"Elliptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... construction. After Hamlet the style, in the more emotional passages, is heightened. It becomes grander, sometimes wilder, sometimes more swelling, even tumid. It is also more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical. It is, therefore, not so easy and lucid, and in the more ordinary dialogue it is sometimes involved and obscure, and from these and other causes deficient in charm.[30] On the other hand, it is always full of life and movement, and in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... is into a lofty vaulted porch or hall by an archway of the entire width of the apartment; thirdly, that beside these oblong halls, the building contains square apartments, vaulted with domes, which are circular at their base, and elliptical in their section, and which rest on pendentives of an unusual character; fourthly, that the apartments are numerous and en suite, opening one into another, without the intervention of passages; and fifthly, that the palace comprises, as a matter of course, a court, placed towards the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... these sticks is seldom a true circle, but bear in mind, when giving your order, to ask for those which are rather flat than otherwise. I mean that the section should be elliptical, and not circular. The shape of the stick then more nearly approaches that of the blade of a sabre, and if you understand sword exercise and make all cuts and guards with the true edge, you are far more likely ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... viz., 3/4in. long and hardly 1/4in. in diameter. The stems are stout, round, hollow, and glaucous; they are furnished with leaves of various shapes at the nodes, as lance-shaped, long oval, heart-shaped and plain, elliptical and pointed, wavy and notched, and arrow-shaped, lobed, and toothed. The root leaves are mostly ovate, lanceolate, and entire. The whole plant is smooth and glaucous. From the description given, it ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... Every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger. And the result of that attraction? Inevitably Jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would "describe a curved path" and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our earth. "Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... treated by excising a triangular or elliptical portion of skin and cartilage from the posterior surface of the pinna and uniting the cut edges with sutures. Abnormally large ears may be diminished in size by the removal of a V-shaped portion from the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... baggy, with a short coat, and a high double-breasted vest with two rows of buttons coming up to the loops of his black tie. This costume was even more foreign-looking than his skin-tight dress clothes, but it was more becoming. He spoke hurried, elliptical English, and very good French. All his sympathies were French rather than German—the Czecks lean to the one culture or to the other. I found him a fierce, a transfixing talker. His brilliant eyes, his gaunt hands, his white, deeply-lined ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... resorts, for all its purposes, to the roots of the rush and water lily. It consumes great quantities of food, whether of roots or wood; and hence often reduces itself to the necessity of removing into a new quarter. Its house has an arched dome-like roof, of an elliptical figure, and rises from three to four feet above the surface of the water. It is always entirely surrounded by water; but, in the banks adjacent, the animal provides holes or washes, of which the entrance ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... must distinguish between elliptical and ellipsoidal. Perhaps some of you gentlemen may be familiar with the works of Mr W. S. Gilbert. In one of his songs he speaks of the billiard sharp who ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... attendant bodies which the sun maintains in their elliptical orbits by the great law of gravitation, some few in turn possess satellites. Uranus has eight, Saturn eight, Jupiter four, Neptune possibly three, and the Earth one. This last, one of the least important of the entire solar system, we call the Moon; and ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... will be found to be 4.75 inches. Viewed from above, Fig. 24, A, the forehead presents an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of the sides and back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical curve. ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley
... in the balcony because Faust was singing through laryngitis and a cloud of fog in his throat. A critic who wrote in terms of elliptical rhythms and tonal arabesques tiptoed out for a smoke. One of those sympathetic fits of coughing swept the house. But Lilly sat hunched in her habitual beatific attitude against the chair back, the old opera flowing ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... well, Browning often defies the established laws of literature. Distorted and elliptical sentences, long and irrelevant parentheses, curious involutions of thought, and irregular or incoherent development of the narrative or the picture, often leave the reader in despair even of the meaning. Nor can these departures from orderly beauty always ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... volume there is a frontispiece representing a portable universal furnace, made of strong wrought iron plates and lined with bricks bedded in fire-proof loam. The height of the furnace is two feet. The body of the furnace is elliptical. There are three openings in front of the furnace, one above the other, furnished with sliding doors, and fitted with ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... preceding, more elliptical in outline, with a thinner shell and with large granules throughout the endoplasm. The nucleus is spherical and subcentral in position and possesses a distinct central granule. This may be a small ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... through the opening afforded by a connecting tube, is an advantage in the same direction, and avoids almost entirely the racking strains due to irregular furnace action. The weight of water carried is less, and that of the boiler may also be made less; while the elliptical form of the two ends gives greater ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... singular way. They have their apexes or points on the outer edge of the bone; and these apexes or points are so contrived, that, lying upon, and seemingly losing themselves, on the processes of the anterior maxillary, they complete, superiorly and posteriorly, that elliptical bony opening into the nose which was commenced by the maxillary anteriorly and inferiorly. The nasal cavity of the dog, therefore, and of all carnivorous animals, terminates by a somewhat circular opening, more or less in the form of an ellipse. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... horses, tracks, stables, farms, etc., is enormous. The tracks are level, with start and finish directly in front of the grand stand, and are either one mile or one-half mile in length. They are always of earth, and are usually elliptical in shape, though the "kite-shaped track" was for a time popular on account of its increased speed. In this there is one straight stretch of one-third mile, then a wide turn of one-third mile, and then a straight run of one-third mile back to the start and finish. The horses are driven in two-wheeled ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... is obscured by the fact that in most cases what is in form a mere part of the demonstrative gesture is in fact a part of the proposition which it is desired directly to convey. In such a case we will call the phraseology of the proposition elliptical. In ordinary intercourse the phraseology of nearly ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been a Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... runs invariably from north-west to south-east; and at the latter point there is a large upright headstone, averaging from ten to fifteen feet high, varying in its form, from the square, elliptical, and conical, to that of three-fourths of an egg; and having in many instances an aperture about eighteen inches square at ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... two general bud shapes were globose-ovate and narrowly elliptical. The broadly oval (Fig. 1a) type of buds were smaller, generally under 1/2 inch in length while the elliptical (Fig. 1b) type of buds were usually over 1/2 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... the Object appear Green, Blew, &c. the Figures of these Particles have a great, but not the only stroak. 'Tis true indeed that the protuberant Particles may be of very great variety of Figures, Sphaerical, Elliptical, Conical, Cylindrical, Polyedrical, and some very irregular, and that according to the Nature of these, and the situation of the Lucid body, the Light must be variously affected, after one manner from Surfaces (I now speak of Physical Surfaces) consisting of Sphaerical, and ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... circle; eidos, form). Applied to those scales of fishes which have a regularly circular or elliptical outline ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... mixed with hyphae tissue. In old plants the tops break in, the powder is dissipated, and there remains (Fig. 833) a bundle of carbonous tubes, the walls of the perithecia. Finally, these break up and disappear, leaving the upper part of the plant hollow. The spores are elliptical, 6-7 x 16-18 mic., smooth, light colored. The asci which disappear at at very early stage, are shown by Moeller as oval, ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... the delicate experiments of Professor Marey on the flight of birds and insects, our readers should be reminded of the great differences between an insect and a bird, remembering that the former, is, in brief, a chitinous sac, so to speak, or rather a series of three such spherical or elliptical sacs (the head, thorax and abdomen); the outer walls of the body forming a solid but light crust, to which are attached broad, membranous wings, the wing being a sort of membranous bag stretched over a framework of hollow tubes (the tracheae), ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... which the sago within is shortly granulated very fine, and becomes what is technically termed "pearled." It is then taken out and put into iron vessels, called quallies, for the purpose of being dried. These quallies are small elliptical pans, and resemble in form the sugar coppers of the West Indies, and would each hold about five gallons of fluid. They are set a little inclining, and in a range, over a line of furnaces, each one having its own fire. Before putting in the sago to be dried, a cloth, which contains a small quantity ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... and Pa-Ramesu was one of these basins, elliptical in shape and walled with rough limestone. Moss grew in the crevices of the masonry and about it had been a sod of velvet grass. Black beetles slipped in and out among the stones; dragon-flies hung over the surface of the water and large ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... wanting it is sometimes because the narrator could not tell where he had become familiar with the items communicated; again, a chance correspondent failed to note the locality. In putting on paper these popular beliefs and notions, the abbreviated, often rather elliptical, vernacular in which they are passed about from mouth to mouth has to a ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... back again to the north. If the movement had been quite regular, the apex would have described a circle, or rather, as the stem is always growing upwards, a circular spiral. But it generally describes irregular elliptical or oval figures; for the apex, after pointing in any one direction, commonly moves back to the opposite side, not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards other irregular ellipses or ovals are successively ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... hand he held a spear about five and a half feet long, the blade being two and a half feet in length, by nearly three inches in width, and having an iron spike at the end of the handle that measured more than a foot. On his left arm was a large and well-made elliptical shield of buffalo hide, on which were painted strange heraldic-looking devices. On his shoulders was a huge cape of hawk's feathers, and round his neck was a 'naibere', or strip of cotton, about seventeen feet long, by one and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... reflection may be adapted to a Brunton otoscope, utilized for examining other natural cavities, such as the nose, pharynx, etc. Elliptical reflectors do not appear to have been employed up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... about the freshness and spontaneity of Mr. MILNE'S humour. The only question was whether an author so fastidiously unstagey, who never underlines his intentions, would be able to accommodate himself to the conditions of a medium that discourages the elliptical method. Well, he did it, and very artfully. He began by making concessions to the habits of his new audience. He wouldn't try them too high at first. In the person of Robert Crawshaw, M.P. (Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR), he introduced them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... which formed part of the wall of the King's Palace; and this queer old lane running up through the walls like a sewer is Cuckoo lane; and that is Bugle street, where in olden times the warden blew; and here are the remains of Canute's palace, with its elliptical and circular arches and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... that was never to reflect the bright face of the moon was easily moved now, and Tom stooped down and picked up one by one the three triangular pieces, and laid them upon the bench, to find then that a good-sized elliptical piece, something in shape like a fresh-water mussel-shell, yet remained upon the stones. This he raised, and found that it fitted in ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... black depths of space toward Venus gleamed the tiny, elliptical, silvery hull of a ship, bearing slightly toward them. Although sharply outlined, the craft was hundreds of miles away as the men realized. Winford checked it swiftly through the telescope distance calculator, determined its speed, and rapidly ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... reliquary is elliptical, and has upon its sides reliefs and inscriptions bordered with a rough leaf-moulding. Round the middle are eight medallions with male and female heads, divided into two groups of five and three by palm-trees. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... and those of the planets. In the case of the latter the orbit is that of an ellipse, while in the case of the comet the orbit may be either that of a parabola or a hyperbola, which may be looked upon as elongated ellipses open at one end. There are, however, some comets whose orbits are perfectly elliptical, and whose return may be calculated with a ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... great distance must have one exact amount of proper motion to produce a parabola: all other amounts would give hyperbolas or ellipses. And if there are no hyperbolic orbits, then it is infinity to one that all the orbits are elliptical. This is just what they would be if comets had ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... in this document are very involved and elliptical, and in some places the sense is not at all clear. The translation is necessarily somewhat free, at times, in wording; but it is believed that the author's meaning is, as a rule, accurately rendered.—Rev. T. C. Middleton, O. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... bulletin of the United States bureau of fisheries,[123] Dr. Evermann asserted concerning Clinton's drawing of Otsego bass, which he had examined, that "the cut, although crude, plainly shows Coregonus clupeaformis. The form is elliptical, and the back shows the dark streaks along the rows of scales usually characteristic of that species." The same author, in collaboration with Dr. Jordan,[124] says concerning the common whitefish: "This species, like others of wide distribution, is subject to considerable variations, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... as supports for the seat of the canoe. The frame of the boat was completed by nailing in place two deck beams of 1/2-inch square pine and four corner pieces between the gunwales and the bulkheads, so as to make an elliptical well hole or deck opening. Before laying on the canvas covering the edges of the gunwales, keelson, deck beams, stem and stern posts were smoothed ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... (top), white, red (double width), white, and blue, with the coat of arms in a white elliptical disk on the hoist side of the red band; above the coat of arms a light blue ribbon contains the words, AMERICA CENTRAL, and just below it near the top of the coat of arms is a white ribbon with the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... chief entrance is a simple but effective arched doorway, now plastered and whitewashed. The double door frame projects pilaster-like, with a four-membered cornice above, from which rises an elliptical arch, with an elliptical cornice about ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... to near each other as they reached the limits of the long elliptical curves which made their course; and presently a great number of scintillating specks were seen in the space enclosed between them. There were the leaping fish, just conscious that they were crowded into a confined place, and desirous of escape. When ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... recruits of the Third Wisconsin Cavalry, under the command of Captain Conkey. This point was rightly regarded as one of the most important on the whole overland route; for near it passed the favourite highway of the Indians on their yearly migrations north and south, in the wake of the strange elliptical march of the buffalo far beyond the Platte, and back to the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... beyond the circle two figures on their knees, in the act of adoration. Having passed the first gate, long arched galleries are discovered, about twelve feet wide and twenty feet high, cased with stucco, sculptured and painted; the vaults, of an elegant elliptical figure, are covered with innumerable hieroglyphics, disposed with so much taste, that notwithstanding the singular grotesqueness of the forms, and the total absence of demi-tint or aerial perspective, the ceilings make an agreeable ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... assault on Mary, the wife of Lewis Bromley. During the investigation, her garrulity was so incessant that the mayor was under the necessity of sending for the 'scold's bridle,' an iron instrument of very antique construction, which, in olden times, was occasionally called into use. It is formed of an elliptical bow of iron, enclosing the head from the lower extremity of one ear to the other, with a transverse piece of iron from the nape of the neck to the mouth, and completely covers the tongue, preventing its movement, and ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... from the end of the web for the first turn. Sew into an elliptical form three and one-half inches long for the sole. Sew two more rows without widening for the sides of the foot; then sew two rows across the front for the toe; the third row bring all around the top ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... were vigorous gestures, a frequent smiting of the chest with the open hand, and a strenuous movement of the pelvis and lower part of the body called ami. This consisted of rhythmic motions, sidewise, backward, forward, and in a circular or elliptical orbit, all of which was done with the precision worthy of an acrobat, an accomplishment attained only after long practice. It was a hula of classic celebrity, and was performed without ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... to the banks of the Ohio, where opium helped him end his life in an obscure Kentucky inn, while his steamboat rotted on the shores of the Delaware. Then John Stevens of Hoboken began a series of experiments in 1791, trying elliptical paddles, smoke-jack wheels, and other ingenious contrivances, which soon found the oblivion of Fitch's inventions. Subsequently Rumsey, another ingenious American, sought with no better success to drive a boat by expelling water from the stern. When it was announced that the great Chancellor ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... from the orifice at its summit at each revolution. This seed ball also possesses the power of opening when moistened, changing its spherical form to that of an open flower about two inches in diameter. When opened, it displays eight elliptical divisions, resembling petals. These are white as snow on the inside, and traversed by a network of small irregular cracks, while their outer surface resembles kid leather, both in color ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the top of Garisendi, Asinelli appears to be four times higher than its neighbour, and the bare aspect of its enormous height deterred me from even making the attempt of ascending it. When viewed or rather looked down upon from Garisendi, Bologna, from its being of an elliptical form and surrounded by a wall and from having these two enormous towers in the centre, resembles a ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the valley would suggest the existence of the grand elliptical crater of some extinct volcano. But instead of the black sulphuric scoria, that you might expect to see strewed over its base, you behold a verdant landscape of smiling loveliness, park-like plains ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... it stood an extraordinary hill or ridge, consisting of a huge red turtle back having a number of enormous red stones almost egg-shaped, traversing, or rather standing in a row upon, its whole length like a line of elliptical Tors. I could compare it to nothing else than an enormous oolitic monster of the turtle kind carrying its eggs upon its back. A few cypress pine-trees grew in the interstices of the rocks, giving it a most elegant appearance. Hoping to find some rock or other reservoir of water, I rode ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... generally make it clear what Campanella meant, except in cases where the text itself is corrupt. But it may sometimes be doubted whether Michael Angelo could himself have done more than indicate the general drift of his thought, or have disengaged his own conception from the tangled skein of elliptical and ungrammatical sentences in which he has enveloped it. The form of Campanella's poetry, though often grotesque, is always clear. Michael Angelo has left too many of his compositions in the same state as his marbles—unfinished and colossal abbozzi, which lack the final touches to make ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... starting his legs next day, if he had to do the journey alone: and he clouded the yacht for Fleetwood with talk of the Wye and the Usk, Hereford and the Malvern Hills elliptical over the plains. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I had bought. They developed about four horsepower. The power was transmitted from the motor to the countershaft by a belt and from the countershaft to the rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds—one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour—obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed; with the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... area of secondaries when it forms a groove for the abdomen: has also been called frenum and frenulum: in Trichoptera, a small elliptical space at base of hind wings near base of anal ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... mind, suspend a spiral spring above a pail of water, then raise the pail until the coils, one after another, become immersed. The spring would represent the helix, and the surface of the water the moving plane. Concentrating attention upon this surface, you would see a point—the elliptical cross-section of the wire where it intersected the plane—moving round and round in a circle. Next conceive of the wire itself as a lesser helix of many convolutions, and repeat the experiment. The point of intersection would ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... speech was elliptical, though he might have been surprised if told so. For once, Medenham wished he was a ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... considerable harbors on the English side are Toronto (York, the former name, has recently been changed to the Indian name of the place, Toronto) and Kingston. Toronto is situated near the head of Lake Ontario, on the north side of an excellent harbor or elliptical basin, of an area of eight or nine miles, formed by a long, low, sandy peninsula or island, stretching from the land east of the town to Gibraltar Point, abreast of a good fort. The town of Toronto, at that period York, was twice captured by the Americans, in April and August, 1813, owing ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... I may notice another error sometimes made. It is said that the shadow of a satellite appears elliptical when near the edge of the disc. The shadow is in reality elliptical when thus situated, but appears circular. A moment's consideration will show that this should be so. The part of the disc concealed by a satellite near the ...
— 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
... 1814, and finished in 1819. It has three arches, and the central arch is two hundred and forty feet, which is the greatest span in the world. In this bridge are five thousand three hundred and eight tons of iron. Blackfriars Bridge was commenced in 1760, and opened in 1770. It has nine elliptical arches, of which the middle one is one hundred feet in width. Recently this bridge has been thoroughly repaired. I think this is my favorite stand-point for the river and city. Nowhere else have I obtained ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... of the Doric order (Figs. 26, 27) consists of a tapering shaft rising directly from the stylobate or platform and surmounted by a capital of great simplicity and beauty. The shaft is fluted with sixteen to twenty shallow channellings of segmental or elliptical section, meeting in sharp edges or arrises. The capital is made up of a circular cushion or echinus adorned with fine grooves called annul, and a plain square abacus or cap Upon this rests a plain architrave or epistyle, with a narrow fillet, the tnia, running along ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Three Laws. The recognition of order in any branch of natural phenomena is but the prelude to the formulation of a set of laws, the simpler as the order is more universal, which describe, and as we say, explain it. Thus the perception of the even, elliptical courses of the heavenly bodies led to the statement of the law of gravitation and the ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... can be compared with these in this respect. These are the most liberal in scale of all the old Teutonic poems; the largest epic works of which we know anything directly. These are the fullest in composition, the least abstract or elliptical; and they still want something of the scale of the Iliad. The poem of Maldon, for instance, corresponds not to the Iliad, but to the action of a single book, such as the twelfth, with which it has been already compared. If the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the second edition of his Apolog.) suppose the word to be erroneously pointed. They propose to read [Hebrew: wlh], compounded of [Hebrew: w] for [Hebrew: awr], and the suffix [Hebrew: h] for [Hebrew: v]. They suppose the language to be elliptical: "Until He come to whom the dominion or sceptre belongs, or is due." The principal argument in support of this exposition is, that most of the ancient translators seem to have followed this punctuation. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... spheres divide into more and more numerous portions which are the daughter-cells, destined to form by their products the many varied tissues and organs of the developing larva and adult frog. After three or four days the egg changes from its globular form into an oval or elliptical mass, and from one end of this a small knob projects to become a flattened waving tail a few days later. On the sides of the larger anterior portion shallow grooves make their appearance and soon break through from the throat or pharynx to the exterior as gill-slits. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... (Bibos) the horns are situated as in Bos, high up on the vertex, but are more elliptical in section; the premaxillaries are short; the dorsal vertebrae, from the third to the eleventh, bear elongated spines which produce a hump reaching nearly to the middle of the back; the tail is shorter, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... known to return into sight after intervals of seventy-four and seventy-six years, during which they have visited portions of space a few hundred millions of miles further than the orbit of Neptune. Six comets travel in elliptical orbits that are never so far from the sun as the planet Neptune, and return into visibility in short periods that never exceed seven or eight years. These interior comets of short period seem to be regular members of our world-system in the strictest sense. Their paths, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... in favor of this theory. There is a "ring nebula'' in Lyra with a central star, and a "planetary nebula'' in Gemini bearing no little resemblance to the planet Saturn with its rings, both of which appear to be practical realizations of Laplace's idea, and the elliptical rings surrounding the central condensation of the Andromeda Nebula may be cited for ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Fig. 58) are two elliptical prominences, placed exterior to the corpora pyramidalia. By some physiologists these bodies are considered as the nuclei, or vital points, of the medulla oblongata. Being closely connected with the nerves of special sensation, Dr. Solly supposed that ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... an elliptical carriage spring composed of a single piece, F, or two separate pieces, E E, of steel, united by means of blocks and bolts, substantially as ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... his bread by tuition at Brunswick, with many possibilities, but no settled career before him. The news from Palermo may be said to have converted him from an arithmetician into an astronomer. He was already in possession of a new and more general method of computing elliptical orbits; and the system of "least squares," which he had devised though not published, enabled him to extract the most probable result from a given set of observations. Armed with these novel powers, he set to work; and ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... rounded edge. Presently it condensed and contracted, leaving at each of the several intervals a severed ring. Most of these rings broke up, their fragments conglomerated and forming a sphere; one in particular separating into a multitude of minuter spheres, others assuming a highly elliptical form, condensing here and thinning out there; while the central mass grew brighter and denser as it contracted; till there lay before me a perfect miniature of the solar system, with planets, satellites, asteroids, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... designed and built under Telford's superintendence was one of no great magnitude, across the river Severn at Montford, about four miles west of Shrewsbury. It was a stone bridge of three elliptical arches, one of 58 feet and two of 55 feet span each. The Severn at that point is deep and narrow, and its bed and banks are of alluvial earth. It was necessary to make the foundations very secure, as the river is subject to high floods; and this was effectuality accomplished ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... position scramble to his feet. This he also managed, when a further comparatively easy climb enabled him to reach the boss. He now found himself standing on the boss and leaning against the smooth elliptical stern of the vessel. His next task was to climb up over this smooth rounded surface and so make his way along the upper surface of the hull to the superstructure, when he would soon find means to reach the deck. This also, though a task of immense difficulty, he actually accomplished; ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of a terrestrial degree given by Abbe Picard, and the determination of the Meridional arc, arrived at by the Cassinis, father and son, led scientific men to an entirety different result, and induced them to consider the earth an elliptical figure, elongated towards the polar regions. Passionate discussions arose from this decision, and in them originated immense undertakings, from which astronomical and mathematical ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Very small, greenish or yellowish white, from 3 to 10 staminate ones in a short cyme; fertile flowers usually solitary, scattered. Stem: A small tree of very slow growth, rarely attaining any great height. Leaves: Evergreen, thick, rigid, glossy, elliptical, scalloped edged, spiny-tipped. Fruit: Round, red berries. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods and thickets. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Texas, chiefly near the coast ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... amphitheatre is really a double theatre without a stage, and with the space in the centre unoccupied by seats. This space, which was sunk several feet below the first row of seats, was called the arena, and was appropriated to the various exhibitions which took place in the building. The plan was elliptical or oval, and this shape seems to have ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... when acted upon by a force varying inversely as the square of the distance; and he established the conditions depending on the velocity and the primitive position of the body which were requisite to make it describe a circular, an elliptical, a parabolic, or a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the fortunate valley, in about fifty-two hours. We then ascended, for about three miles, with far fatigue than I formerly experienced in climbing the Catskill mountains of my native State, and found ourselves on the summit of an extensive ridge, which formed the margin of a vast elliptical basin, the bottom of which presented a most beautiful landscape. The whole surface was like a garden, interspersed with patches of wood, clumps of trees, and houses standing singly or in groupes. A lake, about a mile across, received several small streams, and ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... these circles away, and substituted the conception of an exact ellipse. Even this is found not to represent with complete correctness the accurate observations of the present day, which disclose many slight deviations from an orbit exactly elliptical. Now Dr. Whewell has remarked that these successive general expressions, though apparently so conflicting, were all correct: they all answered the purpose of colligation; they all enabled the mind to represent to itself with facility, and by a simultaneous glance, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... (piu per la sua affezione cognobbe l'animo delle campagne che quello del re per le sue parole). It is difficult, however, in this instance as in many others, to discover with certainty Boccaccio's exact meaning, owing to his affectation of Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of construction; whilst his use of words in a remote or unfamiliar sense and the impossibility of deciding, in certain cases, the person of the pronouns and adjectives employed tend still farther to darken counsel. E.g., if we render affezione sentiment, cognobbe (as ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... ten days' operations to which the name of the Battle of Paardeberg has been somewhat inaccurately given. Paardeberg is a prominent hill on the right bank of the Modder, four miles W.S.W. of the battle centre, Cronje's laager at Vendutie Drift, and lies on the extreme edge of the elliptical arena on which the battle was fought. It seems to have been chosen as the official word because the hill was the only distinctive physical feature shown on the banks of the river in the incomplete surveys ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... beauty of surface rendered definite by increase and decline of light—(for every curve of surface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic solid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spherical one)—it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain; as it is the essential business of a painter to get good color, whether he imitates anything or not. At a distance from the picture, or carving, where the things represented become absolutely unintelligible, we must yet ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... together at the rear and sometimes both at the rear and front. These portions thus cease to vibrate. Only the small free parts vibrate and these only at the edges. As the voice progresses up the scale the stop action ceases, the elliptical opening and the cup become smaller, and the entire vocal tract is, comparatively speaking, contracted. This register practically belongs only to sopranos and tenors. For example, although some baritones are capable of adjusting their vocal tracts to this register, their voices ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... or action does, indeed, lead to the emancipate state. In the regions, of which thou speakest, there are both bliss and emancipation (Arthajata) is explained by Nilakantha to mean Bhoja-mokshakhya-prayojana samanyam. The second line is elliptical, the construction being Paratma aniha (san) param ayati; (anyatha-tu) margena margan nihatya param (prayati). Paratma is explained by Nilakantha, to mean one who regards the material body to be Self. In the succeeding ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of this cluster to the unaided eye appears to be elliptical, but it will be seen from the plan that the ellipse is somewhat pointed on the side farthest from the cliff. As in other cases of ancient pueblos with curved outlines, the outer wall seems to have been built first, and the inner rooms, while kept as rectangular as possible, were adjusted to this ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... far behind, and earth could not be seen because of the sun. There was nothing to do now but ride out the rest of the trip as comfortably as possible until it was time to throw the asteroid into an ever-tightening series of elliptical orbits around earth, known as braking ellipses. The method would use earth's gravity to slow them down to the proper speed. A single atomic bomb and a half dozen tubes of rocket ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... objects. If the reader will turn to the poem, "A Roxbury Garden", he will find in the first two sections an attempt to give the circular movement of a hoop bowling along the ground, and the up and down, elliptical curve ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... the headers there is placed a handhole of sufficient size to permit the cleaning, removal or renewal of a tube. These openings in the wrought steel vertical headers are elliptical in shape, machine faced, and milled to a true plane back from the edge a sufficient distance to make a seat. The openings are closed by inside fitting forged plates, shouldered to center in the opening, their ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... around the star is becoming more and more elliptical," Arcot replied. "As the other sun pulls us, the star beneath us grows smaller with the distance; then, as we begin to fall back toward it, it grows larger again. Since this is taking place many hundreds of times per second, the visual pictures ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Saxon style with narrow holes, scorpions, and large square gratings over narrow loopholes. There was no window on it, but here and there slits, old embrasures of pierriers and archegayes. At the foot of this high wall was seen, like the hole at the bottom of a rat-trap, a little wicket gate, very elliptical in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... temporary wooden flues, filled with straw, are erected, either one at the center or, if the heap is elliptical, one near each end, and the stone and coal are built up around them; thus, when they are burned out, a chimney or two is secured, which may be damped by pieces of stone or sod. Upon this first layer of stone is spread a layer of coal, and upon ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... the nature of some large, transparent, spore-like elliptical cells (fungal?) whose protoplasm was rotating, while it was at the same time charged with triangular grains of starch, I observed some actinophorous rhizopods creeping about them, which had similar shaped grains of starch in their interior; and having determined the nature of these ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... village, the hill terminates in a long, elliptical mound, about one-third of a mile in length. We made the tour of it, and were surprised at finding a large number of columns, each of a single piece of marble. They had once formed a double colonnade, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... back to the most curious part of the furnishing, the mineral hatch or inner door of the entrance. It is an elliptical skull-cap, white and hard as chalk, smooth within and knotted without, resembling more or less closely an acorn-cup. The knots show that the matter is supplied in small, pasty mouthfuls, solidifying outside in slight projections which the insect does not remove, being ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... kapas to insit (Ceiba pantadra Gaertn.), also known by the Ilocano as kapas sanglay. This so-called "Chinese cotton" is a small tree with few, but perfectly straight, branches, which radiate from the trunk in horizontal lines. It produces elliptical pods which burst open when ripe, exposing a silky white cotton. The fiber is too short for spinning, but is used as tinder ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... original position, and the drawer opens to return the medallion. There are twenty of these medallions, all containing different questions, to which the magician returns the most suitable and striking answers. The medallions are thin plates of brass, of an elliptical form, exactly resembling each other. Some of the medallions have a question inscribed on each side, both of which the magician answered in succession. If the drawer is shut without a medallion being put into it, the magician rises, consults his book, shakes his head, and resumes his seat. The ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which must be considered the most important is that of the "line." A line is described in chalk or paint upon a large space of floor. Instead of one line, there may also be two concentric lines, elliptical in form. The children are taught to walk upon these lines like tight-rope walkers, placing their feet one in front of the other. To keep their balance they make efforts exactly similar to those of real tight-rope walkers, except that they have no danger with which to reckon, as ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... is an octagonal building, now Suleiman Aga Mesjedi but generally regarded as a Byzantine library, which has on each side a large wall arch strongly elliptical in form (p. 270). Two arches of somewhat similar form and apparently original are found in the south end of the gynecaeum of the Pantokrator (p. 237). These arches may have been built in this manner to economise centering. ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... of finger rings more common than that of rings for the ears. The finger rings I saw were all made of silver and showed good workmanship. Most of them were made with large elliptical tablets on them, extending from knuckle to knuckle. These also ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... of compression stenosis is that of an elliptical or scabbard-shaped lumen when the bronchus is at rest or during inspiration. Concentric funnel-like compression stenosis, while rare, may be produced ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... banish the ruling power, and institute a Republican form of government; but inasmuch as we saw the weakness of an absolute monarchy in large and populous States, as represented by the circle, the wisdom of an elliptical social system has ordained that there shall be two foci, or houses of representatives of the people, who shall assist in regulating the progress of the nation. Here we have a limited monarchy; the throne is supported by the representatives ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... was 9 ft., and it measured 91/2 ft. in circumference; its weight a ton. Afterwards, it exhibited symptoms of internal injury. The inside became a putrid mass, and the crust, or shell, fell in by its own weight. The shape of the stem is elliptical, with numerous ridges and stout brown spines arranged in tufts along their edges. The flowers are freely produced from the woolly apex; the tube is scaly and brown, and the petals are arranged like a saucer about the cluster of orange-coloured stamens. The colour of the petals ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... giving it a silvery white appearance, and converting him into a clairvoyant at night. According to Professors Brown, Seidy and Gibbs, the negro's hair is not tubular, like the white man's, but it is eccentrically elliptical, with flattened edges, the coloring matter residing in the epidermis, and not in tubes. In the place of a tube, the shaft of each hair is surrounded with a scaly covering like sheep's wool, and, like wool, is capable of being felted. True ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... composed of two theatres of wood, placed on pivots, so that they could be turned round, spectators and all, and placed face to face, thus forming a double theatre, or amphitheatre, which ending suggested its elliptical shape. Statilius Taurus, the friend of Augustus, B.C. 30, erected a more durable amphitheatre, partly of stone and partly of wood, in the Campus Martius. Others were afterwards built by Caligula and Nero. The amphitheatre of Nero was of wood, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... west-bound route as an illustration—traveled in an elliptical course through Springfield, Missouri, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Van Buren, Arkansas, where the Memphis mail was received. Continuing in a southwesterly course, they passed through Indian Territory and the Choctaw ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... red colour that distinguishes oxydised or arterial blood. The red colouring matter of the blood (haemoglobin) is regularly distributed in the pores of their protoplasm. The red cells of most of the Vertebrates are elliptical flat disks, and enclose a nucleus of the same shape; they differ a good deal in size (Figure 2.358). The mammals are distinguished from the other Vertebrates by the circular form of their biconcave red cells and by the absence of a nucleus ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... 30, 1789." Some critics insist upon the insertion of on before a date, as "on April 30," but general usage justifies its omission. With equal force they might urge the use of in before 1789. The entire expression of day, month, and year is elliptical. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... own dignity to invite his readers. To their own dignity, and also to his. Mallarme is obscure, not so much because he writes differently as because he thinks differently from other people. His mind is elliptical, and (relying on the intelligence of his readers) he emphasises the effect of what is unlike other people in his mind by resolutely ignoring even the links of connection that exist between them. Never having aimed at popularity, he has never needed, as most writers need, to make ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... because, instead of moving forwardly, or changing the position of its body horizontally, in performing the undulatory motion of the wing, it causes the body to rock, so that at the point where the wing joins the body, an elliptical motion is produced. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... astronomical phenomenon may be defined as an apparent motion of the heavenly bodies; the stars describing annually orbits more or less elliptical, according to the latitude of the star; consequently at any moment the star appears to be displaced from its true position. This apparent motion is due to the finite velocity of light, and the progressive ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ellipse (marked 1 on the map) 40 miles long from east to west, 28 miles wide, and about 886 square miles in area. The next isoseismal (2) includes the places in which some buildings were ruined, but not as a rule completely, and in which there was no loss of life. Its bounding line is also elliptical, the longer axis being about 71 miles long and running nearly east and west. Towards the south this zone is interrupted by the sea. It will be noticed that these isoseismals are not concentric, the second extending much ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... I might enter still further into detail, and show that the polarization between the plane and the circular is elliptical, and even the positions of the longer and shorter axes and the direction of motion in each case. But sufficient has, perhaps, been said ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... closing act of our drama. To understand it fully, it is necessary that the setting of the stage—the mise-en-scene—be described with a certain degree of minuteness. The little valley-plain, or vallon, in which we had cached ourselves, was not over three hundred yards in length, and of an elliptical form. But for this form, it might have resembled some ancient crater scooped out of the mountain, that on all sides swept upward around it. The sides of this mountain, trending up from the level of the plain, rose not with a gentle acclivity, but with precipitous ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... supply a more convenient form of free elevator. One side will be used by those who are going up and the other by those who wish to come down. The "well" of the staircase for such a lift is made in elliptical form, like the shadow projection of a circle. Steps can be provided so that, when not in motion, the lift will be a staircase not differing much ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... Six of these, which Captain Sabine had an opportunity of examining, and which are situated on a level sandy bank, at the side of a small ravine near the sea, are described by him as consisting of stones rudely placed in a circular, or, rather, an elliptical form. They were from seven to ten feet in diameter; the broad, flat sides of the stones standing vertically, and the whole structure, if such it may be called, being exactly similar to that of the summer huts of the Esquimaux which ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... of strong emotion in abrupt, inverted, or elliptical phrases. It is among sentences what the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... a sharp grating sound as of iron cutting into ice, came suddenly to a stop, and the persons gathering round had an opportunity to examine it. It was the work of a village genius, and consisted of some boards, cut in an elliptical form (as, perhaps, the most convenient), supported by two pieces of iron, parallel to each other, to which the boards were fastened, and running the whole length from bow to stern. In the forward part was rigged a mast, to which was attached a sail, like the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... possibility. Now, let's say Karpin attaches a small rocket to McCann's body, stuffed into its atmosphere suit. He sets the rocket going, and off goes McCann. Not that he aims it toward the sun, that wouldn't work well at all. Instead of falling into the sun, the body would simply take up a long elliptical orbit around the sun, and would come back to the asteroids every few hundred years. No, he would aim McCann back, in the direction opposite to the direction or rotation of the asteroids. He would, in essence, slow McCann's ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... are drawn by the weight and mass of the great central sun to become its satellites, then we move in a nobler orbit and receive fuller and more blessed light and warmth. They who have themselves for their centres are like comets, with a wide elliptical course, which carries them away out into the cold abysses of darkness. They who have God for their sun are like planets. The old fable is true of these 'sons of the morning'—they make music as they roll and they flash ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... has given the most rational explanation of the cause of the earth's elliptical orbit that I have ever seen in print. It is because the earth presents its watery hemisphere to the sun at one time and that of solid land the other; but why has he made his Oxonian astonished at the coincidence? It is what I taught in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of the lower end of our elliptical valley towards the miniature landscape we had seen through the opening. But before we reached it we climbed sharp to the right around the end of the mountains, made our way through a low pass, and so found ourselves in a ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... great valley of the Arno, perhaps twenty-five miles long, and five or six broad, lying like a long elliptical basin sunk among the hills. I can liken it to nothing but a vast sea; for a dense, blue mist covered the level surface, through which the domes of Florence rose up like a craggy island, while the thousands of scattered ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... fine building is elliptical, and some notion of its vast extent may be formed, when it is stated to have been capable of containing ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Where, as in a volcanic eruption, the shock originates with an explosion, these waves go off in circles. Where, however, as is generally the case, the shock originates in a fault plane, which may have a length and depth of many miles, the movement has an elliptical form. ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Colosseum, whose sublimity of size, however, can afford to dispense with detail. The seats at Nimes, like those at Verona, have been largely renewed; not that this mattered much, as I lounged on the cool surface of one of them, and admired the mighty concavity of the place and the elliptical sky- line, broken by uneven blocks and forming the rim of the monstrous cup, - a cup that had been filled with horrors. And yet I made my reflections; I said to myself that though a Roman arena is one of the most impressive ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... full constructed hill, surrounded by an innumerable number of others, differing in shape and dimensions, arched in various forms, circular, and elliptical, which communicate by passages, occupied by guards and attendants, and surrounded by nurseries and magazines. But when the community is in an infant state, these are contiguous to the royal residence; and in proportion as the size of the queen increases, her chamber ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... brilliant display of meteors in two distinct groups, or orbits. Those of August come from a point in the constellation of Perseus and those in November from a point in the constellation Leo. They are believed to fill two distinct orbits or rings making an elliptical orbit round the sun. In such orbits, comets are believed by astronomers to be formed by a concentrated swarm of incandescent meteorites rendered luminous by collisions. But this hypothesis of innumerable collisions ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... The elliptical basin in which Denver is built, sloping north and east, gives it a picturesque and extended view; the mountains losing themselves in one direction in the now historic "Black Hills," and in the other merging into the "Spanish Peaks" and "Sangre de Christo Range," so named ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... can be meritorious to be obscure; but I say that in many cases it is very natural to be so, and pardonable in profound thinkers, and in some cases inevitable. For the other kind of obscurity which I was going to notice is that which I would denominate elliptical obscurity; arising, I mean, out of the frequent ellipsis or suppression of some of the links in a long chain of thought; these are often involuntarily suppressed by profound thinkers, from the disgust which they naturally feel at overlaying a subject with ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Luneta, the garden spot of the city. It is laid out in elliptical form and its green lawns are covered with benches for the people. A broad driveway surrounds it and hundreds of electric lights ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... refers (Geographical Journal, Vol. XVI., p. 422) to conical ground houses with elliptical and circular bases found in villages on the top of steep hills behind the Mekeo district and on the southern spur of Mt. Davidson, and says that in some places, as on the Aduala affluent of the Angabunga (i.e., St. Joseph's) river, the houses are oblong, having a short ridge pole. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... of irregular outline, and very variable in size and depth, are frequently found on the outer slopes of the border. Some of them consist of great elliptical or sub-circular cavities, displaying many expansions and contractions, called "pockets," and suggesting the idea that they were originally distinct cup-shaped hollows, which from some cause or other have coalesced like rows of inosculating craters. While many of these features are so ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... as thus presented was one of the most difficult we can perceive of, but the difficulty was only an incentive to attacking it with all the greater energy. So long as the motion was supposed purely elliptical, so long as the action of the planets was neglected, the problem was a simple one, requiring for its solution only the analytic geometry of the ellipse. The real difficulties commenced when the mutual action of the planets was ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... been dug, to carry away the water which fell from the roof. Near the middle of this house, which measured about forty feet from side to side, a large fire had been kept burning for several hours, the ashes being removed from time to time. The ash bed was elliptical in form, measuring about thirteen feet from east to west, and five from north to south. Under the center of it was a hole, ten inches across and a foot deep, filled with clean white ashes in which was a little charcoal, packed very hard. At the western end, on the south side (or farthest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... or been joined to any belt in its proximity, as has been alleged by some observers. During the year 1885 the middle of the spot was very much paler in colour than the margins, causing it to appear as an elliptical ring. The ring form has continued up to the present time. While the outline of the spot has remained very constant, the colour has changed materially from year to year. During the past three years (1884-'86) it has at times been very faint, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... The brief and elliptical report of Paul's address on Mars' Hill must therefore, in all fairness, be interpreted in the light of his more carefully elaborated statements in the Epistle to the Romans. And when Paul intimates that the Athenians "knew not God," we can not understand him as saying they had no ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 'annual State levees,' the great doors of the 'East Room,' 'Blue Elliptical Saloon,' 'Green Drawing Room,' and 'Yellow Drawing Room' are thrown open at twelve o'clock 'precisely' to the anxious feet of gayly appareled noblemen, honorable men, gentlemen, and ladies of all the nations and kingdoms of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... as killing the canes of the European hazel, Corylus avellana, at Palmer, Mass. The fungus appears in the form of protuberances with elliptical bases that burst the bark and rise rather thickly from the affected portions of the branch. The diseased portion is sunk below the surface of the healthy part. The interior of the protuberance, which is the fruiting part of the fungus, contains numerous black, flask-like structures whose tips reached ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... ellipse. The next day I watched a plant similarly secured until the tendril (which was highly sensitive) made an ellipse in a line exactly to and from the light; the movement was so great that the tendril at the two ends of its elliptical course bent itself a little beneath the horizon, thus travelling more than 180 degrees; but the curvature was fully as great towards the light as towards the dark side of the room. I believe Dutrochet was misled by not having secured the internodes, and by having observed a plant of which the ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... loss for the sense; because I had trusted so much to the excellence of my memory, that my notes were never either sufficiently full or accurate. Ideas which I had thought could never be effaced from my mind were now totally forgotten, and I could not comprehend my own mysterious elliptical hints and memorandums. I remember spending two hours in trying to make out what the following ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Eddy to preach to us in rhetoric? 'Before you attempt composition, be sure that you have a rounded thought.' This isn't round, it's elliptical. Big Olaf is a friend useful. He's a shrewd fellow, who's been looking stupid for some time. The 'bunch' hasn't been treating him square. You can guess what that means. Anyway, he is sore as well as shrewd, and now I fancy ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... showing the positions and movements of the planets during the period covered by the outward voyage of the Areonal is sufficiently explained by the notes printed thereon. It may, however, be pointed out that though the orbits of the planets are all elliptical, especially those of Mercury and Mars, they are so nearly true circles that, when reduced to the scale of these diagrams, they practically become circles. The exaggerated ellipses so often found in astronomical books are ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... from the earth is about 93,000,000 miles. Since the orbit of the earth is elliptical, and the sun is situated at one of its foci, the earth is nearly 3,000,000 miles further from the sun in midsummer than it is in midwinter in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, these conditions are exactly reversed. 2. U.S. Senators are elected by the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... interjectional expression, when it may be rendered, it may be so, so it is, is it so, &c. Sometimes ironically, sometimes expressing chance, &c.; in the course of time it became superseded by the more modern term perhaps. Instances of similar elliptical expressions are common at the present day, and will readily suggest themselves: the modern please, used ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... far, that it is possible by just a touch to convert the noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary. The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife said and what she felt might not be the same; that persons, who have ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... The elliptical and obscure style adopted by most native writers, partly from ignorance of the art of composition, partly because they imitated the mystery in expression affected by their priests, forms a serious obstacle ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... my opinion rather more picturesque. There are strangely grouped ruins, the remains of arcades, half-unroofed cupolas, columns without capitals, the shafts of which have retained all the brightness of their enamelling; then a long row of elliptical porticoes closing in one side of the vast quadrilateral. The effect is really grand, for these old monuments of the splendor of Samarkand stand out from a background of sky and verdure that you would seek in vain, even at the Grand Opera, if our actor does not object. But I must confess ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... in May, walking in the woods, I came upon the nest of a whip-poor-will, or rather its eggs, for it builds no nest,—two elliptical whitish spotted eggs lying upon the dry leaves. My foot was within a yard of the mother bird before she flew. I wondered what a sharp eye would detect curious or characteristic in the ways of the bird, so I came to the place many times and had a look. It was always a task to separate the bird ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs |
