"Elliptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... travel in long elliptical or parabolic orbits round the sun at great velocities. They seem to consist partly of glowing vapours, especially hydrogen, and partly of meteoric stones. 'Shooting stars,' that is to say, stones which fall to ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... the Doric order (Figs. 26, 27) consists of a tapering shaft rising directly from the stylobate or platform and surmounted by a capital of great simplicity and beauty. The shaft is fluted with sixteen to twenty shallow channellings of segmental or elliptical section, meeting in sharp edges or arrises. The capital is made up of a circular cushion or echinus adorned with fine grooves called annul, and a plain square abacus or cap Upon this rests ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... yellowish-grey tinge, more or less rufous on the head, neck, shoulder and sides of body; a hairy brown muzzle, with pale under-lip; long whiskers, some white, the posterior ones dark; under-parts white; fur soft and fine. The upper lip is lobed as in the hare; ears elliptical, with rounded tops. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... with a particular jerk, by means of which the sago within is shortly granulated very fine, and becomes what is technically termed "pearled." It is then taken out and put into iron vessels, called quallies, for the purpose of being dried. These quallies are small elliptical pans, and resemble in form the sugar coppers of the West Indies, and would each hold about five gallons of fluid. They are set a little inclining, and in a range, over a line of furnaces, each one having its own fire. Before putting in the sago to ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... ft., and it measured 91/2 ft. in circumference; its weight a ton. Afterwards, it exhibited symptoms of internal injury. The inside became a putrid mass, and the crust, or shell, fell in by its own weight. The shape of the stem is elliptical, with numerous ridges and stout brown spines arranged in tufts along their edges. The flowers are freely produced from the woolly apex; the tube is scaly and brown, and the petals are arranged like a saucer about the cluster of orange-coloured ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... the experiment was unsatisfactory, and Fitch wandered to the banks of the Ohio, where opium helped him end his life in an obscure Kentucky inn, while his steamboat rotted on the shores of the Delaware. Then John Stevens of Hoboken began a series of experiments in 1791, trying elliptical paddles, smoke-jack wheels, and other ingenious contrivances, which soon found the oblivion of Fitch's inventions. Subsequently Rumsey, another ingenious American, sought with no better success to drive a boat by expelling ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... In the case of the latter the orbit is that of an ellipse, while in the case of the comet the orbit may be either that of a parabola or a hyperbola, which may be looked upon as elongated ellipses open at one end. There are, however, some comets whose orbits are perfectly elliptical, and whose return may be calculated with a ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... in various ways, experimented with regard to the resistance offered by various shapes to the air, and found that an elliptical shape was best; he proposed to make the car boat—shaped, in order further to decrease the resistance, and he advocated an entirely rigid connection between the car and the body of the balloon, as indispensable ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... May, walking in the woods, I came upon the nest of a whip-poor-will, or rather its eggs, for it builds no nest,—two elliptical whitish spotted eggs lying upon the dry leaves. My foot was within a yard of the mother bird before she flew. I wondered what a sharp eye would detect curious or characteristic in the ways of the bird, so I came to the place many times and had a look. It was always a task to separate the bird from ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... heard conversing in a broad Northumbrian accent, with a burr in most of their words. They were broad-shouldered men, capable of doing any amount of hard work. We came in sight of a fine stone bridge with nine elliptical arches, which connects Newcastle with Gateshead, on the opposite bank. Above it is another magnificent bridge; it is double, the lower roadway, ninety feet above the river, being used for carriages and foot passengers, while the upper carries the railway. It has ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the other emanation which should produce the irregular refraction, I wished to try what Elliptical waves, or rather spheroidal waves, would do; and these I supposed would spread indifferently both in the ethereal matter diffused throughout the crystal and in the particles of which it is composed, according to the last mode in which I have ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... continually arise, with hideous sounds, like the steam rushing from the open valves of hundreds of steam-engines. This great abyss consists really of two craters, separated the one from the other by a narrow ridge of rock, to which it is possible to descend and view them both. Each of them is elliptical in form, and surrounded by a crater-wall. That of the western, which the natives call the poison-crater, is a rapid slope nearly a thousand feet in depth, and is densely covered with brushwood almost to the bottom. The flat floor of this deep basin ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... 'annual State levees,' the great doors of the 'East Room,' 'Blue Elliptical Saloon,' 'Green Drawing Room,' and 'Yellow Drawing Room' are thrown open at twelve o'clock 'precisely' to the anxious feet of gayly appareled noblemen, honorable men, gentlemen, and ladies of all the nations and kingdoms of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... model, he strives to imitate his brevity; but while this quality with the Greek historian is natural and involuntary, with the Roman it is intentional and studied. The brevity of Thucydides is the result of condensation, that of Salust is elliptical expression. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... temple of Hercules (I call it old, because it was a ruin when Pompeii was entire); the Temple of Isis, the Theatres, the Forum, the Basilica, the Amphitheatre, which is in a perfect state of preservation, and more elliptical in form than any of those I have yet seen, and the School of Eloquence, where R** mounted the rostrum, and gave us an oration extempore, equally pithy, classical and comical. About sunset we got into the carriages, and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... savage." Of the cave men of Les Eyzies, who were undoubtedly contemporary with the reindeer in the South of France, Professor Paul Broca says (in a paper read before the Congress of Pre-historic Archaeology in 1868)—"The great capacity of the brain, the development of the frontal region, the fine elliptical form of the anterior part of the profile of the skull, are incontestible characteristics of superiority, such as we are accustomed to meet with in civilised races;" yet the great breadth of the face, the enormous development of the ascending ramus ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the insertion of on before a date, as "on April 30," but general usage justifies its omission. With equal force they might urge the use of in before 1789. The entire expression of day, month, and year is elliptical. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... The next day I watched a plant similarly secured until the tendril (which was highly sensitive) made an ellipse in a line exactly to and from the light; the movement was so great that the tendril at the two ends of its elliptical course bent itself a little beneath the horizon, thus travelling more than 180 degrees; but the curvature was fully as great towards the light as towards the dark side of the room. I believe Dutrochet was misled ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... (sic). (A victory brilliant for thee, sorrowful for thy country). A funeral urn upon a tomb is surrounded with naval emblems; a crown of laurel is hanging from a trident, and in a cartoon of elliptical form: W. (William) BURROWS. FUeRST. ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... The other reliquary is elliptical, and has upon its sides reliefs and inscriptions bordered with a rough leaf-moulding. Round the middle are eight medallions with male and female heads, divided into two groups of five and three by palm-trees. Above and below is a row of names; those of the top row being: "[Symbol: ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience. When we see an object, say a penny, we seem to be aware of its "real" shape we have the impression of something circular, not of something elliptical. In learning to draw, it is necessary to acquire the art of representing things according to the sensation, not according to the perception. And the visual appearance is filled out with feeling of ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... other side rounding. One end of the stick is grasped in one hand with the convex edge forward and the flat side up and thrown upward. After going some distance and ascending slowly to a great height in the air with a quick rotary motion, it suddenly returns in an elliptical orbit to a spot near the starting point. If thrown down on the ground the boomerang rebounds in a straight line, pursuing a ricochet motion until the object is struck at which it ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... any discoveries more truly original, or which required for their establishment a more powerful and vigorous mind. The speculations of his predecessors afforded him no assistance. From the cumbrous machinery adopted by Copernicus, Kepler passed, at one step, to an elliptical orbit, with the sun in one of its foci, and from that moment astronomy became a demonstrative science. The splendid discoveries of Newton sprung immediately from those of Kepler, and completed the great chain of truths which constitute the laws of the planetary system. The eccentricity ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... steam engine that I had bought. They developed about four horsepower. The power was transmitted from the motor to the countershaft by a belt and from the countershaft to the rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds—one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour—obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... slender minarets of prayer, of which the principal one belongs to a mosque said to be the most beautiful in Algeria. The interior of this chief mosque is not deprived of ornament, having its columns of pink marble, its elliptical Moorish arches, and its tiles of painted fayence set in the walls. In the centre is the pulpit, coarsely painted red and blue, where the imaum recites his prayers. Three small, lofty windows are filled with carved lacework. The floor is spread with carpets for the knees ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... serrate-dentate Mulberry A D Ovate, serrate, oblong { Shadbush { Plums { Cherries A D Oval or oval-oblong, spines, evergreen Holly A D Broad-ovate, one-sided, serrate Linden A D Obovate, oval, lanceolate, oblong Chestnut oaks A D Broad-ovate to broad-elliptical, thorny Thorns A E F Lobes rounded Sassafras A E F Base truncate or heart-shaped Tulip tree A E F Obtuse, rounded lobes White oaks A E F 3-5-lobed, white-tomentose to glabrous beneath White poplar A E G 5-lobed, finely serrate Sweet gum A E G Irregularly ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... and beyond the circle two figures on their knees, in the act of adoration. Having passed the first gate, long arched galleries are discovered, about twelve feet wide and twenty feet high, cased with stucco, sculptured and painted; the vaults, of an elegant elliptical figure, are covered with innumerable hieroglyphics, disposed with so much taste, that notwithstanding the singular grotesqueness of the forms, and the total absence of demi-tint or aerial perspective, the ceilings make an agreeable whole, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... See—Elliptical wheels on a Cart! It looks very fair In the Picture up there; But imagine the ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... some shade of brown. Coloured sporidia of this kind are common in Xylaria and Hypoxylon, as well as in certain species of the section Superficiales. Coloured sporidia are often large and beautiful: they are mostly of an elongated, elliptical form, or fusiform. As noteworthy may be mentioned the sporidia of Melanconis lanciformis, those of Valsa profusa, and some species of Massaria, the latter being at first invested with a hyaline coat. Some coloured sporidia have hyaline appendages at each extremity, as in Melanconis ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... from the end of the web for the first turn. Sew into an elliptical form three and one-half inches long for the sole. Sew two more rows without widening for the sides of the foot; then sew two rows across the front for the toe; the third row bring all around the top ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... was no window on it, but here and there slits, old embrasures of pierriers and archegayes. At the foot of this high wall was seen, like the hole at the bottom of a rat-trap, a little wicket gate, very elliptical ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... excepting through the opening afforded by a connecting tube, is an advantage in the same direction, and avoids almost entirely the racking strains due to irregular furnace action. The weight of water carried is less, and that of the boiler may also be made less; while the elliptical form of the two ends gives greater ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... valley of the Arno, perhaps twenty-five miles long, and five or six broad, lying like a long elliptical basin sunk among the hills. I can liken it to nothing but a vast sea; for a dense, blue mist covered the level surface, through which the domes of Florence rose up like a craggy island, while the thousands of scattered villas resembled ships, with spread sails, afloat ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... an interjectional expression, when it may be rendered, it may be so, so it is, is it so, &c. Sometimes ironically, sometimes expressing chance, &c.; in the course of time it became superseded by the more modern term perhaps. Instances of similar elliptical expressions are common at the present day, and will readily suggest themselves: the modern please, used for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... each side—lie in the external capsule along the posterior edge of the lobes of the thyreoid. They are flattened, elliptical bodies, averaging a quarter of an inch in length and an eighth of an inch in width, of a light brown colour, smooth and glistening on the surface, and of a soft, flabby consistence (W. G. MacCallum). When tetany follows operations for goitre ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language of the common Russian muzhik, and is therefore extremely difficult of translation; but I have tried to preserve, as far as possible, the spirit and flavor of ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... onwards to the south, then to the west, and back again to the north. If the movement had been quite regular, the apex would have described a circle, or rather, as the stem is always growing upwards, a circular spiral. But it generally describes irregular elliptical or oval figures; for the apex, after pointing in any one direction, commonly moves back to the opposite side, not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards other irregular ellipses or ovals are successively described, with their longer [page 2] axes directed ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... complication; until at last Kepler swept all these circles away, and substituted the conception of an exact ellipse. Even this is found not to represent with complete correctness the accurate observations of the present day, which disclose many slight deviations from an orbit exactly elliptical. Now Dr. Whewell has remarked that these successive general expressions, though apparently so conflicting, were all correct: they all answered the purpose of colligation; they all enabled the mind to represent to itself ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... balcony because Faust was singing through laryngitis and a cloud of fog in his throat. A critic who wrote in terms of elliptical rhythms and tonal arabesques tiptoed out for a smoke. One of those sympathetic fits of coughing swept the house. But Lilly sat hunched in her habitual beatific attitude against the chair back, the old opera flowing back to her in association that ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... days' operations to which the name of the Battle of Paardeberg has been somewhat inaccurately given. Paardeberg is a prominent hill on the right bank of the Modder, four miles W.S.W. of the battle centre, Cronje's laager at Vendutie Drift, and lies on the extreme edge of the elliptical arena on which the battle was fought. It seems to have been chosen as the official word because the hill was the only distinctive physical feature shown on the banks of the river in the incomplete surveys ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... a bright golden dot, at first. It decelerated swiftly. In minutes it was a rounded, end-on disk. Then it swerved lightly and presented an elliptical broadside to the Niccola. The Niccola was in full deceleration too, by then. The two ships came very nearly to a stop with relation to each other when they were hardly twenty miles apart—which meant ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... fight?" he said inquiringly, and as he asked his question he fitted his long, elliptical shield well upon his left arm and arranged ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... singular way. They have their apexes or points on the outer edge of the bone; and these apexes or points are so contrived, that, lying upon, and seemingly losing themselves, on the processes of the anterior maxillary, they complete, superiorly and posteriorly, that elliptical bony opening into the nose which was commenced by the maxillary anteriorly and inferiorly. The nasal cavity of the dog, therefore, and of all carnivorous animals, terminates by a somewhat circular opening, more or ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... sharp and well-defined outline, and at no time has it coalesced or been joined to any belt in its proximity, as has been alleged by some observers. During the year 1885 the middle of the spot was very much paler in colour than the margins, causing it to appear as an elliptical ring. The ring form has continued up to the present time. While the outline of the spot has remained very constant, the colour has changed materially from year to year. During the past three years (1884-'86) it has at times been very faint, so as barely to be visible. The persistence ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... greater distance than did the ancients, to account for the absence of any observed alteration (parallax) in the position of the stars during the year. He also retained the old conception of circular orbits for the planets, though at one time he considered the possibility of their being elliptical, as they are. Unfortunately for his immediate followers the section on this subject found in his own manuscript was cut out of his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Dunckley, 'produce beautiful women—it is one of the surest signs that they are going to pieces. The Romans did at the last, and Rome and England are parallel cases. As Mrs. Le Roy Jennings says, they are parasitic nations. What did the Romans add to Greek art? The Greeks had this'—he made an elliptical movement of his hands—'the Romans did that to it'—he described a circle, then shrugged his shoulders, convinced that he ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... VII. 75. "Nay, his style," says Miss Rossetti, "is more than concise: it is elliptical, it is recondite. A first thought often lies coiled up and hidden under a second; the words which state the conclusion involve the premises and develop the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... beneath strata of more recent geological age, narrow shafts have been, in many cases, sunk by means of boring apparatus, in preference to the usual process of excavation, and the practice has since been adopted in South Wales. In England the usual form of the pit is circular, but elliptical and rectangular pits are also in use. On the Continent polygonal-shaped shafts are not uncommon, all of them, of whatever shape, being constructed with a view to resist the great pressure exerted by ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... eyebrows, and long effeminate black lashes. You would have expected his dress in the city to be just a trifle flashy, not enough so to be loud, but sinning as to the trifles of good taste. The two men conversed in short elliptical sentences, using ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... and versification adapt themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles, and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere of obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obsolete words and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. But when the whole of Shakespeare's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... 7th May, 1822, some remarkable hailstones fell at Bonn, on the Rhine. Their general size was about an inch and a half in diameter, and their weight 300 grains. When picked up whole, which was not always the case, their general outline was elliptical, with a white, or nearly opaque spot in the centre, about which were arranged concentric layers, increasing in transparency to the outside. Some of them exhibited a beautiful star-like and fibrous arrangement, ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... narrator could not tell where he had become familiar with the items communicated; again, a chance correspondent failed to note the locality. In putting on paper these popular beliefs and notions, the abbreviated, often rather elliptical, vernacular in which they are passed about from mouth to mouth has to a great extent ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... conforming to Watts' rule to make the colouring suit the subject. Here there is nothing hard or defined; the spirit of the universe is merely suggested or hinted at, his great wings enclose all. The elliptical form of this composition is seen again in "Death Crowning Innocence" and "The Dweller in the Innermost," and the same expressive indefiniteness and lowness of the colour tones. In the latter effort we have the figure of Conscience, winged, dumb-faced and pensive, seated within a glow of light. ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... meritorious to be obscure; but I say that in many cases it is very natural to be so, and pardonable in profound thinkers, and in some cases inevitable. For the other kind of obscurity which I was going to notice is that which I would denominate elliptical obscurity; arising, I mean, out of the frequent ellipsis or suppression of some of the links in a long chain of thought; these are often involuntarily suppressed by profound thinkers, from the disgust which they naturally feel at overlaying a subject with superfluous explanations. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... I communicated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society a Paper on the Theory of Pendulums, Balances, and Escapements: and I find applications of Babbage's symbolism to an escapement which I proposed. I have various investigations about the Earth, supposed to project at middle latitudes above the elliptical form. In November an account of the Dolcoath failure (by Whewell) was ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... village of considerable size, and were led to what I supposed was the house of the principal chief, the father of the young man who had captured us. It stood on a raised platform of stone, and was built entirely of wood, with elliptical ends, the beams ornamented with coloured cocoa-nut plait. The side walls were solid, with windows, the frames of which were bound together to represent a kind of fluting, and which had a very ornamented appearance. The interior was divided into several compartments ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... The elliptical roof, under which the boat at first passed, suddenly rose; but the darkness was too deep, and the light of the lantern too slight, for either the extent, length, height, or depth of the cave to be ascertained. ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... contemporary writers.... All his characters are delightful. In the heat of sensational incidents or droll scenes we stumble on observations that set us reflecting, and but for an occasional roughness of style—elliptical, Carlyle mannerisms—the whole is ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... purchase of culture. The great centres had begun to exercise dominion over her. She had ever been a lonely little soul, with no confidante of her own sex. Speech had never been fluent with her, and she was still elliptical, curt, and in a sense inexpressive. She had no chatter, and the ways of women were in many directions alien to her. Miss Franklin had been her teacher, and yet, while respecting her, she had never learned to ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been a Limerick, had it been written. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the exhibits of a country in the different classes, or he may go lengthwise of the building and see what the various nations have to show in a given class. No better plan could be devised if they are all to be assembled under one roof. The same plan has been tried before, especially in the great elliptical building at Vienna. It is probable that the Philadelphia plan of isolated buildings may find imitators in the future, and then this plan of national and subjective arrangement may be carried out without the violent contrasts incident to sandwiching the machine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Castle-garden lies at a very short distance from Battery-street, which is a spacious and elegant promenade, on the south westerly part of the city. It was formerly a fort, and is about one hundred and seventy feet in diameter, of a circular or elliptical form. It has lately become a place of great resort in the warm season of the year. Everything which labor and expence, art and taste could effect was done to render it convenient, showy and elegant. An awning covered the whole area ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... beside the helmsman, holding a soiled chart in his hands; further aft on the elliptical railed platform of the conning tower a tall, angular, grey-haired man, clad in civilian garb, stood talking to the First Lieutenant. A Yeoman of Signals, his glass tucked into his left arm-pit, was securing ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... spores mixed with hyphae tissue. In old plants the tops break in, the powder is dissipated, and there remains (Fig. 833) a bundle of carbonous tubes, the walls of the perithecia. Finally, these break up and disappear, leaving the upper part of the plant hollow. The spores are elliptical, 6-7 x 16-18 mic., smooth, light colored. The asci which disappear at at very early stage, are shown by Moeller as oval, each ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... same phenomena of rapidly varying refraction may often be witnessed at sunset, when the sun, sinking into the lake, undergoes a most striking series of changes. At one moment it is drawn out into a pear-like shape; the next it takes an elliptical form; and just as it disappears, the upper part of its disk becomes elongated into a ribbon of light, which seems to float for a moment upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... the wilderness of ranges, with its waters starting for either ocean. From the first ridge we crossed after leaving Canyon we had a singular view of range beyond range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding in elliptical valleys, richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far as one could see, were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but the food of wild animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered with pitch pines, and where they come down on the grassy slopes they look as ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... is constructed a large stone basin, open at the bottom, through which springs bubble. From this reservoir the new aqueduct leads. It is an elliptical tunnel of brick, placed under ground, and marked by turrets of brick and stone placed along ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... where there was nothing which did not possess its originality, its reason, its genius, its beauty,—nothing which did not proceed from art; beginning with the smallest house, with its painted and carved front, with external beams, elliptical door, with projecting stories, to the royal Louvre, which then had a colonnade of towers. But these are the principal masses which were then to be distinguished when the eye began to accustom itself to this ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... point was rightly regarded as one of the most important on the whole overland route; for near it passed the favourite highway of the Indians on their yearly migrations north and south, in the wake of the strange elliptical march of the buffalo far beyond the Platte, and back to the sunny ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... oxygen, and thus bring about the bright red colour that distinguishes oxydised or arterial blood. The red colouring matter of the blood (haemoglobin) is regularly distributed in the pores of their protoplasm. The red cells of most of the Vertebrates are elliptical flat disks, and enclose a nucleus of the same shape; they differ a good deal in size (Figure 2.358). The mammals are distinguished from the other Vertebrates by the circular form of their biconcave red ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... utterance, while others are confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is quite mute, though some are rather silent. The language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood. (* See Spectator, Vol. VII., ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... that it is possible by just a touch to convert the noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary. The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife said and what she felt might not be the same; ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Century of Inventions' was adopted by Lord Worcester as the title of his book. And when we use the word century (as generally we do) to indicate a certain duration of time, it is allowable only on the understanding that it is an elliptical expression; the full expression is a century ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... It is of a tawny or brownish yellow color, with numerous black bands arranged transversely along the back, from the shoulders to the tail; hence the erroneous names tiger and hyaena, given to it by the early settlers. The muzzle is rather elongated, the ears short and erect, and the pupils elliptical, corresponding with its leaping, predaceous habits; if it had the characteristic brush instead of a long taper tail, its figure would bear a considerable resemblance to that of the fox. The female is much smaller, but more active and supple in its movements than the male. They ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... was anxious to secure and assured him of my ability to fulfill its terms. But I could see his mind was not intent upon the specifications for fieldrations. Looking up occasionally from a dejected study of his knees, he kept inquiring, in elliptical, practically verbless questions, how many men my plant employed, whether I had a satisfactory manager and if a knowledge of chemistry was essential to the manufacture of concentrates; evading or discussing in the vaguest terms ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... between elliptical and ellipsoidal. Perhaps some of you gentlemen may be familiar with the works of Mr W. S. Gilbert. In one of his songs he speaks of the billiard sharp who is ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... here and there scattered with fig-trees and vines, with lupines, euphorbias, and other wild growths. From the summit of the southern front we sighted the Cima de Ginamar, popularly called El Pozo (the Well). It is a volcanic blowing-hole of oval shape, about fifty feet in long diameter, and the elliptical mouth discharged to the north the lava-bed before seen. Apparently it is connected with the Bandana Peak, further west. Here the aborigines martyred sundry friars before the Conquistadores 'divided ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... in the sky. Two of them, Ollier's Comet and Halley's, are known to return into sight after intervals of seventy-four and seventy-six years, during which they have visited portions of space a few hundred millions of miles further than the orbit of Neptune. Six comets travel in elliptical orbits that are never so far from the sun as the planet Neptune, and return into visibility in short periods that never exceed seven or eight years. These interior comets of short period seem to be regular members of our world-system in the strictest sense. Their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... old ever jousted on a lovelier field than the green little valley toward which the Hon. Sam waved one big hand. It was level, shorn of weeds, elliptical in shape, and bound in by trees that ran in a semicircle around the bank of the river, shut in the southern border, and ran back to the northern extremity in a primeval little forest that wood-thrushes, ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... which were originally proposed for comparison,—We are reminded (a) that in describing our SAVIOUR'S Baptism, it is only S. Mark who relates that "He came from Nazareth" to be baptized.—(b) In his highly elliptical account of our LORD'S Temptation, it is only he who relates that "He was with the wild beasts."—(c) In his description of the Call of the four Disciples, S. Mark alone it is who, (notwithstanding the close resemblance of his account to what is ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... his brain he was traversing in order to engulf the interviewer as soon as the letter was finished. Shaughnessy never could have carried on such an interview, lasting four hours of a busy life. His talks to the press must be curt and comprehensive—or else elliptical. He had no exuding vivacity. When I talked to him—or listened to him—he was cold and exact. He left his chair only to walk erectly to the window. He deviated not a syllable from the subject in hand—the system. He worshipped that: as much as ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... and terminated by Lewis XIV. One half, beginning from a narrow strip of ground, called the Jardin de l'Infante, is decorated externally with large pilasters of the Composite order, which run from top to bottom, and with pediments alternately triangular and elliptical, the tympanums of which, both on the side of the Louvre, and towards the river, are charged with emblems of the Arts and Sciences. The other part is ornamented with coupled pilasters, charged with vermiculated rustics, and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... though the ellipse was recognized as a geometrical figure (it had been described and named along with the parabola and hyperbola by Apollonius of Perga, the pupil of Euclid), yet it would have been the rankest heresy to suggest an elliptical course for any heavenly body. A metaphysical theory, as propounded perhaps by the Pythagoreans but ardently supported by Aristotle, declared that the circle is the perfect figure, and pronounced it inconceivable that the motions of the spheres should be other than circular. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... rose from their stone seats and fell flat on their faces. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, an oval or elliptical plate of shining gold set in the wall of the cavern just above the outer ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... banneret, from banniere, banner, elliptical for seigneur or chevalier banneret, Med. Lat. banneretus), in feudalism, the name given to those nobles who had the right to lead their vassals to battle under their own banner. Ultimately bannerets obtained a place in the feudal hierarchy between [v.03 p.0354] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... (piu per la sua affezione cognobbe l'animo delle campagne che quello del re per le sue parole). It is difficult, however, in this instance as in many others, to discover with certainty Boccaccio's exact meaning, owing to his affectation of Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of construction; whilst his use of words in a remote or unfamiliar sense and the impossibility of deciding, in certain cases, the person of the pronouns and adjectives employed tend still farther to darken counsel. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Abbe Picard, and the determination of the Meridional arc, arrived at by the Cassinis, father and son, led scientific men to an entirety different result, and induced them to consider the earth an elliptical figure, elongated towards the polar regions. Passionate discussions arose from this decision, and in them originated immense undertakings, from which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... other colored, the gray being seen first to the left, and then to the right. The colors used were of Prang's series (Gray, R., Y., G., B., V.). In No. 1 the figures were in the form of a six-pointed star, and gray was compared with red. In No. 2 the figures were elliptical, and gray was compared with yellow. In No. 3 a broad circular band of gray was compared with the same figure in green. In No. 4 the figures were kite-shaped, and gray was compared with blue. In No. 5 a circular surface of gray was compared with a ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... elliptical carriage spring composed of a single piece, F, or two separate pieces, E E, of steel, united by means of blocks and bolts, substantially as herein ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... tracks, stables, farms, etc., is enormous. The tracks are level, with start and finish directly in front of the grand stand, and are either one mile or one-half mile in length. They are always of earth, and are usually elliptical in shape, though the "kite-shaped track" was for a time popular on account of its increased speed. In this there is one straight stretch of one-third mile, then a wide turn of one-third mile, and then a straight run of one-third mile back to the start and finish. The horses are ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... persons used to come and study it. After the great disaster when the Lodge was sold and allowed to fall to pieces, this fine work went first, and now no one examining its remains could have imagined how wonderful it was, and in its own way how beautiful. This ceiling was of wood, painted, and semi-elliptical in form, and one wet day, when we knew not what else to do, Kate and I counted more than three hundred panels. It was an arduous labour for the neck, and the General refused to help us; but I am sure that ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... cupellation in flattened elliptical buttons, adhering but only slightly to the cupel. Its upper surface should show faint markings as if it were crystalline. The presence of platinum renders it still more crystalline, but removes the characteristic lustre and renders the metal dull and grey. Copper, if not completely removed, ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... form than the preceding, more elliptical in outline, with a thinner shell and with large granules throughout the endoplasm. The nucleus is spherical and subcentral in position and possesses a distinct central granule. This may be a ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... struck it stood an extraordinary hill or ridge, consisting of a huge red turtle back having a number of enormous red stones almost egg-shaped, traversing, or rather standing in a row upon, its whole length like a line of elliptical Tors. I could compare it to nothing else than an enormous oolitic monster of the turtle kind carrying its eggs upon its back. A few cypress pine-trees grew in the interstices of the rocks, giving it a most elegant appearance. Hoping to find some rock or other reservoir of water, I rode over ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... I may notice another error sometimes made. It is said that the shadow of a satellite appears elliptical when near the edge of the disc. The shadow is in reality elliptical when thus situated, but appears circular. A moment's consideration will show that this should be so. The part of the disc concealed by a satellite ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... of the wall of the King's Palace; and this queer old lane running up through the walls like a sewer is Cuckoo lane; and that is Bugle street, where in olden times the warden blew; and here are the remains of Canute's palace, with its elliptical and circular arches and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... investigation, her garrulity was so incessant that the mayor was under the necessity of sending for the 'scold's bridle,' an iron instrument of very antique construction, which, in olden times, was occasionally called into use. It is formed of an elliptical bow of iron, enclosing the head from the lower extremity of one ear to the other, with a transverse piece of iron from the nape of the neck to the mouth, and completely covers the tongue, preventing its movement, and the whole ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... is an octagonal building, now Suleiman Aga Mesjedi but generally regarded as a Byzantine library, which has on each side a large wall arch strongly elliptical in form (p. 270). Two arches of somewhat similar form and apparently original are found in the south end of the gynecaeum of the Pantokrator (p. 237). These arches may have been built in this manner to economise centering. Still, in the library they are wall ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... Pa-Ramesu was one of these basins, elliptical in shape and walled with rough limestone. Moss grew in the crevices of the masonry and about it had been a sod of velvet grass. Black beetles slipped in and out among the stones; dragon-flies hung over the surface of the water and large ants ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... in the Baptistery of St. John Lateran, are the only examples of ophite pillars in Rome. Next to these the largest masses are a circular tablet, forming part of the splendid sheathing of one of the ambones in the Church of San Lorenzo; and two elliptical tablets, still larger, engrafted upon the pilasters in front of the high ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... uniformly polished. Between the happier passages we have to cross stretches of flat prose twisted into rhyme; Pope seems to have intentionally pitched his style at a prosaic level as fitter for didactic purposes; but besides this we here and there come upon phrases which are not only elliptical and slovenly, but defy all grammatical construction. This was a blemish to which Pope was always strangely liable. It was perhaps due in part to over-correction, when the context was forgotten and the subject had lost its freshness. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... fully, it is necessary that the setting of the stage—the mise-en-scene—be described with a certain degree of minuteness. The little valley-plain, or vallon, in which we had cached ourselves, was not over three hundred yards in length, and of an elliptical form. But for this form, it might have resembled some ancient crater scooped out of the mountain, that on all sides swept upward around it. The sides of this mountain, trending up from the level of the plain, rose not with a gentle ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in the ground and arched over, the ends being artfully entwined so as to give support to each other; the whole was covered with a thatch of dried grass and reeds; they were not larger than two people could conveniently occupy. In one of the huts, which was of a more elliptical shape and of larger dimensions than the other, was a bunch of hair that had been recently clipped from either the head or beard. This proves that these operations are not done solely by fire, as Captain Cook supposed,* ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... showing the positions and movements of the planets during the period covered by the outward voyage of the Areonal is sufficiently explained by the notes printed thereon. It may, however, be pointed out that though the orbits of the planets are all elliptical, especially those of Mercury and Mars, they are so nearly true circles that, when reduced to the scale of these diagrams, they practically become circles. The exaggerated ellipses so often found in astronomical books are very misleading. The orbits of Mercury and Mars have an ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... speech was elliptical, though he might have been surprised if told so. For once, Medenham wished he ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... well-marked nerves. Flowers yellowish-green, dioecious, growing in axillary racemes. The male flowers have a corolla of six petals, the three smaller ones arranged alternately. In the female flower the stamens are represented by three glands situated at the base of the petals. Fruit, an elliptical drupe. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera |
