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... I get fifteen graylings to my own rod. Collectively they weigh just a little over thirty pounds. Swimming against the current, they take the fly eagerly; and one cannot hope to land a more gaudy or more gamy fish. Its big dorsal fin is rainbow-tinct, the tail an iridescent blue, and the scales pure mother-of-pearl. Mr. Keele has had "The Complete Angler" for two years with him in the fastnesses, and as he helps us prepare the catch for our evening meal over the coals, quotes ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... advancement in London, and another glance led Newman to suppose that she had found it. A gentleman was strolling beside her, lending a most attentive ear to her conversation and too entranced to open his lips. Newman did not hear his voice, but perceived that he presented the dorsal expression of a well-dressed Englishman. Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention: the ladies who passed her turned round to survey the Parisian perfection of her toilet. A great cataract of flounces rolled down from the young lady's waist to Newman's feet; he had ...
— The American • Henry James
... natural curvatures of the spinal column diminish the shock produced by falling, running or leaping, which would otherwise be more directly transmitted to the brain. The ribs at the sides, the sternum in front, and the twelve dorsal bones of the spinal column behind, bound the thoracic cavity, which contains the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... BIG BROWN BAT.—One big brown bat was obtained on July 23, 1952, from one mile west of Niobrara, Knox County. While not so dark in dorsal coloration as some specimens of E. f. fuscus from eastern Nebraska (Cass and Sarpy counties), this specimen is noticeably darker than a series of E. f. pallidus from Ft. Niobrara Wildlife Refuge, 4 mi. E of Valentine, Cherry County, ...
— Distribution of Some Nebraskan Mammals • J. Knox Jones
... sea, the lone, blue sea, and those who have seen him turning handsprings on a sponge lawn, or riding in his water-tight chariot with his feet over the dash-board, beside a slim young mermaid with Paris green hair, and dressed in a tight-fitting, low-neck dorsal fin, say he is a lively ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... manifested no disposition to leave our neighborhood, or in any other way showed displeasure at the trick we had played him. On the contrary, he drew nearer the vessel, and moved indolently and defiantly about, with his dorsal fin and a portion of his tail above the water. He was undoubtedly hungry as well as proud, and it is well known that sharks are not particular with regard to the quality of their food. Every thing that is edible, and much ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... mind, rather more doleful than the street. It was dark, it was dusty, and cobwebs hung from every corner. The few chairs upon the floor and the books upon a greasy table seemed to be afflicted with some dorsal epidemic, for their backs were either gone or broken. A little bedstead in the corner was covered with a spread made of New York Heralds, with their ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... soon after these seizures. On a Friday she bled from the left side of her chest. On the following Friday this flow was renewed, and in addition, blood escaped from the dorsal surfaces of both feet; and on the third Friday, not only did she bleed from the side and feet, but also from the dorsal and palmar surface of both hands. Every succeeding Friday the blood flowed from these places, and finally other points of exit were ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... circumstances would allow the passage of dissolved granule substance into the neighbourhood to be followed. Kanthack and Hardy have succeeded in demonstrating the secretory nature of the eosinophil granules of the frog. When, for example, anthrax bacilli are introduced into the dorsal lymph sac of the frog they exert a positive chemiotaxis on the eosinophil cells. The latter come in contact with the bacilli, and remain for some time attached to them. During this period Kanthack and Hardy observed ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... must have stood in his no-stockings eight feet four inches. This, I may add, will be warranted as authentic, in so far that I made him myself out of at least eighteen or twenty big specimens, with a few slight "divergencies" I may call them, such as putting in eight more dorsal vertebrae than the regulation, and that the right femur is two inches longer than the left. The inferior maxillary, too, was stolen from a "Pithacus Satyrus" in the Cork Museum by an old friend, since transported ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... ring, at the tip of the abdomen, on the dorsal surface. If your capture be an Halictus, there will be here a smooth and shiny line, a narrow groove along which the sting slides up and down when the insect is on the defensive. This slide for the unsheathed weapon denotes some member of the Halictus tribe, without distinction ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... declining sun warned us that it was time to take our departure from the cave, when, at no great distance from us, we saw the back, or dorsal fin of a monstrous shark above the surface of the water, and his whole length visible beneath it. We looked at him and at each other with dismay, hoping that he would soon take his departure, and go in search of other prey; but the rogue swam to and fro, just like ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... lip is very large, thick, and as it turns down suddenly at right angles with the head, it much resembles an elephant's trunk shorn off at the mouth. Its length averages from eight to fourteen feet; there is no dorsal fin, and the tail is horizontal; colour blue, and white beneath. Its means of propulsion are two paddles, with which it also crawls along the bottom, and beneath which are situated the udders, with teats exactly like a cow's. Its flesh is far from bad, resembling lean beef in appearance, though hardly ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... looping their bodies like geometrid caterpillars or leeches, as well as by creeping on their setae. The mouth is terminal, and leads into a muscular oesophagus which opens into a straight intestine terminating in an anus, which is said to be dorsal in position. The sexes are distinct. The testis is single, and its duct opens into the intestine and is provided with two chitinous spicules. The ovary is also single, opening independently and anterior to the anus. The nervous system ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various |
