"Metallic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... works." Pericord stretched out a thin, nervous hand, and pressed a button upon the machine. The joints revolved more slowly, and came presently to a dead stop. Again he touched a spring and the arms shivered and woke up again into their crisp metallic life. "The experimenter need not exert his muscular powers," he remarked. "He has only to be passive, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... very volatile liquid, which appears like a puff of smoke, and is accompanied by a distinct crepitating explosion. It is probably because these insects are mostly nocturnal and predacious that they do not present more vivid hues. They are chiefly remarkable for brilliant metallic tints or dull red patches when they are not wholly black, and are therefore very conspicuous by day, when insect-eaters are kept off by their bad odour and taste, but are sufficiently invisible at night when it is of importance that their prey ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the back of the great altar, and the curtain of damask silk being drawn up by a little string, we saw sitting in a metallic maguey plant a bright new Paris doll, dressed in the gaudy odds and ends of silk that make such a thing an attractive Christmas present for the nursery. Paste supplied the place of jewels, and a constellation ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the shaking hands beneath the cap? Christopher's eyes, still on the tragically foul face, never dropped to catch the metallic gleam; his whole mind lay in dragging out the truth entangled in the wild words. The voice quivered more and more as if under spur of some mental effort that urged the speaker to a climax he could not reach but on the current ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... bulk of men would realise that a fabric of confidence and confident assumptions had vanished; that cheques and bank notes and token money and every sort of bond and scrip were worthless, that employers had nothing to pay with, shopkeepers no means of procuring stock, that metallic money was disappearing, and that a paralysis ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... speculators, with the enormous wealth which awaited them in the interior of Africa. The roofs of the houses were represented to be covered with plates of gold, that the bottoms of the rivers glistened with the precious metal, and the mountains had only to be excavated, to yield a profusion of the metallic treasure. From the northern part of Africa, impediments of almost an insuperable nature presented themselves, to the attainment of these great advantages; immense deserts, as yet unexplored by human foot, and the knowledge of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... warning to all the animals within hearing to flee from the approaching danger. The alarm-note, "tinc-tinc-tinc", of another variety of the same family ('Pluvianus armatus' of Burchell) has so much of a metallic ring, that this bird is called "setula-tsipi", or hammering-iron. It is furnished with a sharp spur on its shoulder, much like that on the heel of a cock, but scarcely half an inch in length. Conscious of power, it may be seen chasing the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... massing under pointed, Gothic towers. Innumerable are they, delicate or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, full of bells which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant iron clang to me, their metallic sounds, now stronger and now weaker, according as the wind is ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... o'er." But a St. John Long, of some kind or other, is so essential to the West-end world, that a successor must be rapidly erected in his room. Every age has its St. John Long, formed by the mere necessities of the opulent and idle. A new Perkins, with a packet of metallic tractors on a new scale would be extremely acceptable in any handsome street in the neighbourhood of Grosvenor-square. Animal magnetism would thrive prodigiously between this and the dust-months, when London is left ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... theatrical hallway of draperies and armor. It was very quiet; we stood uncertainly after the car had gone, and looked at the two or three doors in sight. They were heavy, covered with metal, and sound proof. From somewhere above came the metallic accuracy of a player-piano, and through the open window we could hear—or feel—the throb of the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hard and metallic, like the click of a withdrawn bolt, and came first from the case at his side. A second sharp rap replied from the other raised casket, then an echoing tattoo of metallic impacts rattled and clattered in the resounding room. Each of the hundreds of caskets was adding ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... He pulled out a piece of tin white mineral with a brilliant metallic luster, sparkling with curious crystals. "Sylvanite—twenty-five per cent, gold an' twelve an' a half silver. Veined in the porphyry. There's a young assayer come in last night. He 'lows it's sylvanite, same as they have over to Boulder County in Colorado. He comes from the Boulder School ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... and kicked one of the fires apart. Then he lifted the pick, and the steel point drove in and stopped with a metallic clang, as though brought up ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... which they have apparently contracted without extraneous aid. The first is their worship of wealth, their devout genuflection before it as the sole choicest gift which fate can bestow, and the second is their merciless and metallic snobbery. They have made a god of caste, and in a country where, of all other cults, that of caste is the most preposterous. The men (the real grown-up men, who may hate the big balls, but are nevertheless a great deal in the movement as regards other ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of each other; and in sciences, so many natural miracles, as it were, have been brought to light,—such as the fall of stones from meteors in the atmosphere, the disarming of a thunder-cloud by a metallic point, the production of fire from ice by a metal white as silver, and referring certain laws of motion of the sea to the moon,—that the physical inquirer is seldom disposed to assert, confidently, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... time, he could see Chifney on the handsome gray cob, trotting soberly along the green ride, beside the long string of race-horses coming home from exercise. The young leaves were fragile and green now, not sparse and metallic, and the April rain splashed in his face. He tried to call out to Tom Chifney, but the words died in his throat. If they would only put him on one of those horses! He knew he could ride, and so be safe ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and its misery; thank Heaven, we once more looked upon green trees, and magnificent cliffs of compact grey limestone tinted with various colours according to the presence of metallic substances, instead of wearying the eyes with the depressing brown of a withered surface. The road was improving under the hands of several working parties, and the animals stepped along at a cheerful pace. On the left hand were exceedingly ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... every imaginable way. These birds were all of one kind, each of them full eighteen inches in length, and of a uniform colour over the body, which was a purple, or deep indigo—their beaks only being white. In the sun their plumage glistened with a metallic lustre. They were, in fact, a rare species,—the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... swift straightening And darting below: Oblique grey shadows Athwart a pale casement. Roped and curled, Green man-eating eels Slumber in undulate rhythms, With crests laid horizontal on their backs. Barred fish, Striped fish, Uneven disks of fish, Slip, slide, whirl, turn, And never touch. Metallic blue fish, With fins wide and yellow and swaying Like Oriental fans, Hold the sun in their bellies And glow with light: Blue brilliance cut by black bars. An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer, Across it, in a tangent, A smear of ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... silver. On her head she wore a high golden crown, and under the green veil fell a long square shawl of some material which seemed woven entirely of gold. Her dress was scarlet as poppy petals, and she appeared to be draped in many layers of thin stuff that flashed out metallic gleams. For a long moment she stood motionless. Then, when she had made her effect, suddenly she threw up her veil. Winding it around her arm, she snatched it off her head, and paused again, unsmiling, statue-still, except for her immense dark eyes, encircled with kohl, which darted glances of pride ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... away and went into the shop, which was all in darkness. Ayscough, waiting, heard the sound of a key being turned, then of a metallic tinkling; presently the girl came back, carrying a velvet-lined tray in one hand, and a jeweller's magnifying glass ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a group of people gathered—cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into streaks of moisture on the glass of the cab window was like the ceasless drip, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... from the elements of the urine can derive, for example, by a simple displacement of molecules, "all this dazzling magic of colours of innumerable shades: the amethystine violet of Geotrupes, the emerald of the rose-beetle, the gilded green of the Cantharides, the metallic lustre of the gardener-beetles, and all the pomp of the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... only four digits. The creature had a high, well-rounded forehead but no chin, the face being distinctly lizard-like in contour. The skin was a dull black, with a velvety surface. About its loins it wore a short kilt of metallic cloth, the garment being supported by a jeweled belt of ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... look of gazing on the world in surprise, a smile parts her lips and her whole aspect is as completely changed as that of a butterfly which escapes from the shade into the sunshine where the bright beams are reflected in the metallic lustre of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... metallic voice became almost sympathetic, and I was pleased to observe that his harsh profession had not destroyed in him all ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... through it and above it all, clearer and clearer heard as I run hastily forward, the horrid hoarse "hough-hough"—that sound so hollow and booming as heard in the "echoing woods,"—with the sharper metallic clashing of savage jaws, that I know can only proceed from ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... over the vast space which separates them from us, and be visible on our globe now; whereas, the Bible teaches that the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago. Third: that the Bible represents God as creating the sky a solid crystal, or metallic sphere, or hemisphere (they are not agreed which), to which the stars are fastened, and with which they revolve around the earth; which every school-boy knows to be absurd. Fourth: that the Bible represents God as creating the sun and moon only ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... passional analogy? The head of a bull; but a bull with an intelligent face. Eyes which at the least opposition would glow like coals of fire; and above them a permanent contraction of the superciliary muscle, an invariable sign of extreme energy. Short hair, slightly woolly, with metallic reflections; large chest rising and falling like a smith's bellows; arms, hands, legs, feet, all worthy of the trunk. No mustaches, no whiskers, but a large American goatee, revealing the attachments of the jaw whose masseter ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... replied Stone. "From each of the three ships we received reports right up to the instant when the red area was approached. From each of the three came a vague description of the peculiarity of the ground ahead of them: it seems to glitter with a queer metallic sheen. Then, from each of the three, as they passed over the boundary—nothing! All radio communication ceased as abruptly as though ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... the houses and the cabins around it, the two-hundred-year-old church, all were silent and apparently lifeless as they set the helicopter down. Once Loudons caught a movement inside the door of a house, and saw a metallic glint. ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... dry, croupy cough, and hoarseness of the voice. The first difficulty in breathing usually takes place during the night, and once it begins, it rapidly gets worse. Inspiration becomes noisy, sometimes stridulous or metallic or sibilant, and there is marked indrawing of the epigastrium and lower intercostal spaces. The hoarseness becomes more marked, the cough more severe, and the patient restless. The difficulty of breathing occurs in paroxysms, which gradually increase in ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... Emperors made a tremendous row, trumpeting with their curious metallic voices. There was no doubt they had eggs, for they tried to shuffle along the ground without losing them off their feet. But when they were hustled a good many eggs were dropped and left lying on the ice, and some of these were quickly picked up by eggless Emperors ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the Kursaal conveyed to that lost English dove and others a note of warning which struck the senses, as does the immortal warning emblazoned on the fair brow of that beautiful college; only, in the Kursaal the warning struck the ear, not the eye. They provided French clocks with a singularly clear metallic striking tick; their blows upon the life of Time rang sharp above the chant, the mumble, and the jingle. These clocks seemed to cry aloud, and say of the hours, whose waste they recorded, "Pereunt - et - impu-tantur, pere - ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... methods and kinds of binding above mentioned, there are others of a metallic and a textile character. We find volumes clothed in bronze, silver, silver-gilt, gold, and embroidered silks, the last variety usually associated with the Nunnery of Little Gidding, without absolute certainty of correctness so far as the claim set up on behalf of that institution to be an ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the above analysis how considerably the proportions of the white metals, as silver and tin, vary in these coins, and this variation, as regards metallic composition, is so universal that amongst a large number in the same "find" you will even, on cleaning the coins, see some of them look as if made of silver, and the colour vary, until you reach some that ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... purpose we include in this description all paper substitutes for metallic currency whether issued by banks, governments or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... to toll, though there still came a ringing, metallic hum from up in the tower. Paul had snatched up a lamp as he ran, and with this he was able to see when he reached the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... ordinary temperature was quickly drawn out into a straight wire by a weight of one ounce, would, when cooled to -182 deg, support a weight of two pounds, and would vibrate like a steel spring so long as it was cool. A bell of fusible metal has a distinct metallic ring at this low temperature; and balls of iron, tin, lead, or ivory cooled to -182 deg and dropped from a height, "in all cases have the rebound greatly increased. The flattened surface of the lead is only one-third what it would be at ordinary temperature." "These ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... beckoned to their travelling companions—a lame fellow of middle age who, propped on crutches, leaned against the wall, an older pock-marked man with a bloated face, and the sickly girl—calling to them in the harsh, metallic voice peculiar to hawkers and elderly singers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which is likewise in use in the French navy, and that is the Whitehead torpedo. This consists of a metallic cylinder, tapering at each end, and containing not only a charge of gun cotton, but a compressed air engine which actuates two helices. It is, in fact, a small submarine vessel, which moves of itself in the direction toward which it has been launched, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... sinners, when air and fire and water become the accusers of those who have perverted the powers of nature to purposes of cruelty. The poem is ill composed, its rhetoric is often strained or hard and metallic, its unrelieved horrors oppress the heart; but the cry of true passion is heard in its finer pages; from amid the turmoil and smoke, living tongues of flame seem to dart forth which illuminate the gloom. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... tongues of fire, now intensely—almost one might call it heraldically—blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate, and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the background of a ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... a strain of music is heard from behind the scenes, from an instrument of glass or steel—the harmonica or Celestina stop, or Clagget's metallic organ. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Your last letter has a valuable suggestion. Your Carbon Electrodes ARE the very best now in use, and Metallic Electrodes are objectionable from the metallic influence they impart, even if no metal can be ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... voices in her, metallic hollow clangs of the engine-room, footsteps on the deck. Her ports shone, round like dilated eyes. Shapes moved about, and there was a shadowy man high up on the bridge. He heard ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... seats. The car started and then by an unfortunate inadvertency Sir Richmond pulled the gear lever over from the first speed to the reverse. There was a metallic clangour beneath the two gentlemen, and the car slowed down and stopped although the engine was still throbbing wildly, and the dainty veil of blue smoke still streamed forward from the back of the car before a gentle breeze. The doctor ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... that it was the action of the angel troubling this water, that gave it its sanative qualities. Those who are of a different sentiment, enumerate a number of waters, which become salutary at certain times of the year, by being then charged with metallic salts; the mud of which being brought up from the bottom, has been serviceable in many diseases. Wherefore they say, it is not just to have recourse to a supernatural power for effects, which may be produced ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... mild little voice. "You see I always have the extra saddle, the extra railway ticket, the extra what-ever-it-is. And—and—" Caressingly a little gold-tipped hand reached out through the shadows and patted something indistinctly metallic. "My mother's memory? My father's revolver?" she drawled. "Why, what better company could any girl have? Indiscreet?" Slowly the tip of her little nose tilted up into the light. "Why, down in the Transvaal—two years ago," she explained painstakingly, ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... varnish. When this is used a diametrically opposite effect is produced. The Violin is, as it were, wrapped in glass, through which the sound passes, imbued with the characteristics of the varnish. The result is, that the resonance produced is metallic and piercing, and well calculated for common purposes; if, however, richness of tone be required, spirit-varnished instruments cannot supply it. From these remarks the reader may gather some notion of ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... past them. Two men were seated in it; both in clothes of some really beautiful metallic colour; but the cap of one was plain, while the cap of the other blazed with ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... acid on metallic zinc affords an instance of what was once called disposing affinity. Zinc decomposes pure water at common temperatures with extreme slowness; but as soon as sulphuric acid is added, decomposition of ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... and the water has a pungent and disagreeable metallic taste, leaving a burning effect on the tongue. Within perhaps two yards of the jet d'eau, is a small hole of about an inch in diameter, through which, at regular intervals, escapes a blast of hot air with a light wreath of smoke, accompanied by ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... completely new form of the Bird of Paradise, differing most remarkably from every other known bird. The general plumage is very sober, being a pure ashy olive, with a purplish tinge on the back; the crown of the head is beautifully glossed with pale metallic violet, and the feathers of the front extend as much over the beak as inmost of the family. The neck and breast are scaled with fine metallic green, and the feathers on the lower part are elongated on each side, so as to form a two-pointed gorget, which can be folded beneath the wings, or partially ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... circumstances are favourable to the exhibition of the colour. As long as a wave remains unbroken no colour appears, but when the foam just doubles over the crest like an Alpine snow-cornice, under the cornice we often see a display of the most exquisite green. It is metallic in its brilliancy. The foam is first illuminated, and it scatters the light in all directions; the light which passes through the higher portion of the wave alone reaches the eye, and gives to that portion its matchless colour. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... thickness, technically over one inch in circumference. Ropes are made of hemp, manila, flax, cotton or other vegetable fiber or of iron, steel or other metallic wire. A rope is sometimes called a line. They are composed of threads which are spun or twisted into strands and the finished ropes have special names, according to the number of the strands, and the various sizes are indicated ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... rest slumbered about his feet, watching dreamily the night shadows and the bats. At about nine o'clock he went to bed, and slept soundly. He was vaguely conscious of a great peace within him, a great stillness of the spirit, against which the metallic events of his craft clicked sharply in vivid relief. It was the peace and stillness of a river before ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Elements of Chemistry he made use of this new nomenclature, and it seemed so clearly an improvement over the old that the scientific world hastened to adopt it. In this connection Lavoisier says: "We have, therefore, laid aside the expression metallic calx altogether, and have substituted in its place the word oxide. By this it may be seen that the language we have adopted is both copious and expressive. The first or lowest degree of oxygenation in bodies converts them into oxides; a second degree of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... attributed to Hipp a metal cylinder covered with smoked glazed paper is rotated uniformly by clockwork, a tuning-fork armed with a metallic style being so adjusted that it makes a clear fine line on the smoked paper. The tuning-fork is placed in the secondary circuit of an induction coil, so that when the primary circuit is broken an induced spark removes a speck of black from the paper and leaves a mark. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats. Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many gutter-snipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metallic colours which are almost better than chocolate itself; and the huge white wedding-cake in the window was somehow at once remote and satisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to eat. Such rainbow provocations could naturally collect the youth of the neighbourhood ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... reveals the DUKE to be clad in a scarlet satin doublet, which has a high military collar and sleeves puffed with black. His tights also are of scarlet, and he wears shining soft black riding-boots. Jewels glisten at his neck. About his middle, too, there is a metallic gleaming, for he is equipped with a noticeably long sword and a dagger. Such is the personage who now addresses himself ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... Fry and Figgins, the London typefounders, would not produce under L700 half the Nagari fount which the Serampore native turned out at about L100. In 1813 Dr. Marshman's Chinese Gospels were printed on movable metallic types, instead of the immemorial wooden blocks, for the first time in the twenty centuries of the history of Chinese printing. This forms an era in the history of Chinese ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... stood in the corner of the hut, exhibiting as she did it, a leg and foot of surpassing symmetry and beauty. By stretching herself up to her full length, she succeeded in pulling down several old cobwebs that had been for years in the corner of the wall; and in the act of doing so, disturbed some metallic substance, which fell first upon the chest, from which it tumbled off to the ground, where it made two or three narrowing circles, and then ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... that is?" said the first speaker, in hard metallic tones. "One would think you had just ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... course you're broken in to the country, but as you know a new belt and holster are apt to be viewed with suspicion and a gentleman sometimes has to draw when he'd rather not, to prove himself. This gun has been used just enough to take the roughness off the trigger pull, and it employs the metallic cartridges—very convenient. The furniture for it is O. K. And all at ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... methods of clouding, and strength of burnished lustre, in plumage like the peacock's, give them more universal interest; in some birds, also, as in our own kingfisher, the colour nearly reaches a floral preciousness. The lustre in most, however, is metallic rather than vitreous; and the vitreous always gives the purest hue. Entirely common and vulgar compared with these, yet to be noticed as completing the crystalline or vitreous system, we have the colours of gems. The green of the emerald ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the shaggy, metallic ground, and I soon had to stop and rig a sort of protection for the soles of them from a portion of the harness over my shoulder. According to the stature I was when I reached the bottom, I had descended perhaps twelve thousand feet ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... been the last improvement in the Library since the war with China had started in 1958. Shandor found a reading booth in one of the alcoves on the second floor, and plugged in the index. The cold, metallic voice of the automatic chirped twice ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... he encountered more smoke, floating lazily upward in the warm sunshine beyond an outjut of rock. As he came around the corner he heard a light, metallic tap-tapping and a merry whistling that kept the beat. Then he saw the man, an upturned shoe between his knees, into the sole of which he was ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... slam-bang of trains and the metallic howls of surface cars that herded and volplaned about them, the fat lady, now apparently gone mad, was gesticulating insanely. Yet she was but indicating, or trying to indicate, the relative refuge of a side street in which ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... copper, nickel, tin, clay, numerous metallic and nonmetallic ores), steel; wood products, cement, chemicals, fertilizer, clothing and ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... similar to that which outlines the profile, seems left on purpose for a name. The owner, who is a Frenchman, decidedly refuses to sell this gem, and you will probably never have an opportunity to see that the same Being who has commanded the violet to be beautiful can fashion the gold, crucibled into metallic purity within the earth's dark heart, into ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... diving with prodigious force and straight as an arrow, after their prey—all plunging, rising, screaming and shrieking, like some maddened human mob, the more terrible because of the ear-piercing metallic ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... without wires," went on Tom, "the air is used in place of a metallic conductor, with the help of the earth, which in itself is a big magnet, or a battery, as you choose to regard it. The earth helps to establish the connection between places where there are no wires, when we ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... combustibles beneath the pile, Mohun had recourse to the metallic match case which he always carried with him in order to read dispatches, lit the fuel, and a blaze ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... waters? Words are impotent to relate such wonders. Captain Nemo walked in front, his companion followed some steps behind. Conseil and I remained near each other, as if an exchange of words had been possible through our metallic cases. I no longer felt the weight of my clothing, or of my shoes, of my reservoir of air, or my thick helmet, in the midst of which my head rattled like an almond ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... decay—sheep skins were stored there in great, stiff bales. She went on, feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing and laughing as they hung vests and shirts and socks among the rigging, threw soapy water at each other ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... cain't affawd it.' It was atrocious. Finally I was by his side and he was again motionless, staring thoughtfully. Then I saw he was considering. In his hands, which lay twined on his knees, were a lot of little metallic oblongs. I disengaged them. The muchacho drew nearer, and with the torch over my shoulder I examined them. They were photographs, cheap tintypes. The first was of a woman, a poor being, sagging with overwork, a lamentable baby in her arms. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed to stiffen with the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... muscles. The syringe is made of glass, and has a solid glass piston; the needle of platino-iridium should be 5 cm. long and of a larger calibre than the ordinary hypodermic needle. The preparation usually employed consists of: metallic mercury or calomel 1 dram, lanolin and olive oil each 2 drams; it must be warmed to allow of its passage through the needle. Five minims—containing one grain of metallic mercury—represent a dose, and this is injected into the muscles above and behind the great trochanter once a week. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... ran into his sleeping tent and presently came forth with a pair of ugly looking Colts; for this was before the days of the convenient automatics. "All aboard, Ramabai!" Bruce laughed; the sound was as hard and metallic as the click of the cartridge belt as he slung it round his waist; but it was music to Ramabai's ears. "Trust me. There shan't be any ordeals; not so you would notice it. . . . Great God! A white woman, one of my kind! . . . All right, Ali; ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... as the Mettegang recorder, Fig. 2, Plate VII, comprises two sparking induction coils and a rapidly revolving metallic drum driven by a small motor, the periphery of the drum having a thin coating of lampblack. A vibration tachometer which will indicate any speed between 50 and 150 rev. per sec., is directly connected to the drum, so that any chance ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... may confidently be asserted, is practically far cheaper than that of silver. I do not insist upon having the gold standard, but if we are to have but one, I think that the best. The expense of maintaining a metallic currency is of course greater than that of paper; but it must be borne in mind that a paper currency is only tolerable when convertible at the will of the holder into coin—and no one asks for more than that. A metallic currency ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... shot many very beautiful little honey-birds, as well as other small birds. Of these former the most beautiful was the Nectarinia Habessinica. It has an exceedingly gaudy plumage, that glistens in metallic lustre as the rays of light strike upon its various-coloured feathers. This is the more remarkable on a warm sunshiny day, when the tiny bird, like a busy humble-bee, bowing the slender plant with its weight, inserts ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... happened. Mrs. Kildair did not vary her measure the slightest, only the sound became more metallic. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... lock which they had unscrewed fell onto the floor with a metallic sound, and Madame de Lauriere and the Police Commissary, wearing his tricolored scarf, appeared in the door, while behind them the heads of the uncle and of the lawyer could be seen indistinctly in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the experiments reported in Tables IV.-VIII. with varying conditions, I first tried the plan of using metallic points at the ends of the spaces. Thus, by an apparent difference in the temperature between the end points and the filling, the sensations from the end points, which play the most important part in the judgment of the length, were to a certain extent kept from fusing with the rest. The figures ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... injections. They are administered in the following manner:—A jar holding about a gallon of water, simple or medicated, as may be advisable, is placed upon a table or high stand. A long india-rubber tube is attached to the bottom of the jar, ending in a metallic tube, and furnished with a stopcock. The patient seats herself on the edge of a chair over a basin, introduces the tube, and turns the stopcock. The liquid is thus thrown up in a gentle, equable stream, without any exertion on ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... material makes him prevailingly a narrator. He sees and presents his subjects as wholes, enlivening them with realistic details and pictures, but keeping the subordinate parts subordinate and disposing of the less important events in rapid summaries. Of clear and trenchant, though metallic, narrative and expository style he is a master. His sentences, whether long or short, are always lucid; he knows the full value of a short sentence suddenly snapped out after a prolonged period; and no other writer has ever made such' frequent and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... so long among the Teutons, he had not become Teutonized. He was a marked exception. He viewed the nation with a metallic aplomb that at times ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... did, and the trees which had looked down on Marie Antoinette had ceased echoing to the loud, metallic, and vigorous sound, he noticed his watch still in his hand. He glanced at it automatically, thrust it back into his pocket and exclaimed, quite serious again, "Look-y-here. We'll have to step lively if we are going to catch that train back to Paris, Miss Midland—Lady Midland, I mean,—Your ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... here," shouted Boase, straightening his long back and holding his curved-out hands aloft. Ishmael ran towards him, the tussocks, dry from long drought, swaying and sagging beneath him. As he drew near he caught a whirring sound, so strong as to seem metallic, and saw a big green and yellow dragon-fly fighting in the Parson's hands. Boase took hold of it carefully but firmly by the wings, and the creature stared angrily at Ishmael with its huge glassy green eyes, opening its oddly-fleshy mouth and wagging its fawn-coloured lips like an ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... de Campvallon was strolling beside a large circular sheet of water which ornamented the lower part of her park, the metallic gleam of the rippling waves being discernible from afar through the branches ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... obovoid or turbinate to cylindric, usually few to many fasciculate upon the united stipes, sometimes sessile, brown-red to brown or blackish in color, smooth and often shining with a metallic luster; the wall much thickened by a dense brownish-red layer of minute granules, at maturity the apex torn away, leaving much the greater part persistent. Capillitium of slender threads, 4-6 mic. in thickness, brownish-red in color, very rarely branched; the free extremities ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... for a pale leprosy, which was spread over his whole body, gave him the appearance of an inert thing. His nose, however, which was hooked like a vulture's beak, was violently dilated to breathe in the air, and his little eyes, with their gummed lashes, shone with a hard and metallic lustre. He held a spatula of aloe-wood in his hand wherewith ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... dipped her fingers into a pot of molten lead, and let fall upon her tongue several drops of the metallic fluid, to the no small amazement and terror of the company; and as if to remove the idea of precautionary application, she after a lapse of five minutes, repeated the same extraordinary exhibition, and finally immerged her naked feet in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... leaf-clad towers of the elms and chestnuts. It was as if, instead of being clad in soft and sensitive foliage, they were cast in iron. No note of birds came from the bushes, no ripple broke the metallic hardness of the river, and the reflections of the loose-strife and tall grasses along its edges, and the clump of chestnuts on the little promontory at the corner of the garden, were as clear-cut and unwavering as if they had been enamelled ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the dredging machine. See Figs. 1 and 2. The battering rams, suspended by chains, are raised by hydraulic power to a height varying from 1.50 to 6 meters (4 ft. 11 in. to 19 ft. 8 in.), and are then let fall upon the rock. The mechanism of the battering rams is carried by a metallic cage which can be moved forward or backward by the aid of steam as the needs of the work require. A series of five battering rams gives from 200 to ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... meddle with that which goes on in secret; although we, as miners, cannot see the matter exactly in the same light as he did. Solid masses have grown like the rest of us; and who can say whether they may not enliven and further the shooting and coalescing of the metallic particles round ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Italics being his own:—"What is heat? Is there any such thing as an igneous fluid? Is there anything that with propriety can be called caloric? We have seen that a very considerable quantity of heat may be excited by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given off in a constant stream, or flux, in all directions, without interruption or intermission, and without any signs of diminution or exhaustion. In reasoning on this subject, we must not forget that most remarkable circumstance, that the source ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... The metallic rasp of the speaker echoed through the corridors of the great ship. The passengers glanced at each other uneasily, murmuring and peering out the port windows at the small speck below, the dot of rock that was the Martian ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... cabinet of physics is rich, and his effects of optics are managed in the true style of French gallantry. His experiments of galvanism excite admiration. He repeats the difficult ones of M. VOLTA, and clearly demonstrates the electrical phenomena presented by the metallic pile. A hundred disks of silver and a hundred pieces of zinc are sufficient for him to produce attractions, sparks, the divergency of the electrometer, and electric hail. He charges a hundred Leyden bottles by the simple contact of the metallic pile. ROBERTSON, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... "are those for which no test is known; there are poisons so destructive that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that virus from the contaminated blood and show the metallic particles of poison glittering palpably, and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Animal Fibers—Wool, Silk, Mohair. Vegetable—Cotton, Flax, Jute, Hemp. Mineral—Asbestos, Tinsel, Metallic. Remanufactured Material—Noils, Mungo, Shoddy, Extract, and Flocks. Artificial Fibers—Spun Glass, Artificial Silk, Slag Wool. Structure of Wool. Characteristics of Wool. Classification of Wool. Carpet and Knitting Wools. Sheep Shearing. Variation in Weight ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... so the chains rattled! The metallic clangings clanged and the whole array of ghostly noises sounded out in the unholy hour of three ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... that divide the properties, he will perceive at every turn the smooth and trim little figure of the wood-slaves (Mabouya agilis) basking on the loose stones of the dry walls; their glossy, fish-like scales glistening in the sun with metallic brilliancy. They lie as still as if asleep; but on the intruder's approach, they are ready in a moment to dart into the crevices of the stones and disappear until the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... left in the rags when being reduced to pulp, and thus a single button chopped up will contaminate a large portion of paper; occasionally these particles are so large that they reduce the silver solutions to the metallic state, which is formed on the paper; at other times they are so minute as to simply decompose the solution, and white spots are left, much injuring the effect ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... scene, and one that John will never forget. The grotto alone has charming features, since the walls are white and incrusted with some metallic substance that shines ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... almanac having predicted a new moon about this time, the lamps had been conscientiously extinguished. Suddenly a great globe of sound fell from an adjacent church-tower, and exploded on the night with a deep metallic boom. Then all the clocks and bells began ringing-in the New Year—pounding and banging and yelling and finishing off all the nervous invalids left over from the preceding Sunday. The little orphan started from ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... those so-called poles, to the attraction of which electric decomposition had been ascribed. He connected a piece of turmeric paper moistened with the sulphate of soda with the positive conductor of his machine; then he placed a metallic point in connection with his discharging train opposite the moist paper, so that the electricity should discharge through the air towards the point. The turning of the machine caused the corners of the piece of turmeric paper opposite to ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... animals in great numbers enliven the forests and lowland plains with their graceful movements. Squirrels[1], of which there are a great variety, make their shrill metallic call heard at early morning in the woods; and when sounding their note of warning on the approach of a civet or a tree-snake, the ears tingle with the loud trill of defiance, which rings as clear and rapid as the running down ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Inch by inch he felt his way around the smooth cylinder, so hard, so coldly metallic. Then, with a rush, he let his hands follow up the slanting thing, up to a rounded top, to a heavy ring and a shackle that was on the end of a cable, thin and taut. And, while his hands explored it ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... The water was a dull-metallic gray, broken by great swaths of purple as if an artist had slapped a brush of color across it in a hit or miss fashion. Sand of the red grit, lightened by the golden flecks which glittered in the sun, stretched to the edge of the wavelets ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... another a gourd filled with fire, the third a metallic ring to encircle people's heads, the fourth a stick made of wolves' teeth, and the fifth ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... not done for yet, however. With the strength of desperation he held on to the other fellow's shirt. He felt something hard and metallic under it, and in a new grasp included that in ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... deal concretely with the passions, it found itself impotent. Pope's "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard" rings hollow: it is rhetoric, not poetry. The closing lines of "The Dunciad"—so strangely overpraised by Thackeray—with their metallic clank and grandiose verbiage, are not truly imaginative. The poet is simply working himself up to a climax of the false sublime, as an orator deliberately attaches a sounding peroration to his speech. Pope is always "heard," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... fee of five thousand guineas, or fifty thousand guineas, I should still decline to be associated with this matter," said Tarling, and his words had the metallic quality which precludes argument. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... roughly hewn, getting worse and worse as they rise higher, till the later zigzags suggest the difficulties of the ascent of the Great Pyramid. The day was fearfully hot, 99 degrees in the shade, and the naked, shining surfaces of purple rock with a metallic lustre radiated heat. My 'gallant grey' took me up half-way—a great feat— and the Tibetans cheered and shouted 'Sharbaz!' ('Well done!') as he pluckily leapt up the great slippery rock ledges. After I dismounted, any number of willing hands hauled ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... exposed, and the successful treatment of pulp-canals when the pulp has been devitalized either by design or disease. The conservation of the exposed pulp is affected by the operation of capping. In capping a pulp, irritation is allayed by antiseptic and sedative treatment, and a metallic cap, lined with a non-irritant sedative paste, is applied under aseptic conditions immediately over the point of pulp exposure. A filling of cement is superimposed, and this, after it has hardened, is covered with a metallic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... a sharp, musical rattle rang out as it ran below, for the hollow hull flung back the metallic clinking like a sounding-board. When the cable was short-up, they grasped the halyards and the big gaff-mainsail rose flapping up the mast. They set it and turned to the head-sails, for though, strictly speaking, a sloop carries only one, the term is loosely applied ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... purpose of ink- making; and that even the addition of any persalt, such as the nitrate or chloride of iron, though it improved the present color of the ink, deteriorated its durability. The author failed to procure a persistent black ink from manganese, or other metal or metallic salt. The author exhibited a series of eighteen inks which had either been made with metallic iron or with which metallic iron had been immersed, and directed attention to the fact that though the depth and body of color ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a man for hammer and chisel. He returned with them at once. Four sharp metallic blows rang out, and Lionel was dragged forth from his place to the gangway-deck. Here he revived, and screamed for mercy as though he were to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini |
