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Vertical   Listen
adjective
Vertical  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to the vertex; situated at the vertex, or highest point; directly overhead, or in the zenith; perpendicularly above one. "Charity... is the vertical top of all religion."
2.
Perpendicular to the plane of the horizon; upright; plumb; as, a vertical line.
Vertical angle (Astron. & Geod.), an angle measured on a vertical circle, called an angle of elevation, or altitude, when reckoned from the horizon upward, and of depression when downward below the horizon.
Vertical anthers (Bot.), such anthers as stand erect at the top of the filaments.
Vertical circle (Astron.), an azimuth circle. See under Azimuth.
Vertical drill, an upright drill. See under Upright.
Vertical fire (Mil.), the fire, as of mortars, at high angles of elevation.
Vertical leaves (Bot.), leaves which present their edges to the earth and the sky, and their faces to the horizon, as in the Australian species of Eucalyptus.
Vertical limb, a graduated arc attached to an instrument, as a theodolite, for measuring vertical angles.
Vertical line.
(a)
(Dialing) A line perpendicular to the horizon.
(b)
(Conic Sections) A right line drawn on the vertical plane, and passing through the vertex of the cone.
(c)
(Surv.) The direction of a plumb line; a line normal to the surface of still water.
(d)
(Geom., Drawing, etc.) A line parallel to the sides of a page or sheet, in distinction from a horizontal line parallel to the top or bottom.
Vertical plane.
(a)
(Conic Sections) A plane passing through the vertex of a cone, and through its axis.
(b)
(Projections) Any plane which passes through a vertical line.
(c)
(Persp.) The plane passing through the point of sight, and perpendicular to the ground plane, and also to the picture.
Vertical sash, a sash sliding up and down. Cf. French sash, under 3d Sash.
Vertical steam engine, a steam engine having the crank shaft vertically above or below a vertical cylinder.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vertical" Quotes from Famous Books



... nearly perpendicular to his orbit, and a direction of rotation having no reference to his orbital movement. Saturn has a mass seven times as great, and an orbit of less than half the diameter; whence it follows that his genetic ring, having less than half the circumference, and less than half the vertical thickness (the spheroid being then certainly as oblate, and indeed more oblate), must have had a much greater width—must have been less hoop-shaped, and more approaching to the quoit-shaped: notwithstanding difference of density, it must have been ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... ic, al, ical or ine: (sometimes with an omission or change of some of the final letters:) as, danger, dangerous; glory, glorious; right, righteous; rock, rocky; clay, clayey; poet, poetic, or poetical; nation, national; method, methodical; vertex, vertical; clergy, clerical; adamant, adamantine. Adjectives thus formed, generally apply the properties of their primitives, to the nouns ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... tree not seventy yards from where we are hidden. It sits almost motionless on its perch, the body remaining in the same position, the head only moving from side to side. The tail does not hang quite perpendicularly, the angle between the true tail and the vertical being perhaps as much as fifteen or twenty degrees. The tail is occasionally jerked open and closed again, and now and then slightly raised, causing the long tail coverts to vibrate gracefully. I have not ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... ceremony was conducted from the Mansion House steps, and the manifesto was said to have been read by Pearse, of St. Enda's. The Republican and Volunteer flag was hoisted on the Mansion House. The latter consisted of vertical colours of green, white and orange. Kerry wireless station was reported captured, and news of the Republic flashed abroad. These rumours were flying in ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens

... but his centre of gravity. Bisected, upper Giles would have outweighed three lower Giles. But this very disproportion enabled him to do feats that would have baffled Milo. His brawny arms had no weight to draw after them; so he could go up a vertical pole like a squirrel, and hang for hours from a bough by one hand like a cherry by its stalk. If he could have made a vacuum with his hands, as the lizard is said to do with its feet, he would have gone along a ceiling. Now, this pocket-athlete was ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... old-green of trees that never wither and never resurrect. Something very foreign or is it San Francisco? Cubist effects of the horizontally-lined cypress, vertical lines of the eucalyptus, and the soft, down-dropping of the willow trees ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... the sense of the words, and she returned to the place at which she had begun, trying to concentrate her attention upon the matter, moving her fresh lips to form the syllables, and bending her brows in the effort of understanding, so that a short, straight furrow appeared, like a sharp vertical cut extending from between the eyes to the midst of the broad forehead. One, two and three sentences she grasped and comprehended; then her thoughts wandered again, and the groups of letters passed meaningless ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... dimmed by the light of the new moon. We then rowed across to the island of Motir, which is so surrounded with coral-reefs that it is dangerous to approach. These are perfectly flat, and are only covered at high water, ending in craggy vertical walls of coral in very deep water. When there is a little wind, it is dangerous to come near these rocks; but luckily it was quite smooth, so we moored to their edge, while the men crawled over the reef to the land, to make; a fire and cook our ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... cliffs of Stone Mountain's eastern end, Sandy Creek races in tumultuous course. The limpid stream cascades in vertical sheen of silver from ledge to ledge. It writhes with ceaseless noisy complainings through the twisting ways of bowlder-strewn gorges. Here and there, in some placid pool, it seems to pause, languid, resting from its revels of flight. Such a pool lay at the foot of the longest fall. A barrier of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... which it is claimed will not let a splinter fall, even if badly cracked. The mounds are then erected right up against the walls of the building, exceeding them in height by several metres. For this method of construction it is claimed that the force exerted by an explosion will expand itself in a vertical direction ("Report on Visits to Certain ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... and 3 now go to the rear, and Nos. 2 and 4 to the front pole, and raise the tent to a convenient height from the ground, when Nos. 2 and 3 enter and seize their respective poles, and all together raise the tent until the upright poles are vertical. While Nos. 2 and 3 support the poles, Nos. 1 and 4 tighten the corner guys, beginning on the windward side. The tent being thus temporarily secured, all set the guy pins and fasten the guy ropes, Nos. 1 and 2 to the right, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... he do it?" asked Tarzan. "I can see no foothold upon that vertical surface and yet he appears to be climbing with ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of yesterday's illness. In a few minutes we reached a point where the buttress was overhanging, and there was no other way of surmounting the difficulty than by passing around one side of it, which was the face of a vertical precipice ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... am I. Every hair at the vertical, I should resort to hysterical screams Did a diaphanous Lady (or Sir) tickle Me on the cheek in the midst of my dreams; Yet when, at Yule, I hear people converse on all Manner of spooks round the log in the grate, Often I wish that I too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... explained, "is the scientific name for the element gold and the figure is its atomic weight. You will see," he added, pointing down the second vertical column on the chart, "that gold belongs to the hydrogen group - hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium, copper, rubidium, silver, caesium, then two blank spaces for elements yet to be discovered to science, then gold, and finally ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... austerity and beauty without ostentation were the fundamental impressions the Big House gave. Its lines, long and horizontal, broken only by lines that were vertical and by the lines of juts and recesses that were always right-angled, were as chaste as those of a monastery. The irregular roof-line, however, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... the illustrious Newton in treating the subject of curvilinear motion, I consider the trajectory or curve described by a moving body in space as consisting of a series of right lines, described in successive intervals of time, and constituting the diagonals of parallelograms formed in a vertical plane between the vertical deflections caused by gravity and the production of the line of motion which has been described in each preceding interval of time. This must be obvious; for, if you say that ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... is more moderate, it is clear, settled, and serene. If the wind should veer farther to the southward, and become S.E., or S.S.E., it then blows more gently, with a smooth sea, and is called Maooui. In those months, when the sun is nearly vertical, that is, in December and January, the winds and weather are both very variable; but it frequently blows from W.N.W., or N.W. This wind is what they call Toerou; and is generally attended by dark, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... any substance, however small, thrown at it; a thin jet of water only half an inch in diameter, if discharged at great pressure equivalent to a column of water of 500 metres, cannot be cut even with an axe, it resists as though it were made of the hardest steel; a thin cord, hanging from a vertical axis, and being revolved very quickly, becomes rigid, and if struck with a hammer it resists and resounds like a rod of wood; a thin chain and even a loop of string, if revolved at great speed over a vertical pulley, becomes rigid and, if ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... topple would send them over a natural chute into the River. He had not scaled those logs: neither had his assistants. There was no record of them on the books. Of course, he had heard the chop and slash at the settlers' cabins, but homesteaders don't farm on the edge of a vertical precipice unless they are a lumber company; and logs tossed over that precipice to the River were destined for only one market, Smelter City. Then he remembered giving a permit to a Swede settler of the Homestead Slope to take out windfall and dead tops for a little ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... well-sinker commences by boring, or rather digging, a circular hole two feet six inches in diameter. The soil of Cyprus is so tenacious that the walls of the shaft require no artificial support; this much facilitates the work, and the labourer, armed with a very short-handled pick, patiently hacks his vertical way, and sends up the earth by means of a basket and rope, drawn by a primitive but effective windlass above, formed of a cradle of horizontal wooden bars. The man in charge simply turns the windlass without a handle, by clutching ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... to tow, from Port Royal up to Kingston, a powder-boy, and, through some misconduct of the coxswain, the boat's awning had been left behind. Six or seven hours under a sun, vertical at noon, through the hottest part of the day, and among the swamps and morasses, so luxuriant in vegetable productions, that separate Port Royal from Kingston, is a good ordeal by which to try a European ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... village. In line with the trail on Hannah's Hill, and southwest of it, were two huge hemlocks that bore upon their trunks the old wounds of blazes made as if by the axes of Indians. The blazes were vertical, deeply indented, and the thick bark had grown outward and around them, forming in each a pocket into which a man might sink his elbow and forearm. These patriarchal trees of the forest were about four feet in diameter at the base, and on being felled showed, by count ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... rim of the mesilla to the east and the house is greatest; the top-rock bends also to the west about e e, and there the irregularities noticed on the diagram about the chambers (II and III) come in. They evidently result from an effort to conform the general plan to both the lateral and vertical deviations of its base. About the line f f, while the same number of chambers (six) remains in every transverse row, there is but one story below the general surface to the east. I may safely assume that ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... had learned by this time that most difficult of all flying feats; to hold the body vertical and whirr the wings without rising or advancing—he loved to hover on windless nights over ponds and rivers and see the stars reflected in their still pools. Indeed, sometimes he hovered till he dropped, and only saved himself from a wetting by sweeping up in ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... suitable to its object, and was grand and noble. The great thickness of the columns, the beautiful entablature, the ample proportion of the capital; the great horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice, predominating over the vertical lines of the columns; the severity of geometrical forms, produced for the most part by straight lines, gave an imposing simplicity to the Doric temple. How far the Greek architects were indebted to the Egyptian we cannot ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... the black line indicates the "pipe" or call; the four faint horizontal lines, the notes, and the vertical bars, the time. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... near Zanzibar, we find the rains following the track of the sun, and lasting not more than forty days on any part that the sun crosses; whilst the winds blow from south-west or north-east, towards the regions heated by its vertical position. But in the centre of the continent, within 5 deg. of the equator, we find the rains much more lasting. For instance, at 5 deg. south latitude, for the whole six months that the sun is in the south, rain continues to fall, and I have heard ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... end, Hall and Billy went out of sight over the south side of the backbone, and when Saxon saw them again they were rounding the extreme point of rock and coming back on the cove side. Here the way seemed barred. A wide fissure, with hopelessly vertical sides, yawned skywards from a foam-white vortex where the mad waters shot their level a dozen feet upward and dropped it as abruptly to the black depths of battered rock ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... treasure for the future. Never discouraged by the heavy labour of climbing, leaving to the mother only the more moderate labour, keeping the severest for himself, the heavy task of transport in a narrow tunnel, very deep and almost vertical, he goes foraging, forgetful of himself, heedless of the intoxicating delights of spring, though it would be so good to see something of the country, to feast with his brothers, and to pester the neighbours; but no! he collects the food which is to ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... with a cable, A, frame, F, wheels, G, sheave, E, and rope, C, the disengaging device, consisting of a collar, M, stop, L, and vertical catch, K, enclosing the cable, A, and rope, C, and operated ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... another of those interesting plants which go to sleep at night. Some members of the genus erect one half of the leaf and droop the other half until it becomes a vertical instead of the horizontal star it is by day. Frequently the leaflets rotate as much as 90 degrees on their own axes. Some lupines fold their leaflets, not at night only, but during the day also there is more or less movement in the leaves. Sun dial, a popular name for the wild lupine, has ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... systems that facilitate interagency, intergovernmental, and private information sharing will be expanded to allow our overseas agencies to have access and input, as necessary. This initiative will include not only database alignment and the horizontal and vertical information flow; it will also optimize disclosure policy and establish a consistent reporting criteria across agencies and allies. Additionally, implementation of both the domestic and international elements of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace and the National Strategy for the Physical ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States

... represented in the niches, are intended to illustrate the main points in the Episcopal succession and the characteristics of the Scottish Church. The tower is supported upon a carved capital with six amethysts between repousse oak-leaves, and is jointed to a circular boss surrounded with four vertical bands enriched with cairngorms, while between the bands are carbuncles set off by filigree work. There are also silver bosses at the joints of the ebony ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... (not under great pressure) is examined by the spectroscope, it yields a few vertical lines or bars of light on a dark background; when a glowing liquid or solid is examined, it gives a continuous rainbow-like stretch of colour. Some of the nebulae give the former type of spectrum, and are thus known to be masses ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... cut do not shoot up again, [Footnote: It was not long ago stated, upon the evidence of the Government foresters of Greece, and of the queen's gardener, that a large wood has been discovered in Arcadia, consisting of a fir which has the property of sending up both vertical and lateral shoots from the stump of felled trees and forming a new crown. It was at first supposed that this forest grew only on the "mountains," of which the hero of About's most amusing story, Le Roi des Montagnes, was ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... the storeroom was a long, narrow dining room on one side and a few little cell-like rooms on the other with a crack of a hall between them leading back to the kitchen, the whole structure, only one story high, having more vertical boards than horizontal in its making. But the lettering over the front door bore the brave information that this was the Post Office, the General Merchandise Store, and the Jacobs House, all ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... stormed, and almost swore at me. He placed my gun at the carry, and called repeated attention to the exact description of the position, contained in the language of Hardee: "The piece in the right hand, the barrel nearly vertical, and resting in the hollow of the shoulder; the guard to the front, the arm hanging nearly at its full length near the body; the thumb and forefinger embracing the guard, the remaining fingers closed together, and grasping the swell of the stock ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... "standard" time also took place during the eighties. Hitherto there had been a wide variety of time standards and different roads even in the same city despatched their trains on different systems. In 1883 the country was divided into five vertical zones each approximately fifteen degrees or, in sun-time, an hour wide. Both the roads and the public then conformed to the standard time of the zone in ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... think of refusing to listen to such a reasonable request," the vicar replied. Seeing that Reuben had secured the pen, he resumed his vertical position, and added, "You know, Dewy, it is often said how difficult a matter it is to act up to our convictions and please all parties. It may be said with equal truth, that it is difficult for a man of any appreciativeness to have convictions ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... abbreviations, in the same manner as these objects are still characterized in our almanacks, and in our astronomical calculations. Thus also the kingdom of China is designed by a square, with a vertical line drawn through the middle, in conformity perhaps with their ideas of the earth being a square, and China placed in its center; so far these may be considered as symbols of the objects intended to be represented. So, also, the numerals one, two, three, being designed by [Chinese: y[i]] ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... the terminating end of each coil is connected to the commencing end of the next or succeeding helix, and the junctions so made are attached to conducting wires which are gathered together close to the vertical shaft on which the armature ring is fixed, passing through holes at equal distances apart in a wooden collar fixed to the same shaft, and being attached at their lower extremities to the metallic contact pieces of the commutator, c, shown at the lower part of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... and a skirmish with some of the natives, Nearchus reached the extreme point of the land of the Orites, which is marked in modern geography by Cape Morant. Here, he states in his narrative that the rays of the sun at mid-day are vertical, and therefore there are no shadows of any kind; but this is surely a mistake, for at this time in the Southern hemisphere the sun is in the Tropic of Capricorn; and, beyond this, his vessels were always some degrees distant ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... removed from the cast-away netting. In this extremity, Rob bethought of rigging up a couple of guy-poles, as the salmon-fishers call them, one for each end of the small seine he had in view; so that these guy-poles, with a lump of lead at the lower end, would keep the net vertical while it was being dragged through the water. All this took up the best part of the afternoon; for he had to cadge about before he could get a couple of stout poles; and he had to bargain with the blacksmith for a lump of lead. Then he walked along to the point where the other ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... reference to existing orders of them has been made, owing to their anomalous structure. The stems are fluted from base to stem, although this is not so apparent near the base, whilst the raised prominences which now form the cicatrices, are arranged at regular distances within the vertical grooves. ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... the first natural curiosities we saw was Chimney Rock; a vertical column of sandstone something like forty feet high, with a rugged stone bluff rising abruptly near it. Its appearance, from our distant view, resembled a stone chimney from which the building had been burned away, as it ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... eight hundred and forty-seven cubic feet of gas, to give his balloon nearly double capacity he arranged it in that elongated, oval shape which has come to be preferred. The horizontal diameter was fifty feet, and the vertical diameter seventy-five feet. He thus obtained a spheroid, the capacity of which amounted, in round numbers, to ninety ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... he copies the title-page of the book in extenso, using red ink for red print, capitals where capitals occur, and underlining those words which are in italics. The end of each line is indicated by a vertical stroke. Then follows a complete collation of the book. The following illustration, however, will convey a better idea than can be given in words. It will be noticed that after the size (which is given in the English notation) the measurement of the title-page in millimetres ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... one from the east, and coming to the centre looked up and saw Elk's heart beating. Drawing his flint-pointed arrow to the head, he shot the monster through the heart, then quickly dropped down into Gopher's burrow beneath four stones which, one below the other, stopped the vertical channel. But first he made with his fire-stick a dense white smoke at the end of the burrow that ran to the east. Elk leaped down into the opening and rushed in the direction of the smoke, seeking his enemy. Then in his rage he went to the centre, but in the meantime Naye{COMBINING ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... a rope which passed over the well-roller into the depths below. Fairway, with a piece of smaller rope round his body, made fast to one of the standards, to guard against accidents, was leaning over the opening, his right hand clasping the vertical rope that ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... this the faint purple of the Oakland shore. On either side of these doors, in deep alcoves, were divans with mattings and head-rests for opium smokers. The walls were painted blue and hung with vertical Cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. A chandelier, all a-glitter with ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... twenty degrees, giving to the islands, as a predominant characteristic, a regular slope on one side and a cliff-like aspect on the other; though not a few are bent up in the middle, perhaps exhibiting there some sharp ridge or vertical wall, while from this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... him how to cling on, and pursued him up the ladder, goading and jabbing his legs with a bunch of keys whenever he desisted from climbing. It seemed to Bensington at times that he must climb that vertical ladder for evermore. Above, the parapet was inaccessibly remote, a mile perhaps, below—He did not care to think of ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... The nail upon its under surface is fashioned into thin vertical plates, which are received between the folds of the sensitive skin. In this manner, the two kinds of laminae reciprocally embrace each other, and the firmness of connection of the nail is maintained. If we look on the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... dropped its whole cargo of 15 bombs in a distance of a few hundred yards, taking no lives and doing little material damage. Since then, several big craft have appeared at night, but have always been frightened away by the searchlights and the fire of the small vertical guns which have been ready ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... angles by reflexion.—an ordinary artificial horizon is useless for very low angles. They can be measured to within two or three minutes, by means of a vertical point of reference obtained in the following manner:—Tie two pieces of thread, crossing each other at two feet above the ground, put the vessel of mercury underneath it, and look down upon the mercury. When the eye is so placed, that the crossed threads exactly cover their reflexion, the line ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... Tests were made, not only for their carrying capacity, but also for their value as anchorages, and it was found that the screw-pile was more satisfactory in every way; it could be put down much more rapidly, it was more easily maintained in a vertical position, and it could carry satisfactorily any load which could be placed on it as a support for the track. The 16-in. pipe did not prove efficient either as a carrier or as an anchorage. These tests will be mentioned ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles M. Jacobs

... some hours of walking with not a little of uphill and downhill, I began to find the heat well-nigh intolerable. I was on a hard dusty glaring road, shut in by dusty hedges on either side. Not a breath of air was stirring; not a bird sang; on the vast sky not a cloud appeared. If the vertical sun had poured down water instead of light and heat on me my clothing could not have clung to me more uncomfortably. Coming at length to a group of two or three small cottages at the roadside, I went into one and asked for something to quench my thirst—cider ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... perfectly fair in all respects. I have merely substituted for the beautiful spring of the Gothic vaulting in the ash bough, a cross lintel; and then, in order to raise the leaves to the same height, I introduce vertical columns; and I make the leaves square-headed instead of pointed, and their lateral ribs at right angles with the central rib, instead of sloping from it. I have, indeed, only given you two boughs instead of four; because the perspective of the crossing ones could not have been given ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... formed by looking at a long vertical slit through a simple prism, I noticed an elongated dark spot running up and down in the blue, and following the motion of the eye as it moved up and down the spectrum, but refusing to pass out of the blue into the other colours. ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... fire-place recess, round another smaller shoulder of rock, was a perfectly vertical wall of smooth stone terminating just above our reach at an opening three yards wide or more. The top of the wall of rock at the bottom of the opening was almost as ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... blessedness of the languor of recovery, when one finds himself in a large airy room, with a dreamy indistinct recollection of great past suffering, endured in a small miserable vessel within the tropics, where you have been roasted one moment by the vertical rays of the sun, and the next annealed hissing hot by the salt sea spray;—in a broad luxurious bed, some cool sunny morning, with the fresh sea breeze whistling through the open windows that look into the piazza, and rustling the folds of the clean wire gauze musquitto ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... found that it had been dead about twelve hours. There were no marks of violence or any abnormal condition excepting a single puncture in the right thigh, apparently made by the needle of the hypodermic syringe. The puncture was deep and vertical in direction as if the needle had been driven ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... book hive consists of twelve vertical frames or boxes, parallel to each other, and joined together. Fig. 1. the sides, f f. f g. should be twelve inches long, and the cross spars, f f. g g. nine or ten; the thickness of these spars an inch, and their breadth fifteen lines. It is necessary that this last measure should be accurate; ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... all. Observation indicates that if we could look at a vertical section of Jupiter's atmosphere we should behold an equally remarkable contrast and conflict of motions. There is evidence that some of the visible spots, or clouds, lie at a greater elevation than others, and it has ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... heave into sight around a bend below the Dermots' house and plod heavily up to their gate. On the charjama—the passenger-carrying contrivance of wooden seats on the pad with footboards hanging by short ropes—sat a lady and two European men holding white umbrellas up to keep off the vertical rays of the noonday sun. When the animal sank to its knees in front of the bungalow Wargrave saw the girl—it could only be Miss Benson—spring lightly to the ground before either of her companions could ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... condition. I had, I imagine, a swarter skin and firmer flesh when I could ride all day over great summer-parched plains, where there was not a bush that would have afforded shelter to a mannikin, and think that I was having a pleasant journey. The cloudless sky and vertical sun—how intolerable they would now seem, and scorch my brain and fill my shut eyes with dancing flames! At present even this mild June sun is strong enough to make the old mulberry tree on the lawn appear grateful. It is an ancient, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... fate. (Jones, the undertaker, had had another job that morning.) The long string of buggies and carts and horsemen; other buggies and carts and horsemen drawn respectfully back amongst the trees here and there along the route; male hats off and held rigidly vertical with right ears as the coffin passed; and drivers waiting for a chance to draw into ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... from Mende to the summit of the plateau can only be described as a vertical ascent; before beginning to descend, we have a few kilometres of level, that is all. As we approach the village of Sauveterre, we see one or two wild figures—shepherds, uncouth in appearance as Greek herdsmen; poorly dressed, but robust-looking, well- made girls and women, short-skirted, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a vertical sun. Lat. 17 degrees, or thereabouts. We saw Madeira at a distance like a cloud; since then, we had about four days trade wind, and then failing or contrary breezes. We have sailed so near the African shore that we get little good out of the trades, and ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... (The Allied fliers on the Somme took seventeen hundred photographs during a single day.) Most of these photographs are taken at a height of eight thousand to ten thousand feet,[F] though very much lower, of course, when an opportunity presents itself, and always with the camera as nearly vertical as possible. As soon as an aviator has secured a sufficient number of pictures of the locality or object which he has been ordered to photograph, he wings his way back to his own lines, the plates ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... Vittoria's eyes to the sight. "See," she said, and her face was set hard with cold and excitement, so that she looked a witch in the uproar; "would you not say the devil is loose now Angelo is abroad?" Thunder and lightning possessed the vale, and then a vertical rain. At the first gleam of sunlight, Laura and Vittoria walked up to the Laubengasse—the street of the arcades, where they made purchases of numerous needless articles, not daring to enter the Italian's shop. A woman at a fruitstall opposite to it told them that no carriage could have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... miles in length. Commencing above the upper fall, it attains a depth of two hundred feet where that takes its plunge, and in the distance of half a mile from that point to the verge of the lower fall, it rapidly descends with the river between walls of rock nearly six hundred feet in vertical height, to which three hundred and twenty feet are added by the fall. Below this the wall lines marked by the descent of the river grow in height with incredible distinctness, until they are probably two thousand ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... probably the remains of old Onkilon dwellings. The present inhabitants, two old men and an old woman, had their habitation arranged in the following way:—In the bottom of a cylindrical pit, one metre deep and three and a half to four and a half metres in diameter, a vertical pole was erected, against the upper end of which rested a number of obliquely placed bars, rising from the edge of the pit, which were covered with skins. The enclosure or bedchamber, peculiar to the Chukch ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... suitability of different styles for different purposes, such as tiling for kitchen and bathroom walls, light papers for dark rooms, etc. The division of wall space will be the next point to be settled, i.e. the height of the tiling or wainscot, the width of a border, or the effect of horizontal and vertical lines in breaking up wall space. These questions may be discussed as far as the immediate circumstances and the ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs

... monsoons as they are termed in the latter, blow from the west-north-west and south-west, according to the situation, extent, and nature of the nearest lands; the effect of which upon the incumbent atmosphere, when heated by the sun at those seasons in which he is vertical, is prodigious, and possibly superior to that of any other cause which contributes to the production or direction of wind. To trace the operation of this irregular principle through the several winds prevalent ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... interior walls are from 3 to 4 feet thick at base. At the top the walls are reduced to about 2 feet thick, partly by setbacks or steps at the floor levels, partly by exterior batter, the interior wall surface being approximately vertical. Some writers, noting the inclination of the outer wall surface, and not seeing the interior, have inferred that the walls leaned considerably away from the perpendicular. This inference has been strengthened, ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff

... ascent to this wonderful place, it may be proper to state what it is like. On the flanks of the formidable and gigantic Mont Perdu rises Mont Marbore, from the summit of which stretches to the west a wall of rock from 400 to 600 feet high, in most places absolutely vertical. This huge natural wall forms the crest of the Pyrenees, and divides France from Spain at this part of the chain. In the middle of the natural barrier is a gap, which, when viewed from the French valley of the Gave ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... began to justify its name. A gap appeared in the rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the opening rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the sunlight, the companion cliff on the right being livid in shade. Between these cliffs, like the Libyan bay which sheltered the shipwrecked Trojans, was a little haven, seemingly a beginning made by Nature herself of a perfect harbour, which appealed to ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... discoursed of their afternoon's excursion, with occasional pauses induced by the hypnotic effect of the fresh air; and Effie, kneeling, on the hearth, softly but insistently sought to implant in her terrier's mind some notion of the relation between a vertical attitude and sugar. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... every one is equally aware of the contrary effect of horizontal lines of varied surface. But in the use of perpendicular lines it is well to remember that, if the room is small, it will appear still smaller if the wall is divided into narrow spaces by vertical lines. If it is large and the ceiling simply low for the size of the room, a good deal can be done by long, simple lines of drapery in curtains and portieres, or in choosing a paper where the composition of design is perpendicular rather ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... determine accurately, since all the others are usually made to depend on this one. We cannot trace it correctly on the dial until the style has been itself accurately fixed in its proper place. When that is done the XII o'clock line will be found by the intersection of the dial surface with the vertical plane which contains the style; and the most simple way of drawing it on the dial will be by suspending a plummet from some point of the style whence it may hang freely, and waiting until the shadows of both style and plumb-line coincide on the dial. This single ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... height of the crossed plants being taken as 100. On the right hand, the mean heights of the crossed and self-fertilised plants of all the generations taken together are shown (as eleven pairs of unequal vertical lines.)) ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... donkeys carrying mud raised the dust in heavy clouds; carpenters in blue trousers hammered and sawed; planks, bricks, barrels of concrete, and piles of matting littered the ground: and upon all the vertical rays of the sun beat down unmercifully. The creek was full of the mahallas that had brought up our equipment, and for the rest of that day our men toiled and sweated over the crates and boxes, and ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures imprest upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are to be found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Hindustan. From kindred feelings ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... proceeds simultaneously according to two different principles. On the one hand the plant grows in an axial direction and thereby produces its main and side stems. To this growth principle Goethe gave the name 'vertical tendency'. Were the plant to follow this principle only, its lateral shoots would all stand vertically one above the other. But observation shows that the different plant species obey very different laws in this respect, as may be seen if one links up ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... wing, and to the fact that this is less directly up-and-down in its action than that of the duck, for example. The chief effort of the duck is to sustain its weight. Consequently the wing must lie flat (comparatively) upon the air, and be kept straight out, economizing its vertical pressure; and hence the noticeable stiffness and toilsomeness of its progression. The gull, less concerned to sustain itself, uses the wing more flexibly, bending it slightly at the elbow, and pressing back the outer portion with each stroke. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... slid, wherever they found it possible to exchange the painful and difficult walking for this simpler process. "Once below these slopes of snow," says the journal of young de Pourtales again, "rocks almost vertical, or narrow ledges covered with grass, served us as a road and brought us to the glacier of the Grindelwald. To reach the glacier itself we traversed a crevasse of great depth, and some twenty feet wide; on a bridge of ice, one or two feet in width, and broken toward the end, where we were obliged ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... vegetable world, of types no longer recognisable among the existing forms—sculptured ullodendra, bearing rectilinear stripes of sessile cones along their sides—and ornately tatooed sigillaria, fluted like columns, and with vertical rows of leaves bristling over their stems and larger branches. Such were some of the dreams in which I began at this period for the first time to indulge; nor have they, like the other dreams of youth, passed ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... another place of which a similar narrative is extant—namely, Crow Butte, Nebraska, which is two hundred feet high and vertical on all sides save one, but on that a horseman may ascend in safety. A company of Crows, flying from the Sioux, gained this citadel and defended the path so vigorously that their pursuers gave over all attempts to ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... a point that would intersect the flight of the swan should he keep on in his horizontal course. This, however, he did not do. With an eye as quick as theirs, he saw that he was "headed;" and, stretching his long neck upward, he again pursued an almost vertical line. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... apparatus that we could devise," assented the Doctor. "But that we should be obliged to float aimlessly, hither and thither, altogether the creatures of chance, I do not for a moment admit. The equator, receiving as it does, the vertical rays of the sun, is by far the hottest portion of the earth. The atmosphere at that quarter, being constantly superheated and correspondingly rarified, ascends into the vault above. This creates a semi-vacuum below, and the cooler atmospheres north and south of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... which one movement is as little obstructive to the other as possible. This happens in two ways: first by the particles limiting one another's movement till they all advance in one direction; and, secondly, in this way, that the particles limit their vertical movements in virtue of which they are approaching the centre of attraction, till they all move horizontally—i. e., in parallel circles round the sun as their centre, no longer intercept one another, and by the centrifugal force becoming equal with the falling force they keep themselves constantly ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... possible, the action of the forming forces in one wave of simple elevation, the Mont Saleve, and in another of lateral compression, the Mont Brezon: but the investigation of the Mont Saleve had presented unexpected difficulty. Its facade had been always considered to be formed by vertical beds, raised into that position during the tertiary periods; the speaker's investigations had, on the contrary, led him to conclude that the appearance of vertical beds was owing to a peculiarly sharp and distinct cleavage, at right angles with the beds, but nearly parallel ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... architecture Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces General features of Grecian architecture The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders Simplicity and beauty of their proportions... The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of Gothic architecture Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture Superiority of Greek sculpture Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and distinguished men The great sculptors of antiquity Their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... drawing and painting offers the student the following problem in descriptive geometry: to represent the three dimensions of space by means of a plane surface of two dimensions. The Egyptians and Assyrians solved this problem by throwing down vertical objects upon one plane, which demands a great effort of abstraction on the part of the observer. European perspective, built up in the fifteenth century upon the remains of the geometric knowledge of the Greeks, is based on the monocular theory used by the latter. In this system, ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci

... Officers of H.M.S. "Beagle," is given in Plate I., Figure 10. The greatest width of this atoll is nine miles and a half. Its structure is in most respects characteristic of the class to which it belongs, with the exception of the shallowness of the lagoon. The accompanying woodcut represents a vertical section, supposed to be drawn at low water from the outer coast across one of the low islets (one being taken of average dimensions) to ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... for war! What a country for defence!" he said to himself, as Nevill's yellow car sped along the levels of narrow ridges that gave, on either hand, vertical views far down to fertile valleys, rushed into clouds of weeping rain, or out into regions ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the double bottom between the outer and inner skin plating is 21/2 ft. The watertight compartments were divided into stations by means of vertical lightening plates pierced by three holes, and in order to make them, as far as was practicable, resemble the bracket frames of a modern armorclad, the center of the plates was cut away so as to leave a single oval hole instead of the three circular holes. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... types of the early forms it is appropriate to turn our attention to the question of their origin. As to the first three there is no question. The [1 vertical stroke] or [1 horizontal stroke] is simply one stroke, or one stick laid down by the computer. The [2 vertical strokes] or [2 horizontal strokes] represents two strokes or two sticks, and so for the [3 vertical ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... penetrate it to a depth depending only on the medium, which means that there is a constant ratio between the tangents, instead of the sines, of the inclination of the incident and refracted rays to the normal. Experiment proved that this gave too high values for refraction near the vertical compared with those near the horizon, so Kepler "went off at a tangent" and tried a totally new set of ideas, which all reduced to the absurdity of a refraction which vanished at the horizon. These were followed by another set, involving either a constant amount ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... must be over three miles under us to the bottom, on the vertical. Ten miles of thirty-three per cent grade—if we go down we'll never get ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... sexes excavate turn about. The site chosen may be a bunker on the golf links, the butts on the rifle range, a low mud boundary between two fields, or any kind of bank. The sharp claws of the bee-eaters enable the birds to obtain a foothold on an almost vertical surface; this foothold is strengthened by the tail which, being stiff, acts as a third leg. In a surprisingly short time a cavity large enough to conceal the bird completely is formed. The bee-eater utilises the bill as pickaxe and the feet as ejectors. The little clouds of sand that ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... her orbit (the obliquity of the ecliptic) has been diminishing slowly since prehistoric times; and this fact has been confirmed by Egyptian and Chinese observations on the length of the shadow of a vertical pillar, made thousands of years before the Christian era, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... is recognised as indispensable in military operations, its uses are somewhat limited. It can be employed only in comparatively still weather. The reason is obvious. It is essential that the balloon should assume a vertical line in relation to its winding plant upon the ground beneath, so that it may attain the maximum elevation possible: in other words, the balloon should be directly above the station below, so that if 100 yards of cable are paid out the aerostat may ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... it forms a ridge roof 7 feet high and shelters fully ten men. It suits servants perfectly well. For the master who wants to work, to write, to draw, occasionally to receive officials, the ideal tent would be one of the same material, but of larger proportions, and comprising two parallel vertical partitions and surmounted by a ridge roof. The round form of Kirghiz and Mongol tents is also very comfortable, but it requires a complicated and inconvenient wooden frame-work, owing to which it takes some considerable time to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... combination of nature and art. Independent of their beauty, they are, perhaps, the most singular falls that are known to exist. The whole country is of trappe formation, and the black rocks rise up strictly vertical. The river, which at the Falls is about one hundred and twenty yards wide, pours over a bed of rock between hills covered with chestnut, walnut, pine, and sycamore, all mingled together, and descending to the edge of the bank; ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... parties that are made by vertical divisions among the voters. In each party we have the intelligent and the fortunate, with those who are not so intelligent nor so experienced nor so well circumstanced. What will be the tendency of this refusal ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... some extent followed the plan of Blenkinsop's engine. The boiler was cylindrical, of wrought iron, 8 feet in length and 34 inches in diameter, with an internal flue-tube 20 inches wide passing through it. The engine had two vertical cylinders of 8 inches diameter, and 2 feet stroke, let into the boiler, working the propelling gear with cross heads and connecting rods. The power of the two cylinders was combined by means of spurwheels, which communicated ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... in the colour of the light usually called me in the morning. By a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks in our western gable, where the boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to marvel how the qualities could be combined. At an ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... its orbit. Very slowly at first, but faster and faster. They continued to blast, with all their prodigious might and in carefully-computed order, until the desired orbit was attained—an orbit which terminated in a vertical line through the center of the Stretts' ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... out immense nets of metal, extending from the surface of the ocean to its bottom; nets radiating such terrific forces that the very water itself was beaten back and stood motionless in vertical, glassy walls. Torpedoes were futile against that wall of energy. The most fiercely driven rays of the fishes flamed incandescent against it, in vain. Even the incredible violence of a concentration of every available force-ball against one ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... tendencies of approach and withdrawal are transformed into attitudes of superordination and subordination. If primary attitudes of expansion and of contraction are thought of in terms of lateral distance, then attitudes of superiority and inferiority may be charted in the vertical plane as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... the stuffing would have been expensive: they abandoned the idea. The linden tree, thrown down in the garden, might have been used as a horizontal pole; and, when they were skilful enough to go over it from one end to the other, in order to have a vertical one, they set up a beam of counter-espaliers. Pecuchet clambered to the top; Bouvard slipped off, always fell ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... valley, and ran our horses swiftly by, but I noticed that the Indians did not seem to be disturbed by the manoeuvre and soon realized that this indifference was occasioned by the knowledge that we could not cross Hat Creek, a deep stream with vertical banks, too broad to be leaped by our horses. We were obliged, therefore, to halt, and the Indians again made demonstrations of friendship, some of them even getting into the stream to show that they were at the ford. Thus reassured, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... of trees, from two to three hundred paces in breadth and about five hundred in length, was, with the exception of a few places overgrown with turf, covered with a crust of silicious dross, which here and there formed large connected areas, but was generally broken up into flaky plates by the vertical springs which pierced it. In numerous localities boiling hot mineral water containing silica was forcing itself out of the ground, spreading itself over the surface and depositing a crust, the thickness of which depended on its distance from the center point. In this manner, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... sun, upon a dry and sandy country, makes the air insufferably hot. Ali having robbed me of my thermometer, I had no means of forming a comparative judgment; but in the middle of the day, when the beams of the vertical sun are seconded by the scorching wind from the desert, the ground is frequently heated to such a degree as not to be borne by the naked foot. Even the negro slaves will not run from one tent to another without their sandals. At this time of the day the Moors lie stretched at length in their ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park

... Tawarik or Tifinegs. Dr. Gran-Bassas (El Museo Canario), who finds a notable likeness between them and the 'Egyptian characters (cursive or demotic), Phenician and Hebrew,' notes that they are engraved in vertical series. Dr. Verneau, of the Academy, Paris, suggests that some of these epigraphs are alphabetic, while others are hieroglyphic. [Footnote: El Museo Canario, No. 40, Oct. 22, 1881.] Colonel H. W. Keays-Young kindly copied for me, with great care, a painting in the Tacoronte museum. It represents ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... traversed by a diameter that was drawn from east to west. When the shadows were scarcely visible under the noontide rays of the sun, they said that "the god sat with all his light upon the column." 12 Quito which lay immediately under the equator, where the vertical rays of the sun threw no shadow at noon, was held in especial veneration as the favored abode of the great deity. The period of the equinoxes was celebrated by public rejoicings. The pillar was crowned by the golden chair of the Sun, and, both then and at the solstices, the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... portraiture are apt to look either lurid or livid. But if you cannot paint the old loose-looking marble slabs, the great panels of basalt and jasper, the crucifixes of which the lonely anguish looks deeper in the vertical light, the tabernacles whose open doors disclose a dark Byzantine image spotted with dull, crooked gems—if you cannot paint these things you can at least grow fond of them. You grow fond even of the old benches of red marble, partly worn away by the breeches of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... breath, till the bird rose in air like a cork in water. But it has to be, not a buoyant cork, but a buoyant bullet. And therefore that it may have momentum for pace, it must have weight to carry; and to carry that weight, the wings must deliver their blow with effective vertical, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... building a log cabin of tooth-picks by placing upon the table two wooden tooth-picks about two inches apart in a horizontal line, then laying two tooth-picks across them in a vertical position. Place two more directly above the first ones, then two above the second ones and so on as high ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... better in wet weather. It is chiefly employed on young trees having a smooth and tender bark. Of the various systems of budding, that known as the Shield is probably the most successful. Make a small horizontal cut in the bark of the stock, and also a vertical one about an inch long, thus forming an elongated T shape. Next select a branch of the current year's growth on which there is a well-formed leaf-bud. Pass a sharp knife 1/2 in. above the bud and the same distance ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... Ed Capitan-like rock called Mount Watkins; on the south the vast granite wave of Clouds' Rest, a mile in height; and between them the fine Tenaya Cascade with silvery plumes outspread on smooth glacier-polished folds of granite, making a vertical descent in all of about ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... apex of one movement seems to reach as high as the apex of the movement that preceded it, but always its base carries us farther down the slope. Also, in the history of art the summit of one movement seems always to spring erect from the trough of its predecessor. The upward stroke is vertical, the downward an inclined plane. For instance, from Duccio to Giotto is a step up, sharp and shallow. From Giotto to Lionardo is a long and, at times, almost imperceptible fall. Duccio is a fine decadent of that Basilian movement which half survived the Latin conquest ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... irrigate the fields. The ancient process of making these kanats has descended unchanged to the modern Persian, who is really a marvellous expert—when he chooses to use his skill—at conveying water where Nature has not provided it. I watched some men making one of these kanats. They had bored a vertical hole about three feet in diameter, over which a wooden windlass had been erected. One man was working at the bottom of the shaft. By means of buckets the superfluous earth was gradually raised up to the surface, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Templars, by them called Beauseant, No. 13, is black above and white below, which is said to have denoted that, while fierce to their foes, they were gracious to their friends. An ancient Banner of the Earl of Leicester (H.3) is white and red, the division being made by a vertical indented line; No. 14. This design, however, was not the coat of arms of the earl. The Shield of the ducal House of Brittany, closely connected with the Royal Family of England, is simply of the fur ermine; No. 15. The Shield of Waldegrave is silver and ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... however, as Petrie began systematically to clear the ground, the scheme of a large central chamber, with eight long chambers for offerings around it, and a line of private tombs enclosing it, stood apparent. The central chamber is very accurately built, with vertical sides parallel to less than an inch. It is about twenty-one feet wide and thirty feet long, or practically the same as the chamber of Zet. Around the chamber are walls forty-eight to fifty-two inches thick, and beyond them a girdle of long, narrow chambers forty-eight ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... not escape through it; while a second induna was also to take fifty men and block the exit through which we had just passed, thus rendering escape from the valley an impossibility, for, as the king now informed me, the surrounding cliffs were everywhere vertical, so that no animal, save, perhaps, a baboon, could possibly enter or leave the basin except by one or the other of the two natural ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... love this dry, light snow, holding up every limb and every cluster of green needles to receive it, stretching them upward as if in yearning for it. I think it is quite true that in the December cold, when there is a feel of snow in the air, the limbs of young pines do bend a little more toward the vertical. I know that the upward pointing needles do press a little closer to the stems on which they grow and thus more readily tangle and hold the ice crystals that fall upon them. The tender young shoots of this year's growth are clothed with these close-set needles for a space of a foot or ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... worth being serious about," Alan put in, "if one of those lights drop into Boston or New York—especially if it happens to play in a horizontal direction instead of vertical." ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... rite, according to the account we have received, consisted in a low monotonous chant; the manual, in keeping a ball about the size of an orange constantly whirling in a vertical circle. The whole was performed in a kneeling posture. Like most other rude nations, the New Zealanders have certain fancies with regard to several of the more remarkable constellations; and are not without some conception that the issues of human affairs are occasionally influenced, or at ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... July Lord Dundonald left the harbour, to pass round the sharp promontory known as Cape St. George. "About midway," he said, "a remarkable change takes place to the northward of the table mountain, where the vertical strata become in appearance horizontal along the whole shore of the projecting isthmus. The colour of the strata is chiefly grey, in parallel layers of varying hardness, as appears from its projections and indentations. I could not, without delaying the ship longer than I ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... sighted at midday. Minor canyons sometimes approach this character, as, for example, the canyon of the upper Virgen, called Parunuweap, fifteen hundred feet deep and no more than twenty to thirty feet wide, with vertical walls, but I have never been in a canyon from which stars were visible in daylight, nor have I ever known anyone who had. The light is about the same as that at the bottom of a narrow street flanked by very ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... his dotage," he said, "that is evident; what could possess him to maunder so? I really believe he is in love with Miss Stanbury himself, and is wire-working merely to gain my consent. As to going to Georgia, I would as soon bury myself up to my neck in the sea-sand and bear the vertical sun for twenty sequent noons, as to dream of such a step. The old gentleman is a lunatic, and should be cared for without delay. I will get Dr. Parrish to ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... a checkerboard you can see it as black on red, or red on black, as series of horizontal, vertical or diagonal steps which recede or protrude. The longer you look the more patterns you can trace, and the more certain it becomes that there is no single way of looking at the board. So with political issues. There is no obvious cleavage which everyone ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... backward into my face, the aesthetic solution is obviously galways. A stout gentleman can do wonders with his appearance by adopting a pointed beard, and a suit of clothes, shirt, necktie, and stockings with pronounced vertical stripes. A thin one, on the other hand, becomes at once substantial in effect, without being gross, if he cultivates side-whiskers, and wears a suit of clothes, shirt, cravat, and stockings with pronounced horizontal stripes. If my ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... from a pocket in the saddle, and put them in a bag made to hang below the animal's nose; and when he saw the relish with which the good servant took to the food, he turned and again scanned the world of sand, dim with the glow of the vertical sun. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... given me photographs. He it was who pointed out the resemblance, and when he inquired after the kitchen-maid he would say: "Well, how goes it with Giotto's Charity?" And indeed the poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled and stoutened every part of her, even to her face, and the vertical, squared outlines of her cheeks, did distinctly suggest those virgins, so strong and mannish as to seem matrons rather, in whom the Virtues are personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can see now that those Virtues and Vices of Padua resembled her in another respect as well. For ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... and turned it over to you!" Her forehead wrinkled again into vertical lines. She studied him frowningly. "Will you give it ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... it's meant to hide him all it can, And that's what all the blessed evil's for. Its use in Time is to environ us, Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough Against that sight till we can bear its stress. Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart Less certainly would wither up at once 660 Than mind, confronted with the truth of him. But time and earth case-harden us to live; The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child Feels ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... country around had a soft park-like appearance, which contrasted well with the dark cliff that rose beyond—the latter stepping up from the plain by a precipice of several hundred feet in height, and seemingly as vertical as the walls of ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... invention by Monge(17) of the theory of descriptive geometry. Descriptive geometry is concerned with the representation of figures in space of three dimensions by means of space of two dimensions. The method commonly used consists in projecting the space figure on two planes (a vertical and a horizontal plane being most convenient), the projections being made most simply for metrical purposes from infinity in directions perpendicular to the two planes of projection. These two planes are then made to coincide by revolving the horizontal into the vertical ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman

... confidence trick," she burst out to the comte de Souvary, firing up afresh with the memory of her wrongs. "I loved my launch. It was a beauty. It never went dotty at the time you needed it most and it was a vertical inverted triple-expansion direct-acting propeller!' (Florence could always rattle off technical details and showed her Americanism in her catalogue-like fluency in this respect.) "And I miss it and I want it back, and the horrid old woman never ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... intensity of light. There is no colour peculiar to any object, but only more or less rapid vibration of light upon its surface. The speed depends, as is demonstrated by optics, on the degree of the inclination of the rays which, according to their vertical or oblique direction, give different ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of arras ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... seventy-three seams which are workable, whilst in that between Mons and Thulin there are no less than one hundred and fifty-seven seams. The measures here are so folded in zigzag fashion, that in boring in the neighbourhood of Mons to a depth of 350 yards vertical, a single seam was passed through no less than ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... it reached the orifice in the top of the cave of light, Clewe heard the conical steel top grate slightly as it touched its edge, for it was still swinging a little from the motion given to it by his entrance; but it soon hung perfectly vertical and went silently ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... characters are in general less clearly ascertained. Amongst the most remarkable are—the sigillaria, of which large stems are very abundant, shewing that the interior has been soft, and the exterior fluted with separate leaves inserted in vertical rows along the flutings—and the stigmaria, plants apparently calculated to flourish in marshes or pools, having a short, thick, fleshy stem, with a dome-shaped top, from which sprung branches of from twenty to thirty feet long. ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... minute, and the poor cable must feel very sea-sick by this time. We are quite unable to do anything, and continue riding at anchor in one thousand fathoms, the engines going constantly so as to keep the ship's bows up to the cable, which by this means hangs nearly vertical and sustains no strain but that caused by its own weight and the pitching of the vessel. We were all up at four, but the weather entirely forbade work for to-day, so some went to bed and most lay down, making up our leeway, as we nautically term our loss of sleep. I must say Liddell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a standard color. Make six bean bags a corresponding color. This game is played by six files of equal number. In front of each file station a player who holds the hoop in a vertical position and to his right, shoulder high. Two players, one for scorekeeper the other to return bean bags to the place from which they are to be thrown, stand a little to the back of player who is holding the hoop. Upon a given signal the first player in the file throws ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various

... vertical bands of green (hoist side), white, and orange; similar to the flag of Cote d'Ivoire, which is shorter and has the colors reversed - orange (hoist side), white, and green; also similar to the flag of Italy, which is shorter and has colors of green ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... too well, Gouache thought. The nose was of no distinct type, and was the least significant feature in the face, but the forehead was broad and massive, the chin soft, prominent and round, the brows much arched and divided by a vertical shadow which, in the original, might be the first indication of a tiny wrinkle. Orsino fancied that one eye or the other wandered a very little, but he could not tell which—the slight defect made the glance disquieting and yet attractive. Altogether ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... sumptuously. We were not so peculiarly fortunate this time, the house being really very full. Farther from the flowers and nearer to the stars,—to reach the neighborhood of which last the per ardua of three or four flights of stairs was formidable for any mortal, wounded or well. The "vertical railway" settled that for us, however. It is a giant corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth cork, which, by some divine judgment, is no sooner drawn than it is replaced in its position. This ascending and descending stopper is hollow, carpeted, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... the next to another, and so on. Or else—seeing that every zone of altitude bears brambles at its season and that the interval between the maturing of the extreme varieties is at least four months—he might pilgrimage athwart the country in a vertical sense, devouring blackberries of different flavour as he went along; he might work his way upwards, boring a tunnel through the landscape as a beetle drills an oak, and leaving a track of devastation in his rear—browsing aloft from the sea-board, where ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... the basal plates and of the rim of the hexagons be a good adaptation to carry the vertical weight of the cells filled with honey and supporting clusters ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... punctured similarly to a nutmeg grater. This cylinder, technically called the barrel, runs upon a spindle, which turns a brass pick on each side of a frame. Immediately in a line with the centre upon which it turns, and placed vertical to each other, are two pieces of wood, frequently shod with iron of copper, called "the chops," placed about half an inch apart, or sufficient to allow the passage of "parchment" coffee between them. The lower ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... observer wishes to learn what stars are visible towards the west and north-west:—Turning the map until the portion of the circumference marked W ... N.W. is lowermost, he sees that in the direction named the square of Pegasus lies not very high above the horizon, one diagonal of the square being vertical, the other nearly horizontal. Above the square is Andromeda, to the right of which lies Cassiopeia, the stars [beta] and [epsilon] of this constellation lying directly towards the north-west, while the star [alpha] lies almost exactly midway between the zenith ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... choice. The facts are too great for them. I said nothing to Nettie of Edward Dunsack's reason for my coming," he added significantly. Out in the street he stopped, facing toward Java Head and evening; but, with a quiver of his lips, the vertical bitter line between his drawn brows, he turned and marched slowly, his head sunk, to ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... door and stepped forward. The man who stood in the corridor, facing the doorway, was tall, slender, dark of complexion, like a Spaniard or a Mexican. His black hair was long, straight, thin; his black eyes were bright, treacherous, too close together, with a little vertical wrinkle between the brows. He was dressed in a neat brown ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... now illustrate, in Fig. 1, is a sectional presentment precisely half the actual size of a 5-foot burner, which it is intended to prepare for the market before all others. Another simple form of the burner, with vertical tubes, will, we understand, be introduced as soon as possible. It will be readily understood that the principle is capable of being embodied in many shapes; and it is satisfactory to learn that the inventor is quite alive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... was sixteen feet from tip to tip. A trussed spar at the bottom carried six superposed bands of thin holland fabric fifteen inches wide, connected with vertical webs of holland two feet apart, thus virtually giving a length of wing of ninety-six feet and one hundred and twenty square feet of supporting surface. The man was placed horizontally on a base board beneath the spar. This apparatus ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... back, and a moment later vanished as by magic. Their friends rushed to the edge of the cliff but saw no trace of them. They noticed at once that the tide was out, and at the base three or four boatmen were sauntering about as though nothing had happened (forgetting even, as Bryant did, that a vertical line from the top of the cliff on account of the crumbling debris of ages makes it impossible for even the strongest arm to hurl a stone from the summit to the margin of the river). A diligent search was instituted. Friends and boatmen joined in the search, but from that day ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... fancy it mingled with large exogenous trees similar to our oaks and elms covered with creepers and parasites, and figure to himself the ground encumbered with fallen and rotting trunks, branches, and leaves; the whole illuminated by a glowing vertical ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... and the slack of his overcoat, and ran him forward to where a hatchway, not two feet across, opened in the deck. Without ado, he flung him down into the darkness below; and while Wilbur, dizzied by the fall, sat on the floor at the foot of the vertical companion-ladder, gazing about him with distended eyes, there rained down upon his head, first an oilskin coat, then a sou'wester, a pair of oilskin breeches, woolen socks, and a plug of tobacco. Above ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... dying beneath the oppressive heat of a Parisian atmosphere. The same misery appeared to beset the bears who are confined, in an open space, below. They searched every where for shade; while a scorching sun was darting its vertical rays upon their heads. In the Museum of dead, or stuffed animals, you have every thing that is minute or magnificent in nature, from the creeping lizard to the towering giraffe, arranged systematically, and in a manner the most obvious and intelligible: while Cuvier's collection ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin



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