"Spirally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the narwhal is developed into a straight, spirally fluted tusk, from six to ten feet long, like a horn projecting from the forehead. This horn is sometimes as long as the creature's body, and furnishes a valuable ivory. The narwhal also yields ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Micrococci (Fig. 2, I.)looking like spherical granules, Bacteria in the form of very short rods, Bacilli (Fig. 2, V.), Vibriones (Fig. 2, IV.,) moving their straight or curved filaments, and Spirilli (Fig. 2, VI.), rolled up spirally. These varied forms are not absolutely constant, for it often happens in the course of its existence that a species assumes different shapes, so that it is difficult to take the form of these algae as a basis for classifying them, when all the phases of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... this Old World family is found in America. It is a brown, much mottled bird, that creeps spirally around and around the trunks of trees in fall and winter, pecking at the larvae in the bark with its long, sharp bill, and doing its work with faithful exactness but little spirit. It uses its tail as a prop in climbing, like the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... into four classes. First, those which twine spirally round a support, and are not aided by any other movement. Secondly, those endowed with irritable organs, which when they touch any object clasp it; such organs consisting of modified leaves, branches, or flower-peduncles. But these two classes sometimes graduate ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... external processes of eolis, doris, &c., are good examples of serial homology, as also are plainly the successive chambers of the orthoceratidae. Nor are parts of a series less serial, because arranged spirally, as in most gasteropods. Mr. Spencer observes of the molluscous as of the vertebrate animal, "You cannot cut it into transverse slices, each of which contains a digestive organ, a respiratory organ, a reproductive organ, &c."[172] But the same may be said ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... which was driest, and to me looked the rottenest and weakest, I found to be much the strongest. Upon examination of its parts, I discovered it to be composed of an infinite number of small threads, spirally ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... commonly sold under the name of Dutch rushes, for the purpose of polishing wood and ivory. If the rush be burnt carefully, a residuum of unconsumable matter will be left, and this held up to the light will show a series of little points, arranged spirally and symmetrically, which are the portions of silex the fire had not dissipated; and it is this serrated edge which seems to render the plant so efficient in attrition. Wheaten and oaten straw are also found by the experience ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... and with a ring inserted in the upper surface, are not uncommon in the older churches of Rome, although they are very seldom noticed, as their significance is only known to a few experts. One is placed in the centre of the middle nave of Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, on the top of a short spirally-fluted column of white marble, which marks the spot where St. Dominic, the founder of the order of the Dominicans, used to kneel down and pray. It has received the name of Pietra di Paragone, or the Touchstone. Another may be seen at the entrance ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... you know what I mean," she said impatiently. "This stuff." She produced suddenly from behind her a bottle with a Greek label so long as to run two or three times spirally around it from top to bottom. "He says it isn't a dye: it's a ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... yellow yarn wound spirally about the herbage and shrubbery in moist thickets, the dodder grows, its beautiful bright threads plentifully studded with small flowers tightly bunched. Try to loosen its hold on the support it is climbing up, and the secret of its guilt is out at once; for no honest vine is this, but ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... turned it I saw the source of the light: lava flows. The room, or area, I had entered was rather thin and round, with a river of lava flowing downwards and a small ledge of rock winding along its edge. Together they descended spirally downwards at a gentle angle, taking the form of an intelligently designed ramp. As I followed it down I soon broke out in a sweat, for the gurgling, fiery plasma heated the area up to a ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... closely coiled wire. It is made by winding fine wire tightly and closely round a core of stouter wire. When this central core of wire is withdrawn, you have a long hollow tube of spirally twisted wire. This the embroidress cuts into short lengths as required, and sews on to the silk—as she would a long bead or bugle. Its use is illustrated at A in Illustration 51, where the stems of triple gold cord are tied down at intervals by clasps of bullion, and the leaves, again, ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... enemy airplane dived swiftly down to its own lines, smoking. Lost to view at 500 meters from the ground. At 11.40 attacked an L.V.G. (with Parabellum) from behind, at 20 meters; it tacked and dived spirally, pursued neck to neck at 1300 meters. It fell three kilometers from its lines. I rose again and lost sight of it. (This airplane had wings of the usual yellow color, its body was blue like the N., and its outlines seemed similar to that of the monococques.) At 11.50 attacked an ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Torr. (BIG OR GREAT TREE OF CALIFORNIA.) Leaves on the young shoots spreading, needle-shaped, sharp-pointed, scattered spirally around the branchlets; finally scale-shaped, overlapping, mostly appressed, with generally an acute apex, light green in color. Cones oval, 2 to 3 in. long, of about 25 scales. The largest tree known, 300 ft. high, with a trunk nearly 30 ft. through, found in California and occasionally ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... weight of its years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are, bound and knitted together with withes and strands of ivy, as though the old mother had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From the door a stone stair curves upward spirally, passing two landings, and terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by the tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has flowed like water down this ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... form of Knight's Protecting, but is from two to three weeks later. It is of a dwarfish habit of growth, closely protected by the spirally compressed leaves, with a good-sized and perfectly white head. One of the best of the late ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... swollen, traversed the brown skin in every direction, forming perfect network. Here they were traceable by the darker colour of the extravasatod blood, while there the flesh itself lay bare, where it had been exposed to some prominent fold of the spirally-twisted cowskin. The old shirt itself was stained with black blotches that had once been red—the blood that had oozed out during the infliction! The sight sickened me, and called ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... numbered six, and no one of them was insignificant. Two of the men were about Jasper's age, and they had already made their mark in literature; the third was a novelist of circulating fame, spirally crescent. The three of the stronger sex were excellent modern types, with sweet lips attuned to epigram, and good ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... flat-bottomed, bowl or dish, similar to number (47019) except that the inner ornamental depressions are spirally arranged. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson
... determined to pursue her tasks with diligence), but the open windows disclosing a world all sunshine and green leaves, she threw the book aside with a good conscience, and danced out to the garden. There, coming upon a fuzzy, white ball rolling into itself spirally on a lazy pathway, she pounced at it, whereupon the thing uncurled with lightning swiftness, and fled, more like a streak than a kitten, down the drive, through the open gates and into the street, Miss ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... would like to see the rooms. He said he would be delighted, and she lifted the flap and let him pass into the house. On the right of the kitchen door there was a small passage, and at the end of it the staircase began; the first few steps turned spirally, but after that it ascended like a huge canister or burrow ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows said: "No; that's no mist, mate; ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... with our eyes, I feel sure he would cease to despond. How cheerily the wide, slated roof gleams forth from amongst the trees, and returns the warm glance of the sun with one almost as warm, albeit proceeding from a very moist eyelid! How gladly the white smoke arises once more, spirally, from the large chimneys, after having been so long depressed by the heavy atmosphere! and how the massive ivy that covers the gable end, responds to the songs of the birds that warble their evening gladness amongst its gleaming leaves! The face of the dwelling is as cheerful ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... far from uncommon in the Devonian deposits, all the known forms being still Tetrabranchiate. Besides the ancient types Orthoceras and Cyrtoceras, we have now a predominance of the spirally-coiled chambered shells of Goniatites and Clymenia. In the former of these the shell is shaped like that of the Nautilus; but the partitions between the chambers ("septa") are more or less lobed, folded, or angulated, and the "siphuncle" runs along ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... seen on the lower Bogan; while the grasses were also different from any of those on the Darling. A fine new species of Daviesia, very like a Grevillea and forming a most singular bush, grew here. It had no leaves, but green branches formed into short, broad, thick vertical plates arranged spirally, and much lower than the little axillary clusters of flowers which were just beginning to open.* We also met with bushes of the rare Trymalium majoranaefolium, a hoary bush with clusters of small grey flowers, enclosed when young in a bright, large membranous ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... racket- shaped feathers above described. In certain breeds of the pigeon and fowl the feathers are plumose, with some tendency in the shafts to be naked. In the Sebastopol goose the scapular feathers are greatly elongated, curled, or even spirally twisted, with the margins plumose. (72. See my work on 'The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. pp. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... foot-pad. I foolishly gave it to him, but re-entering some time after, and comfortably seating myself in the parquet, I was electrified by hearing my name called from the gallery with the addition of a playful adjective. It was the vulgar little boy. During the performance he projected spirally-twisted playbills in my direction, and indulged in a running commentary on the ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... and persistent for several years (except in Larix), scattered along the twigs, spirally arranged or tufted, linear, needle-shaped, or scale-like; sterile and fertile flowers separate upon the same plant; stamens (subtended by scales) spirally arranged upon a central axis, each bearing two pollen-sacs surmounted by a broad-toothed ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... counteract that in the other. Having allowed his stems to remain in water two or three days, he was able to remove the pith, which had thus become rotten. He then fastened a cup-shaped wooden mouthpiece to one end, and bound the whole spirally with the long flat strips of the black bark of the climbing palm-tree. Among other materials, he had brought a quantity of wax of a dark hue, with which he smeared the whole of the outside. The tube he had thus formed tapered towards the muzzle, the mouthpiece being fitted to the upper ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... illuminated the heavens, dazzled the earth, then melted into each other, faded away or, occasionally, flared afresh in a glare dispelling and persistent. Among these latter was Amon. Glimmering primarily in provincial obscurity at Thebes, the thin fire of his shrine mounted spirally to Ra, fused its flames with his, expanding and uniting so inseparably with them, that the two became one. Amon means hidden; Amon-Ra, the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... while ever and anon, with a loud and grating noise which, to use a homely but faithful simile, seemed to resemble the grinding of steel upon wheels, volumes of streaming and dark smoke issued forth, and rushed spirally ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... already been said that it was a two-story house. It was also of stone, and strongly built. The door was in the middle of it, and rooms were on each side of the hall. The interior plan of the house was peculiar, for the hall did not run through, but consisted of a square room, and the stone steps wound spirally from the lower hall to the upper one. There were three rooms up stairs, one taking up one end of the house, which was occupied by Mrs. Willoughby and Minnie; another in the rear of the house, into which a door opened from the upper hall, close by the head of the stairs; and ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... the spar, and, with the other between his teeth, he climbed the great palm. For more than an hour he toiled; he gained its top, passed the rope over one of its branches, and hauled up the spar to about eighty feet above the ground. Then, descending with the other end, he wound the rope spirally round and round the tree, thus binding to its trunk the first twenty feet by which the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... make a dough. Add a half teaspoon full of salt and a teaspoon full of sugar and mould and pull the dough until it becomes lively. Now, work it into a ribbon two inches wide and half an inch thick, wind the ribbon spirally around the broad end of the club, stick the latter in front of the fire so that the bread will bake evenly and quickly to a light brown and turn frequently until done, which will be in about thirty minutes. When done take it from the fire, stand the club firmly upright ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears |
