"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drainage of North America. Usually it was trimmed down and excavated until only about three-fourths of the outer wall of the shell remained. At one end was the long spike-like base which served as a handle, and at the other the flat conical apex, with its very pronounced spiral line or ridge expanding from the center to the circumference, as seen in Fig. 475 a. This vessel was often copied in clay, as many good examples now in our museums testify. The notable feature is that the shell has been copied literally, the spiral appearing in its proper place. A specimen ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... With spiral shell, Full blasted, tell, That all your wat'ry realms should ring; Your pearl alcoves, Your coral groves, Should ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Round his waist was a girdle of bright yellow strips of plantain leaves, mixed with the scarlet leaves of the ti plant; a band of pearl-shell ornaments encircled his forehead, and his long, black hair, perfumed with scented oil, was twisted up in a high spiral knob, and ornamented with scarlet hibiscus flowers. Across one broad shoulder there hung a small, snowy-white poncho or cape, made of fine tappa cloth, and round his wrists and ankles were circlets of pearl shell, enclosed ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... scientists have not as yet formulated definite theories concerning it. Even the theories regarding the origin of the solar system are still conflicting and none is generally accepted. The old nebular hypothesis is discredited and the theory of the spiral movement of the solar matter seems to be confirmed by phenomena observable in the heavens. The one principle generally held by scientists is that, given matter and life and some creating force, our present marvelous complex universe has come into being according to laws usually called ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... Austrian right wing. A memorial tower has been erected here, 250 feet high, with great avenues of cypresses radiating outwards from it. The custodian is a handsome boy, who lost a leg at the taking of Gorizia two years ago. There is no stair-case within the tower; one goes up by a spiral inclined plane. At successive stages, as one ascends, are large and detailed paintings, running right round the inner circumference of the tower, representing the battles of the Italian Wars of Liberation from 1848 to 1870. ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... spiral road leading up the summit have been observed. In 1824 Bullock (who, however, is not regarded as a very accurate observer) "found the whole mountain had been covered with palaces, temples, baths, hanging-gardens, and so forth." Latrobe, somewhat later, found "fragments of pottery ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... to the hall, and, looking down the spiral staircase to the marble pavement of the entrance three stories below, saw the men swarming in through the wide gateway and doorway by dozens. While they still leaned over the balustrade, Marguerite, one of their pupils, a blue-eyed blonde girl of lovely complexion, with red, voluptuous lips, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... queer passages, where the walls varied from five to fifteen feet thick, peeped into cellars and dungeons, and bending our heads under Norman arches, at last entered the first courtyard. We saw mysterious winding staircases, generally spiral, leading up and down into deep dark mystery. Certainly so far the ruins did not look as though they would protect any one from wind and rain, and we passed on, through walls that seemed impregnable, to ruined chambers, utterly roofless, in and out of which pigeons were flying ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... down a spiral stairway. She kissed his mouth, took off his winged cap and coat, threw them somewhere out of sight, and then he had time to ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... picture. Here we reach definite survivals of Celtic traditions. There flourished in Britain before the Claudian conquest a vigorous native art, chiefly working in metal and enamel, and characterized by its love for spiral devices and its fantastic use of animal forms. This art—La Tene or Late Celtic or whatever it be styled—was common to all the Celtic lands of Europe just before the Christian era, but its vestiges are particularly clear in Britain. When the Romans spread their dominion over the island, ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... "gallery." Into the front chamber, which evidently did service also as a parlor, Mrs. Briskow led the way. By now she was in quite a flutter of excitement. For the guest she drew forth the one rocking chair, a patent contraption, the rockers of which were held upon a sort of track by stout spiral springs. Its seat and back were of cheap carpet material stretched over a lacquered frame, and these she hastily dusted with her apron; then she seated herself upon the edge of the bed ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... look at any on my rack. But be careful; most of the things are only temporarily mounted—just in glycerine. Here is the sweetest longitudinal section of the tentacle of an Actinia, and here—look at these lovely transverse sections of the plumule of a pea; you can see the primary groups of spiral vessels. They've taken the carmine stain wonderfully! But my work is not advanced; I wish you could see that ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... porridge. And our tea! Like the true Australian he was, Ted had actually brought us a twenty-six pound case of tea. It was a wondrous collection, and I drew a long breath when I remembered that there was more, much more, to come. Here were nails, not in spiral twists of paper, but in solid seven-pound packages, and quite a number ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... (2, 3) is formed inside them, either by the softening and dissolution of the central cells or by the secretion of fluid internally. Some of the glands, such as the sudoriferous, do not ramify (Figure 2.284 efg). These glands, which secrete the perspiration, are very long, and have a spiral coil at the end, but they never ramify; so also the wax-glands of the ears. Most of the other cutaneous glands give out buds and ramify; thus, for instance, the lachrymal glands of the upper eye-lid that secrete tears (Figure 2.286), and the sebaceous glands which secrete the fat in the skin ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the valley. He had seen it several times—a long spiral flash, such as the sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a flash as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... their church, the very self-same goats which this morning have been trotting past my window through the most populous streets of Rome, innocently following their shepherd, tinkling their bells, and shaking their long spiral horns and white beards; the very same dew-lapped cattle which were that Sunday morning feeding on the hillside above, carved on the ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... shattering itself in white spray into emerald pools by the side of the railway; Wasen church perched high upon its solitary hilltop; the Biaschina ravine, the cleft rocks of Faido, the serpentine twists and turns of the ramping line as it mounts or descends its spiral zigzags? Dewy Alpine pasture, tossed masses of land-slip, white narcissus on the banks, snowy peaks in the background—all alike were fresh visions of delight to Herminia; and she drank it all in with the pure childish joy of a poetic nature. It was the Switzerland of her dreams, reinforced ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... singly and distinct, thick wreaths of gray-white smoke were sailing straight aloft. The waiting Apache of the Mazatzal was signalling the coming brother from the dark clefts of the Sierra Ancha. One hour later, just as ten was striking on the spiral of the office clock, two sudden shots were heard on the flats to the north-west, and the little herd of horses and mules, not two dozen in all, grazing under cover of the rifles of Sentries 3 and 4, came limping, lumbering in, fast as hoppled ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... from. 2. Co'bra, a highly venomous reptile inhabiting the East Indies. In-fest'ed, troubled, annoyed. 3. Sub'tile, acute, piercing. In-fus'es, intro-duces. 4. Ob-structs', hinders. De-lir'i-um, a wandering of the mind. 5. Ran'kle, to rage. Par'ox-ysm, a fit, a convulsion. 7. Worm, a spiral metallic pipe used in distilling liquors. Still, a vessel used ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... than the common sheep, is covered with brownish hair instead of wool, and is chiefly remarkable for its huge spiral horns, resembling those of a sheep, but frequently three feet in length, and from four to six inches in ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... said Mrs. Chaffery. She held a dismal little oil lamp, and they descended a tenebrous spiral structure into an underground breakfast-room lit by gas that shone through a partially frosted globe with cut-glass stars. That descent had a distinctly depressing effect upon Lewisham. He went first. He took a deep breath at the door. What on earth was Chaffery going ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... low-browed old door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided little quadrangle; for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle should, in this least mathematical of universities, be quadrangular. Groping and stumbling his familiar way up the darkest of spiral staircases, Maitland missed his footing, and fell, with the whole weight of his body, against the door at which he had meant ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... meteoritic theory, and presents it in an especially attractive guise. It regards meteorites as very sparsely distributed through space, and gravity as powerless to collect them into dense groups. So it assigns the parentage of the solar system to a spiral nebula composed of planetismals, and the planets as formed from knots in the nebula, where many planetismals had been concentrated near the intersections of their orbits. These groups of meteorites, already as dense as a swarm ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the precipice we come to a new phase of coastal scenery. From the high land above us green scrub-covered spur after spur shoots downward to the shore, enclosing numerous little beaches of coarse sand and many coloured spiral shells—"Reddies" we boys called them—with here and there a rare and beautiful cowrie of banded jet black and pearly white. The sea-wall of rock has here but few pools, being split up into long, deep, and narrow chasms, into which the gentle ocean swell comes ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... went clumping and clattering along the streets like champion clog-dancers. The Flemish cap, worn by some of the peasant women, also amused Paul very much. From each side of the wearer's head, near the eye, projected a brass ornament, in the shape of a spiral spring, but each circle diminishing in size till the wire ended in a point, like ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... morning. The wind had veered once more, and a cold drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I trudging ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... open, and up the dim spiral stairs rode the Golden Archer, through bars of moonlight to the region of the great winds where again he mounted the tower. But always there is one dream left to the sorrowful, and his was, that some night the great winds would drive her ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... reached the upper landing of the spiral ascent, he paused a moment before laying hold of a grotesque knocker which ornamented the door of the atelier where the famous painter of Henry IV.—neglected by Marie de Medicis for Rubens—was probably at work. The young man felt the strong sensation which vibrates in the soul of ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... towards the land, and looked at it attentively. It lay before him as far as the sky-line, flat, frozen, and covered with snow. Some tufts of heather shivered in the wind. No roads were visible—nothing, not even a shepherd's cot. Here and there pale spiral vortices might be seen, which were whirls of fine snow, snatched from the ground by the wind and blown away. Successive undulations of ground, become suddenly misty, rolled themselves into the horizon. The great dull plains were lost under the white fog. Deep silence. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... impress on subsequent doubt, as the progress of knowledge is in suggesting novelty of form. The sphere is narrowed, or the direction changed. If thought seems to have come round in its revolution to the same spot in its orbit, it will be found to be moving not on a circle, but on a spiral; slowly but surely approaching a little nearer to the great central truth, toward which it ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... that I had barely time to reach the cars before they started. I shook the reins upon her neck, and with a plunge, startled at the energy of my signal, away she flew. What a stride she had! What an elastic spring! She touched and left the earth as if her limbs were of spiral wire. When I reached the car my friend was standing in front of it, the gang-plank was ready, I leaped from the saddle and, running up the plank into the car, whistled to her; and she, timid and hesitating, yet unwilling to be separated from me, crept slowly and ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... is a third variety of the round worm, and is said to infest the bodies of almost every species of mammalia. As its name indicates, the upper portion of its body is slender, hair-like, and terminates at the lower extremity in a thick, spiral portion. It is from one to two inches in length, and is found attached by its head to the mucous membrane of the caecum, and, in rare instances, in the colon and small ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... into the open space in front of what was to be their fortress and abode. Solid was the rock about the entrance and narrow the blocked opening. Smoke curled in a pretty spiral upward from where smoldered the fire Ab had made the day before. Lightfoot looked upon it all and laughed joyously, though tremblingly, for she had now given herself to a man and he had brought her ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... appeared in the Daily Express of 9th June 1910. "A subterranean chamber with a spiral staircase at one end and a Gothic roof has been discovered at Greenhithe. It is believed to have been a ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... time to time to dip the palm branch in the holy water, and sprinkle the bed. Both windows had been opened in spite of the cold. On the marble hearth stood a chafing-dish full of embers from which rose spiral rings of smoke, filling the room with a pungent odor as a servant poured some vinegar and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... day in the great northern city, preparing for what he regarded as his career, James sat in the same large, shabbily furnished room where his mother had once visited him—half-way up the hideously long spiral stair of an ancient house, whose entrance was in a narrow close. The great clock of a church in the neighbouring street had just begun to strike five of a wintry afternoon, dark with snow, falling and yet to fall: how often in after years was he not to hear the ghostly call of that clock, and see ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... for the album, and Panshine, finding himself alone, took a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, rubbed his nails and looked sideways at his hands. They were very white and well shaped; on the second finger of the left hand he wore a spiral gold ring. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... less numerous collections of individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation, and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think the restored Union neither ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... went through the inner lock-door. He saw that the interior of the ship was stripped and bare. But a spiral stairway descended from some upper compartment. It had a handrail of pure, transparent, water-clear plastic. The walls were bare insulation, but that trace of luxury remained. Pop ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... driven by gears at the back, revolving constantly at uniform speed. The inside of the cylinder is arranged with reverse-spiral flanges which mix the coffee perfectly and make uneven roasting impossible; and they discharge promptly every grain of coffee when the front-head opening is turned to the lower position. The roaster is generally operated with coal fuel, but can be used with gas by installing ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl, and the profusion of her sable tresses, which, each arranged in its own little spiral of twisted curls, fell down upon as much of a lovely neck and bosom as a simarre of the richest Persian silk, exhibiting flowers in their natural colours embossed upon a purple ground, permitted to be visible—all these constituted a combination of loveliness, which yielded not to the most ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the little hut, where they pile up the stiffs before they bury them—you know, just to the left outside the abri—they leave lots of their boots around. I can pick up any number I want." With a clasp-knife he was cutting the leather in a spiral, paring off a thin lace. He contracted his bushy eyebrows as he bent over his work. The candlelight glinted on the knife blade as he twisted it ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... remember well, in my boyhood's romp, The beautiful flower that grew near the swamp, With its spiral screw Of cerulean hue, While on the marge of its petals grew A fringe, such as ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Nature hides her internal striving under a smother of white for many months in every year, when what is now gold in the sun will be a soft—sometimes, too, a hard-shining coverlet like impacted wool. Then, instead of the majestic clouds of incense from the threshers, will rise blue spiral wreaths of smoke from the lonely home. There the farmer rests till spring, comforting himself in the thought that while he waits, far under the snow the wheat is slowly expanding; and as in April, the white frost flies ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... aisle is known as The Monks' Door, and is the regular entrance into the cathedral from the south. It opened from the eastern walk of the cloister. It is of later date than the wall in which it is placed. The ornamentation is very rich; one spiral column is especially noteworthy. There is a trefoiled arch, the cusps having circular terminations with the star ornament. In the spandrels are quaint, crouching monks, each holding a pastoral staff. Above are two ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... The liquid fire makes seas, the solid, shores; Arch'd o'er with flames, the horrid concave roars. In bubbling eddies rolls the fiery tide, And sulphurous surges on each other ride. The hollow winding vaults, and dens, and caves, Bellow like furnaces with flaming waves. Pillars of flame in spiral volumes rise, Like fiery snakes, and lick the infernal skies. Sulphur, the eternal fuel, unconsumed, Vomits redounding smoke, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Sandy had thought what would become of the water after it had traversed the chamber. There it was pouring down from the end of the wooden spout, just clearing the tarred roof of the spiral stair, and plashing on the ground close to the foot of it; in their eagerness they had never thought of where it would run to next. And now Willie was puzzled. Nothing was easier than to stop it for the present, which of course he ran at once to do; but where was ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... upon cloven wood. And Aeson's son poured out pure libations, and Idmon rejoiced beholding the flame as it gleamed on every side from the sacrifice, and the smoke of it mounting up with good omen in dark spiral columns; and quickly he spake outright the will of ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the old church of St. Margaret, and within a hundred feet of the spot where the conflagration began. It is of the Doric order, and rises from the pavement to the height of two hundred and two feet, containing within its shaft a spiral stair of black marble of three hundred and forty-five steps. The plinth is twenty-one feet square, and ornamented with sculpture by Cibber, representing the flames subsiding on the appearance of King Charles;—beneath his horse's feet a figure, meant to personify ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... interesting. "I was experimenting," he says, "on an automatic method of recording telegraph messages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the disk talking-machine of to-day. The platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the disk. Over this was placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing point connected to an arm travelled over the disk; and any signals given through the magnets were embossed on the disk of paper. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... moment just before he passes out of range when he glides in a straight line and may be hit. This singular zig-zag flight so deceives the eye as almost to produce the idea of a spiral movement. No barrel can ever be jerked from side to side swiftly enough, no hair-trigger is fine enough, to catch him then, except by the chance of a vast scattering over-charge, which has nothing to do with sport. If he rises at some little ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... have seen him mount till his petty persecutor grew dizzy with the height and returned to earth. But the next day, with a fairly good breeze blowing, I watched two hawks for many minutes climbing their spiral stairway to the skies, till they became very small objects against the clouds, and not once did they flap their wings! Then one of them turned toward the mountain-top and sailed straight into the face of the wind, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... which arose a steep roof, flagged with grey stones. A single turret at one angle, defended by a door studded with huge iron nails, rose above the battlement, and gave access to the roof from within, by the spiral staircase which it enclosed. It seemed to the party that their motions were watched by some one concealed within this turret; and they were confirmed in their belief when, through a narrow loophole, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Cells. Instead of the blotters of App. 11, you can use short lengths of mailing-tubes, which are used to protect pictures, etc., when sent by mail. If you find that the particular tube tends to unwind when soaked, you can use a little paraffine along the edges of the spiral, as suggested in App. 11. Bottoms can be made for the cups ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... was now pushed into a corner to live forgotten or disdained. Why was she not rehearsing there with them? she asked herself. At once the answer came. Because your husband hates you—because he wants to make love to another woman. Then, like one crazed, she clattered down the iron spiral staircase to the stage. She did not even hear Mortimer and Dubois cry out as she pushed past, 'There's ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... same metal projected into a large keeve, or condenser, that was kept always filled with cool water by an incessant stream from the cascade we have described, which always ran into and overflowed it. The arm of this head was fitted and made air-tight, also, into a spiral tube of copper, called the Worm, which rested in the water of the cooler; and as it consisted of several convolutions, like a cork-screw, its office was to condense the hot vapor which was transmitted to it from the glowing Still ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... linger ringing while they fleet, Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dear To her beyond the handmaid ear, Who sits beside our inner springs, Too often dry for this he brings, Which seems the very jet of earth At sight of sun, her music's mirth, As up he wings the spiral stair, A song of light, and pierces air With fountain ardour, fountain play, To reach the shining tops of day, And drink in everything discerned An ecstasy to music turned, Impelled by what his happy bill Disperses; drinking, showering still, Unthinking save ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... in a more rapid manner. And for this purpose, iron is excellently adapted, as it possesses a much stronger affinity for the base of respirable air than mercury. The elegant experiment of Mr Ingenhouz, upon the combustion of iron, is well known. Take a piece of fine iron wire, twisted into a spiral, (BC, Plate IV. Fig. 17.) fix one of its extremities B into the cork A, adapted to the neck of the bottle DEFG, and fix to the other extremity of the wire C, a small morsel of tinder. Matters being thus prepared, fill the bottle DEFG with air deprived of ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... had originally a symbolic value. Sometimes they are drawn from primitive structures and fabrics, as the checker-board pattern, with its likeness to the plaitings of rush mattings, and the volute and spiral ornaments, which recall the curves and involutions of wattle and wicker work. Again, decoration may employ in its service details that in themselves are genuinely representative art. The frieze of the Parthenon shows in relief a procession of men and women and horses and chariots ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... are more delightful than tossing pebbles into some still, dark pool, and watching the ripples that rise responsive, as they run in ever widening circles to the shore. Most of us have felt its fascination second only to that of the dotted spiral of the skipping-stone, a fascination not outgrown with years. There is something singularly attractive in the subtle force that for a moment sways each particle only to pass on to the next, a motion mysterious in its immateriality. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... lamps and Pennsylvania petroleum. Postal boxes after the Yankee custom were erected and in use. Gingham umbrellas were replacing those made of oiled paper. Barbers' poles, painted white with the spiral red band, were set up, and within the shops Young Japan had his queue cut off and his hair dressed in foreign style. Ignorant of the significance of the symbolic relic of the old days, when the barber was doctor and dentist also, and made his pole represent a bandage wound around a broken limb, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... I should not sleep for weeks. But, strangely enough, they had just the opposite effect. I think Mr. Washburn must be writing a book on modern history, and Mr. Hoffman must be writing one on ancient history. I sat between them—a drowsy victim—feeling as if my brain was making spiral efforts to come out of ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... level and sandy lands, across which we have accompanied our adventurers in their double journey. Along both ranges of hills, which bounded the opposite sides of the lake and valley, clouds of light vapor were rising in spiral wreaths from the uninhabited woods, looking like the smoke of hidden cottages; or rolled lazily down the declivities, to mingle with the fogs of the lower land. A single, solitary, snow-white cloud floated above the valley, and marked the spot beneath which lay the silent ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... he snatched up what he evidently looked upon as evidence; for it was a large gimlet, evidently quite new, and its long spiral glistened in the light ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... two years no one has been in my studio." On the whole it is perhaps as well that I declined to make an appointment, for another old friend who went, and who stayed a little longer than he was expected to stay, was thrown down the staircase. And that staircase is spiral, as steep as any ladder. Until he succeeded in realising his art Degas's tongue was the terror of artistic Paris; his solitary days, the strain on the nerves that the invention and composition of his art, so entirely new and original, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... voiding the urine, several ineffectual efforts being made before it will flow. The stream is diminished in size, of a flattened or spiral form, or divided in two or more parts, and does not flow with the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... trembled, with the gladness that possessed us as we found this way opening to us from the valley wherein we had thought that surely we must die. In a little chamber, cut in the rock above the opening into which the ladder of bolts led us, Young was waiting for us; and from this chamber a spiral stair-way ascended that was dimly lighted by crevices cut from it out to the face of the cliff. With Young leading us, up this we went; at first rapidly, but, later, slowly and wearily, for it seemed as though the stair would never end. Yet though our bodies were heavy our spirits were very light; ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... above, the doctor caused to be constructed two sheet-iron chests two lines in thickness. These were connected by means of pipes furnished with stopcocks. He joined to these a spiral, two inches in diameter, which terminated in two branch pieces of unequal length, the longer of which, however, was twenty-five feet in height and the shorter ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... oil refining and transshipment, salt, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral-welded ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... frieze below the Bowman represents the Burden Bearers. This, with the Bowman, is the work of H. A. MacNeil. The spiral of ships ascending the shaft symbolizes the upward course of man's progress. Around the base is the frieze by Isidor Konti, on three sides striving human figures, on the fourth celestial trumpeters ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... observations of nature, but I recall a few instances where he does do a bit of moralizing; for example, when he speaks of the calmness and dignity of the hawk when attacked by crows or kingbirds: "He seldom deigns to notice his noisy and furious antagonist, but deliberately wheels about in that aerial spiral, and mounts and mounts till his pursuers grow dizzy and return to earth again. It is quite original, this mode of getting rid of an unworthy opponent—rising to heights where the braggart is dazed and bewildered and loses his reckoning! I'm not sure but it is worthy ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... relapse into barbarism and the cycle begin again. He did not himself state this conclusion directly or venture on any prediction. It is obvious how readily his doctrine could be adapted to the conception of Progress as a spiral movement. Evidently the corresponding periods in his cycles are not identical or really homogeneous. Whatever points of likeness may be discovered between early Greek or Roman and medieval societies, the points of unlikeness are still more numerous and ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... contemplating the spiral of smoke rising from his long cigar. He was dreaming pleasantly. He was dreaming of those successful manipulations of finance it was his purpose to achieve. He had lunched, so his dream was of the things ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... far-off Mediterranean antecedents and more directly connected with the La-Tene culture of the continental Celts. Its characteristics were a flamboyant and fantastic treatment of plant and animal (though not of human) forms, a free use of the geometrical device called the "returning spiral," and much skill in enamelling. Its finest products were in bronze, but the artistic impulse spread to humbler work in wood and pottery. The late Celtic age was one which genuinely delighted in beauty of form and detail. In this it resembled the middle ages rather ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... white marble, it was one of the rare objects of art that gave Warwick a claim to distinction and justified the pride of its citizens. Around it were carved innumerable figures of soldiers, climbing a spiral pathway. Indistinguishable now in the moonlight, they still remained in the memory, like the echo of a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... of the pretty features of Robin Redbreast: though a spiral one, the steps were pleasantly shallow, and every here and there it was lighted by quaintly ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... shutters; how he had thrown himself across the current of a torrential gutter to divert the stream into the cellar shop of a tradesman who had offended him; above all, that feat of his when, ascending the spiral turret stair of the church, he had lowered himself down from the parapet, and, astride upon a gargoyle, had worked his way along it until he could secure a stone that lay in its mouth, the perilous and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... others, made his way into the quadrangle of his house. At the foot of a small dark staircase they saw the body of a man lying—wounded or dead. Cranstoun now rushed up the dark stairs, followed by Gowrie, two Ruthvens, Hew Moncrieff, Patrick Eviot, and perhaps others. At the head of the narrow spiral stair they found, in a room called the Gallery Chamber, Sir Thomas Erskine, a lame Dr. Herries, a young gentleman of the Royal Household named John Ramsay, and Wilson, a servant, with drawn swords. A fight began; Cranstoun was wounded; ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... twenty-four flutes and alternate fillets (flat longitudinal ridges), and the fillet is about a quarter the width of the flute. The pediment is flatter than that of the Doric order, and more elaborate. The great distinction of the Ionic column is a base, and a capital formed with volutes (spiral scrolls), the shaft also being more slender. Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients in architecture, says that "the Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... satisfactory they were for the speed of winds observed, failed to account for the observed spiral soaring of buzzards in very light winds and the writer was compelled to confess: "Now, this spiral soaring in steady breezes of 5 to 10 miles per hour which are apparently horizontal, and through which the bird maintains an average speed of about 20 miles an hour, is ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... that the small light of a gas jet, inside, was not necessary to show him the way. Up he ran, sometimes clearing two steps at a jump, slipping his hand lightly along the rough wooden banister. A few spiral turns brought him to the bell, which hung in an open framework of timber. He gave the huge bronze a familiar tap as he passed, and wound on and upward until he came to a trap door, which Uncle Ith held invitingly open. Then he sprang ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... button (as in the ringing of an electric bell), you will then have a multitude of brains set free for the exquisite enjoyment of dealing with the exact sequences and high speculations supplied and prompted by the delicate machines which yield a response to the fixed stars, and give readings of the spiral vortices fundamentally concerned in the production of epic poems or great judicial harangues. So far from mankind being thrown out of work according to your notion," concluded Trost, with a peculiar nasal note of scorn, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... when reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with winch and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... exhausted. They were looking intently at the court, and gave no heed to the boy, as he ran on into the hall. Two men lay there groaning before the fire. Arthur stood and looked round, hesitating whether to ask them for his uncle; but, perceiving the spiral stairs, quickly ascended. Far and far up he wound, till he came to a low-browed arch; he paused, and saw a large vaulted room, through the loop-hole window of which shone a yellow stream of golden sunshine. There was a low bed in one corner, and on it lay a motionless ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unroll it, your fingers encounter a resistance far greater than the size of the animal would have caused you to suspect. To overcome the resistance of this sort of spring coiled upon itself, you have to force it, so much so that you are afraid, if you persist, of seeing the indomitable spiral suddenly burst and shoot ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... this is supposed to have been erected by John de Berwick, who was dean of the minster from 1286 to 1312. The squinches which supported this spire may still be seen in the upper stage just described. Descending from this stage by a spiral staircase in the north-west angle, we find ourselves in the clerestory already mentioned. In each face there are two round-headed windows widely splayed on the interior, with shafts in the jambs; between each pair of windows is a pointed arch, in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... its disadvantages, it also has its charms. After a day or two of heavy snow the sky brightens, and the air becomes exquisitely clear and free from vapour; the smoke ascends in tall spiral columns till it is lost: seen against the saffron-tinted sky of an evening, or early of a clear morning, when the hoar-frost sparkles on the trees, the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... said the man, "it will be best for you to cross our Valley and mount the spiral staircase inside the Pyramid Mountain. The top of that mountain is lost in the clouds, and when you reach it you will be in the awful Land of Naught, ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... of the fiddles accompanied by the harp in a billowing glissando and—then on ragged rims of wide thunder a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching whiff of sulphur and violets, a thin, spiral scream, the music tapered into the sepulchral clang of a tam-tam. And Pobloff, his broad face awash with fear saw by a solitary wavering gas-jet that he was alone and upon his knees. Not a musician was to be seen. Not a sound save dull noises ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... desired to fix a pyrometer, a connection is made with the pipe last spoken of, by means of a small pipe such as is indicated at J, into which is fixed a platinum or other metallic nozzle of small bore, as shown at K. To this same pipe there is attached a solid-drawn copper spiral heater or worm, L, which is fixed into the place or the material the temperature of which it is desired to indicate. Into the outlet of this worm another similar but larger nozzle, M, is fixed. At N is shown a small pipe which is connected with the pipe, J, at any convenient point between ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... stood on the deck near us, with a spiral ladder leading up to a small, square, steel cubby at the top. Through the cubby window I could see instrument panels. A single Martian was up there; he had called down to Potan concerning ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... nestling stems and branches, and go crashing through. There are creeping plants of various sorts, which clamber up the trees, and some of them have changed color in the slight frosts which already have befallen these low grounds, so that one sees a spiral wreath of scarlet leaves twining up to the top of a green tree, intermingling its bright hues with their verdure, as if all were of one piece. Sometimes, instead of scarlet, the spiral wreath ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the glaring spiral of a fresh scar two hand-breadths wide went the swath along which the bolt had ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... fished together. At his feet the turbid current rolled ponderously against the solid wall of rock and, turning back upon itself, swung round in an ever-lessening circle until it sucked down suddenly into a spiral vortex that spewed up all it caught in the boiling channel below. There in years past the lambs and weaklings from the herds above had drifted to their death, but never before had the maelstrom claimed ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... royal palace, the heart of the king was grave and majestic; with a view to gain the merit of a pure and moral life, he became a convert of a great Rishi. With garments dyed and clad with hair, shaved, save one spiral knot, he led a hermit's life, but, as he did not rule himself with strict morality, he was immersed in suffering and sorrow. Each morn and eve he used the three ablutions, sacrificed to fire and practised strict ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... in imitation of the Trajan pillar at Rome, and is twelve feet in diameter at the base. The door at the bottom of the pillar, and where we entered, was decorated above with crowns of oak, surmounted by eagles, each weighing 500 lbs. The bas-relief of the shaft pursues a spiral direction to the capitol, and displays, in a chronological order, the principal actions of the French army, from the departure of the troops from Boulogne to the battle of Austerlitz. The figures are near three feet high, and their ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the lord's place. A style of chair, which we still recognise as Cromwellian, was also largely imported from Holland about this time—plain square backs and seats covered with brown leather, studded with brass nails. The legs, which are now generally turned with a spiral twist, were in Cromwell's ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... live in minute shells, the largest of which may be almost the size of a grain of wheat, but by far the greater number are invisible as shells without a microscope, and merely show as fine dust. The rhizopods are of different shapes, sometimes round, sometimes spiral, sometimes having only one cell, sometimes having several cells. In the latter case a separate animal lives in each cell. The animal is of the very simplest as well as the smallest kind. He ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... the caster and the plate which attaches it to the chair-leg, a strong spiral spring is inserted. The chair thus supported adapts itself to every movement of the sitter, and gives ease and comfort that no ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 53, November 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... portent interposed. The greedy flame seized upon the dry leaves, which crackled in the heat, and bore them on its shining billows high into the air. The fire continued burning till all was consumed, and the heap sent up only a spiral ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... withholding her silver-lace flouncings from the raw edges of moving landscape, high-stepped to a rearward dressing room; the khaki clad hero brushing past her and the pink satin drummer boys for first place down a spiral staircase. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... windows you could see the interior, which was decorated with festoons of foliage, vine branches, and grapes, painted on a soft green ground. The floor was tiled with large black and white squares. At the far end was the yawning cellar entrance, above which rose a spiral staircase hung with red drapery, and leading to the billiard-room on the first floor. The counter or "bar" on the right looked especially rich, and glittered like polished silver. Its zinc-work, hanging with a broad ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... carrying me ascended a spiral stairway which led to an immense hall where beds were laid together in three lines, so close that they touched each other. On one of these beds I was placed, in the midst of oaths, cries for pity, and ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... with absorbed attention an ant which was making a laborious spiral ascent of his cane. Not until it had gained a vantage point on the bone handle ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... have removed—you could not have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... religious convictions, who yet reigned over peoples, largely influenced by enthusiasm for freedom. Thus liberty was preserved for the world; but, as the law of human progress would seem to be ever by a spiral movement, it; seems strange to the superficial observer not prone to generalizing, that Calvinism, which unquestionably was the hard receptacle in which the germ of human freedom was preserved in various countries and at different epochs, should have so often ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all of them.' He spoke without raising his voice, but Mr Cupples could perceive that he was ablaze with excitement as he stared at the faint grey marks. 'This one should be the index finger. I need not tell a man of your knowledge of the world that the pattern of it is a single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically disposed. This, the print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a staple core and fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have just the same two prints on this negative, which I have examined in detail. Look!'—he held one ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... enjoying his domino or his door-knob all the way along that immense neck, the camel-gander must needs indulge in a spiral gullet. It is mere gluttony. Especially is it wicked of Atkinson, who has already the longest bird-neck in all these gardens. Look at the necks of all the cursores. The poor little wingless kiwi, with a mere nothing of a neck—for a cursore. He does without ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of all this varied swinging was that the black column of vapor which slowly climbed the sky, was broken into circles, spiral curves, and all sorts of odd-shaped figures, which did not dissolve for several minutes in ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... assumes:— Know, gentle Ladies, once these shapeless walls, O'er whose grey wreck the shading ivy crawls, Compos'd a graceful mansion, whose fair mould Led from the road the trav'ller, to behold. Oft, when the morning ting'd the redd'ning skies, Far off the spiral smoke was seen to rise; At noon the hospitable board was spread, Then nappy ale made light the weary head; And when grey eve appear'd, in shadows damp, Each casement glitter'd with th' enliv'ning lamp; Here the laugh titter'd, there the lute of Love Fill'd ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... Messrs. Slack & Brownlow, of Canning Works, Upper Medlock Street, Manchester, and the apparatus adopted in carrying it out is here illustrated. It consists of an iron cylindrical tank having inside a series of plates arranged in a spiral direction around a fixed center, and sloping downward at a considerable angle outward. The water to be purified and softened flows through the large inlet tube to the bottom, mixing on its way with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... a first-rate substitute for roast oysters these are?" asked Alan, twirling the great metal spider with purplish back and spiral wire legs that ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... curling billows rouse the fearful deep: Still round and round the fluid vortex flies, Diffusing briny vapours o'er the skies. This vast phenomenon, whose lofty head, In heaven immersed, embracing clouds o'erspread, 40 In spiral motion first, as seamen deem, Swells, when the raging whirlwind sweeps the stream. The swift volution, and the enormous train, Let sages versed in nature's lore explain. The horrid apparition still draws nigh, And white with foam the whirling billows ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... this (1770-72), Dr. Small wrote him that he and Boulton had been talking of moving canal boats by the steam engine on the high-pressure principle. In his reply, September 30, 1770, Watt asks, "Have you ever considered a spiral oar for that purpose, or are you for two wheels?" To make his meaning quite plain, he gives a rough sketch of the screw propeller, with ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... would pitch her dead negative will obstinately against him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind: there was no James. This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of his spiritual egotism. He believed himself finely and sacredly in the right, that he was frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his duty to rise, to soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his Private Hotel seemed a celestial injunction, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... this time the pipes were beginning to scream their opening note, and Lauchie was blowing his anger into the chanter. The tune rose on a shrill spiral and high and clear it poured forth the challenging notes of a fierce pibroch, the war song of the Clan McDonald. The player marched back and forth across the platform keeping quick step to the mad tune, that rose louder and faster and ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... to teach us a higher geometry of curves and spirals? See him with that feather high in air, dropping it and snapping it up again in the very glee of superabundant vitality, and in his sudden evolutions and spiral gambollings seeming more a creature of the imagination than of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... seated he resettled himself on the sofa, and, keeping his eyes fixed on the lad, placed the amber mouth-piece of a long spiral tube connected with a narghile which was smouldering on the floor to his lips, and the gurgling sound was once more produced. But to Harry's astonishment, no cloud issued from his uncle's mouth; like a law-abiding factory ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals. We see the same great law in the construction of the mouths of insects: what can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a beetle?—yet all these organs, serving for such different purposes, are formed by infinitely numerous modifications of an upper lip, mandibles, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... of Approach is known as the Imprintum. On either side rose lines of marble columns, their lofty capitals crowned with statues, their bases clustering with marble groups, while breaking now and then the white monotony, spiral and intertwining pillars of colored glass sprang into the air, like titanic tropical vines holding in extended fingers the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... spiral stairway to the grillroom, where an orchestra was playing jazz, and dancers gyrated on a polished floor, and diners in evening dress looked on ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... slowly to prevent the glossy shells from cracking. When cool, your bivalves will be gaping open; simply scrape them clean. Your univalves will be more difficult; remove the animal with a crocket hook or other piece of bent wire, turning it gently with the spiral; try to get it out whole to save yourself trouble. Save the univalve's operculum and slice it off the muscle that holds it. It will preserve indefinitely and is a ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... number of broken granite columns, which formed part of the Forum dedicated to him by Rome, after the conquest of Dacia. The column is one hundred and thirty-two feet high, entirely covered with bas-reliefs representing his victories, winding about it in a spiral line to the top. The number of figures is computed at two thousand five hundred, and they were of such excellence that Raphael used many of them for his models. They are now much defaced, and the column is surmounted by a statue of some saint. The inscription on the pedestal ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... descend until it had arrived half way between the cloud and the sea. The water beneath, then ruffled on its surface, increasing its agitation more and more until it boiled and bubbled like a large cauldron, throwing its foam aside in every direction. In a few minutes a small spiral thread of water was perceived to rise into the air, and meet the tongue which had wooed it from the cloud. When the union had taken place, the thread increased each moment in size, until it was swelled into a column of water several feet in diameter, which continued to supply the thirsty ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the major, "was that spiral gentleman handed to me all hot by friend Mark, who took it sizzling out of the fire with a bit of bent stick ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... replied a dozen yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom—a bit of smoke climbing weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter—and then, between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came creeping toward him on all fours, like ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... slowly through the long avenues of trees, past mossy marbles and old-time columns, and threading the grove by the bronze lion, came upon the tree-crowned terrace above the fountain. Below lay the basin shining in the sunlight. Flowering almonds encircled the terrace, and, in a greater spiral, groves of chestnuts wound in and out and down among the moist thickets by the western palace wing. At one end of the avenue of trees the Observatory rose, its white domes piled up like an eastern mosque; at the other end stood ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... with his head covered by a gaudy little hood. This hood is quickly removed whenever an opportunity arises to send him off after some unfortunate bird. Then, mounting aloft, and spreading his wings and whirling round his prey in concentric circles, he gradually descends in a spiral, until, at last, dashing down upon his victim, he seizes it with his pointed claws and brings it to his master. At other times the falcon is not flown, but only used to attract, with his mesmeric eyes, birds; these then, when within reach, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... he was apparently absorbed in the lecture; so intent indeed, was he in the task, that he did not hear the steps which wound the spiral stairs that conducted to his cell, and it was not till the wards harshly grated beneath the huge key, and the door creaked on its hinges, that Rienzi, in amaze at intrusion at so unwonted an hour, lifted his eyes. The door had reclosed on the dungeon, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (Terminalia catappa, L. and Juglans catappa, Lour.) resembles the almond both in its outer husk and the flavour of its kernel; but instead of separating into two parts, like the almond, it is formed of spiral folds, and is developed somewhat like a rosebud, but continuous, and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... in print just how the graver should be held, but a little experiment will suffice to teach the proper position. The best indication that a graver is doing its work properly, is the fact that the chips come away in long spiral coils. Aim to see how light a cut you can make rather than how heavy. Never use force in removing the material, but depend entirely upon the keenness of the cutting edges. Never use the point of the graver, except ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... as easily as upon the comet to communicate it to them? Finally, how could the planets have left the body of the sun without falling back into it again? What curve did they describe in leaving it, so as never to return? Can you suppose that gravitation could cause the same body to describe a spiral and an ellipse? In the same exact spirit, Turgot brings known facts to bear on Buffon's theory of the arrangement of the terrestrial and marine divisions of the earth's surface. The whole criticism he sent to Buffon anonymously, to assure him that the writer had no other motive than the interest ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... my question. Exactly in the middle of the filament of the normal anther, and exactly in the middle of the lateral membrane of the clinandrum, and running up to the same height, are quite similar bundles of spiral vessels; ending upwards almost suddenly. Now is not this structure a good argument that I interpret the homologies of the sides of clinandrum rightly? (602/2. Though Robert Brown made use of the spiral vessels of orchids, yet according to Eichler, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... was a mast set up in the ground, thirty or forty feet high. At the ground, ten feet from the foot of the mast, there commenced an inclined plane, formed of a plank about a foot or eighteen inches wide, which ascended in a spiral direction round and round the mast till it reached the top. A man ascended this plane by means of a large ball, about two feet in diameter, which he rolled up standing upon it, and rolling it by stepping continually on the ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... remains to me of my impression of Durham Cathedral is, strangely enough, an objection: I did not like those decorated pillars, alternating with the clustered columns of the interior, and I do not suppose I ever shall: the spiral furrows, the zigzag and lozenge figures chiselled in their surfaces, weakened them to the eye and seemed to ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... adding to the pleasant sounds of the jungle a loud rich note, which closely resembles the frequent repetition of the name bestowed upon it by the blacks, "Calloo-calloo." As are its visits so are its notes—casual, coming in erratic bursts and sudden sallies of whirling spiral sound. Its advent is hailed with satisfaction, for the belief exists that it causes the bean-tree—the source of a much-esteemed food—togrow more quickly. This faith has a substantial origin, for shortly after the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... strontium compared with that of hydrogen as unity, is about the mean of those of calcium (40) and barium (137). Such relations, in this and other chemical groups, were illustrated by Beguyer de Chancourtois in 1862 by the construction of a spiral diagram in which the atomic weights are placed in order round a cylinder and elements chemically similar are found to fall on ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... pass through a low door in its extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some thirteen feet square, beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by a large stone fireplace, and in the corner, a spiral staircase leading up to another square room above opening directly into the cloister. It is a little library or charter-house. The arrangement is almost too clever for gravity, as is the case with more than one ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... massive tower supports a tall but suddenly tapering spire of the most puzzling construction to the eye. It must have been designed by a monk of the olden time, with a Chinese turn of ingenuity. There is no order known to architecture to furnish a term or likeness for it. A ridgy, spiral spire are the three most descriptive words, but these are not half enough for stating the shape, style and posture of this strange steeple. It is difficult even to assist the imagination to form an idea of ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... No. 2, and at last they come to the ground together. If this machine is required to show exactly the space that a falling body would describe in given times, the cone and cylinder must have grooves cut spirally upon their circumference, to direct the string with precision. To describe these spiral lines, became a new subject of inquiry. The young mechanics were again eager to exert their powers of invention; the eldest invented a machine upon the same principle as that which is used by the best workmen for cutting clock ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... deltas and at least one ridge making a complete circuit, which may be spiral, oval, circular, or any variant of a circle. An imaginary line drawn between the two deltas must touch or cross at least one of the recurving ridges within the inner pattern area. A recurving ridge, however, which ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation |
