"Concave" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over decks, glimpses of the Nile might be caught. It rippled passively between its banks, for it was yet seven months before the first showing of the June rise. Here were the frail papyrus bari, constructed like a raft and no more concave than a long bow; the huge cedar-masted cangias, flat-bottomed and slow-moving; the ancient dhow with its shapeless tent-cabin aft; the ponderous cattle barges and freight vessels built of rough-hewn logs; the light passenger skiffs; and lastly, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... crinoline. She had at first counted on assisting at the evocation with a trustworthy person, but at the last moment her friend drew back; and as the triad or unity is rigorously prescribed in magical rites, Eliphas was left alone. The cabinet prepared for the experiment was situated in a turret. Four concave mirrors were hung within it, and there was an altar of white marble, surrounded by a chain of magnetic iron. On it was engraved the sign of the Pentagram, and this symbol was drawn on the new, white sheepskin which was stretched beneath. A copper brazier stood on the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... cabochon cut closely resembles the top of a head in shape. Cabochon cut stones usually have a flat base, but sometimes a slightly convex base is used, especially in opals and in moonstones, and some stones of very dense color are cut with a concave base to thin them and thus to reduce their color. The contour of the base may be round, or oval, or square, or cushion shape, or heart shape or of any regular form. The top is always smooth and rounding and unfacetted. The relation of the height or thickness to the ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... crust of superstition that enveloped his powerful mind, though it may have dimmed, could not obscure the brightness of his genius. To him, and apparently to him only, among all the inquiring spirits of the time, were known the properties of the concave and convex lens. He also invented the magic-lantern; that pretty plaything of modern days, which acquired for him a reputation that embittered his life. In a history of alchymy, the name of this great man cannot be omitted, although, unlike many others of whom we shall have occasion to speak, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... was a temporary structure of boards, removed after the performances were closed. This fashion continued till the erection of the theatre of Bacchus, at Athens, which served as a model for the others. The Greek theatre was no more than a concave sweep, scooped out of the hollow side of a hill, generally facing the sea. The sweep was filled with seats, rising above each other, and ascended by staircases, placed like the radii of a circle. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Seizing each nut in his claw-like hands, he pushed it against this point, turning and twisting it as he ripped off the thick and fibrous husk. Then he cracked each nut in half with a well-directed blow of a heavy knife. For the best copra-making, the half-nuts should be placed in the sun, concave side up. As the meats begin to dry, they shrink away from the shell and are readily removed, being then copra, the foundation of the many toilet preparations, soaps and creams, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and distinguished from those of the lower mammals. If the hair has been pulled out from the root, the microscope will show that the bulbous root has a concave surface which fitted over the hair papilla, or that the root is encased ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... which we had descended. Both led in the direction of our route, and the pond we had just left was ascertained to be the only one in the little channel. I sought a good position for a depot camp on the newly-discovered river, and found one extremely favourable, on a curve concave to the N. W., overlooking, from a high bank, a dry ford, on a smooth rocky bed; and having also access to a reach of water, where the bottom was hard and firm. We approached this position with our carts, in the midst of smoke and flame; the natives having ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... the great size of the broken ends, burns for weeks or even months without being much influenced by the weather. After the great glowing ends fronting each other have burned so far apart that their rims cease to burn, the fire continues to work on in the centres, and the ends become deeply concave. Then heat being radiated from side to side, the burning goes on in each section of the trunk independent of the other, until the diameter of the bore is so great that the heat radiated across from side ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... with their horizontal strata abruptly cut off, showing the immense mass of matter which has been removed. Nearly this whole line of coast consists of a series of greater or lesser curves, the horns of which, and likewise certain straight projecting portions, are formed of hard rocks; hence the concave parts are evidently the effect and the measure of the denuding action on the softer strata. At the foot of all the cliffs, the sea shoals very gradually far outwards; and the bottom, for a space of some miles, everywhere consists of gravel. I carefully examined ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden[143]. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or concave swoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... turning. Quite as solitary and untrodden did it look as its still more stately sister, the Hoch Gall, a mountain deservedly the especial pride of the district, its lofty pinnacle piercing the sky, whilst a vast sheet of thick, pure snow hung straight and smooth down its concave sides, a huge mountain-buttress linking the lower portion of this snow pyramid to the white, glittering expanse of the Gross Lengstein Glacier—a buttress of many thousand feet, standing prominently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... I have found the comfortable, convex and concave characters often really more difficult in the long run. You must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... about 1 inch in length and scarcely 1/12 inch in width, yellowish-green, numerous, stiff, curved or twisted, cross-section showing two fibrovascular bundles; outline narrowly linear; apex sharp-pointed; outer surface convex, inner concave or flat. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... said Mr. Dickson, stropping a concave razor on the palm of his hand, "it war just like dis. I jined the church in good fait; I give ten dollars toward de stated gospill de fus' year, and de church people call me 'Brudder Dickson'; ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... the apricots up, with the convex side uppermost, in a glass dish, reserving one cup apricot to go on the top, with the concave side uppermost. Take a few preserved cherries, and cut them in halves, and stick half a cherry in all the little holes or spaces where the apricots meet. Cut four little green leaves out of the angelica about the size of the thumb-nail, only a little longer; the size of a filbert would ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... course, is permanently set to run no matter from what direction the wind may be blowing. Tests instituted with the object of determining the pressure which the wind exerts on the cup of a "Robinson" anemometer have shown that when the breeze blows into the concave side of the cup, its effect is rather more than three times as strong as when it blows against the convex side. At any given time the principal part of the work done by a windmill constructed on this ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... it stands both for reason and for speech, and it is difficult to say which it means more properly. It means both at once: why? because really they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do without it—then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its own double, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... grouped, encircling as in a zone, the visible vault of heaven. This narrow and branched girdle, studded with a radiant light, and here and there interrupted by dark spots, deviates only by a few degrees from forming a perfect large circle round the concave sphere of heaven, owing to our being near the center of the large starry cluster, and almost on the plane of the Milky Way. If our planetary system were far 'outside' this cluster, the Milky Way would appear to telescopic vision ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... existing stock of 2c purple stamps would last was not far wrong for on July 20th the first of the surcharged labels were issued. The surcharge follows a somewhat peculiar arrangement the numeral "2" and "S" of CENTS being larger than the rest of the inscription, which is flat at the bottom and concave at the top. This distinctive type is said to have been adopted to make counterfeiting difficult, though it is hardly likely anyone would have reduced a 3c stamp to the value of 2c with the idea of defrauding the Government! Evidently ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... on the market a papier mache background also adapted to any picture frame, called the "concave dust proof case." This has the flat face glass of the old style wall case, but with the square corners and much of the weight eliminated. Any of these styles of wall cases may be placed on shelves as well as hung on the ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... less than a hundred feet high, were cunningly loopholed for defense. They presented a slightly concave facade to the plain, and slanted backward at about the angle of the Tower ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... fodder; and there are nooks for pigeons in an adjoining cave. In many cases there are cisterns; in one is a well. The cisterns had to be filled laboriously. They are provided with bungholes for the purpose of occasional cleaning out. The walls are scored with concave grooves slanting downwards, uniting and leading into small basins. The moisture condensing on the sides trickled into these runnels and supplied the basins with drinking water. The mangers have holes bored in the stone through which passed the halters. There are indications that the cattle were ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... plane," because it belongs to that variety of planes in which the face is made changeable, so that it may be conveniently adapted to the planing of curved as well as straight surfaces. By the use of my improvement surfaces that are convex, concave, or straight may be easily worked, the face of the tool being readily changed from one form to another to suit the surface to which it is to ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... a result, perceived form not as an appearance, but as a reality; saw with the eye the complexities of projection and depression perceivable by the hand. His craft was that of measurements, of minute proportion, of delicate concave and convex—in one word, of planes. His dull, malleable clay, and ductile, shining bronze had taught him nothing of the way in which light and shadow corrode, blur, and pattern a surface. His fancy, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and clothing and foodstuffs mingling with the yet low-lying powder smoke and with the pall of Valley dust. Horses lay stark across the way, or, dying, stared with piteous eyes. The sky was like a bowl of brass, and in the concave buzzards were sailing. All along there was underfoot much of soldiers' impedimenta—knapsacks, belts, accoutrements of all kinds, rolled blankets and oilcloths, canteens. Dead men did not lack. They lay in strange postures, and on all the dust was thick. There were many wounded; the greater number ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... are denominated ugly. I am particularly so. My complexion is a bright snuff-colour; my eyes are grey, and unprotected by the usual verandahs of eye-lashes; my nose is retrousse, and if it has a bridge, it must be of the suspension order, for it is decidedly concave. I wish Rennie would turn his attention to the state of numerous noses in the metropolis. I am sure a lucrative company might he established for the purpose of erecting bridges to noses that, like my own, have been unprovided by nature. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... latter and then takes the form of a helicoidal or screw-shaped spiral, the rings of which, rising one over the other, occupy nearly the whole of the height of the tank. Before again issuing from it, this spiral runs into a small cone with a concave base, that is turned downward in the shape of ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... and walked leisurely up the street till he came to the dark stairway of a little public hall over a feed-store. He ascended the steps with a respectful tread and entered the hall. It was furnished with crude unpainted benches and lighted by kerosene lamps in concave-mirrored brackets on the white walls. At the end stood a table holding a pitcher of water, a goblet, and a Bible, and behind the table sat an earnest-eyed, middle-aged evangelistic preacher, who bowed and smiled in agreeable surprise at the new-comer. The room held fifty or sixty men and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... the morning breeze tempers the genial warmth of the mid-day sun; which had acquired just sufficient strength in his rays to impart a pleasant heat without oppressiveness. On such a morning, then, when the vast concave of the heavens, expanded in a perfectly spotless azure sky (such as in our foggy isle is never seen); and with the freshness of the bush developing its verdure in the odorous exudations of floriferous plants, and the blithesome exuberance of ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... be kept all winter by laying them in a heap in the cellar, with the concave side upwards to hold in the liquor. Sprinkle them every day with strong salt and water, and then with Indian meal. Cover them with ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... vases, glass, bookcases, folios, boxes, lap desks, ribbons, dresses, etc. The method of transferring beautiful designs is so simple, and all the materials requisite for the art so easily procured, that it brings it within the means of everyone. Flat surfaces are more suitable than concave or convex ones for this style of decorating, for when the surface is curved the design has to be cut to accommodate the shape, and in this way is often spoiled unless done by the most careful and skillful hand. The materials required are cement, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... of less and less false, more and more nearly true "ideas" about the phenomenon. The "ideas" are reflexes of the phenomenon, reflected in our midst as in a mirror; the reflexes may be distorted, as in a convex or concave mirror, but they suggest an ideal reflex valid in infinity. It is of the utmost importance to realize that the words which are used to express the ideas and the ideals are THE MATERIALIZATION of the ideas and ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... the ball which we less-favoured golfers dream shall some day be ours to command; the ball which starts low, rises in a concave curve, and ends its trajectory in a slight slant to the left—the low, hooked ball. It was not a phenomenally long drive; about two hundred yards, I should say, but for the apparent effort expended I have never seen ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... as monstrosities but only as the most natural of artificialities; for they are a part of a horticultural whole. To walk into a Japanese garden is like wandering of a sudden into one of those strange worlds we see reflected in the polished surface of a concave mirror, where all but the observer himself is transformed into a fantastic miniature of the reality. In that quaint fairyland diminutive rivers flow gracefully under tiny trees, past mole-hill mountains, till they fall at last into lilliputian lakes, almost smothered ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... lay a glass tube about two inches in diameter and thirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near another table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and on this table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whose optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once that this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electric waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath was audible the beating of an engine. My companion ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... at first slight. In the second part, there is a rapidly increasing effect with increased stimulus. Finally, a tendency shows itself to approach a limit of response. Thus we find the curve at first slightly convex, then straight and ascending, and lastly, concave to the ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... come nearer to me," said the old gentleman, turning sideways on his couch and ferreting out from beneath his pillows a concave snuff-box, "pray do not be angry with me for putting you to inconvenience. Bear with me for the little time I have still to live. But if you find living under the same roof with me unendurable, all the greater reason for you to seize the opportunity ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... unfinish'd laves, 15 Sips with rude mouth the salutary waves; Seeks round its cell the sanguine streams, that pass, And drinks with crimson gills the vital gas; Weaves with soft threads the blue meandering vein, The heart's red concave, and the silver brain; 20 Leads the long nerve, expands the impatient sense, And clothes in silken skin the nascent Ens. Erewhile, emerging from its liquid bed, It lifts in gelid air its nodding head; The lights first dawn with trembling ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... thine; The eagle's vision cannot take it in. The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;— It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their host within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... sequel of his words Clok'd their beginning; for the last he spake Agreed not with the first. But not the less My fear was at his saying; sith I drew To import worse perchance, than that he held, His mutilated speech. "Doth ever any Into this rueful concave's extreme depth Descend, out of the first degree, whose pain Is deprivation merely of sweet hope?" Thus I inquiring. "Rarely," he replied, "It chances, that among us any makes This journey, which I wend. Erewhile 'tis true Once came I here beneath, conjur'd by fell Erictho, sorceress, who compell'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... no measure of doubt, that the speed of which that extraordinary vessel then proved herself capable was such as no other that ever swam could for one moment cope with. Now rising majestically on the long roll of the swell, now falling into the concave of the sea, she rushed onward towards the steamer she was evidently pursuing as though driven by all the furies of ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... somewhere. Fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its last nobility ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... another form of line variety—what may be called "Variety in Symmetry." While roughly speaking the limbs are symmetrical, each side not only has variety in itself, but there is usually variety of opposition. Supposing there is a convex curve on the one side, you will often have a concave form on the other. Always look out for this in drawing limbs, and it will often improve a poorly drawn part if more of this variation ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... button at the bottom of the concave in the wall seemed to stare with wonder upon this unfamiliar Raikes, who could thus permit the radiator to swing open so heedlessly, and the inner recess ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... and, being armed with long-rowelled spurs, overcame the patience of the animal, which bounced and plunged, while poor Gibbie's entreaties for aid never reached the ears of the too heedless butler, being drowned partly in the concave of the steel cap in which his head was immersed, and partly in the martial tune of the Gallant Grames, which Mr Gudyill whistled with all his power ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... receive (though the fare is only ten Kowrie shells for each individual) furnishes a considerable revenue to the king in the course of a year. The canoes are of a singular construction, each of them being formed of the trunks of two large trees, rendered concave, and joined together, not side by side, but end-ways, the junction being exactly across the middle of the canoe; they are, therefore, very long and disproportionately narrow, and have neither decks nor masts. They are however, very roomy, for I observed in ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... is always worn by women. It consists of a segment of bamboo, 7 or 8 centimeters long and 5 centimeters high, curved while still green and made to retain its shape by a slip of bamboo fastened into two holes on the concave side. The teeth are whittled out and the upper part and sides are cut into the characteristic shape seen in Plate 9. On the front or convex side of the comb are ornamental incisions the style and variety of which depend upon the caprice and adeptness of the fashioner. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... not consider the laws of acoustics: a whisper becomes a peal of thunder in the focus of reverberation. Allow me to explain this: sounds striking on concave surfaces are reflected from them, and, after reflection, converge to points which are the foci of these surfaces. It follows, therefore, that the ear may be so placed in one, as that it shall hear a sound better than when situated ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... these I fix very strongly together by the help of very hard Cement, and then fit the whole Glass ABCDEF into a long Board, or Frame, in such manner, that almost half the head AB may lye buried in a concave Hemisphere cut into the Board RS; then I place it so on the Board RS, as is exprest in the first figure of the first Scheme; and fix it very firm and steady in that posture, so as that the weight of the Mercury that is afterwards ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... 25th we left our comfortable spruce beds and "long fires," and tracked on to House River, which we reached at nine a.m. Here there is a low-lying, desolate-looking, but memorable, "Point," neighboured by a concave sweep of bank. The House is a small tributary from the east, but very long, rising far inland; and here begins the pack-trail to Fort McMurray, about one hundred miles in length, and which might easily be ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... as it was light enough Nub looked anxiously around in the hopes of seeing some of the boats approaching from the direction of the ship; but no object was visible on the wild waste of waters, the raft appearing to float in the midst of a vast circle bounded by the concave sky, without ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... with their entablature and beautiful arches, whereby the body of the church and choir are divided into three parts or aisles. The roof of each is adorned with arches and spacious peripheries of enrichments, as shields, leaves, chaplets, &c. (the spaces included being somewhat concave), admirably carved in stone; and there is a large cross aisle between the north and south porticoes, and two ambulatories, the one a little eastward, the other westward from the said cross-aisle, and running parallel therewith. The floor of the whole is paved with marble, but ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... whose spiritual vision has been newly opened requires to be trained, in fact he is in much greater need thereof than the babe and the blind man already mentioned. Denied that training he would be like a new-born babe placed in a nursery where the walls are lined with mirrors of different convex and concave curvatures, which would distort its own shape and the forms of its attendants. If allowed to grow up in such surroundings and unable to see the real shapes of itself and its nurses it would naturally believe that it saw ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... or used in England, is a Greek idea for decoying thrashes. It is a whistle formed from two discs of thin silver or silvered copper, each the size of, or a little smaller than, a "graceless" florin, or say an inch across; those discs are—one fully concave, and the other slightly convex, both have a hole in the centre and are soldered together by their edges in the manner shown in Fig. 10. [Footnote: Since writing this I find there are now sold to boys, for the large sum of one-halfpenny, whistles formed in tin, of almost similar ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the Russian line drew back about twenty miles. For the defense of Lemberg the front ran in a concave form from along the River Tanev, five miles from Rawa-Ruska, down to Grodek and Kolodruby; then eastward behind the Dniester to Zuravno and Halicz. The marshes of the Dniester, then swollen by heavy rains, formed a good natural defense; the intrenchments on the hills north of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane, whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the woodland. From this self-contained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... shape, the Hebrew mirrors were always either circular or oval, and cast indifferently flat or concave. They were framed in superb settings, often of pearls and jewels; and, when tarnished, were cleaned with a sponge of hyssop, the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the edifice, all on one side of it being ancient, and the other modern. It was lighted by one narrow, high, Gothic window, the panes of which were very small, lozenged, and many of them still stained. The roof was groined and concave, and still gay with tarnished gold. The mouldings and traceries sprang up from the four corners, and all terminated in the centre, in which grinned a Medusa's head, with her circling snakes, in high preservation, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... were to tend the sick and provide for the welfare of all Christian travellers. The churches belonging to the Templars were usually built in circular form in imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. They were capped with vaulted concave roofs said to be symbolical of the vast circuit and concave of the heavens. Our best example is the Temple Church, London, to which was added at a later period, a beautiful Early English Gothic extension. Other ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... Apollo, known as the "far-darter;" or shall I say some fierce Maenad with electric snakes having nickel-plated skins; or shall I say some terrific modern war-god, pouring poison gases from a forest of chemical tubes? Over the top of the flesh-mountain was a big metal object, a shining concave dome with which all the tubes connected; so that a stranger to the procedure could not have felt sure whether the mountain was holding up the dome, or was dangling from it. A piece of symbolism done by a maniac artist, whose meaning ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... in this way, and to hold fast the blade of the sword, it is bound across with several stout strips of rattan which are laced closely to the wood with finer strips. The handle, carved out of the same solid block of wood as the body of the shield, is in the middle of the concave surface; it is a simple vertical bar for the grasp of the left hand. The Kayan shield is commonly stained red with iron oxide, and touched up with black ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... made flat with straight keys until Willis and the great organist, Dr. S. S. Wesley, devised the radiating and concave board whereby all the pedal keys were brought within equal distance of the player's feet. This was introduced in the organ in St. George's Hall, Liverpool, in 1855, and Willis has refused to supply any other type of board with his organs ever since. Curiously enough, the advantages of this board ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... ends, and they measured from 6 to 10 inches in diameter. Three other rows cross the Costa in the same neighbourhood separated by a few hundred yards and as they lie at right angles to the stream which there forms a concave bend, they appear to converge upon one point. This would be what may roughly be termed an island between the Costa and a large drain where water in ancient times probably ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... as good a conductor of electricity. Where tin fillings are subject to a large amount of attrition, they wear away sooner or later, but this is not such a great detriment, for they can easily be repaired or replaced, and owing to the concave form produced by wear the patient is liable to know when a large amount has been worn away. That portion against the wall of the cavity is the last removed by wear, so that further caries is prevented so long as there is any reasonable amount of tin left. If at this time the tooth has become sufficiently ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... sun has disappeared behind the western mountains, and the stars sparkled o'er the blue concave, we have been accustomed to sit down to the compilation of this unpretending volume, and therefore it is called "Eventide." O, that its pages might be read at that calm, silent hour,—their follies mercifully overlooked, their ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... from his anchorage at Sessola saw the sea white with the sails of the enemy, the blue water churning to foam beneath the strokes of his oars; the Ottoman fleet was issuing from the Gulf of Arta manoeuvring with precision and deploying into a single line abreast; which line being slightly concave, either from accident or design, resembled the form of a crescent. In advance came six great fustas commanded by Dragut; the left wing hugged the shore as closely as possible; the Ottoman commander-in-chief intended to commence operations on the first ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Lowness. — N. lowness &c. adj.; debasement, depression, prostration &c. (horizontal) 213; depression &c. (concave) 252. molehill; lowlands; basement floor, ground floor; rez de chaussee[Fr]; cellar; hold, bilge; feet, heels. low water; low tide, ebb tide, neap tide, spring tide. V. be low &c. adj.; lie low, lie flat; underlie; crouch, slouch, wallow, grovel; lower &c. (depress) 308. Adj. low, neap, debased; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the doors were covered with sculpture, its material being a blue-gray stone combined or inlaid with a yellow metal, the effect being indescribably rich. The floor was mosaic of many dark colors, but with no definite pattern, and the concave roof was deep red in color. Though beautiful, it was somewhat somber, as the light was not strong. At all events, that is how it struck me at first on coming in from the bright sunlight. Nor, it appeared, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... embarkation. In the north is a high conical mountain around which revolve the sun and moon. When the sun is behind the mountain it is night. The sky is glued to the edges of the outer earth. It consists of four high walls which meet in a concave roof, so that the earth is the floor of the universe. There is an ocean on the other side of the sky, constituting the "waters that are above the firmament." The space between the celestial ocean and the ultimate roof ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... upon him may be shortly described by the fact that the female choristers were placed in an adjoining room, and that he only fired at their reflection thrown forward into that in which he slept by the effect of a concave mirror. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... suspended in a curve across the shirt fronts, under and below the beads. As many as ten or more are worn by one woman. These disks are made by men, who may be called "jewelers to the tribe," from silver quarters and half dollars. The pieces of money are pounded quite thin, made concave, pierced with holes, and ornamented by a groove lying just inside the circumference. Large disks made from half dollars may be called "breast shields." They are suspended, one over each breast. Among the disks other ornaments are often suspended. One young woman I noticed gratifying her vanity ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... mighty amphitheatre with solid rock walls shooting vertically hundreds of feet upward. Vertically, he thought—with the back of his head between his shoulders as he looked up—they were more than vertical—they were actually concave. The Almighty had not only stored riches immeasurable in the hills behind him—He had driven this passage Himself to help puny man to reach them, and yet the wretched road was going toward them like a snail. On the fifth night, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... dykes, their arrangements so as to present a series of settling basins, etc., a description of which would only complicate the conception. Through the larger part of the river works of contraction will not be required, but nearly all the banks on the concave side of the beds must be held against the wear of the stream, and much of the opposite banks defended at critical points. The works having in view this conservative object may be generally designated works of revetment; and these also will be largely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his shoulders, Chopin twists his whole body; where Field puts some seasoning into the food, Chopin empties a handful of Cayenne pepper...In short, if one holds Field's charming romances before a distorting concave mirror, so that every delicate expression becomes coarse, one gets Chopin's work...We implore Mr. Chopin to return ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... entrances from below, except on the inner or concave partition, from which one enters directly to the lower parts of the building. The higher parts, however, are reached by flights of marble steps, which lead to galleries for promenading on the inside similar to those on the outside. From these one enters ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... plenty where he could have climbed high enough to be beyond reach of the water even if it rose thirty or forty feet; but they were all on the other side, which was slightly convex, while their side, as the guide had pointed out, was concave, and would have matched exactly if the ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... concave body and a baluster stem with a square foot, is marked "Moulton" and is in the style of Ebenezer Moulton who worked in ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... a sharp fire upon Wayne's position. Every now and then would come a frantic cry from some stricken horse as a random bullet took effect, but few struck among the men. The surgeon and the wounded were well sheltered in a concave hollow of ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... to the conclusion that he had dropped into a sewer. To get out the way he had entered appeared impossible. He could not leap upward from the slimy, concave bottom the distance he had dropped. To follow the sewer upward would lead him nowhere nearer escape. There remained no hope but to follow the trickling stream downward toward the river, into which his judgment told him the entire sewer system ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... navetas are so named from their resemblance to ships. The construction is similar to that of the talayots. The outer wall has a considerable batter. The famous Nau d'Es Tudons is about 36 feet in length. The facade is slightly concave. A low door (a) gives access through a narrow slab-roofed passage (b) to a long rectangular chamber (c), the method of whose roofing is uncertain. All the naus are built with their facades to the south or south-east, with the exception of that of Benigaus Nou, the ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... with hatchets, and lastly flake it off as thick as they can, by driving in wedges. The sword is a large heavy piece of wood, shaped like a sabre, and capable of inflicting a mortal wound. In using it they do not strike with the convex side, but with the concave one, and strive to hook in their antagonists so as to have them under their blows. The fishing-lines are made of the bark of a shrub. The women roll shreds of this on the inside of the thigh, so as to twist it together, carefully inserting the ends of every fresh piece into ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... spinal column, and increase in length as far as the seventh. From this they successively become shorter. The direction of the ribs from above, downward, is oblique, and their curve diminishes from the first to the twelfth. The external surface of each rib is convex; the internal, concave. The inferior, or lower ribs, ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... breakfast. The end of his spare time had now arrived, and emerging from the garden by getting over the hedge at the back he pursued a path northward, till he came to a wide and lonely depression in the general level of the upland, which was sown as a corn-field. This vast concave was the scene of his labours for Mr Troutham the farmer, and he descended into the midst ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... they got from us, were commonly applied to this use. We saw coarse garments amongst them, made of a sort of matting, but they seemed never to wear them, except when out in their canoes and unemployed. Some had a kind of concave, cylindrical, stiff black cap, which appeared to be a great ornament among them, and, we thought, was only worn by men of note or warriors. A large sheet of strong paper, when they got one from us, was ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... triangular form, with concave sides and rounded corners. A bronze figure of a Battalion man is mounted upon the front corner. Flanking him on two sides of the triangle are: cut in high relief, on the left, the scene of the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... is, such is the form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally inexhaustible in forms;—each exterior is the physiognomy of the being within,—its true image reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror;—and even such is the appropriate excellence of her chosen poet, of our own Shakespeare,—himself a nature humanized, a genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... the contrary, is open at its upper extremity. The rays from the object observed penetrate freely into it, and strike a concave metallic mirror—that is to say, they are focussed. From thence their reflected rays meet with a little mirror, which sends them back to the ocular in such a way as to magnify the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... edge, it is necessary to add not only the thickness of the tire, but also two thirds of the depth of the flange; generally, however, the tire bars are sent from the forge so curved that the plain edge of the tire is concave, and the flange edge convex, while the side which is afterward to be bent into contact with the cylindrical surface of the wheel is a plane. In this case the addition of the diameter of two thirds of the depth of the flange is unnecessary, for the curving of the flange ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... run of English clothes may not be especially good, but they are, on the other hand, never bad; whereas American freak clothes are distortions like the reflections seen in the convex and concave mirrors of the amusement parks. But not even the leading tailors of Bond Street can excel the supremely good American tailor—whose clothes however are identical in every particular with those of London, and their right to be called "best" is for greater perfection of workmanship and fit. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... light metal, and fold when not in use, so that only the frames are visible. Sometimes these also fold and are housed, or wholly disappear within the mast. Steam-boilers are also placed at the foci of huge concave mirrors, often a hundred feet in diameter, the required heat being supplied by the sun, without smoke, instead of by bulky and dirty coal. This discovery gave commercial value to Sahara and other tropical deserts, which are now desirable ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the Pauillac opened up the concave of the sand and brought its whole length to view, Stern and the girl suddenly became aware ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... followed him into the storeroom, but remained near the open doorway in a concave and pessimistic attitude. Penrod felt in a dark corner of the box and laid hands upon a simple apparatus consisting of an old bushel-basket with a few yards of clothes-line tied to each of its handles. He passed the ends of the lines over a big spool, which revolved upon an axle ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... model. A perfectly flat head, no matter how highly polished, does not look well, neither does a flattened conehead, like Fig. 35. The best head for this purpose is a cupped head with chamfered edges, as shown at Fig. 34 in vertical section. The center b is ground and polished into a perfect concave by means of a metal ball. The face, between the lines a a, is polished dead flat, and the chamfered edge a c finished a trifle convex. The flat surface at a is bright, but the concave b and chamfer at c are beautifully blued. ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... power of the lever to make a small weight raise a larger one. This is due, according to Aristotle, to the generally miraculous character of the circle and of all circular movement. The circle is both convex and concave; it is made by a fixed point and a moving line, which contradict each other; and whatever moves in a circle moves in opposite directions. Nevertheless, movement in a circle is the most "natural" movement; and the long arm of the lever, moving, as it does, in the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... fish themselves may well have been lying, in search of coolness among the weedy stones at the bottom of the sea. Of all living creatures the jelly fish alone seemed to retain any spirit. Immense crowds of them drifted past the Tortoise, swelling out and closing again their concave bodies, revolving slowly round, dragging long purple tendrils deliriously through the warm water. They swept past Priscilla's drooping hands, touching them with their yielding bodies and brushing them softly with their tendrils. Now and ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... or, in antennae, with the basal joint distended into a concave, plate-like ear which envelops ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... 469.a) bo:s, bovis (gen. plur. boum or bovum, dat. and abl. plur. bo:bus or bu:bus), m. and f. ox, cow bracchium, bracchi:, n. arm brevis, -e, adj. short Brundisium, -i:, n. Brundisium, a seaport in southern Italy. See map bulla, -ae, f. bulla, a locket made of small concave plates of gold fastened by a spring ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... eighteenth century Romanism. It doesn't impress the imagination, but richly feeds the curiosity, by which I mean one's sense of the curious; suggests no legends, but innumerable anecdotes a la Stendhal. There is a vast dome, filled with a florid concave fresco of tumbling foreshortened angels, and all over the ceilings and cornices a wonderful outlay of dusky gildings and mouldings. There are various Bernini saints and seraphs in stucco-sculpture, astride ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... millionth-part as large as a small mosquito. She noticed, too, that their tails were bitter. If it had not been for the bitterness of their tails, she would not have felt so uneasy about them; as it was, she held the dimples tight in her hand, with the concave side ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... fluttered like a silk flag, throwing an angry swaying glare mingled with moving shadows over the poop, lighting up the concave surfaces of the sails, gleaming on the wet paint of the white rails. And young Powell turned his eyes to windward with ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... also urged that the concave on the under side of the wing gives the quality of lift. Certain kinds of beetles, and particularly the common house fly, disprove that theory, as their wings are ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... placed above the arms of prelates of the Church of England, sometimes borne as a charge, and adopted by the BERKELEYS as their crest. The contour of the mitre has varied considerably at different periods, the early examples being low and concave in their sides, the later lofty and convex. ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... El Makam Souleman, the Place of Solomon. A similar one upon the left is named El Makam Daoud, the Place of David. A cavity or niche on the south-west side of the rock is called El Makam Ibrahim, the Place of Abraham. A similar concave step at the north-west angle is described as El Makam Djibrila, the Place of Gabriel; and a sort of stone table at the north-east angle is denominated El Makam el Hoder, the Place of Elias. In the roof of the apartment, exactly in the middle, there is an aperture almost cylindrical through ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... discourse, to deliver you a model of any prince's court in the world; speaks the languages with that purity of phrase, and facility of accent, that it breeds astonishment; his wit, the most exuberant, and, above wonder, pleasant, of all that ever entered the concave of this ear. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... in the same manner in which silver pencil-cases and thimbles are made. If you take a thin piece of silver, or of any ductile material, and lay it over a concave mould, you can readily imagine that you can make the thin, ductile material take the shape of any mould into which you put it; and you may go on forcing it into moulds of different depths, till at last the plate of silver will have been shaped into a cylindrical form; a thimble, ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... elaborately of a single flattened band of chips, which is rolled up into a coil four layers deep. One side, forming the bottom of the cell, is concave, being beaten down and smoothed off by the bee. The other side of the partition, forming the top of the cell, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... wide-spreading and concave hoofs the Woodland caribou does not have to "yard" as other deer do in winter time, for thus provided with natural snowshoes, the caribou can pass over the deepest snow with little trouble. Also, throughout the year it is an extensive traveller, and ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming |
