"Wedge-shaped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... islanders. The canoes are built of several pieces, sewed together in so neat a manner that on the outside no join could be seen. They were of two kinds, double and single. The single were from twenty to thirty feet long, and twenty-two inches broad in the middle, with wedge-shaped heads and sterns, and decked over at both ends, leaving only a third part open. They had outriggers, and some few carried sails, but were generally impelled by short paddles, the blades of which were broadest in the middle. The double canoes were composed of two vessels, each from sixty to ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... saw five columns of vapor ascending from this strange abyss. They are evidently formed by the compression suffered by the force of the water's own fall into an unyielding wedge-shaped space. Of the five columns, two on the right and one on the left of the island were the largest, and the streams which formed them seemed each to exceed in size the falls of the Clyde at Stonebyres when that river is in flood. This was the period of low ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of the humerus the patient is to be bound in the supine position, a wedge-shaped stone wrapped with yarn placed in the axilla, and the surgeon, pressing against the padded stone with his foot and raising the humerus with his hands, reduces the head of the bone to its natural position. If this method fails, a long crutch-like stick is prepared to receive at one end ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... elongated cell; this becomes septate, and ultimately separates at the joints. During the greater part of the year, both kinds of spores are to be found in the same pustule. In Melampsora, the winter spores are elongated and wedge-shaped, compacted together closely, and are only matured during winter on dead leaves; the summer spores are pulverulent and globose, being, in fact, what were until recently regarded as species of Lecythea. In Cystopus, the spores are sub-globose, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... Heaven had floated to these Assyrians. The slabs against the walls were carved with representations of battles, hunts, sacrifices, triumphs, and all the scenes in the kings' histories, nay, in the building of the city; and there were explanations in the wedge-shaped letters of the old Assyrian alphabet. The Ninevites had numerous idols, but their honour for the Lord had not quite faded away; and about the year 830, about the time of Amaziah in Judah, and Jeroboam II. in Israel, the prophet ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Morro showed as the wedge-shaped end of a high mesa, soaring into cliffs and pinnacles, on the very tip of which they could just make out the hunched figure ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... and, taking out the wedge-shaped cap of the birdmen, set it on his head and went out. He took the same path he had followed home. On top of the cliff he stopped to look down on Squitty Cove. In a camp or two ashore the supper fires of the rowboat trollers were ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... noticeable examples that came under my attention, and which have not been described by other authors. Amongst these were the striking modifications of some beetles belonging to the Mordellidae. These, in their normal form, are curious wedge-shaped beetles, which are common on flowers, and leap like fleas. In some of the Nicaraguan species the body is lengthened, and the thorax and elytra coloured, so as to resemble wasps and flies. In the Mordellidae the head is small, and nearly concealed beneath the large thorax; and in the mimetic forms ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... asa-shot or an elf-shot. On this subject Grimm says: It is a very old belief that dangerous arrows were shot by the elves from the air. The thunder-bolt is also called elf-shot, and in Scotland a hard, sharp, wedge-shaped stone is known by the name of elf-arrow, elf-flint, elf-bolt, which, it is supposed, has been sent by the ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... easily retains its hold of the branch or twig on which it is sitting. Their bills are of almost all forms: in some kinds they are straight; in others curved, sometimes upwards and sometimes downwards; in others they are flat; in some they are in the form of a cone, wedge-shaped, or hooked. The bill enables a bird to take hold of its food, to strip or divide it. It is useful also in carrying materials for its nest, or food to its young; and in the birds of prey, such as the owl, the hawk, the falcon, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... coin, in turn from Latin cuneus, wedge, suggestive either of an earlier wedge-shaped piece, or of a wedge-shaped mark on the piece. The German word Muenze is from the Latin moneta (as is the English mint, the place where coins are made), which meant money, that name being taken from the temple of Juno, called Moneta, where ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... write this, one corner of her territory remains to her, a wedge-shaped piece, ten miles or so in width at the coast, narrowing to nothing at a point less than thirty miles inland. And in that tragic fragment there remains hardly an undestroyed town. Her revenues are gone, being collected as an indemnity, for God knows what, ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... material was clay. Papyrus, it is true, was occasionally used, but it was expensive, while clay literally lay under the feet of everyone. While the clay was still soft, the cuneiform or "wedge-shaped" characters were engraved upon it by means of a stylus. They had originally been pictorial, but when the use of clay was adopted the pictures necessarily degenerated into groups of wedge-like lines, ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... stem. Leaves fleshy, wedge-shaped. Flowers small, sessile, terminal, pale yellow. Calyx of 2 large teeth, deciduous. Corolla, 4-5 petals with a notch at the end. Stamens 9-14. Style of equal length with the stamens. Stigma in 4-6 divisions. The seed vessel, which dehisces ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... only the oldest but the first where man settled in great city communities, under an orderly government, with a developed religion, practicing agriculture, erecting dwellings and using a syllabified writing. All modern civilization had its source there. For 6,000 years the cuneiform or wedge-shaped writing of the Assyrians was the literary script of the whole civilized ancient world, from the shores of the Mediterranean to India and even to China, for Chinese civilization, old as it is, is based upon that which obtained in Mesopotamia. ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... wedge-shaped boards somewhat like backing boards, but with the top edge square; used in cutting the edge of ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... the shipwrecked and carried them ashore in the guise of a ray-fish. The same divinity bore priests from isle to isle about the archipelago, and by his aid, within the century, persons have been seen to fly. The tutelar deity of each isle is likewise helpful, and by a particular form of wedge-shaped cloud on the horizon announces the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clean by cells especially adapted to this purpose, known as the ciliated epithelial cells. These are slender, wedge-shaped cells which have projecting from a free end many small, hair-like bodies, called cilia (Fig. 35). They line the mucous membrane in most of the air passages, and are so placed that the cilia project into the tubes. Here they keep up an inward and outward wave-like movement, which ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... the centre of the base, is very large in proportion to the size of the animal. It is formed of five shelly, wedge-shaped pieces, each ending in a hard, triangular tooth. The whole mouth is a conical box, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... use in table-work. There is a series of finger keys representing the various characters and spaces, and the machine is so organized that on manipulating the keys it selects the matrices in the order in which their characters are to appear in print, and assembles them in a line, with wedge-shaped spaces or justifiers between the words. The series of matrices thus assembled in line forms a line matrix, or, in other words, a line of female dies adapted to mold or form a line of raised type on a slug cast against the matrices. After the matrix line is composed, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... roots differ materially in shape, colour, and taste, so as to be easily discriminated: furthermore the leaves of the Aconite—supposing them to be attached to the root—are not to be mistaken for those of any other plant, being completely divided to their base into five wedge-shaped lobes, which are again sub-divided into three. Squire says it seems incredible that the Aconite Root should be mistaken for Horse Radish unless we remember that country folk are in the habit of putting back again into the ground Horse ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... stalks; spikes of flowers with innumerable stamens; and here and there a fruit something like the cannon-ball, though not quite as large. On breaking the soft rind you find it full of white meal, probably eatable, and in the meal three or four great hard wrinkled nuts, rounded on one side, wedge-shaped on the other, which, cracked, are found full of almond-like white jelly, so delicious that one can well believe travellers when they tell us that the Indian tribes wage war against each other for the possession of the trees which bear these ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the material of the continental delta grow more and more feeble as they pass into deeper and more quiet water away from shore. Coarse materials are therefore soon dropped along narrow belts near land. Gravels and coarse sands lie in thick, wedge-shaped masses which thin out seaward rapidly and give place to ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... then, seem as if the panels were thickly coated with clay. Into this clay was then driven small, smoothed blocks of wedge-shaped stones, in such a way as to cover them with geometrical ornamentations, which, though not absolutely symmetrical, present a striking and agreeable appearance. Each section of the wall presents a different pattern, but this difference ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... for sale, but many people like to have an eraser in the end, and this requires still more work. These erasers are round or flat or six-sided or wedge-shaped. They are let into the pencil itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap, so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit his taste, ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... in Karl Vogt's "Vorlesungen ueber den Mensohen," distinguishes four chief forms of the pelvis in mankind—the oval in Aryans, the round among the Red Indians, the square in the Mongols, and the wedge-shaped in the Negro. Examining this question mechanically it would seem that the longer a race had remained in an upright position the lower is the sacrum, and the greater is the tendency to approximate to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... 53. The wedge-shaped dash over the note (staccatissimo) was formerly employed to indicate a tone still more detached than that indicated by the dot, but this sign is really superfluous, and is seldom ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... from tree and thicket fall, And on the ground their autumn carpet strew; And overhead the wild geese honking call, In wedge-shaped column, ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... and Caleb, learning the result of the fossil-search, offered to apply their more efficient skill and strength to a new attempt in the same direction; and, with high hopes for the result, Mysie, still accompanied by Clarissa, proceeded to another portion of the cliffs, where a low, wedge-shaped promontory, shadowed by beetling crags, was, as Mr. F. confidently stated, "sure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... downtown; our new uniforms with their unlined greatcoats (minus the cozy fur collars such as civilians wore) did not keep out more than a quarter of the cold, the rest went through us. Our caps were wedge-shaped affairs of imitation black fur, and on mild days we felt very smart in them, but when it was forty below and Jack Frost was on a still hunt for every exposed portion of our body, a cap that would not be coaxed down to meet ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... following a regular order of procedure, until he misses, when the knife is surrendered to the next in turn. When he receives the knife each player tries the feat at which he failed before. The last player to accomplish all the feats has the pleasure of "pulling the peg," The peg consists of a wedge-shaped piece of wood the length of the knife blade which is driven into the ground by the back of the knife and must be pulled by the teeth of the unfortunate one who was last to complete the necessary feats. The winner ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... small reef, about three miles South-West from QUOIN ISLAND, which is a small wedge-shaped rock: it is in the neighbourhood of this reef that the merchant ship, Morning Star, was lost. Quoin Island is in latitude 12 degrees 24 minutes, and longitude 143 ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... pursue their work according to certain definite lines and shapes, which are to them instinctive and in no way, we may presume, logical. The same is seen in the groups and formations of flocks of gregarious animals and in the flights of gregarious birds, among which the wedge-shaped phalanx of wild ducks and the huge globe of soaring storks are as remarkable ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... curved out from the shaft. The whole of the barb turned on a stout pivot of steel, but was kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg which passed through barb and shaft, being then cut off smoothly on both sides. The point of the harpoon had at one side a wedge-shaped edge, ground to razor keenness, the other side was flat. The shaft, about thirty inches long, was of the best malleable iron, so soft that it would tie into a knot and straighten out again without fracture. Three harpoons, or "irons" as they were always ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Wolseley remained behind to guard the new base of operations. At Abu Klea wells, when nearing the Nile, the column was assailed by a great mass of Arabs. They advanced in five columns, each having a wedge-shaped head designed to pierce the British square. With a low murmuring cry or chant they rushed on in admirable order, disregarding the heavy losses caused by the steady fire of three faces of the square. Their leaders soon saw ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the mountains here yielding to its sweep in a broadening valley only to press on it beyond and thrust it back on its way northward. It was all splendid and simple; if you please, nothing but a stream filling the intersecting slopes of a wedge-shaped valley and turning off because it had to. But the serenity of the whole composition: gray rocks, shining waters, green slopes; white mists, enveloping the crests, smiling in the afternoon sun! Jaded as were our faculties of admiration ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... the narrow strand where he had landed with Decoud, and afterwards alone on his first visit to the treasure. He made for the beach at the other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope of the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he saw from afar, sitting on a bench under the front wall of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly to his loud hail. He walked up. Neither of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... armless, who had tumbled down and lay in an unnatural posture, the naked, ancient wooden sculpture of the body on the naked, living rock. It was one of the old uncouth Christs hewn out of bare wood, having the long, wedge-shaped limbs and thin flat legs that are significant of the true spirit, the desire to convey a religious truth, not ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... or very pale; about 1 inch broad, on slender footstalks, in terminal clusters. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, much enlarged in fruit, sticky; 5 petals with claws enclosed in calyx, wedge-shaped above, slightly notched. Stamens 10; pistil with 3 styles. Stem: 4 to 10 in. high, hairy, sticky above, growing in tufts. Leaves: Basal ones spatulate; 2 or 3 pairs of lance-shaped, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... over. No room here for anything else, thought the smoker, as, after a quarter of an hour's saunter, he threw away the end of his cigar. But his conclusion was premature. For lo and behold!—there, in a strange little wedge-shaped corner, of all things in the world, a barber's shop; maybe a relic of the days of Ben Jonson or earlier—how could a mere loafer tell? Anyhow, his hair wanted cutting sufficiently to give him an excuse to see the old place inside. He went in and had his hair cut—but under ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... in the State. This is particularly true of those living on the plains, who display in their encampments a military precision and regularity which are remarkable. Every village consists of a single row of wigwams, conical or wedge-shaped, generally made of tule, and just enough hollowed out within so that the inmates may sleep with the head higher than the feet, all in perfect alignment, and with a continuous awning of brushwood stretching along ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... time, the tree is taken from the ground with its roots undisturbed. Should the end of the tap root project below the end of the cylinder, the thready end should be pinched off with the thumb nail. By placing the lower end of the cylinder on the bottom of a box and inserting a wedge-shaped piece of wood in the slot, the cylinder is sprung open and can be withdrawn, leaving the young tree, with a cylinder of earth around its roots, standing on the bottom of the box. This operation can be repeated until the box is full of the young trees, ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... armadillo, the truncated Chlamydophorus, is a dweller in the sand-dunes of Mendoza, and has never colonized the grassy pampas. The Tatusia hybrida, called "little mule" from the length of its ears, and the Dasypus tricinctus, which, when disturbed, rolls itself into a ball, the wedge-shaped head and wedge-shaped tail admirably fitting into the deep-cut shell side by side; and the quirquincho (Dasypus minutus), all inhabit the pampa, are diurnal, and feed exclusively on insects, chiefly ants. Wherever the country becomes settled, these three disappear, owing to the dulness ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson |
