"Serrated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flame into the rich blue air, like a monstrous, fiery syringa. The light coursed hotly down the smooth trunks of the palms, golden white it curled about the gentle curve of their slender hips, like frozen silver it weighed upon the serrated palm-leaves, often seeming to slip down and fall, so that the liberated leaf gave a little leap upward into a new bath of silver; the rigid leaves of black-green bushes were sown with immobile, penetrating scintillations; ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... came the view of the city beneath its delicate canopy of mist. The city was built on escarpments, on ridges, on hills, and sagged here and there into great hollows. The serrated silhouette of it wrote romance upon the sky, and the contours of the naked earth beyond lost themselves grandly in the mystery of the north. The jutting custom-house was a fine piece of architecture. From ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... channel. So narrow was the channel, so large the outflow of water, that the passage was more like the rapids of a river than the mere tidal entrance to an atoll. The water boiled and whirled and swirled and drove outward in a white foam of stiff, serrated waves. Each heave and blow on her bows of the upstanding waves of the current swung the Malahini off the straight lead and wedged her as with wedges of steel toward the side of the passage. Part way in she was, when her closeness to the coral ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... discriminating them philosophically. Every one would say that the reform effected by Lavoisier and Guyton-Morveau in the language of chemistry consisted in the introduction of a new nomenclature, not of a new terminology. Linear, lanceolate, oval, or oblong, serrated, dentate, or crenate leaves, are expressions forming part of the terminology of botany, while the names "Viola odorata," and "Ulex Europaeus," belong to ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... all right enough," stated Mayo, scratching the serrated edge of the check across his palm as if to make sure it was real and not a shadow. "Yes, he told me not to mention the note to him till he said something to us about it himself, and to keep quiet about the loan. Didn't ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of spurwinged geese, the habits of the ostrich, the nests of bee-eaters, pass under review in rapid succession. His sphere of observation ranges from the structure of the great continent itself to the serrated bone of the konokono, or the mandible ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... tasseled, and partaking of an elegant vase-shaped appearance. In fact, nothing short of the moist heat of a stove will induce it to show its characters in their best condition. The pinn, which are small, of different sizes, rounded and serrated at the edges, are produced in pairs, one overlying the other, and, curiously enough, those on the top are the largest. The pairs are sometimes opposite, but mostly alternate, distant toward the base, approximate higher up, and crowded and quite overlapping in the crested ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... according to Waterson, ranks high in beauty among the birds of Demerara. This beautiful creature seems to suppose that its beauty can be increased by trimming its tail, which undergoes the same operation as one's hair in a barber shop, using its own beak, which is serrated, in lieu of a pair of scissors. As soon as its tail is fully grown, he begins about an inch from the extremity of the two longest feathers in it and cuts away the web on both sides of the shaft, making a gap about an inch long. Both male ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... dem handle chranades," spoke up Iggy, meaning, thereby the serrated Mills bombs which were used in the ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... the San Juan mountains lifted their serrated ridge of ebony. On all other sides the flat-lands stretched out seeming to have no end, suggesting to the fancy that they were kin in vastitude to the clear expanse of the sky. On all hands little wind-shaped ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Mergus merganser, a northern sea-fowl, allied to the duck, with a straight, narrow, and serrated bill, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... which rose the lonely towers of this the marshal's most remote castle could now be seen, serrated darkly against the broad belt of the sky. The sombre blackness of their spreading branches, the yet blacker darkness where the gaps between their red trunks showed a way into the wood, increased the gloom of the weary travellers. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... in this spring of mighty rivers. We soon had the satisfaction to find ourselves riding along the huge wall which forms the central summits of the chain. There at last it rose by our sides, a nearly perpendicular wall of granite, terminating 2,000 to 3,000 feet above our heads in a serrated line of broken, jagged cones. We rode on until we came almost immediately below the main peak, which I denominated the Snow peak, as it exhibited more snow to the eye than any of the neighboring summits. Here were three small ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... advance guard of dawn emerged from behind the serrated peaks to the east and paused on their snow-encrusted summits before charging down the slopes into the open desert to rout the lingering shadows of the night, a coyote came out of his den in the tumbled malpais at the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the south appears the rocky island of Monte-Cristo. This, too, has its tale of exile, insignificant as it looks except for its sharply serrated outline, and a worldwide fame. The emperor Diocletian banished here St. Mamilian, Archbishop of Palermo. A convent was afterwards founded on the site of the Saint's rude cell. The monks of Monte-Cristo flourished, as they deserved; the worthy fathers having founded ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... wherever there is space to nourish their roots, and where moisture and heat have no other outlet whereon to expend their fructifying powers. The bread-fruit-tree is especially interesting, with its deeply serrated, feathery leaves, and its melon-shaped fruit, weighing from three to four pounds. This the natives prepare for eating in many ways, and as the tree bears fruit continually for nine months of the year, it forms a most important food supply. Two or three trees will support a hearty man, and half ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... tolerably steep hillocks. They attain a height of from six to twelve feet, and begin to bear sometimes as soon as the second, but in no case later than the third year, and are productive for ten years. The leaf is long and slightly serrated, the blossom white, while the fruit hangs down in the same manner as a bunch of grapes, and resembles a longish cherry, which is first green, then red, brown, and nearly black. During the time it is red, the outer shell ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... powers, the apparent evenness of their edges entirely disappears, and we find that the latter exhibit indentations, projections, and little flexures, like the banks of an ordinary stream or rivulet, or, to use a very homely simile, the serrated edges and little jagged irregularities of a biscuit broken across. In some cases we remark crateriform hollows or sudden expansions in their course, and deep sinuous ravines, which render them still more unsymmetrical and variable in breadth. With regard to their distribution on the ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... that thing is more like an alligator's than a frog's," objected Earle. "And then, look at that serrated arrangement of the skin—I suppose it is—from the back of the head to the extremity of the tail. You never said anything ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... rocks), is very remarkable from the structure of its hind pair of legs. The penultimate joint, instead of terminating in a simple claw, ends in three bristle-like appendages of dissimilar lengths—the longest equalling that of the entire leg. These claws are very thin, and are serrated with the finest teeth, directed backwards: their curved extremities are flattened, and on this part five most minute cups are placed which seem to act in the same manner as the suckers on the arms of the cuttle-fish. As the animal lives in the open sea, and probably wants a place of rest, I suppose ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... hat under her round chin before a small glass at her window. The window gave upon a background of serrated mountain and olive-shadowed canyon, with a faint additional outline of a higher snow level—the only dreamy suggestion of the whole landscape. The foreground was a glaringly fresh and unpicturesque mining ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... surf—than which there are few sadder sounds on earth—fills the atmosphere with a never-ceasing melancholy. The country is overwooded; the tropical vegetation, the huge tangled African trees, stand almost in the surf; and inland the red serrated hills mount guard in gloomy array. For Europeans this country is accursed. From the mysterious forest-land there creeps down a subtle, tainted air that poisons the white man's blood, and either strikes him down in a fever or terrifies him by strange unknown symptoms ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... with more than usual care; upon opening it we found it contained several spear-heads, most ingeniously and curiously made of stone; they were about six inches in length, and were terminated by a very sharp point; both edges were serrated in a most surprising way; the serratures were evidently made by a sharp stroke with some instrument, but it was effected without leaving the least mark of the blow: the stone was covered with red pigment, and appeared to be a flinty slate. These spear-heads ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... They were the flowers of the sorrel-tree—the beautiful lyonia—the very sight of which sent a thrill of gladness through my heart. I was soon under the tree, and, clutching one of its lowermost branches, I stripped it of its smooth, serrated leaves, and eagerly chewed them. Another and another branch were successively divested of their foliage, until the little tree looked as if a flock of goats had been breakfasting upon it. I lay for nearly an hour masticating the soft ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Higgins Farm, Sarah Brown was a little disconcerted to find a small dragon. It was coiled round a tree beside the clipped box archway. It was not a very fine specimen, being of a brownish-green colour, and having lost the tip of one wing. Its spine was serrated, especially deeply between its shoulder blades, where it could raise a sort of crest if angered or excited. But at present it was asleep, its saturnine and rather wistful face rested upon one ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... together, and was not yet recovered from the strain of some violent compression. Gently stretching the stuff, and bringing it closer to the light, he found the almost regular marks, above and below, as of some serrated, semi-trenchant tool which had been closed upon ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... rosa sinensis) is a well-known shrub, with leaves of a yellowish green, serrated and curled. Of one sort the flower is red, yielding a juice of deep purple, and when applied to leather produces a bright black, from whence its vulgar name of the shoe-flower. Of another sort the blossom is white. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... phenomena in other regions. Here, as in the Alps, the abrupt line, where the rounded and worn surfaces of the mountains (moutonnees, as the Swiss say) yield to their sharply cut, jagged crests, showed him the ancient and highest line reached by the glacial action. The long, serrated edge of Mount Tarn, for instance, is like a gigantic saw, while the lower shoulders of the mass are hummocked into a succession of rounded hills. In like manner the two beautiful valleys, separated by a bold ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... afternoon when they ran a level in a spot of surpassing grandeur. A rock slide had sent a great heap of stone into the river. Close beside this they set the transit. Forward the river swept smoothly round a curve. Back, the two looked on a magnificent series of flying buttresses of serrated granite, their bases guarding the river, their tops remotely supporting the heavens. The buttresses nearest the rock heap and on opposite sides of the river were not ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... along a lengthy chamber which was quite dark, immediately after which the large, heavy one opened a way to a serrated incline leading downward. It was extremely dark, I should say. There was also an extreme smell, quite like that of the outer air, but enormously intensified; one would suspect that there was an incomplete combustion of, perhaps, wood or coal, as well as ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... The parts of the gelatine in light become insoluble, while the parts in shade can be washed away by water. In this way a relief or engraving of the picture is obtained on the gelatine, and a cross section through the plate would, if looked at edgeways, appear serrated, or up and down, like a section of country or the trace of the stylus in the record of a phonograph. The gelatine plate thus carved by the action of light and water is wrapped round a revolving drum or barrel, and ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... weapon. Originally designed as a surgeon's tool, its special steel blade moves in and out of the heavy hilt at speeds from two hundred to two thousand vibrations per second, depending on the size and the use to which it is to be put. Make it eight inches long, add serrated, diamond-pointed teeth, and you have the man-killing vibroblade. Its danger is in its power; that shivering blade can cut through flesh, cartilage, and bone with almost no effort. It's a ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hours on the way. And we had left the summer behind, on lower levels; we did not need to remind ourselves now that it was autumn. By noon we were en route again, but the brilliance of the day had gone. As we looked back at the world we were leaving, serrated mountains were dark against flying silver clouds, and when we neared the Col, a fierce north wind, which had been lying in wait for us above, swooped down like a great bird of prey. We had heard it shrieking from afar, but now we had penetrated into its very eyrie; and as we crept, like flies ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... well with the finger and thumb to make the wax adhere to the leaf, get the impression, and hold the wire firmly; then lay another piece of wax on the under side, press the edges together and cut away the superfluous wax, leaving the edge plain (the ivy leaf is not serrated), cover the wire stem with wax and the leaf is ready for bronzing. Rub both sides with turpentine, give one coat of bronze No. 4000, then the last coat of bronze No. 6000. When all the leaves are finished, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... south—showing clear above the serrated back of the ridge beyond the camp—stood the Pir Panjal; pale ivory in the pale horizon below the sun. At the foot of the valley up which we had come yesterday, and partly screened by the intruding buttresses of its enfolding hills, the Wular Lake lay ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... convey even a tolerable portraiture of the ruggedness, the fairy grouping, the shelves, hollows, crags, terraces, precipices, and beach of this kingdom of ice, where its frontal line broke away from the smooth face of the tall reaches, and ran with a ploughed, scarred, and serrated ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... that she had mastered a new element in it, soon restored her to her sisterly affinity with natural glories. The sunset was on yonder side of the snows. Here there was a feast of variously-tinted sunset shadows on snow, meadows, rock, river, serrated cliff. The peaked cap of the rushing rock-dotted sweeps of upward snow caught a scarlet illumination: one flank of the white in heaven was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the parapet of the Latomia, where the breath of the sirocco, the gnawing tooth of time, and the slow ravelling of rain had serrated the ledge, stood Leo, gazing into the dizzying depths of the charnel house that swarmed with the ghosts of nine thousand men, who once were huddled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ugly, and well established in two languages. We may think of it as formed from gre, and meaning 'a nice bird.' The specialities of the whole class, easily remembered, are, first, that they have chestnut-leaf feet; secondly, that their legs are serrated behind with a double row of notches—(why?); thirdly, that they have no tails; fourthly, that they have, most of them, very fine and very comic crests, tufts, tippets, and other variously applied appendages to their heads and chins, so that some are ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... envisaged the full strangeness of it. Around me were spreading miles of barren, naked landscape. I gazed off to where, across the rugged plateau we were traversing, there was a range of hills. Behind and above them were mountains; serrated tiers, higher and more distant. An infinite spread of landscape! And, as we dwindled, still other vast reaches opened before us. I gazed overhead. Was it—compared to my stature now—a thousand miles, perhaps even a million ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... a short cut through the orchard and as she walked she tore off a corner and peeped into the envelope. Yes, there was a pale-blue slip of paper with serrated edges. She leaned against ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... long, waved, and serrated on the borders; stalk of medium height; head large,—measuring from seven to ten inches in diameter,—close, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... shark is far more dreadful, from its gigantic size and strength; its jaws are also furnished with from three to six rows of strong, flat, triangular, sharp-pointed, and finely serrated teeth, which it can raise ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... cute little pursuer of fame is absolutely invisible until you find it stuck fast to one of your toes with a serrated dorsal spur a quarter of an inch long. It is invisible, because Nature sends it into this breathing world masquerading, as she did Richard III, deformed, unfashioned, scarce half made-up. In general appearance it closely resembles a crazy root-stalk of alga—green and not quite ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... air and hovered over a nearby eddy with an irregular flapping of quick, blue wings. Then, like a bullet, he dived into the flashing stream immediately at Clark's feet, and emerged with diamond drops flying from his brilliant plumage and a small, silver fish curving in his sharp, serrated beak, till, a second later, he darted into the covert with his prey. The bird had dared the rapids and found that which he sought. Clark's gray eyes had seen it ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... resting their cold, sharp noses on the very leech of the top-sail—waiting like hungry dogs for a bone, with a thousand more diving and cutting in the water beneath, at last cut through the canvas belly of the sail, and, before you could think, the floating corpses were within their serrated jaws. In another moment the bodies rose again to the surface outside the sail and wreck; then another dash from the monsters, and a greedy dive and peck from the birds; a few bubbles and shreds of black threads, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... paling. Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leaves Silverly stir on the breath of moving water, Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill, And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill, Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black. By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhere He drops his sack, and lights once more the pipe There often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened sky A pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall, Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it been Last year, and the ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... jars, the top or face of it is marked or ornamented with a tool made to the size of half the diameter of the interior of the jar, in a similar way to a saw; a piece of lead or tortoise-shell, being serrated with an angular file, or piece of an "old saw," will do very well; place the marker on the amandine, and ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... collecting, and guiding of the cotton into a form suitable for the next succeeding processes. The fleece of cotton is stripped from the doffer by the "Doffer Comb," which is a thin bar of steel, having a serrated under edge, and making about 1600 beats or strokes per minute. From this point cotton is collected into the form of a loose rope or "sliver," and passed first through a trumpet-shaped mouth, and then through a pair of calender ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... legs and arms clank like the fetters of slaves. The men wear massive ivory rings on the upper arm. The rich cover the whole arm. The men also wear leather bracelets and necklaces.[396] In Behar, Hindostan, the women wear brass rings on their legs. "One of these is heavy, nearly a foot broad, and serrated all around the edges. It can only be put on the legs by a blacksmith, who fits it on the legs of the women with his hammer, while they writhe upon the ground in pain." Women of the milkman caste wear bangles of bell metal, often ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... initiated men may witness. Part of the proceedings consists in knocking out a tooth and giving a new name to the novice, indicative of the change from youth to manhood. While the teeth are being knocked out an instrument known as a bull-roarer, which consists of a flat piece of wood with serrated edges tied to the end of a string, is swung round so as to produce a loud humming noise. The uninitiated are not allowed to see this instrument. Women are forbidden to witness the ceremonies under pain of death. It is given out that the youths are each met in turn by a mythical being, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... formidable obstacle till August 14th, when they ran into a granite formation, the "First Granite Gorge." While the gorge was wide above, it grew narrower as the river level was approached, till the walls were closer than anywhere farther up; and they were ragged and serrated. They had noticed that hard rocks had produced bad river, and soft rocks smooth water; now they were in a series of rocks harder than any before encountered. There was absolutely no way of telling what the waters might do in such a formation, which ran up till a thousand feet of it stood ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... comprising this family are of greatly varying sizes, but all have webbed feet, and generally the bill is broader than high, and is serrated on the edges or provided with gutters to act as a strainer in assisting the birds to gather ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... less than one minute the trim battalions had become simply a swarm of men struggling through the undergrowth of the forest, pushing and crowding. The front was irregularly serrated, the strongest and bravest in advance, the others following in fan-like formations, variable and inconstant, ever defining themselves anew. For the first two hundred yards our course lay along ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... close inspection, to be Martini weapons of the 1879 pattern—a most serviceable and reliable fire-arm, far superior to the modern small-bore rifle in the opinion of soldiers themselves, as a man-stopper and rush-checker. A long, wicked-looking bayonet with a basket hilt, the back of the blade serrated for three-quarters of its length, like the edge of a large saw, swung from the left hip; and the armoury was completed by a long-hilted, long-bladed knife, or short sword, stuck through the belt which supported the bayonet. ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... of Pichincha has a sharp, serrated edge, which, happily for Quito, is broken down on the west side, so that in the next eruption the volcano will doubtless pour its contents into the wilds of Esmeraldas. The highest pinnacle is 15,827 feet; so that the mountain just enters the region of perpetual winter. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... there?" queried the boy, pointing in front of them. The road wound onward toward the middle Sierras, thickly wooded with oak and digger pine, and, of course, the chapparal, and towering to the clouds rose the mighty serrated peaks of the range, where magnificent forests of pine, fir, and cedar swept upwards to the limits of eternal snow. "Up there the hunting ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... various conditions of obscurity.[230] This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature complete as a type of the human nature. We have, observe, first, Subordination; secondly, Individuality; lastly, and this not the least essential character, Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson in every serrated point and shining vein which escape or deceive our sight among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which we at first think we understand, a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... "is intimately connected with innumerable events that precede and follow. It has so many serrated points of contact with other events that the human mind is not able to fit a false event so that no trace of the joinder will appear. The most skilled workmen in the devil's shop are only able to give their ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... appearance, and to follow an enemy of unknown strength into its gloomy depths was to court disaster. The canyon into which the Indians had been driven was steep, rocky and with the sides covered with brush, while the ridge was covered with scattering pines back to the timber line where rose the jagged, serrated peaks of the extreme summit of the mountain. After taking a careful view of all the surroundings we retreated down the mountain pretty much as ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... for you, Elinor," said David, pointing to the beautiful serrated mass of the great buildings looming misty-blue against the gold. "Can't you remember that, and put it on ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... found to differ totally in shape and character from any yet seen; they trended North-North-West in narrow ridges, and were of a grey slate formation, their eastern sides formed steep precipices, while the western subsided to the water in rich grassy slopes, leaving quite a serrated ridge on their summits. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... and fortifications of Brescia are boldly placed, overlooking the city. The Cathedral Dome, and red serrated hills, add a picturesque grace, with the purple mountains in the background. Up to this point our journey had charmed us with its beautiful and varied landscapes, but the remainder of the route appeared tame and uninteresting. It was our first taste of the beautiful Italian lake scenery, and we were ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... in the thoracic ganglions, however efficacious, is often insufficient. Although the six limbs are paralysed, although the victim cannot move, its mandibles, "pointed, sharp, serrated, which close like a pair of scissors, still remain a menace to the tyrant; they might at least, by gripping the surrounding grasses, oppose a more or less effectual resistance to the process of carrying off." So the preceding manoeuvres are consummated by a kind of garrotting; that is, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... admiration upon the scene. There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemnity to the moonlight. There, far away to the left, the spire-crowned Citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets, and the long serrated line of the Mokattam Hills were carved against the sky in the yellow-rose of pink topaz. Shafts of light gave to jagged shapes and terraces of rock on the low mountains an appearance of temples and palaces, very noble and splendid, as must have been the first glimpse of Ancient Egypt to desert-worn ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... head was protected by a massive cuirass of bony plates firmly articulated together, but the hinder end of the body seems to have been simply enveloped in a leathery skin. The teeth are of the most formidable description, consisting in both jaws of serrated dental plates behind, and in front of enormous conical tusks (fig. 102, a). Though immensely larger, the teeth of Dinichthys present a curious resemblance to those of ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... supple armor, but this had been colored or overlaid with a pearly hue in which other tints wove opaline lines. His head was bare except for a broad, scaled band running from the nape of his neck to the mid-point of his forehead, a band supporting a sharply serrated crest not unlike the erect fin ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... the calm gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds. On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises majestically ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... our view till March 23. "'Land in sight' was reported this morning. We were sceptical, but this afternoon it showed up unmistakably to the west, and there can be no further doubt about it. It is Joinville Island, and its serrated mountain ranges, all snow- clad, are just visible on the horizon. This barren, inhospitable- looking land would be a haven of refuge to us if we could but reach it. It would be ridiculous to make the attempt though, with the ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... very light wood tree with large pith, headed with hard wood and generally topped with bone so as to form a point or barb, are the most common. The end of the tail of a species of ray fish is sometimes used as a point. It is serrated and brittle, and on entering any object breaks short off. It is said to be poisonous, but I do not believe such to be the case, as one of the marines stationed here was speared in the shoulder with one of these spears, and no poisonous effect was produced. The point ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... tint; it was grey, it was violet—it was what the eye chose to make it—and through it, giving its solidity the air of a bubble, shone the southern sky, flushed too with faint orange. It was this that was supreme and dominant; the serrated line of domes, spires and pinnacles, the crowded roofs beneath, in the valley dell' Inferno, the fairy hills far away—all were but the annexe to this mighty tabernacle of God. Already lights were beginning to shine, as for thirty centuries ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... of poison. Mixes instantly with blood. Paralysis—convulsions—death. The least scratch and you're gone. Wicked head on this thing, too: looks like a piece of serrated bone. See all those little barbs along the edges? War ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel |
