"Configuration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a vast cup extending over many thousand acres, situated beneath the snow-line of the peak and filled with rich soil washed down, I suppose, from above. So sheltered was the place by its configuration and the over-hanging mountain that, facing south-west as it did, notwithstanding its altitude it produced corn and other temperate crops in abundance. Here the College had its farms, and very well cultivated these seemed to be. This great cup, which could not ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... population. From that diagram I took the figures for 1913, 1918 and 1919. These figures should be constantly borne in mind by any one who wishes to realize how catastrophic the shortage of labor in Russia actually is, and to judge how sweeping may be the changes in the social configuration of the country if that shortage continues to increase. Here are ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... Qualities of the mind are perhaps as much liable to hereditary transmission as bodily configuration. Memory, intelligence, judgment, imagination, passions, diseases, and what is usually called genius, are often very markedly traced in the offspring.—I have known mental impressions forcibly impressed ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... under lest a shark should seize me I cannot express, and my strained eyeballs would come from the tall shadow of the ship to the the sea about me in a wild searching of the liquid ebony of it for the sparkling configuration of the most abhorred of all fish. I could have sworn that hours elapsed before they lowered a boat from the ship, that seemed to grow fainter and fainter every time I looked at her, so swallowing is the character of ocean darkness, and so subtle apparently, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... of the town itself we now pass to what would seem to have been the extent of territory dependent upon her. The strongest argument of this discussion is based upon the natural configuration of the land. To the west, the domain of Praeneste certainly followed those long fertile ridges accessible only from Praeneste. First, and most important, it extended along the very wide ridge known as Le Tende and Le Colonnelle which stretches down toward Gallicano. ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... configuration of the theatre of operations be favorable to a movement against the extremity of the enemy's line of defence, this direction maybe best calculated to lead to important ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... stared all about, studying the configuration of the meadow, crossed it to the redwood trees beyond, then ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... governed and directed the course of sublunary events resided in the heavens, and that its decrees might be understood by watching the movements of the heavenly bodies under its control. It was, therefore, believed that by observing the configuration of the planets and the positions of the constellations at the instant of the birth of an individual, his horoscope, or destiny, could be foretold; and that by making observations of a somewhat similar nature the occurrence of events of public importance ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... He held in his hands a book and pencil; and as the canoe glided onward, he was noting down his memoranda. The trees upon the banks were in leaf—many of them in blossom—and as the little craft verged near the shore, his keen eye followed the configuration of the leaves, to discover any ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and configuration of the country. Now let us come to the climate, which is a not less important element in making South Africa what ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... may be said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. Among animals, the mule, which is the produce of the male ass and the mare, is ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... (Milvus govinda) is found on the Nilgiris. This useful bird usually sails in graceful circles high overhead, looking for food. Its cry is not heard so frequently on those hills as in the Himalayas, the reason being the different configuration of the two ranges. The Nilgiris are undulating and downlike, hence the kites are able, while hovering higher than the summits of the hills, to see what is happening in the valleys. In the Himalayas they cannot do this, because the valleys are usually deep. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... 252,000 stades, et la largeur de la chlamyde du Cap Sacre (Cap Saint Vincent) a l'extremite de la grande ceinture de Taurus, pres de Thinae a 70,000 stades. En prolongeant la distance vers le sud est jusque au cap des Coliaques qui, d'apres les idees de Strabon sur la configuration de l'Asie, represente notre Cap Comorin, et avance plus a l'est que la cote de Thinae, la combinaison des donnees d'Eratosthene offre 74,600 et meme 78,000 stades. Or, en reduisant, par la difference de latitude, le perimetre equatorial au parallele de Rhodes, des portes Caspiennes et ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... great deep, which defies arithmetical computation, and can be expressed only by their sacred numerals. The people have a more certain faith in them than in most of their divinities, because they see them so often; every cloud with a curious configuration or serpentine tail is a dragon. "We see him," they say. The scattering of the cloud is his disappearance. He rules the hills, is connected with feng-shui (geomancy), dwells round the graves, is associated with the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the mental development is no longer affected. This explains the fact that many oriental eunuchs, in whom castration is commonly effected shortly before the seventh or eighth year of life, while they exhibit the bodily configuration characteristic of the eunuch, are nevertheless capable of experiencing heterosexual feelings, and ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... triandria; of gypsum, talc, calcareous spar, quartz, topaz, mica, garnet, pyrites, hornblende, augite, actynolite; of hexahedral, prismatic, rhomboidal, dodecahedral; of acids and alkalies; of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon; of the configuration of the brain, and its relative powers; do all this, and what will he know of your meaning? So of all science. Words are to be understood from the things they are employed to represent. You may as well talk to a man in the hebrew, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... denying that it looks as though Providence had just planned the configuration of the country to suit a ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... his elastic steps with the placid and dignified philosophy of the ancien regime; while the Parisian dames, of all ranks, ages, and degrees, trip along, with one leg undraped, exactly in proportion to the shapeliness of its configuration. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... "The configuration of the ground was as follows: The road from the river after leaving Gasht brought us on to an alluvial fan, the ascent to which was short and steep; it was covered with boulders and intersected with nullahs; the road led across this fan and then along the foot of steep shale ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... time making themselves spherical through being kept in constant motion by the water. These pot-holes, as a geologist would call them, are common enough in torrents, where a heavy stone is borne into a whirlpool-like eddy, and goes on grinding itself a deeper and deeper bed, the configuration of the rock-walls where it lies having prevented its being swept down at the first, while every year after it deepens its bed until escape ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... of Germany and to the political configuration of its peoples and other causes, mediaeval conditions of life as we find them in the early sixteenth century left more abiding traces on the German mind and on German culture than was the case with some other nations. The ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Worthy of equal trust. And therefore what At any time unto these senses showed, The same is true. And if the reason be Unable to unravel us the cause Why objects, which at hand were square, afar Seemed rounded, yet it more availeth us, Lacking the reason, to pretend a cause For each configuration, than to let From out our hands escape the obvious things And injure primal faith in sense, and wreck All those foundations upon which do rest Our life and safety. For not only reason Would topple down; but even our very ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... in the northeast of Scotland. It is said that his holy master commanded him to found a church in the spot where he should find a river forming by its windings the shape of a bishop's pastoral staff. Such a configuration he found in the river Don, at the spot now known as Old Aberdeen. Here he accordingly fixed his seat, and the cathedral that rose from the humble beginnings of a church instituted by Machar now bears ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... of the observations here recorded, like most of the tobacco-plantations in Virginia, covers a broad expanse of land, including in one body many thousand acres, remarkable for many differences of soil and for a varied configuration. It is partly made up of steep hills that roll upon each other in close succession, partly it is high and level upland that sweeps back to the wooded horizon from the open low-grounds contiguous to the river that winds along its southern border. At least one-half of it is in forest, in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... must needs have been copied from some preceding sensible impression, but neither from within nor from without can we have received an impression from which this particular idea can have been copied. No keenest scrutiny of any portion of matter, no study of its external configuration or internal structure could, previously to experience, enable us to conjecture that it could produce any effect whatever, still less any particular effect: could enable us to guess, for instance, that flame would burn, or ice ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... and other igneous rocks, which are exposed in many places in the shape of massive blocks; otherwise the hill-range is covered in the upper part with sandstone, and in the bottoms with alluvial clay. This is the superficial configuration of the land as it strikes the eye; but, knowing the elevation of the interior plateau to be only 2500 feet above the sea immediately on the western flank of these hills, whilst the breath of the chain is 100 miles, the mean slope of incline of the basal surface must be on ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... progress of scientific knowledge has enabled man to measure the depths of the ocean, which were formerly believed to be as unfathomable as boundless in extent. From soundings which have been taken, it is ascertained that the configuration of the earth at the bottom of the sea, is similar to that portion which rises above the surface, undulating, and interspersed with hills, and valleys, and plains, and mountain ranges, and abrupt precipices. The greatest depth of water at which soundings have been ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... which are mellow with the golden calm of his discovered peace, he tells how, having reached the climacteric which he had set at forty years, he went apart into the solitude of the Ermitage to inquire into the configuration of his own soul, and to fix once for all his opinions and his principles. In the exquisite third Reverie two phrases occur continually. His purpose was 'to find firm ground'—'prendre une assiette,'—and his means to this discovery was 'spiritual honesty'—'bonne foi.' Rousseau's deep concern ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... forum of Rome a broad and magnificent highway ran out towards every province of the empire. It was terraced up with sand, gravel, and cement, and covered with stones and granite, and followed in a direct line without regard to the configuration of the country, passing over or under mountains and across streams and lakes, on arches of solid masonry. The military roads were under the pretors, and were called pretorian roads; and the public roads for travel and commercial traffic were ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... the general configuration of the earth's surface as permanent a continuous and progressive dispersal of species from the centre to the circumference, i.e. southwards, seems inevitable. If an observer were placed above a ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... and her dry deserts, her cold ocean-currents pouring down from the high North on some of her shores, while warm ones from tropical seas carry their softer influence to others,—in short, all the contrasts in the external configuration of the globe, with the physical conditions attendant upon them, are naturally accompanied by a corresponding variety in animal ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... any new and original impression being formed in marble or other material, or any new and useful pattern, or print, or picture, to be either worked into or worked on, or printed, or painted, or cast, or otherwise fixed on any article of manufacture, or any new and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture not known or used by ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... They had reached a part of the glacier where the slope and the configuration of the valley had caused severe strains on the ice in various directions, so that there were not only transverse crevasses but longitudinal cracks, which unitedly had cut up the ice into blocks of all shapes and sizes. These, as their position shifted, had become isolated, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... was on the coast of Norway—he did not know where; Inisthona, according to Laing, was a wilful corruption of Inis-owen in Lough Foyle; Inisthona, in point of fact, was Iceland—as clearly and distinctly so in Macpherson's own text, as latitude, longitude, and physical configuration can make it; far more distinctly recognisable than any Ultima Thule of the Romans. But here, in this Inisthona, we have first a fountain surrounded with mossy stones, in a grassy vale, at the head of a bay; then a wilderness ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... wrecked instruments you threw out of Skylark I when we built Skylark II?" Having every minute detail of the configuration of Seaton's brain engraved upon his own, Dunark spoke English in Seaton's own characteristic careless fashion. Only when thinking deeply or discussing abstruse matter did Seaton employ the carefully selected and precise phrasing, which ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... to be attended with much pain. The appearance of the infant, however, while under it, is shocking,—its little black eyes seem ready to start from their sockets; the mouth exhibits all the appearance of internal convulsion; and it clearly appears that the face is undergoing a process of unnatural configuration. About a year's pressure is sufficient to produce the desired effect; the head is ever after completely flattened;" and as slaves are always left to nature, this deformity is consequently a mark of free birth. The Indians on the north ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... given in this catalogue it is possible to reconstruct the Great Bear as it appeared in those early days. This has been done, and it appears that the seven principal stars have not changed in this lapse of time to any large extent, so that the configuration of the Great Bear remains practically the same now as it was then. The beginner must first obtain an acquaintance with this group of seven stars, and then his further progress in this branch of astronomy will be greatly facilitated. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... on the misfortune of the configuration of human anatomy, which makes sky-searching so uncomfortable a habit. This outlook was probably developed to a greater extent during the war than ever before; and I can remember many evenings in Paris ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... it unnecessary to explain minutely the causes that produce variation in the monsoons. Every intelligent reader will readily conceive how the change of seasons and varied configuration as well as unequal arrangement of land and water, will reverse, alter, and modify the direction and strength ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... charactered with strange hieroglyphs; he had described the magical circles in the hall, and he arranged everything with his utmost skill, to be certain of the result. He had searcht diligently into the configuration of the stars, and was ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... drawing a comparison between him and that peculiar type of per son commonly called a Virginian bean-pole. Nor, when he gets himself (as is not uncommon with him) "all over" native brown homespun, does his configuration materially change, there yet remaining, and boldly refusing to be disguised, that face so full of penetration, and those features so sharp. The waggishly inclined have identified them with the wizardry of dividing storm currents. Nevertheless, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... August, 1899. There were, of course, plenty of men available in America for service in the Philippines, and finally twelve regiments of volunteers were raised, two of which were composed of negroes. Aguinaldo's strength lay in the configuration of the country, in its climate, which for four centuries had prevented a complete conquest by the Spaniards, and in the uncertainty which he knew existed as to how far the American people would support a war waged apparently for conquest, against ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... possessed by vital cells of reacting to the irritation caused by injury or disease. The cells of the damaged tissues, under the influence of this irritation, undergo certain proliferative changes, which are designed to restore the normal structure and configuration of the part. The process by which this restoration is effected is essentially the same in all tissues, but the extent to which different tissues can carry the recuperative process varies. Simple structures, such as skin, cartilage, bone, periosteum, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... wonder; for their whole interior is composed of iron, and day and night they are glimmering and smoking with a hundred fires. They have a dreadful, stern, metallic look about them, and are as different in their configuration from the chalk hills of Hampshire as they are from cheese. Some day we shall ascend their dusky sides, and dive into Pluto's drear domains—the iron-works—a god who, in the present state of railway speculation, might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the variety which it presents in point of elevation, soil, and aspect, and from the configuration of its hills and shores, possesses several peculiarities of climate and situation, which render it a very favorable and commodious residence throughout the year, for a large class of invalids. On this account, the Isle of Wight claims our particular ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... the cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... functions of mind to the material of the brain substance is observed. It asserts that just as speech, taste, touch, &c., have their centres in certain convolutions of the brain, so have benevolence, firmness, conscientiousness, &c., and that by studying the configuration of the brain, as indicated by that of the skull, a man's character may be approximately discovered. As a science it is usually discredited, and held to be unsupported by physiology, anatomy, and pathology. It is held as strongly militating against its claims that it takes ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of Little Crawling Stone, lies a vast waste. Standing in the midst of this frightful eruption from the heart of the mountains, one sees, as far as the eye can reach, a landscape utterly forbidding. North for sixty miles lie the high chains of the Mission range, and a cuplike configuration of the mountains close to the valley affords a resting-place for the deepest snows of winter and a precipitous escape for the torrents of June. Here, when the sun reaches its summer height or a sweet-grass ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... two initial hydrographic meridians, Greenwich and Paris, a prime meridian has been taken, the reign (practical influence) of which is principally over the sea; and this meridian, instead of being chosen with reference to the configuration of the continents, is borrowed from an observatory; that is to say, that it is placed on the globe in a hap-hazard manner, and is very inconveniently situated for the function that it is to perform. Finally, instead of profiting by the lessons ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... hasten to carry into execution the plans which he had originally formed only with the view to aggrandizement. He had delayed too long, either because the favourable configuration of the stars had not yet presented itself, or, as he used to say, to check the impatience of his friends, because THE TIME WAS NOT YET COME. The time, even now, was not come: but the pressure of circumstances no longer allowed him to await the favour of the stars. The first ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a V wrong side upward—I can't make nothin' of that," said Mr. Simlins, with again the approach to a grin;—"'taint over easy to tell whether his Vs are one side up or 'tother. Now I'd like to know from you where the hitch is. The Squire aint likely to set the Mong in a configuration just yet—but if he's swingin' a torch round, I'd jest as lief put it ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... valleys (like that of Quillota) which connect them with the coast, I have no doubt are the bottoms of ancient inlets and deep bays, such as at the present day intersect every part of Tierra del Fuego and the western coast. Chile must formerly have resembled the latter country in the configuration of its land and water. The resemblance was occasionally shown strikingly when a level fog-bank covered, as with a mantle, all the lower parts of the country: the white vapour curling into the ravines, beautifully represented little coves and bays; and here and there a solitary ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... with halts at different ports, and around the eastern end of the island to the destination. It is now an all-rail run of twenty-four hours. The project for a "spinal railway" from one end of the island to the other had been under consideration for many years. The configuration lent itself excellently to such a system, and not at all well to any other. A railway map of such a system shows a line, generally, through the middle of the island along its length, with numerous branch lines running north and south to the various cities ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... perilous one. The configuration of Manhattan Island is such that the British could land a force from the East River, throw it across the narrow width of the island, and cut off retreat from below. The only trust lay in the shore batteries, and they ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... ethnography, that the varieties of colour refer themselves, in part, to climates, elevations of land, proximity to the sea-coast, or distance from it. It can hardly be doubted that these conditions have likewise an effect on the configuration of the human body. But there is, perhaps, some truth in the remark, though frequently made on little better foundation than conjecture, that the prevailing form or configuration of the body is more liable to be influenced by the habits of different ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... aggregation, i.e., collectivity as sum of the individuals, but as a unity with a peculiar two-sidedness, at the same time "essential totality" (M.H. Boehm). The folk is both a living creature and a spiritual configuration, in which the individuals are included through common racial conditioning, in blood and spirit. It is that force which works on the individual directly "from within or from the side like a common degree of temperature" (Kjellen) ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... and with the character and clear-sightedness of the rulers; but the history of the seaboard nations has been less determined by the shrewdness and foresight of governments than by conditions of position, extent, configuration, number and character of their people,—by what are called, in a word, natural conditions. It must however be admitted, and will be seen, that the wise or unwise action of individual men has at certain periods had a great ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... shape is the strongest. Now these two nests require an exceptional power of resistance. Without protection of any kind, they have to brave the weather, one on its pebble, the other on its bough. Their spherical configuration is ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... had risen, the tide was half up. Whatever sign or trace of alien footprint or occupation had been there was already smoothly obliterated; even the configuration of the land had changed. A black cape had disappeared, a level line of shore had been eaten into by teeth of glistening silver. The whole dark surface of the Marsh was beginning to be streaked with shining veins as if a new ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... "A peculiar configuration is observed in these coefficients in that a quite pronounced positive correlation exists at the central age group, but disappears with some regularity towards both extremities of life. If the mortality has any influence upon the natality this cannot be in the ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... invented in Paris, as our American belles and dandies? The newest cut in garments which was hatched in Paris beneath the crescent-moon, her waning rays see carried to its utmost verge in our bustling marts. We follow the revolutions in the configuration of coats, from square to round, and from round to angular, with as scrupulous and painful a precision as if our national honor depended on the issue. Nay, we are usually a little too faithful, and fairly 'out-Herod Herod.' Does ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... suspected." The jeweller's wife went home and did as she was instructed. In an hour Ahmed followed her, and told the jeweller he had made his calculations, and found by the aspect of the sun and moon, and by the configuration of the stars, that the ruby was at that moment lying under the pillow of his couch on the side farthest from the door. The jeweller thought Ahmed must be crazy; but as a ray of hope is like a ray from heaven ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of the cavern showing its internal configuration, the situation of the lagoon, the lay of the Beehive, Ker Karraje's habitation, my cell, and Thomas ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... of weird and ghostly appearances. Glowing with its own splendour, that mountain looks resplendent as the morning sun. And no creature with his natural eyes made of flesh, can ever ascertain its shape or configuration, and neither heat nor cold prevails there, nor doth the sun shine nor do the winds blow. And, O king, neither doth senility nor hunger, nor thirst, nor death, nor fear afflict any one at that place. And, O foremost of conquerors, on all sides ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that had been banged, and in their ignorance of the configuration of the place they did not realise that it ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... usual marks, and threatening to sweep across the isthmus. Masses of tangled kelp, torn from the outlying rocks, washed backwards and forwards in the surf or were carried high up among the tussocks. The configuration of the shingly beach changed while one looked at it. The tops of the waves could be seen flying over Anchor Rock, seventy feet high, and spray was blowing right across ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... was succeeded in 1843 by his great work called "Central Asia." "In this," says La Roquette, "he has laid down and systematized the principal scientific results of his expedition in Asia, and has recorded some ingenious speculation as to the shape of the continents and the configuration of the mountains of Tartary, giving special attention to the vast depression which stretches from the north of Europe to the centre of Asia beyond the Caspian Sea and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... point out this valley," said the Emir as to a dog, when they were near enough to observe the configuration of ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... with all its inflections, extending from the north of Kansas to Fort Vancouver and to the coasts of the South Sea (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk). As I believe I was the first who attempted to represent, in geognostic profile, the configuration of Mexico, and the Cordilleras of South America,—for the half-perspective projections of the Siberian traveler, the Abbe Chappe* were based upon mere, and for the most part on very inaccurate, estimates of the falls of ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... knowledge all speculations concerning ethnology are futile and misleading. The course of race development is chaos and confusion without the key furnished by the character of Atlantean civilization and the configuration of the earth at Atlantean periods. Geologists know that land and ocean surfaces must have repeatedly changed places during the period at which they also know—from the situation of human remains in the various strata—that the lands were ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... the trees in particular being very curious and grotesque in shape, both as to their trunks and branches, and their foliage being of almost any other colour than green. In some cases the trees, notwithstanding their strange and abnormal configuration, were very beautiful, the large, heart-shaped leaves being of almost every conceivable tint of red, ranging from palest pink to a very deep, rich crimson, with great bunches of snow-white blossom; while at the opposite end of the scale, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to go to Reims and take the King to his anointing.[1315] She did not stay to consider whether it would be better to wage war in Champagne than in Normandy. She did not know enough of the configuration of the country to decide such a question, and it is not likely that her saints and angels knew more of geography than she did. She was in haste to take the King to Reims for his anointing, because she believed it impossible ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the spirit of this belief, is no more than might have been expected; and hence arose the at one time powerful and generally-accepted doctrine of "Catastrophism." That the succession of phenomena upon the globe, whereby the earth's crust had assumed the configuration and composition which we find it to possess, had been a discontinuous and broken succession, was the almost inevitable conclusion of the older geologists. Everywhere in their study of the rocks they met with apparently impassable gaps, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... that the configuration of parallel lines agrees with the flight-formation of cranes. This was in 1880: anybody now living in New York City, for instance, would tell him that also it is a familiar formation of aeroplanes. But, because of data of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... powerful and enervating embrace the mighty trunk had perished, still clasped the magnificent colossus with their shining red tendrils, whilst the interior of the tree, hollowed by the tooth of time, was of a fantastical configuration, not unlike a Gothic chapel, and sufficiently spacious to contain twenty men. The care with which the hollow had been swept out, and the neighbourhood of a salt spring, showed that it was used by the Indian hunters as a resting-place ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... deferentially places at my feet. Opening it, I find that the chief countries and cities of the world are indicated in written Hindostani characters. In this manner some English officer has probably been the undesigning medium of giving these Afghans a peep into the configuration of the earth they live on, and their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Bocca di Cattaro as a submarine base from which to harass the Italian fleet. Italy, it was recognized, was contending with geographical disadvantages everywhere, but in the Adriatic more than elsewhere, owing to the peculiarly tame configuration of her coast line. As compared with that on the eastern side of the Adriatic ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... between cliff and wave. You wonder at first if the road was made merely to gladden the tourist, for it does not seem likely that there could be much traffic other than that of pleasure-seekers thus along the margin of the sea. The configuration of this part of the County Antrim, however, explains the position of the road, and justifies the engineer who was so happily enabled to combine the utilitarian with the romantic. A series of deep cut gorges, locally known ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... stars known as the "Plough" is perhaps the most familiar configuration in the sky (see Plate XIX., p. 292). In the United States it is called the "Dipper," on account of its likeness to the outline of a saucepan, or ladle. "Charles' Wain" was the old English name for it, and readers of Caesar will recollect it under Septentriones, or the "Seven Stars," a term ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... elevation above the surrounding plains, and passes into rolling prairies. Its length is about two hundred miles, and its general direction N. N. W. and S. S. E. Its northern termination (called Tete du Couteau in consequence of its peculiar configuration) is not more than fifteen to twenty miles across; its elevation above the level of the Big Stone Lake is eight hundred and ninety feet, and above the ocean one thousand nine hundred and sixteen feet. Starting from this extremity ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... skull as acquired from books on craniology. Perhaps after the inspection and examination of a large collection of crania, it may be safe to pronounce upon their differential character; but whether the differences in configuration are constant or only occasional manifestations, admits of as much doubt as the exceptions in Professor Sophocles's Greek grammar, which are often coextensive ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... though for the first mile almost imperceptibly. The inlet itself resembled the estuary of a mighty river, its both sides well wooded, though very different in configuration, the northern rising quietly from shelving beaches of coral-white sand to some of the most respectable hills in the island, while that on our starboard hand presented a succession of cliff and chasm, the cliffs varying, as we judged, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... This physical configuration of the country explains the existence at a very early date of those gigantic serpents which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to it, "this is evidently water, and all this land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas? Where the oceans are upon the outer crust, is land here. These relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the continents of the ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a power of thirty diameters, and a field of view of seventy-eight minutes of arc. Two diagrams were usually drawn in the book for each of these objects, the one showing the relation of adjacent objects in the great telescope, and the other the configuration of the more conspicuous objects in the field of view of the finder. Adjacent to these "finder" diagrams are the settings—to the nearest minute of arc in declination, and of time in right ascension—as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... demonstrated that in his scientific delineation of character the professional phrenologist depends upon something more than mere configuration of skull. The great modifying conditions of health, quality and temperament in every case give us the foundation of the character. It will be seen, some medical authorities to the contrary, notwithstanding, that the science of Phrenology has a firm basis on the established principles and known ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... of tidal evolution in a fresh light. If the moon now departed to any considerable extent from showing the constant face to the earth, it would seem that its retreat could not have been caused by tides. Some other agent for producing the present configuration would be necessary, just as we found that some other agent than the tides has been necessary in the case ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... eye for you; by the same token, as the night's could, warm your tooth, avick; there's waker wather nor this in Lough Mecall. Sorra sup of it over I keep for my own use at all, barrin' when I take a touch o' configuration in my bowels, or, may be, when I'm too long at my prayers; for, God help me, sure I'm but sthrivin', wid the help o' one thing an' another, to work out my salvation as well as I can! Your health, any how, an' a merry Chris'mas to you!—not forgettin' myself," he added, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... aperture in the lid might be closed, and the box could then be hung up beside the doorway lamp, so that its proportions might be fairly realised. The interior of the church is broad and lofty, but through its Norman configuration it is stiff and coldly ponderous in effect. Massive bare walls, high narrow windows, and a semi-sexagonal ceiling dependent upon rather ungainly beams and rafters, like a series of hanging frames, chill you a little; but on looking northward, to the end of the building, the chancel and transept ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... care of generations. Stretches of lawn, coolly green and shaven, sloped away from a terrace which ran the whole length of the house, meeting the gravelled drive as it curved past the house-door. Beyond lay dim sweet alleys, over-arched by trees, and below, where a sudden dip in the configuration of the land admitted of it, were grassy terraces, gay with beds of flowers, linked together by ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... us think we had the open sea before us (see illustration). At this part of our journey we met two Bedouins, who greeted us with much ceremony. Here too, scattered about, we found specimens of Caucalis. Our course then lay through drearily uniform sandy ground, of somewhat broken configuration, and covered with bushy vegetation, where we passed a telegraph post bearing the notice that it was half-way between Bir el Abd and Bir el Magara. Here we overtook our camels, which, as usual, had preceded us; but we ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... centuries, while Christian Spain had been but a fringe of debatable border-land on the skirts of the Moorish kingdom, perpetual guerilla warfare had rendered consecutive labour difficult or impracticable; and the physical configuration of the country contributed in bringing about this result. To plunder the Moors across the border was easier than to till the ground at home. Then as the Spaniards, exemplifying the military superiority of the feudal over the sultanic form of social organization, proceeded steadily to recover ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... with armoured trains and other enterprises. The southern frontier is armed, and menaced, and the expectation of collision is strong. But it is on the eastern side that the Boers have concentrated their greatest energies. They have gone Nap on Natal. The configuration of the country favours an invader. The reader has scarcely to look at the map, with which he is already familiar, to realise how strategically powerful the Boer position was and is. The long tongue of plain running up into ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... dwelling before my eyes. As for the skin accompanying it, this has been so much spoilt by the moisture of the soil and by the grassy roots that I cannot determine its origin exactly. The cranium, however, which is better-preserved, the mandibles and certain details of the general configuration lead me to suspect the larva of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... of Ricca is a sporadic one, such as may crop up anywhere and at any time. It is like that of Musolino—the case of an isolated outlaw, who finds the perplexed geographical configuration of the country convenient for offensive and defensive purposes. Calabrian brigandage, as a whole, has always ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of his earlier despatches, Sir Ian Hamilton very aptly likens the configuration of the Peninsula between Achi Baba and Cape Helles to the bowl of a huge spoon, with Achi Baba at the heel of the bowl and the Cape at its toe. This Rest Camp of ours was near the toe and rather to the left of the centre line; in full view of ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... it really was an island, a point that I never cleared up—were well in sight, the mountain top that stood some miles inland having been visible for hours. In fact, through my glasses, I had been able to make out its configuration almost from the beginning of the voyage. About five we entered the mouth of a deep bay fringed on either side with forests, in which were cultivated clearings with small villages of the ordinary African stamp. I observed from the smaller size ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... cells from the haemorrhagic foci of the wall of the gut, on the margins of which bodies of various sizes appeared, and which differ essentially from the mast cells themselves by their staining. Nevertheless from their whole configuration and position it is evident that these bodies have arisen in the mast cells themselves; and Prus comes to the conclusion "that the degenerating young mast cells secrete a fluid or semi-fluid substance, which as a rule sets on the surface of the cells, ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage that he was induced to land and ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... off again I had slackened my pace down to a stealthy cat-like tread that took me along with an incredible absence of noise. As I moved forward I began to turn the configuration of the place over in my mind and wonder to what practical use I could put the fine natural cover of the bushes. As I could see none I put the matter out of my head and devoted all my energies to coming to immediate grips with the ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... at a flower of any particular species; we see that, as it is developed in connection with a variety of external influences,—as it comes successively under the action of the sun, rain, dew, soil,—it expands in a particular manner, and in that only. It exhibits a certain configuration of parts, a certain form of leaf, a certain color, fragrance, and no other. We do not doubt, on the one hand, that without the "skyey influences" these things would never have been; nor, on the other; that the flower assumes this form of development, and this alone, in virtue of its internal structure ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... is ripe, a fair goodly object joyous in the sun, inviting to every sense. Hanging amidst its foliage, bending the twig with its weight, it is at once a pattern in good shape, perfect in configuration, in sheen beyond imitation, in fragrance the very affluence of all choice clean growth, its surface spread with a bloom often so delicate that the unsympathetic see it not; and yet the rains do not ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... interest. Before the wedding was celebrated a change occurred in the European situation which profoundly affected the policy of France. The revolt broke out in the Netherlands, the real revolt, which was not the work of Belgian nobles, but of the Water Beggars, who took advantage of the maritime configuration, and accomplished the deliverance of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty— and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the Form and Distribution of the Landtracts during the Secondary and Tertiary Periods respectively; and on the Effect upon Animal Life which great Changes in Geographical Configuration have probably produced," by Mr. Searles V. Wood, jun., which was published in the Philosophical Magazine, in 1862, was unknown to me when this Address was written. It is well worthy ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... CONFIGURATION. The relative positions of celestial bodies, as for instance those of Jupiter's satellites, with respect to the primary ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... use the expression, natural capitals and capitals that are artificial. The sites of the first are determined by the configuration of the earth. When they perish it is but a temporary death, to be followed by a life often more full and brilliant than the first. The second owe their prosperity to the caprice of a sovereign, or to political combinations that pass away and leave no trace. Thebes and Nineveh were ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... liquid lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... made by Ehrenberg and Lyell (page 71 of this volume), on the antiquity of certain individual corals in the Red Sea and at Bermuda; namely, that at Upolu, one of the Navigator Islands, "particular clumps of coral are known to the fishermen by name, derived from either some particular configuration or tradition attached to them, and handed down from time immemorial." With respect to the thickness of masses of coral-rock, it clearly appears, from the descriptions given by Mr. Couthouy (pages 34, ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... years of labor in deciphering the inscriptions found upon ancient pillars, Egyptian and Arabic, dating five thousand years before Christ. I asked him if he found the observations continuous, and he said that he did not, but that they seem to be astrological pictures of the configuration of the planets, and to have been made at the birth ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... as a standard geometric figure, a familiar symbol, an emblem, or a motif, or another shape, pattern, or configuration which has become ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... our desires! In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for the deed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is removed, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and reunites itself to that image of good which is but a reflection and configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the long perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and enriched by countless recollections, become interesting; the most painful, broken and softened by time, soothe. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... also scarcely acquainted with the character which the influence of that wayward and melancholy orb creates. Thus, the aspect of Herschel neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and ambition, and pride of heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the felicitous configuration of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at thy birth. That yearning for something beyond the narrow bounds of the world, that love for reverie, that passionate romance, yea, thy very leaning, despite thy worldly sense, to these occult and starry mysteries;—all ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... luxuriously reposing in an immense armchair, covered with Hungary leather. His two elbows rested on the arms and enabled him to support in his hands the largest, the reddest, the fattest face that had ever ornamented the configuration of a Dutch functionary before. Mr Jansen Pyl wore at that moment the radiant look of satisfaction which only a magistrate can assume who feels conscious that he is in the full sunshine of the approbation of his sovereign. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... parted links, l. 398. As our ideas consist of successive trains of the motions, or changes of figure, of the extremities of the nerves of one or more of our senses, as of the optic or auditory nerves; these successive trains of motion, or configuration, are in common life divided into many links, to each of which a word or name is given, and it is called an idea. This chain of ideas may be broken into more or fewer links, or divided in different parts of it, by the customs of different people. Whence the meanings of the words of one ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... mortality at this time prevailed amongst the cats of Vienna, Basle, Copenhagen, and other places. Cats being so eminently an electric animal, of course he attributed this epizootic to electricity. During the same period, he persuaded himself that a peculiar configuration of clouds prevailed; this he took as a collateral proof of his electrical hypothesis. His own headaches, too, which in all probability were a mere remote effect of old age, and a direct one of an inability [Footnote: Mr. Wasianski ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... contain four star-maps. They not only serve to indicate the configuration of certain important star-groups, but they illustrate the construction of maps, such as the observer should make for himself when he wishes to obtain an accurate knowledge of particular regions of the sky. They are all made to one scale, and on the conical projection—the ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... (March 9th) state that the Grand Duke's main army is making for the Gulf of Alexandretta with intent to cut the Turkish Empire in two. This is not only possible, but highly probable, and the echelon formation of the Allies, together with the configuration of the country, lends itself to such an operation. The British army in Egypt and the British fleet could in such an eventuality ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... those of the present distorted strata, crystallization has nothing to do with that part of the figure which corresponds to the case now under consideration; it forms indeed certain figures of crystals in the mass by which also the configuration of some minute parts, affected by those crystals, is determined; but the figure of those alabasters, which is to be compared with the present subject, arises solely from the current of petrifying water along the surface of the mass. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... of pointing out that the celluloses not only suggest with some definiteness the connection of the structural properties of visible aggregates—that is, of matter in the mass—with the configuration of the chemical molecule or reacting unit, but supply unique material for the actual experimental investigation of the problems involved. Of all the 'organic' colloids cellulose is the only one which can be converted into a variety of derivative forms, ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... Configuration is a certain boundary of quantity. Wherefore, properly speaking, it is only in corporeal things; and of spiritual things is said metaphorically. Now that which decides the genus or species of a thing must needs be predicated ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... within a dozen yards or so of the wooded bank, sometimes approaching still closer, in accordance with the configuration of the land. His desire to keep advancing, while the chance was his, led him to venture further in, in order to take advantage of the sluggish current. Once or twice he felt a projecting root graze the bottom, and again the craft came ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... nasal bones, the shape of the orifice of the nostrils, the breadth of the frontal bone, the shape of the post-lateral processes of the frontal and squamosal bones, and the direction of the bony cavity of the ear, have all been modified. The internal configuration of the skull and the whole shape of the brain have likewise been altered in a ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... product's character. The recent Mont-Pelee eruption, for example, required all previous history to produce that exact combination of ruined houses, human and animal corpses, sunken ships, volcanic ashes, etc., in just that one hideous configuration of positions. France had to be a nation and colonize Martinique. Our country had to exist and send our ships there. IF God aimed at just that result, the means by which the centuries bent their influences towards it, showed exquisite ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... the dense clouds which lay nearest the bottom of the horizon, presenting their dark sides to you, exhibited to the imagination all the gorgeous and picturesque appearances of arches, obelisks, mouldering towers, magnificent gardens, cities, forests, mountains, and every fantastic configuration of living creatures, and of imaginary beings; while the finely stratified clouds a little higher in the atmosphere, might really be imagined so many glorious islands of the blessed, swimming in an ocean ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... Basis and methods of reduction (budget, peace-time effectives, tonnage of naval and air fleets, population, configuration of frontiers, etc.); ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant Myrtle had upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell from an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to narrate, his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airmen, Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield, would ask, with an enigmatic smile: "And where, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... attention farther east, and it was impossible from the camp to learn much of the conditions that would confront us on the overland journey. I planned to climb to the pass and then be guided by the configuration of the country in the selection of a route eastward to Stromness Bay, where the whaling-stations were established in the minor bays, Leith, Husvik, and Stromness. A range of mountains with precipitous slopes, forbidding peaks, and large glaciers ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... equal footing,—as far as accommodations for living were concerned. There are no special quarters, no spacious halls. The few rooms of somewhat larger size are naturally explained by the mode of construction, adapting the house to the configuration of the rock, and not conversely as we do. It was, therefore, a large joint-tenement structure, harboring, perhaps, when fully occupied, several hundreds ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... must be pre-admonished concerning the Letters; that there is a great Latitude almost amongst them all, and that one and the same Character is not pronounced by one and the same Configuration of the Mouth, yea, in one and the same Language; thus [a] and [e] sometimes are sounded open, and sometimes close; also [o] hath its own Latitude, so as many other Letters also may have; yea, as many as are the divers Modes, by which the Voice and Breath ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... Toulon were approaching the crisis which ended its tenure by the British and their allies. The garrison had never been sufficient to man properly the very extensive lines, which the peculiar configuration of the surrounding country made it necessary to occupy for the security of the town; and the troops themselves were not only of different nations, but of very varying degrees of efficiency. Under these conditions the key of the position, accurately ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... by this hesitation than to discuss linguistic change in the abstract. What is true of the particular idiom that we started with is true of everything else in language. Nothing is perfectly static. Every word, every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration, molded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language. The evidence is overwhelming that this drift has a certain consistent direction. Its speed varies enormously according to circumstances that it is not always easy to ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... observer, whether he be specially deputed, or whether the work be placed in the hand of the pilot himself—in this event the operation is rendered additionally trying, as he also has to attend to his machine must keep his eyes glued to the ground beneath and at the same time be able to read the configuration of the panorama revealed to him. He must also keep in touch with his map and compass, so as to be positive of his position and direction. He must be a first-class judge of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... rest was accorded. Smoke and Labiskwee knew their danger. They were lost in the high mountains, and they had seen no game nor signs of game. Day after day they struggled on through an iron configuration of landscape that compelled them to labyrinthine canyons and valleys that led rarely to the west. Once in such a canyon, they could only follow it, no matter where it led, for the cold peaks and higher ranges on either side were unscalable and unendurable. The terrible ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Pacific waves are crested with radiance, you have the one blending picture, nay, the reality, of the American domain! No such soil, so varied by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and by opulent plains,—yet all bound into unity of configuration and bordered by both warm and icy seas,—no such domain was ever given to ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... which determines the relation or measure of their connection. This is the source of the threefold division of the Philosophy of Nature. The magnet with its union of opposite polar forces is the type of all configuration in nature. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat Cayuga. This was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's; for his heart got the better ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... which this change of status is leading, is social equality—that is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a male; there are few exceptions.[51] In woman, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... It has in fact become customary to designate all morbid manifestations not of traumatic or infectious origin as degenerative. Indeed, Magnan's classification of degenerates makes it possible that the highest general configuration of nervous accomplishment need not exclude the application of the concept of degeneration. Under the circumstances, it is a question what use and what new content the judgment of "degeneration" still possesses. It would seem more appropriate not to speak of degeneration: (1) Where there ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... third division consists of members of unclean castes attached to the Lingayat community by reason of performing to it menial service. A marked tendency has recently been displayed by the community in Bombay to revert to the original Brahmanic configuration of society, from which its founder sought to free it. On the occasion of the census a complete scheme was supplied to the authorities professing to show the division of the Lingayats into the four groups of Brahman, Kshatriya, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Chapter 24 Paragraph 7]); and that, from the attentive study of the geological map of Mr. Bain and other materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of Mr. Oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the Geographical Society in 1852, but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my information! There was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being thus fairly "cut out" by the man who had foretold the existence ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the configuration of the country as on a map; the high Jebel Orbata, 1170 metres, now covered with snow, coming forward to meet you on the other side of the wide valley. From this point it is easy to realize, as did the commander of that French expedition, the significance of ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... you, who can actually SEE an angle, and contemplate the complete circumference of a Circle in the happy region of the Three Dimensions—how shall I make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing one another's configuration? ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... seat, and which he whom he is opposing, when he argues thus, imagines to be distinct and separate from the mind. Now this resemblance is more remarkable in beasts, whose souls are void of reason. But the likeness in men consists more in the configuration of the bodies; and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul is lodged; for there are many things which depend on the body that give an edge to the soul, many which blunt it. Aristotle indeed, says, that all men ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... all excitement to be off again. Every hour—every minute, indeed—was precious to him, and, as the two rode back, the advance was resumed without a moment's delay. Instead of proceeding back in a direct line, however, over the path traveled by the scout, they made a detour to the northward, the configuration of the country being such that a much nearer approach, undiscovered, could be made from this direction than from ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... of more value to particular men for a special purpose for the time being. If an engineer has to build a railway, knowledge of the exact height above sea-level of various points and of the general configuration of the ground is of more value than knowledge of its beauty. But for the engineer himself, when he is not thinking of his railway, and for mankind in general, knowledge of the beauty may be the more ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... perpendicularly from the water. It is really difficult to describe the appearance of the banks at this place; so singular were they in character, and so varied in form. Here they had the most beautiful columnar regularity, with capitals somewhat resembling the Corinthian order in configuration; there they showed like falls of muddy water that had suddenly been petrified; and in another place they resembled the time-worn battlements of a feudal castle. It will naturally be asked, of what could these cliffs have been ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... a Persian walnut in appearance than a black walnut. The shell surface is slightly rougher and somewhat darker than most Persian nuts. The suture of the Persian parent is prominent. Black walnut parentage is exhibited by the thick shell, the interior configuration and in the flavor of the small kernel. Nut size varies somewhat with diameters ranging from 1 to 1-1/4 inches and lengths ranging ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... content at that moment to take down the outlines of the great stones and the configuration of lake and hill beyond, but by and by he would give another sort of atmosphere to this wild scene. He would have rain and darkness spread over the island, with the low hills in the south grown desolate and remote, and the waters of the sea covered with gloom. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and configuration will be at once understood by a reference to the annexed figure (fig. 3), which is a transverse section of a wagon boiler. The line b represents the top of the grate or fire bars, which slope downward from the front at an angle of about 25 deg., giving the fuel a tendency to move toward the back ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... respect similar, namely, they were invariably presented as points of light incapable of being sensibly magnified, even with the highest powers. True, there was a great variety of apparent brightness in these objects and a singular diversity of configuration, but there was no exception to the invariable feature referred to. The point of light was constant, and no striking exception was anticipated until one night—March 13, 1781—Herschel being intently engaged in the examination of some small stars in the region of Gemini, brought ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... Bumble became possessed of a devil. There was no doubt about it. From being the most kindly of masters he became a snarling absurdity, whose endeavours simultaneously to study the canvas, observe the configuration of the country-side, and rave into the speaking-tube were consistently vain. George raised his eyes to heaven and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... embryos of all animals are not distinguishably different from each other; and, 2. That those of all animals pass through a series of phases of development, each of which is the type or analogue of the permanent configuration of tribes inferior to it in the scale. Higher the order of animals, the more numerous its stages of progress. Man himself is not exempt from this law. His first foetal form is that which is permanent in the animalcule; it next passes through ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous |
