"Conformation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... signal for general lamentation and horror. This first sense of pain lay in a rigorous constriction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable dryness of the skin. It could not be denied that our atmosphere was radically affected; and the conformation of this atmosphere, and the possible modifications to which it might be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. The result of investigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest terror through the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... prominency of his nose. They insisted that both were artificial, the first they said, was produced when he was an infant, by dipping him in milk, and they insisted that his nose had been pinched every day, till it had acquired its present unsightly and unnatural conformation. On his part, without disputing his own deformity, he paid them many compliments on African beauty. He praised the glossy jet of their skins, and the lovely depression of their noses; but they said, that flattery, or as they emphatically ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... other; thus, the hunter who knows the red-deer in his father's forest, may know in every forest on earth how the stag will behave in any given case. The better a genus is fitted for variability in the conformation of its individuals, the higher is the rank it is entitled to hold in the graduated series of creatures capable of development; and it is precisely that wonderful many-sidedness of his inner life, and of its outward manifestation, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to the imagination of a reader any accurate presentation of the picture, which the writer has in his mind's eye. She was dark. Hair, brows, eyes, and complexion, were all dark; and the contour of the face was of the long or oval type of conformation—very delicate—transparently delicate—more so, the Englishman thought, not without a pull at his heart-strings, than was quite compatible with a due daily supply of nourishment. Still she did not look unhealthy. At seventeen a good deal of pinching may be undergone without destroying ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Himself is the grace of all graciousness; hence He assumeth the conformation of the Forehead, which is disclosed in the most intense light (otherwise, hath a formation in the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... the skin swarthy. His eye, too, was black as jet, and his cheek was half covered in whiskers of a hue dark as the raven's wing. His face, as a whole, was singularly beautiful—for handsome is a word not strong enough to express all the character that was conveyed by a conformation that might be supposed to have been copied from some antique medal, more especially when illuminated by a smile that, at times, rendered the whole countenance almost as bewitching as that of a lovely woman. There was nothing ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... man, four inhabitants called Andrew, or Dandie, Oliver. They were distinguished as Dandie Eassil-gate, Dandie Wassilgate, Dandie Thumbie, and Dandie Dumbie. The two first had their names from living eastward and westward in the street of the village; the third from something peculiar in the conformation of his thumb; the fourth ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that a first class dog in every respect mated with a number of equally well bred typical bitches would produce on an average a comparatively uniform type of pups. Nothing could be further from actual results. The same dog bred, say to four females practically alike in style, size, conformation, color and markings, and from common ancestry, will give perchance in one litter two or three crackerjacks, and the other three will contain only medium pups. This same thing will occur every time the dogs are bred. This is because the bitch with the choice pups and the ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... Insanitary dairy stable and yards. 1. Side and posterior view of bull showing conformation favorable to the development of disease. 2. Insanitary yards. 3. Showing where pulse of horse is taken. 4. Auscultation of the lungs. 5. Fever thermometer. 6. Dose syringe. 7. Hypodermic syringes. 8. Photograph ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... they show us the true central region of the brain from which its development must be determined; and although this work, designed for the general reader, cannot say much of the brain, it is necessary to show its true conformation to enable us to estimate the living brain correctly, so as to describe accurately living men, study the forms of crania, and derive some profit in ethnological studies from the forms of crania which to the ethnologists ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... visible till they were close upon it, on account of the conformation of the land; but when they did come in sight, the scene was so curious that they halted with cocked pieces, gazing down from the rocks at black Peter ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... exceedingly handsome and clear-cut features, but a peculiar head. The peculiarity of his head was that it seemed to be perfectly round on top—that is, its diameter from ear to ear appeared quite equal to its anterior and posterior diameter. The curious effect of this unusual conformation was rendered more striking by the absence of all hair. There was nothing on the Baron's head but a tightly fitting skull cap of black silk. A very deceptive wig hung upon one ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... I said, was to ascertain how to best protect ourselves from like dangers. We then proceeded to discuss the physical conformation of our country. It is a vast table-land, situated at a great height far above the tropical and miasmatic plains, and surrounded by mountains still higher, in which dwell the remnants of that curious white race first described by Stanley. The only access to our region from the lower country ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... so much solemnity, that it is difficult to believe it conveys nothing of any value. Another device for improving the effect of a cold idea, is, to embody it in a verse of unusual harshness and asperity. Compound words, too, of a portentous sound and conformation, are very useful in giving an air of energy and originality; and a few lines of scripture, written out into verse from the original prose, have been found to have a very happy effect upon those readers to whom they have the recommendation ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... followed a native. This man's face was in conformation that of the typical negro; but there the resemblance ceased. Behind the features glowed a proud, fierce spirit that transformed them. His head was high but his eyes roved from right to left restlessly, never still save when they ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... say things feel hard or soft, the varying density of the objects being the cause of the varying sensations they awaken. Smoothness and roughness are varying outlines of surface, existing as physical conformation; the pleasurable or disagreeable sensations awakened in us by contact being due to the greater or less irritation of the nerves of feeling that attrition with it occasions. Motion is absolutely necessary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... head and face no slight resemblance to the ace of hearts. An apron was tied on with great care, ornamented with embroidery of the preceding century. Her complexion, was dark but clear, and her eyebrows high and well-arched. Her mouth was drawn in, raised slightly on one side,—a conformation more particularly apparent when engaged in scolding the maids, or in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... an agony, lest the fog should close in again, and the vision fade before my eyes; for, following the sweep of the tusk, I was aware of the phantom presentment of some monster creature lying imbedded within the ice, its mighty carcase prostrate as it had fallen; the conformation of its enormous forehead presented directly to our gaze. Its little toffee-ball eyes—little proportionately, that is to say—squinted at us, it seemed, through half-closed lids, and a huge, hairy ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Anglo-Saxon in his physical conformation, by his black skin, his curly hair, his flat nose and broad flat foot. Nor is he less distinctly marked by his mental characteristics. Content to repose on the bosom of his mother terra firma, he is not disturbed by dreams of honor, wealth or fame. ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... as they increase, can keep together, will, in the rude state of knowledge in which reliance for subsistence must be principally upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea separate ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... been adopted. It is true that this boundary would have included some districts which had taken no share in the national struggle, and would have excluded others which had taken an active part in the war; but still it was the most proper. The natural conformation of the line gave it a special political recommendation; and where boundaries do not coincide with some great natural features, but are lines arbitrarily laid down, they tend to tempt an usurper by the dangerous facility which they offer to violation. Sooner or later ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... coal-strata. (Edward Hull Quarterly Geological Journal volume 24 page 327.) The carboniferous strata most productive of workable coal have so often a basin-shaped arrangement that these troughs have sometimes been supposed to be connected with the original conformation of the surface upon which the beds were deposited. But it is now admitted that this structure has been owing to movements of the earth's crust of upheaval and subsidence, and that the flexure and inclination of the beds has no connection ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... she was excellent; but her own strong conformation prevented her from understanding that young girls were incapable of such tension of intellect as an enthusiastic scholar of forty-two, and that what was sport to her was toil to a mind unaccustomed to constant attention. Change of labour is not rest, unless it be through gratification ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stones. Through constraint they suffered the king to appropriate to himself the public portion. The primitive foundation remains, property as organized in ancient times, the fettered or exhausted land supporting a social conformation that has melted away, in short, an order of privileges and of thralldom of which the cause and the purpose ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is no change of conformation to note, except that the intestinal tube is naturally much longer than ours, on account of the difference of food: as a general rule, it is ten or twelve times the length of the body. The sheep, who is able to pick up a living in the poorest pastures, is indebted for this inestimable power, which ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... to the west of the double basin that the untoward effects of the territorial conformation were chiefly felt. The valley of the Euphrates is not like that of the Nile, a canal hollowed out between two clearly marked banks. From the northern boundary of the alluvial plain to the southern, the slope is very slight, while from east to ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... like instrumental tone, a commixture of fundamental and overtones, and the manner in which the composite conformation of collective waves strikes the ear being largely determined by the cavities of resonance, the control of these is of great importance to the singer. This control should, by thorough training, be brought to such a degree of efficiency that it becomes subconscious ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... with iron, and constituted the boom or chief water defence of Hamburgh. We passed through, and found an entire regiment under arms, close by the Custom—house. Somehow or other, I had drank deep of that John Bull prejudice, which delights to disparage the physical conformation of our Gallic neighbours, and hugs itself with the absurd notion, "that on one pair of English legs doth march three Frenchmen." But when I saw the weather—beaten soldierlike veterans, who formed this compact battalion, part of the elite of the first corps, more commanding in its, aspect from ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... for there they would have found themselves in the presence of one of the greatest of Theological intellects. Black and Cavendish were born ready-made chemists, and Linnaeus and Cuvier were naturalists, in spite of themselves; and so, there is a mental conformation which almost necessitated Augustine and Athanasius, Calvin and Arminius, to be dogmatists and systematic divines. With the opposite aptitudes for large generalization and subtile distinction, as soon as some master-principle ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... (kitchen remains) of Denmark, of the same epoch, we find the remains of a dog, which, according to Rutymeyer, belongs to a breed which is constant up to its least details, and which is of a light and elegant conformation, of medium size, with a spacious and rounded cranium and a short, blunt muzzle, and a medium sized jaw, the teeth of which form a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... The mental conformation of the English people, which we may admit to be less lively and less easily amused than the temperament of Irishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or even the German branch of our own Teutonic race, is what it is from natural causes, whether remote descent, or that coupled with ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... not far to seek. The physical conformation of no other continent is so unfavorable for exploration and development. Africa's straight coast-lines, affording little shelter to the primitive ships of early mariners, repelled the enterprising Phoenicians and other seafarers ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... dropped the prejudices of my former humble situation in life, and forgotten the bellows-mender in far different occupations. But at the epoch of which I speak, the analogy which a casual observation of a star offered to the conclusions I had already drawn, struck me with the force of positive conformation, and I then finally made up my mind to the course which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... deal of information in respect to the countries which they had visited, and Caesar called together as many of them as he could find, when he had reached the northern shores of France, to inquire about the modes of crossing the Channel, the harbors on the English side, the geographical conformation of the country, and the military resources of the people. He found, however, that the merchants could give him very little information. They knew that Britain was an island, but they did not know its extent or its boundaries; ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... detecting small effusions in this situation. The elbow was to a certain extent protected by the possession of a degree of fixity somewhat resembling that already mentioned in the case of the hip-joint, although here depending on the conformation of the bones alone. I think this explained the absence of free effusion in many cases of fracture of the humeral shaft, but when the latter affected the lower third effusion into ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... line was reformed to my right and rear, my division was at length drawn through the cedars and debouched into an open space near the Murfreesboro' pike, behind the right of Palmer's division. Two regiments of Sill's brigade, however, on account of the conformation of the ground, were obliged to fall back from the point where Woodruff's brigade of Davis's division had rallied after the disaster of the early morning. The division came out of the cedars with unbroken ranks, thinned by only its killed and wounded—but few missing. When we came into ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... projected on the page before me an image which I mistook at first for the likeness of Richard Owen. It was the conformation of the head that gave rise to the mistake, a head domed and massive, white and smooth—it was a head that had always interested me. But as I looked, my mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that the lower part of the face was that of ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... form of the bony fabric, those of the skull are the most striking and distinguishing. It is in the head that we find the varieties most strongly characteristic of the different races. The characters of the countenance, and the shape of the features depend chiefly on the conformation of the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... must be for a moment supposed that our Women are destitute of affection. But unfortunately the passion of the moment predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration. This is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation. For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles, they are consequently wholly devoid of brain-power, and have neither reflection, judgment nor forethought, and ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... on approaching these little mountain lakes, with the extensive preparation that is made for them in the conformation of the ground. I am thinking of a depression, or natural basin, in the side of the mountain or on its top, the brink of which I shall reach after a little steep climbing; but instead of that, after I have accomplished ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... head. Having lived in the East, I am aware that Oriental women ride astride, but I have not seen any of them voluntarily go out of a walk. It is not difficult to trot and canter in a man's plain hunting saddle, but I think our conformation requires the assistance of knee rolls for jumping. We may see even fair horsemen thrown by a horse suddenly stopping dead at a fence, an accident that rarely occurs to a woman in a side saddle, as the grip afforded by her crutches gives her greater ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... which in the distance seem insignificant, are really heavy rain, however local; these are the gray wisps well zigzagged with lightning. The darker ones are torrent rain, which on broad, steep slopes of favorable conformation give rise to so-called "cloudbursts"; and wonderful is the commotion they cause. The gorges and gulches below them, usually dry, break out in loud uproar, with a sudden downrush of muddy, boulder-laden floods. Down they all go in one simultaneous gush, roaring ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... way to Devil's Hole, taking the south-shore road, Colin had an opportunity of noticing its amazing contrast to the north shore, which had seemed so desolate and uninviting as the steamer came in. The conformation was widely different, marked by higher cliffs, rocks jutting out boldly into the sea, with the waves boiling over them and throwing up the spray, wide stretches of fine white sand, and as far as the eye ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... enable us, it is said, by a series of pendulum observations at or near the Pole, to render essential service to the science of geology, to form a mathematical theory of the physical condition of the earth, and to ascertain its exact conformation. It would probably throw light on the wonderful phenomena of magnetism and atmospheric electricity and the mysterious Aurora Borealis—to say nothing of the flora of these regions and the animal life on the ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... been executed, and the drum, A, continuing to revolve, the punches rise a little owing to the conformation of the cam-wheel, and through the action of the springs, b, and allow the moistener to move forward to dampen the little circles which remain at the orifice of the punches. The moistener or dampener is a sort of pad equal in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... virtually blockading all the Mediterranean ports of France. At Toulon, as has been told, they actually entered, and departed only after losing control of the promontory which forms the harbor. There is a similar conformation of the ground at the entrance to the port of Marseilles, but Buonaparte found that the fortress which occupied the commanding promontory had been dismantled. With the instinct of a strategist and with no other thought than that of his duties as inspector, he sat down, and on January ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... represents the now extinct mylodon. Some time afterwards, the discovery of another carapace under similar conditions added weight to Ameghino's supposition.[110] In the midst of the pampas, those vast treeless plains, where no rock or accident of conformation affords shelter from heat or cold or a hiding-place from wild beasts, man was not at a loss; he hollowed out for himself a hole in the earth, roofing it over with the shell of a glyptodon, and securing a retreat where he could be safe at ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... there is a high degree of improbability in supposing a rude dialect to supplant a substantial portion of a more polished one; and, thirdly, we must not overlook the collateral evidence of the similarity of conformation pervading the entire race from Polynesia to the archipelago—distinct alike from the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... it almost seems to try to resume its old condition. This will be borne out by watching the effect of much wet upon any wood that has been previously bent into shape, or upon the separated ribs of a violin. The efforts of the wood to return to its original conformation will be apparent in the instance of the ribs, perhaps provoking, as the re-bending without injuring the varnish, which may happen to be of the most lustrous and delicate description, is often a matter of great difficulty, and at ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... to do with the comfort of those living in country villages than sidewalks which are good at all seasons of the year. Those fortunate villages which are built on a gravelly soil, with a perfect natural drainage, need little more in this direction than such a conformation of the surface as will prevent water from standing on the footway when the ground is frozen. At all other times it sinks naturally away into the earth. It is much more often the case that the character of the soil or subsoil prevents a settling away ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... escaping with their lives by hastily climbing up the side of the canyons, beyond the reach of the roaring waters, and of others being overwhelmed and drowned. Such a flood, caused by a cloud-burst, may have buried the alleged Gunsight Lead and have changed the conformation of ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... the seat of all the greatest disturbances, this part naturally manifests the greatest number of anomalies, which extend from the external conformation of the brain-case to the ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... given, for the walling of an ancient city was seldom of the same height in all places. The structure necessarily varied according to the nature of the ground, being high wherever the ground without was such as to give the enemy an advantage in an attack, and lower in other situations, where the conformation of the surface was such as to afford, of itself, a partial protection. It is not, perhaps, impossible that, at some particular points—as, for example, across glens and ravines, or along steep declivities—the walls of Babylon may have been raised even to ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... or less analogy to that of the tiger, the vulture, or the fox, the form of his retreating forehead, and his bony, lank, and protruding jaws, supported by a neck of immense length, resembled entirely the conformation of a serpent's head. Total baldness increased this resemblance still more, for, under the rough skin of this reptile-shaped forehead, could be distinguished the slightest protuberances, the smallest sutures of his skull; as to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... were not so learned as we, yet they were wiser. They did not explain the phenomena of nature, but described with a graceful and imposing imagery. The rainbow, reduced in our colleges to a mere conformation of matter, was the scarf of Iris; the light-footed hours preceded the car of night, and the rosy-fingered Aurora opened the horizon to permit the car of Jove to pass. When the thunder rolled, Jupiter spoke to attentive mortals. When volcanic mountains trembled, the old Titans sought to throw ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modeling of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... the moral and intellectual perceptions promote spiritual progress or perfection. The system of animal sensations and motions, then, comprises the conception of the animal nature. This is the ground on which all the activities of the soul depend, and the conformation of this fabric determines the duration of the spiritual activity itself, and the degree of ease with which it works. Here, then, we find ourselves in possession of the first member of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... rugged descent, the Mochuelo commanded a halt. The place where this occurred was in a narrow gorge between two lines of hills, or it should rather be said of mountains; for although their altitude was only here and there very considerable, their cragged and precipitous conformation and rocky material entitled them to the latter denomination. The passage between them continued narrow only for a few hundred yards, after which, at either of its extremities, the mountains receded, and the valley opened into plains of some extent. To the right of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... o' Fundy: The Bay of Fundy is remarkable for its high and violent tides, owing to the peculiar conformation of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Islands, to which our examinations were limited, are moderately high, woody land; they slope down nearly to the water on their west sides, but on the east, and more especially the south-east, they present steep cliffs; and the same conformation seemed to prevail in the other islands. The stone of the upper parts is grit or sandstone, of a close texture; but the lower part of the cliffs is argillaceous and stratified, splitting in layers of different ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... lower or nether extremities go first, and the head behind: it follows its tail, instead of being followed by it; and this curious peculiarity in its mode of progression, though, of course, on the whole, the mode best adapted to its conformation and instincts, sometimes proves fatal to it in calm weather, when not a ripple breaks upon the pebbles, to warn that the shore is near. An enemy appears: the creature ejects its cloud of ink, like a sharp-shooter discharging his rifle ere he retreats; and then, darting away, tail ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... that the path by which we had come was the only one by which we could reach the spot where we stood. The circles of black rocks above the tops of the highest trees, though indescribably beautiful, were strangely repellent in their weird conformation. They struck us as the walls of a prison from which the only way to liberty lay across ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of the water itself, only the conformation of the lava stream whose edge could be seen upon the other side of the second river at least ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... is the great event of the voyage. It is always rough there, from the peculiar conformation of the land, and the conflict of the waters from the Gulf of Georgia, and other inlets, with the ocean-tides. Our captain had been sailing on this route for fifteen years, but said he had never seen a worse ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... more careful than before at Mrs. Peck. She was of the age to be Francis's mother, but otherwise she was quite at fault; there was not any likeness there either. A conformation of the little finger was rather peculiar, but it was an exaggeration of a little defect on Mrs. Phillips's otherwise very handsome hand, but ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... . . writing of a species of rock-fish, says—'I found that it had a beautiful contrivance in the conformation of its mouth. It has the power of prolongating both its jaws to nearly the extent of half-an-inch from their natural position. This is done by a most beautiful bit of mechanism, somewhat on the principle of what are called 'lazy tongs.' The cat-fish possesses ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... which we are lies between three large rivers, and, owing to the conformation of the country and the winding of the rivers, its fourth side is a narrow neck of land not more than a mile and a half wide. Here there is a very lofty and rugged range, and it is the spot agreed on as our final rendezvous, being some fifteen miles ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... suppose the condition of a people known as respects (1) civilization, as respects (2) relation to the sovereign, (3) the prevailing mode of its industry, (4) its special circumstances as to taxation, (5) its physical conformation and temperament, (6) its local circumstances as to neighbours warlike or not warlike, (7) the quality and depth of its religion, (8) the framework of its jurisprudence, (9) the machinery by which these laws are made to act, (10) the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... discovered by accident in the year 1616, and after that time a number of Dutch ships unexpectedly touched at those shores, thus continually shedding additional, though always imperfect light on the question of the conformation of the coast-line. How was it, we may ask, that it was especially after 1616 that this coast was so often touched at, whereas there had never been question of this before that time? The question thus put ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls, ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with silvery radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that have fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well as the moraines laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and scratches on the bottom and sides, indicate in the most unmistakable manner the direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth, and the tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Jacques-Emile Blanche's portrait of the Spanish painter explains other things. There is the physique of a man who can work many hours a day before an easel; there are the penetrating eyes of an observer, spying eyes, slightly cruel; the head is an intellectual one, the general conformation of the face harmonious and handsome. The body is that of an athlete, but not of the bull-necked sort we see in Goya. The temperament suggested is impetuous, controlled by a strong will; it has been fined down by study ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... (October 24, 1795), in which each of the three powers took her share, followed as a natural consequence, and Poland ceased to exist as an independent state. Not, however, for ever; for when in 1807 Napoleon, after crushing Prussia and defeating Russia, recast at Tilsit to a great extent the political conformation of Europe, bullying King Frederick William III and flattering the Emperor Alexander, he created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, over which he placed as ruler the then King ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the human family, so called, is divided into many distinct races, having each its peculiar conformation, color, and so forth, which together constitute essential differences; but it is to be remembered that these essentials are all physical; and so far they are properly generic, as implying a difference in kind. But, though a striking difference is also observable in their moral being, it is by ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... up there, studying the conformation and general appearance of the island, we fell to discussing our future prospects, and soon arrived at the conclusion that, situated just where the island happened to be, far away from all the regular ship tracks, its very existence apparently unknown—since it was not marked upon the chart—it ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... precedence as to development and proportions. This diversity in the relative capacity of the thorax and abdomen at different stages of development, and also in persons of different sexes, stamps each individual with characteristic traits of physical conformation; and it is required that we should take into our consideration this normal diversity of character, while conducting our examinations of individuals in reference to ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... the secret of the place should have been kept all down the centuries; for it was the hollow middle of a limestone mountain, that could neither be looked down into from above, because the heights were not scalable, nor guessed at from the conformation of the country. The river, that flowed out of rock and went plunging down into the chasm, must be snow from the Himalayan peaks, on its way to swell the sea. There was no other way to account for that; but that explanation ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... highly amusing to observe the peculiarity which the consciousness of superior knowledge impressed upon the conversation and personal appearance of this decaying race. Whatever might have been the original conformation of their physical structure, it was sure, by the force of acquired habit, to transform itself into a stiff, erect, consequential, and unbending manner, ludicrously characteristic of an inflated sense of their extraordinary knowledge, and a proud and commiserating ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... that, as Mind is always associated with Matter within experience, there arises a presumption against Mind existing anywhere without being thus associated, so that unless we can trace in the disposition of the heavenly bodies some resemblance to the conformation of cerebral structure, we are to conclude that there is a considerable balance of probability in favour of Atheism. Now, as this argument—if we rid it of the grotesque allusion to the heavenly bodies—is one that is frequently met with, ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... broad-faced Laotian, to the more classic profile of the Rajpoot, armed with sword and shield, and the bearded Moor. A panorama in life-size of the diverse nationalities, it yet displays, in the physical conformation of each race, a remarkable predominance of the Hellenic type—not in the features and profiles alone, but equally in the fine attitudes of the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... general conformation of the parrots, as well as the arrangement and strength of their toes, they climb very easily, assisting themselves greatly with their hooked bill, but walk rather awkwardly on the ground, from the shortness and wide separation of their legs. The bill of the parrot is moveable in both ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... pray and to beg favors. Jewish travellers' tales of the Middle Ages are heavily laden with these legends. Of course, the traveller would also bring genuine news about his brethren in distant parts, and sober information about foreign countries, their ways, their physical conformation, and their strange birds and beasts. These stories were in the main true. For instance, Petachiah tells of a flying camel, which runs fifteen times as fast as the fleetest horse. He must have seen an ostrich, which is still called ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... a man somewhat advanced in years, but of a robust conformation, in bed: he had been seized with a fit, which was supposed to be apoplectic, a few hours before; but was already sensible, and out of immediate danger. After I had prescribed a few simple remedies, I took aside ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to have been made for it in the conformation of the ground, even in the deep underlying geological strata! Vast rocks and ledges are piled for it, or cleft asunder that it may find a way. Sometimes it is a trickling thread of silver down the sides of a seamed and scarred precipice. Then again the stratified ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... holding their position on the ridge of the Aisne. It could not have retreated without fearful loss as that ridge was the last conformation of any military value in the practically flat country between the Aisne ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... he has brought together carries us from the top to the bottom of the Tertiaries. Firstly, there is the true horse. Next we have the American Pliocene form of the horse (Pliohippus); in the conformation of its limbs it presents some very slight deviations from the ordinary horse, and the crowns of the grinding teeth are shorter. Then comes the Protohippus, which represents the European Hipparion, having one large digit and two small ones on each foot, and the general ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... there no appeal in this wonderful and enchanting fact to man's highest reason? Does it contain no suggestion that man, representing the highest pinnacle of created life upon the globe, must undergo a final metamorphosis, as supremely more marvelous and more spiritual, as man is greater in physical conformation, and far removed in mental construction from the humble worm that at the call of nature straightway leaves the ground, and soars upon the gleeful air? Is the fact not a thousand-fold more convincing than the assurance of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... characteristic of the wonderful region to which we were all more or less strangers,—for even Dr. Epaminondas and Senhor Tavares Bastos were here for the first time,—the conversation turned naturally enough upon the nature of this Amazonian Valley, its physical conformation, its origin and resources, its history past and to come, both alike and obscure, both the subject of wonder and speculation. Senhor Tavares Bastos, although not yet thirty, is already distinguished in the politics of his country; and from the moment he entered upon public life to the present time, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and east of the Rocky Mountains, which lie much nearer to the Pacific Coast than to the eastern shore of America: many of these birds being, for the first time, made known to ornithologists. We have selected two of the most singular in their conformation: one from the Owls, which are numerous and beautiful; and the other from the Grouse, of which ten fine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... holes bored in the bottom of ships by the worms, which appear to answer the same purpose in water as the termites do upon land. How convincing is this fact of the infinitely wise arrangements of the Creator, who has united, in the whole system of creation, one uniform conformation of order and utility; for although the vermis, or worm, which is so pernicious to shipping in tropical climates, and the termite, possess so many destructive qualities, yet these very properties serve the most important purposes and designs. Scarcely ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... Calder's conformation of eye enabled him to express much surprise by facial expression, and at this moment he used his power to ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... continued, gaining a little heat at the word, "I bought the finest-lookin' pair you ever saw in New York this spring,—all-around action, manners, conformation, everything; I'll show 'em to you. One of 'em's all right now; this confounded railroad injured the other gettin' him up here. I've put in a claim. They say they didn't, my man says they did. He ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... traced a few words, and then resumed his reclining position, apparently absorbed in reflection, and utterly regardless of all the occupants, male and female, of the imperial apartment. Judging from his general appearance, he could scarcely be twenty-five years of age. The conformation of the upper part of his face was thoroughly intellectual—the forehead high, broad, and upright; the eyes clear, penetrating, and thoughtful;—but the lower part was, on the other hand, undeniably sensual. The lips, full and thick, formed ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... This conformation accompanies any great proportional developement of the vital system; and it is frequently observable in the woman of the Saxon population of England, as in the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... it seemed a strange, critical entrance into another world, which she was destined to know and to love. The pines were big, brown-barked, seamed, and knotted, with no typical conformation except a majesty and beauty. They grew far apart. Few small pines and little underbrush flourished beneath them. The floor of this forest appeared remarkable in that it consisted of patches of high silvery grass and wide brown areas ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... coverts, and tail, are white in the perfect, or old birds of both sexes, in those under three years of age these parts are of a gray brown; the rest of the plumage is deep, dark brown, each feather tipt with pale brown, lightest on the shoulder of the wing, and darkest towards its extremities. The conformation of the wing is admirably adapted for the support of so large a bird; it measures two feet in breadth on the greater quills, and sixteen inches on the lesser; the longest primaries are twenty inches ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... rhinoceros or behemoth. One other corporeal fact I could not help observing, was, that his cheeks rose at once from the collar of his green coat, his neck being invisible, from the hollow between it and the jaw being filled up to a level. The conformation was just what he himself delighted to contemplate in his pigs, to which his resemblance was greatly increased by unwearied endeavours to keep himself close shaved.—I could not help feeling anxious about his son and Jane Rogers.—He gave a quantity of gossip about various people, evidently anxious ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the general distribution of the reef-building corals, but there are some very interesting and singular circumstances to be observed in the conformation of the reefs, when we consider them individually. The reefs, in fact, are of three different kinds; some of them stretch out from the shore, almost like a prolongation of the beach, covered only by shallow water, and in the case of an island, surrounding ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... for Nature's bulwarks. Here again geographical features will be found to have had an important bearing on the course of history, the close connection of the two countries, in almost every age, resulting from their physical conformation. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... life-giving breath of the sea, when she could distinguish the green line of ocean beyond the trees, she clapped her hands with ecstasy. She became a guide for Genevieve, explaining to her the conformation of Carnac, and recounting with pretty fancy the legends of the country they ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... view her aunt, broken under the news, and Hugh still unknowing to them; her own separate existence Fleda was hardly conscious of. Hugh especially how was he to be told, and how could he bear to hear, with his most sensitive conformation of both physical and moral nature? And if an arrest should take place there that night! Fleda shuddered, and, unable to go on thinking, rose up and went to her aunt's bedside. It had not entered her mind till the moment she read Mr. Thorn's letter that ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... overhanging conformation of the place, it was quite impossible for us to descend in front where pressure had made the snow hard as stone, we were obliged to risk a march over the looser material upon its flank. As there was nothing to be gained ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... at, minutely circumstantial in its details, and the veracity of which admits of no dispute. As the researches of comparative anatomists have enabled us, from the examination of a single bone, to pronounce with certainty upon the general conformation and habits of the animal to which it belonged; and as, in many cases, from the existence of such animals, we may go on, step by step, to the nature of the earth's surface at the period when they lived: so the meanest relic of art will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the ai does not move rapidly over the ground, but the ground is not its proper place no more than it is that of the orang-otang, or other tree-monkeys. Its conformation shows that nature intended it for an inhabitant of the trees, where it can move about with sufficient ease to procure its food. On the branches it is quite at home, or, rather, I should say, under the branches, for, unlike the squirrels ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Enright, never fails in the administration of justice. Doctor Peets will be glad to exhibit this memento mori to all who care to call. Doctor Peets, who is eminent as a phrenologist, avers that said skull is remarkable for its thickness, and that its conformation points to the possession by Bear Creek, while he wore it, of the most powerful natural inclinations to crime. From these discoveries of Doctor Peets, the committee which suspended this felon to the windmill is to be congratulated on acting just in time. It seems plain from the ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... be no mistake about it, for all of them recognized the conformation of the ground in the immediate neighborhood, since they had taken particular pains to impress the same on their ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... unpleasant dilemma. Aided by a legal adviser, however, his judgment must be strengthened, and his decision would be more weighty, without creating in his breast those uneasy sensations which must arise under different circumstances. In the present conformation of the government, the governor has no legal adviser to have recourse to when an appeal is made to his decision, which is not rarely the case, except the judge advocate, and this officer having previously given his opinion in the court below cannot, of course, be again ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... underlip ending in a precipitous dent above her chin. He liked that chin. There was courage there and strength, softened at once by the curve of the throat, flowing to where it joined the fine deep breast. Yesterday she had seemed like a boy. To-day she was a woman grown, feminine in every graceful conformation, on tiptoe at the very ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... of level between the source and mouth of the brook is about 190 feet. The sharpest descent is just above the hatchery and rearing troughs, which therefore receive well-aerated water. The conformation of the ground offers good facilities for the distribution and utilization of ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... find some rich mines near here soon. Stay; it can do you no harm. I will tell you something: three days ago I followed up the river, and about twenty miles above this spot I became attracted by the conformation of the country, and remarked it as being very similar to some very famous spots in South America. 'Here,' I said to myself, 'Maximilian, you have your volcanic disturbance, your granite, your clay, slate, and sandstone upheaved, and seamed with quartz;—why should you not discover ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... as being of peculiar and unsuitable conformation to the various conditions of life amid which they are placed; with strong moral proclivities, for the most part subservient to a weak ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... masculine organ of mentality in other particulars so marked that one who has given the subject attention can determine with perfect ease the probable sex of the owner of almost any skull which might be presented to him. This difference in the conformation of the skull is undoubtedly due to a difference in mental character, which, in turn, depends upon a difference in cerebral development. Faculties which are generally largely developed in one are usually smaller in the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... began to con their lessons together, Reuben, who was as much superior to Jeanie Deans in acuteness of intellect, as inferior to her in firmness of constitution, and in that insensibility to fatigue and danger which depends on the conformation of the nerves, was able fully to requite the kindness and countenance with which, in other circumstances, she used to regard him. He was decidedly the best scholar at the little parish school; and so gentle was his temper and disposition, that he was ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... essential differences. In all those modifications of the features which are produced by habits and sentiments, no two persons were less alike. Nature seemed to have intended them as examples of the futility of those theories which ascribe every thing to conformation and instinct and nothing to external circumstances; in what different modes the same materials may be fashioned, and to what different purposes the same materials may be applied. Perhaps the rudiments of their intellectual character, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... consul at Alexandria a certificate declaring me to be an Indo-British subject named Abdullah, by profession a doctor, aged thirty, and not distinguished—at least so the frequent blanks seemed to denote—by any remarkable conformation of eyes, nose, or cheek. For this I disbursed a dollar. And here let me record the indignation with which I did it. That mighty Britain—the mistress of the seas—the ruler of one-sixth of mankind—should charge five shillings to pay for the shadow of her protecting ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... miscarriage in this manner was of eight months' growth and was accompanied by its placenta. The older observers thought this woman must have had two orifices to her womb, one of which had some connection with the stomach, as they had records of the dissection of a female in whom was found a conformation similar ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Holloway) weighing eight grains less than nine ounces. This sort is also termed amas lichin or smooth gold, and appears to owe that quality to its having been exposed, in some prior state of the soil or conformation of the earth, to the action of running water, and deprived of its sharp and rough edges by attrition. This form of gravel is the most common in which gold is discovered. Gold-dust or amas urei ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Buch compares the Lofodens to the jaws of a shark, and most travellers since his time have resuscitated the comparison, but I did not find it so remarkably applicable. There are shark tooth peaks here and there, it is true, but the peculiar conformation of Norway—extensive plateaus, forming the summit-level of the mountains—extends also to these islands, whose only valleys are those which open to the sea, and whose interiors are uninhabitable snowy tracts, mostly above the line ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wrestlers. If it be said that in these cases the things employed are of the same kind, it is answered that even in the case of men and women, the nature of the two persons is the same. And as the difference in their ways of working arises from the difference of their conformation only, it follows that men experience the same kind ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... displacing the preexistent and probably more primitive peoples of the Mississippi valley. While the time is not yet ripe for making final answer to these inquiries, it is not premature to suggest a relation between a peculiar development of the aboriginal stocks and a peculiar geographic conformation: In general the coastward stocks are small, indicating a provincial shoreland habit, yet their population and area commonly increase toward those shores indented by deep bays, along which maritime and inland industries naturally ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... within this inclosed sea, is a place where the water is just of the right depth, and the bottom of just the right conformation for the convenient anchoring of ships of war. This place is called Spithead, and it forms one of the most famous anchoring grounds in the world. It is here that the vast fleets of the English navy ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... last acts of some of our best dramatic writers, there wants that degree of finish and grouping equal to the rest. Shakspeare sometimes has this want in common with others; but in this play he has lost none of his force and propriety of character—here all continue to speak the language of their conformation, and lose none of their original importance. Barry was an actor that, in this particular, kept pace with the great poet he represented—he supported Othello throughout with unabating splendor—his ravings over the dead body of the innocent ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... or skill—it is unnecessary to decide which—has associated symmetry with quality and conformation, as a point of great importance in animals calculated for fattening; and there is no doubt that, to a certain extent, this is so. The beast must be a system of mathematical lines. To the advocate of symmetry, the setting-on of ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... light ground. The general grouping is in three horizontal or encircling bands agreeing with or following the foundation coil. Details are governed by the horizontal and the oblique structure lines. The vertical construction lines have no direct part in the conformation of the design excepting in so far as they impose a stepped character ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... among them, until one day when the company after a fierce charge found itself hugging the ground in a wide field, on the far side of which the enemy—infantry and artillery—was posted in force. Lying down they were pretty well protected by the conformation of the ground from the artillery; and lying down, the infantry generally, even with their better guns, could not hurt them to a great extent; but a line of sharp-shooters, well placed behind cover of scattered rocks on the far side of the field, could ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and drug habitue wards of hospitals as well as in medicolegal cases of degenerates, gunmen and other criminals, the characteristic conformation and diagnostic stigmata of the thymo-centric are often encountered. Life treats them badly. Misunderstood and misjudged, they are the hopeless misfits of society. If the pituitary and the thyroid can enlarge to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... is borne by a single immensely-extended finger (fig. 178). No trace of the actual wing-membrane itself has, of course, been found fossilised; but we could determine that the "Pterodactyles" possessed the power of flight, quite apart from the extraordinary conformation of the hand. The proofs of this are to be found partly in the fact that the breast-bone was furnished with an elevated ridge or keel, serving for the attachment of the great muscles of flight, and still more in the fact that the bones were hollow and were filled with air—a ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... bottom' one, which indeed does stand in front of the rest,—but if therefore it is to be called the front petal—which is the back one?) You may find in the next paragraph description of a "singular conformation," and the interesting conclusion that "no one has yet discovered for what purpose this singular conformation was provided." But you will not, in the entire article, find the least attempt to tell you the difference between ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... thing from a soldier's point of view. Pay was drawn from the Field Cashier, and distributed for the first time in France. Next came the notification that in conformation with the policy of re-forming the 33rd and the 2nd Divisions by forming brigades, each consisting of two new battalions and two regular battalions, the 99th Brigade was to lose the 17th and 24th Battalions Royal Fusiliers, receive the 1st Royal Berks and the 1st King's Royal ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... to the reverence of infinite generations, and of centuries beyond the vision of prophecy. A plausible hypothesis has been started in modern times, that the facial structure, and that the intellectual conformation, may be deduced more frequently from the corresponding characteristics in the mother than in the father. It is certain that no very great man has ever existed, but that his greatness has been rehearsed and predicted in one or other of his parents. And it cannot be denied, that in the most eminent ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... very brief notice of the above varieties of fish sufficient,—they have been described over and over again by much abler pens than mine, and I advise all those who are desirous of minute details, as to their conformation and habits, to have recourse to one of the published Histories of British Fishes,[2] indeed all the above fish and their varieties have been faithfully and naturally described in (I take it for granted) every angling book ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... said of Reynolds, as Macaulay said of Horace Walpole: "The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great; and whatever was ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... from other nations by a thin beard, they try to eradicate the few hairs that nature has given them. They think themselves embellished in proportion as they heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of their national conformation. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the Neanderthal, near Hochdal, between Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. Of this, however, I was unable to procure more than a plaster cast of the cranium, taken at Elberfeld, from which I drew up an account of its remarkable conformation, which was, in the first instance, read on the 4th of February, 1857, at the meeting of the Lower Rhine Medical and Natural History Society, at Bonn.* ([Footnote] *'Verhandl. d. Naturhist.' Vereins der Preuss. Rheinlande ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... pick out on the map the headquarters of all the more notable peoples, not merely as they are now, but also as they were at various outstanding moments of the past. His next business is to master the main facts about the natural conditions to which each people is subjected—the climate, the conformation of land and sea, the animals and plants. From here it is but a step to the economic life—the food-supply, the clothing, the dwelling-places, the principal occupations, the implements of labour. A selected list of ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... gable-end where, earlier in the evening I had seen peering out at me an old woman's face. Conceive my astonishment at finding the spot still lighted and a face looking out, but not the same face, a countenance as old, one as intent, but of different conformation and of a much more intellectual type. I considered myself the victim of an illusion; I tried to persuade myself that it was the same woman, only in another garb and under a different state of feeling; ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... afforded; although the extreme right rested on no obstacle which superiority in numbers could not overcome. And a heavy force, massed in the clearing at Dowdall's as a point d'appui, was indispensable to safety, inasmuch as the conformation of the ground afforded nothing for this flank ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... lifted his nose, which by its natural conformation betrayed an aspiring character, and looked ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... stranger's friend. At this moment the extreme beauty of a small moss in fructification caught his eye. Though the whole plant was not much larger than the top of one of his fingers, he could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, and capsules without admiration. "Can that Being," he thought, "who brought this plant to perfection look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? Surely not." He started up and, disregarding ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... peculiar to America, but in this he is certainly mistaken; and probably, as Pallas has observed in his Zoology, the Phalanger itself is a native of the East Indies, as the animal which was caught by Mr Banks resembled it in the extraordinary conformation of the feet, in which it differs from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... red, sarcastic man, the engineer, and a meek puppet who was merely the superintendent of the whole thing.... Una watched these village people, to whom the Zodiac hall was Main Street, and in their satisfied conformation to a life of marble floors and artificial light she found such settled existence as made her feel at home in this town, with its eighteen strata called floors. She, too, at least during the best hours of the day, lived in the Zodiac ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the work done by the men who have laid bare so many of the secrets of the interior, and by deductions to be drawn from the physical conformation and climatic peculiarities already revealed, we may, to some extent, conjecture the possibilities of the future. With every variety of climate between temperate and tropical, with enormous mineral treasures—the extent of which, even at the present time, can only be conjectured—boundless ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... snow-dust in a loose condition on exposed slopes, where there is a free upward sweep to leeward, it is tossed back into the sky, and borne onward from peak to peak in the form of banners or cloudy drifts, according to the velocity of the wind and the conformation of the slopes up or around which it is driven. While thus flying through the air, a small portion makes good its escape, and remains in the sky as vapor. But far the greater part, after being driven into the sky again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... conformation of the island is slightly undulating, with the exception of a mountain range which traverses it from east to west, running through nearly its whole length in a zig-zag course, and on the average about twenty-five miles ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... mysterious light became stronger and soon they could make out the conformation of the rock walls they were passing at such a snail's pace. Layers of vari-colored rock showed here and there, and, at one point there was a stratum of gold-bearing or mica-filled rock that glistened with a million reflections and re-reflections. The air grew warmer and more humid ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... sights to be seen on those beachless shores, of that multitude of creeks and inlets and little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain existence. Thanks ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... close Southern ports, and the South to destroy Northern commerce, the advantage was clearly with the South. From Cape Henry to the Rio Grande the Navy of the United States was called upon to create an effective blockade against all ingress and egress. The conformation of the coast, which along great distances prevented the entrance and exit of ocean-going vessels, materially aided in the task, but it was still such a one as had never before been attempted in the naval history of the world. The line to be subjected to blockade was ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... surf-swimmers these men are;—they will go far out for mere sport in the roughest kind of a sea, when the waves, abnormally swollen by the peculiar conformation of the bay, come rolling in thirty and forty feet high. Sometimes, with the swift impulse of ascending a swell, the swimmer seems suspended in air as it passes beneath him, before he plunges into the trough beyond. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... understands the conformation of the brain, and the general character of its different regions. It is important that he should as soon as possible begin the study of heads, and learn to judge correctly their development. When he can do this, he has an inexhaustible ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... the ledge had seemed to be four or five feet wide; now she saw that it was nearer ten. The conformation of the rocks, beetling above it, had led her to imagine that a straight wall of cliff rose abruptly just at the back of the ledge. In reality they overhung the rudely level space like out-jutting eaves over the sun-deck ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... will see many a pretty face enveloped in a fur-trimmed hood, and observe how much grace and modest dignity is given by that simple habiliment. It is something of this kind which we would recommend. For example—if a hood, so cut as not to admit of too close a conformation to the shape of the head, were attached to a tippet which might descend and protect the shoulders, or come even lower, at the fancy of the wearer, and were fastened round the neck, the hood itself might be elevated so as to cover the head, and might be drawn even over the face; or it might be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... language, being a fool or lumpish stupid person. And, besides that name, it bore that of Toelpel in German, which has the same signification. The Dod-aers of the Dutch is most probably a vulgar epithet of the Dutch sailors, expressive of its lumpish conformation and inactivity. Our sailors would possibly have substituted heavy-a——. I find the Dodo was also called the Monk-swan of St. Maurice's Island at the commencement of last century. The word Dronte is apparently neither Portugese nor Spanish, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... Wealden lake, or filled up the hollows of the old inland cretaceous sea. Paradoxical as it sounds to say so, the Celtic kingdom of the Regni, the South Saxon principality of AElle the Bretwalda, the modern English county of Sussex, have all had their destinies moulded by the geological conformation of the rock upon which they repose. Where human annals see only the handicraft and interaction of human beings—Euskarian and Aryan, Celt and Roman, Englishman and Norman—a closer scrutiny of history may perhaps see the working of still deeper elements—chalk and clay, volcanic upheaval ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... knows the difficulty experienced in singing very high tones to different syllables, each requiring a different conformation of the buccal cavity. The passage quoted—expressing Tell's bitterness at the recollection of his past sufferings in prison, "Well I know the weight of galling chain"—has to be declaimed with great energy. So far as the relative value of the notes is concerned, it is entirely ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam |
