"Dorsal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... profoundest depths, the large fish leave them, and, ascending to the surface, remain under the cool shade of the trees, watching for whatever tit-bit or delicacy the stream may bring with it, while others prefer a quiet saunter, or, with the dorsal fin above the water, lie so still and stationary near some lily or other aquatic plant, that they seem ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... woman should show so much intelligence, and so, raising my dorsal spine, I began to rub up against her legs and to purr lovingly with the deepest chords of my ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... this subject than the older ones. Richardson speaks of a woman falling down a few weeks before her delivery. Her pelvis was roomy and the birth was easy; but the infant was found to have extensive wounds on the back, reaching from the 3d dorsal vertebra across the scapula, along the back of the humerus, to within a short distance of the elbow. Part of these wounds were cicatrized and part still granulating, which shows that the process of reparation is as active in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the spinal cord has been divided in the dorsal region, reflexes can be more easily evoked from the lumbar than from the cervical cord, because the former is freed from the inhibitory control ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... the body has taken the characteristic shape of the sole. Thus, then, what appear to be the upper and under surfaces of the sole, are really the right and left sides, and this can easily be proved by a careful examination of the body, which, if it be placed on edge will be found to have a back or dorsal fin, and a pair of breast fins—one on either side, as in ordinary ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... name given to a whale which has a dorsal fin. A Finner whale commonly measures from 60 ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... points of each scale rises into a minute spine curved towards the caudal fin. In the narrowest part of the tail there are not above three or four of these spines in a vertical row, but there are ten or more between the posterior parts of the dorsal and anal. Immediately behind the gill openings there are three roundish scales larger than the others. The scales of the cheeks are studded with points, which are more minute and rounded than the others, and there are no smooth intervening lines, such as exist on the cheeks of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... an' to resist the merriment of the crew for he cast many furious and malicious glances at the vessel. Once more he backed off fur a charge to swallow thim an' this toime succeeded in holdin' thim in be a nate trick. Instid av turnin' partly on his side an' showin' his dorsal fin afther he had swallowed he kept bottom up and swam slowly away waggin' av his tail with a gratified air while a huge grin ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... I should have probably denied that it was so, yet the fact remains that on some of our excursions to neighboring islands, when, having pulled back the terrestrial cork of the atoll, we had eased our tight little craft into the outer waters, I experienced a distinct dorsal chill. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... abstracted from the rear in order to create a show in the front. Then to complete the garniture of the head, to make all perfect, to leave no point of escape for the susceptible admirer of modern beauty, some dorsal appendage was necessary of mornings as well as in the more fully bedizened period of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Black Fish; coal-black and glossy. They seemed to swim by revolving round and round in the water, like a wheel; their dorsal fins, every now and then shooting into view, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... back into the desired position—that of the typical bicycle "scorcher,"—making each particular vertebra stand out sharply under the tight drawn skin. Dr. Jonnesco quickly ran his finger along the protuberances, and finally selected the space between the twelfth dorsal and the first lumbar vertebrae—in other words, the space just above the small of the back. He then took an ordinary hypodermic needle, and slowly pushed it through the skin and tissues until it entered the small ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... this exceedingly remarkable worm, which connect the widely differing classes of invertebrate and vertebrate animals. To these animals have been given the name of sack-worms (himatega). They originated out of the worms of the seventh stage by the formation of a dorsal nerve marrow (medulla tube), and by the formation of the spinal rod (chorda dorsalis) which lies below it. It is just the position of this central spinal rod or axial skeleton, between the dorsal marrow on the dorsal side and the intestinal canal on the ventral side, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... is not settled whether the back of a cuttle-fish answers to the dorsal or ventral surface of a gasteropod. It is not decided whether the arms and funnels of the one have or have not their homologues in the other. The dorsal integument of a Doris and the cloak of a ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... connected with Behind. With the approach of Danger I had started forward. There had been no forward nor backward before, nor any sides or top to me. Now a back, a dorsal aspect, came into being, and the vital centre was thrust forward within the cell, so as to be farthest away from the danger. It is in this way that the potential centre of an organism came to be in the front, in ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... order to teach singing? I think the answer must ever be in the negative. You might as well talk to a gold-fish in a bowl-and say: 'If you desire to proceed laterally to the right, kindly oscillate gently your sinister dorsal fin, and you will achieve the desired result.' Oh, Art, what sins ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... principally fulmars (procellaria glacialis,) and shearwaters, (procellaria puffinus,) and not unfrequently saw shoals of grampusses sporting about, which the Greenland seamen term finners from their large dorsal fin. Some porpoises occasionally appeared, and whenever they did, the crew were sanguine in their expectation of having a speedy change in the wind, which had been so vexatiously contrary, but they were ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... nearly alike; the principal difference between these two species and S. cecropia being that the tubercles on the back are of a uniform color—orange-red, or yellow—while on Cecropia the first four dorsal tubercles are red, and the rest yellow. The tubercles on the sides are blue ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... water and examine them at your leisure. I have thus stood over them half an hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand approached their ova, and have even taken them gently out of the water with my hand; though this cannot be accomplished by a sudden movement, however dexterous, for instant warning is conveyed to them through their denser element, but only by letting the fingers ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... marly or shaly bottom, and the stream is quick and clear, conditions such as this famous fish, described by Dr. Fleming as the "grey salmon," has a liking for. It has grey longitudinal lines—hence its name—and a violet-coloured dorsal fin barred with brown; it is best in the winter and early spring months, and spawns in those of April and May. The French, who denounce the chub as "un villain," pronounce the grayling "un chevalier." ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... On the other hand, American Eutamias agrees with the Asiatic members of the genus in the shape of the rostrum, the well-defined striations of the upper incisors, the presence of the extra peg-like premolar, and in the pattern of the dorsal stripes.'" ...
— Genera and Subgenera of Chipmunks • John A. White
... only get up into the body of the crowd—for the herd now ran in a crowd—a few whimpers would suffice to explain—they would come to a halt at once,—they would gather around him, and assist both with hoofs and teeth to get "shed" of the ugly two-legged thing that clung so tightly to his dorsal vertebrae. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... inches. This, I may add, will be warranted as authentic, in so far that I made him myself out of at least eighteen or twenty big specimens, with a few slight "divergencies" I may call them, such as putting in eight more dorsal vertebrae than the regulation, and that the right femur is two inches longer than the left. The inferior maxillary, too, was stolen from a "Pithacus Satyrus" in the Cork Museum by an old friend, since transported ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... board the steamer which lies 'blowing off' for a moment or two while it receives on the forward deck a rich supply for breakfast of these broad thick-backed fellows, all wet and spangling from the River, as stout at the dorsal fin as at the shoulder, leaping hither and thither astonished at the suddenness of the change, pausing at each instant to expand the deep pomegranate-coloured gills that decorate their small and beautiful heads, and puffing on the deck as if the air they inhaled ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... constitute a scabbard. The two latter are more substantial, are hollowed out like the sides of a groove and, when uniting, form a complete groove in which the filament is sheathed. This bivalvular scabbard adheres loosely to the dorsal part; but, farther on, at the tip of the abdomen and under the belly, it can no longer be detached, as its valves are welded to the abdominal wall. Here, therefore, we find, between the two joined protecting parts, a simple trench in which the filament lies ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the dorsal aspect, from the knees and elbows down, and about the face and neck; it may, however, ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... mean to, Aunt Rachel," said Jack, penitently, eyeing his aunt, who was rocking to and fro in her chair. "Besides, I hurt myself like thunder," rubbing vigorously the lower part of the dorsal-region. ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... fifty dollars. My tarpon ground was at Aransas Pass, on the Gulf Coast of Texas. There in September the fish seem to congregate preparatory to their migration south. I have seen them there in bunches of fifty to seventy, swimming about in shallow, clear water, their great dorsal fins sticking out, for all the world like a lot of sharks. My first experience on approaching in a small row boat such an accumulation of fish muscle, grit and power will never be forgotten. It was one of the events of my chequered life. The boatman assured me ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... voracity is well known, and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... neither here nor there. You have accustomed yourself to the narrow dorsal strip that is all New York to you. Therein are contained the means of meeting your every need, and of gratifying your every taste. There are your shops, your clubs, your libraries, your schools, your theatres, your art-galleries, ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... sea, the lone, blue sea, and those who have seen him turning handsprings on a sponge lawn, or riding in his water-tight chariot with his feet over the dash-board, beside a slim young mermaid with Paris green hair, and dressed in a tight-fitting, low-neck dorsal fin, say he is a lively ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... and coming toward the swimmer like an arrow at its mark, was a great black dorsal fin which bespoke the presence of the ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... discover what the Arabs are afraid of. And very little investigation will reveal the simple truth that they are very much afraid of sharks; and that in their book of symbolic or heraldic zoology it is the Jew who is adorned with the dorsal fin and the crescent of cruel teeth. This may be a fairy-tale about a fabulous animal; but it is one which all sorts of races believe, and certainly one ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... owner, but before his mother would hear of his entering the frail-looking skiff she declared she must contrive a swimming dress, that "should his boat receive a puncture from a sharp rock or the dorsal fin of a fish and collapse, he might yet have a chance of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... towers of the submarines show but a foot or two above the surface—a sinister black spot on the water, like the dorsal fin of a shark, that suggests but does not reveal the cruel power below; for an instant the knob lingers above the surface while the steersman gets his bearings, and then it sinks in a swirling eddy, leaving ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... is feeding below. You think, if you are accustomed to less experienced fish, that all is well. You throw your flies, two or three, a yard above the ripple, and wait to strike. But the ripples instantly cease, and on the surface of the water you see the long thin track of a broad back and huge dorsal fin. The trout has been, not frightened—he is in no hurry—but disgusted by your clumsy cast, which would readily have taken in a sea-trout or a loch-trout. They of Kennet and Test know a good deal better ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... you need not at the same time bend the dorsal vertebr' of your body, unless you wish to be very reverential, as in ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... Whale or Ka-Kow-in has a large dorsal fin shown in a conventional manner in the pictograph between the Thunder Bird and the face of the Indian girl, sister to Shewish. The Killer Whale was often used as a family emblem or crest and as a source from which personal ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... August G——, aged 18 years, single, a native of Switzerland, was admitted to the Santa Clara County Hospital with incipient spinal disease. He was of that peculiar temperament which indicates a scrofulous cachexia. The fifth dorsal vertebra was sufficiently prominent to indicate the sight where the attack was being made by the enemy. There was considerable tenderness on pressure; slightly accelerated pulse, and elevated temperature;—in other words, a well defined case;—one which would ...
— Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society • Joseph Bradford Cox
... fitting up a rod and line—for he had brought hooks with him; and I found, when I got back, that he and the sergeant had caught a dozen salmon-trout, between a pound and a pound and a half in weight. Their colour was of a light gray above, and a pale yellow below. The dorsal and caudal fins were dark gray, and the others mostly of a brilliant ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... his red lips, his white teeth, his pure breath, will always arouse the envy of an aged emperor. And then, every morning, he sets himself afresh to the task of earning his bread; and while his hands earn his bread, his dorsal column gains pride, his brain gathers ideas. His task finished, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joys; he beholds his feet set in afflictions, in obstacles, on the pavement, in the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the same law to set in movement the immensity of ocean, and to effect circulation in the cockchafer's few drops of blood. In the latter we find the moving agent to be a long tube, which runs the whole length of the back, and is called the dorsal vessel (from the Latin dorsum, back). I told you that the cockchafer had no heart under his cuirass, but I spoke too hastily. The dorsal vessel is a true heart, but a heart devoid of veins or arteries, and thrown into the midst of the blood. It dilates and contracts ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... affections, the direction of instincts, and the compensatory processes where these happen to be thwarted,—on all such topics he is learned and full; whilst, on the science of measurements and proportions, applied to dorsal-fins and tail-feathers, and on the exact arrangement of colours, &c.—that petty upholstery of nature, on which books are so tedious and elaborate,—not uncommonly he is negligent or forgetful. What may have ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... warned us that it was time to take our departure from the cave, when, at no great distance from us, we saw the back, or dorsal fin of a monstrous shark above the surface of the water, and his whole length visible beneath it. We looked at him and at each other with dismay, hoping that he would soon take his departure, and go ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the lower extremities will be efficiently forced into the general circulation. After from three to five minutes of this faradization, the surface board may be successively applied for a minute or two each to the arms, abdomen, pectoral and dorsal muscles. I believe the best results can be obtained by first going through the faradic process, then subjecting the patient to general galvanization, as above indicated, and concluding by another but ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... up all my courage, and being tired of holding on by the spar, resolved to mount upon his back, which I accomplished without difficulty, and I found the seat on his shoulders before the dorsal fin, not only secure but very comfortable. The animal, unaccustomed to carry weight, made several attempts to get rid of me, but not being able to sink I retained my seat. He then increased his velocity, and we went on over a smooth sea, at the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Opossum, the Tiger and the Badger, the Tapir and the Rhinoceros, are respectively members of the same orders. These successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another immensely, in such matters as the proportions and structure of their limbs; the number of their dorsal and lumbar vertebrae; the adaptation of their frames to climbing, leaping, or running; the number and form of their teeth; and the characters of their skulls and of the contained brain. But, with all these differences, they are so closely connected ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... questions rapidly to the two attending physicians)—"Dr. Meurot examined her himself early this morning. This is just the formal process before she goes to the grotto. The fracture is complete. It's between the eleventh and twelfth dorsal vertebrae." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... pterodactyls, which soared round high above our heads while they waited for the carrion, all was still around the camp. But it was different out upon the rose-tinted waters of the central lake. It boiled and heaved with strange life. Great slate-colored backs and high serrated dorsal fins shot up with a fringe of silver, and then rolled down into the depths again. The sand-banks far out were spotted with uncouth crawling forms, huge turtles, strange saurians, and one great flat creature like a writhing, palpitating mat of black greasy leather, which flopped its way slowly to ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meal," urged X-Ray Tyson, "or we'll all be sprouting gills and dorsal fins and scales. Once a day after this ought to satisfy the trout hunger. Now it seems to me that's a bully ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... teeth worn down to the necks, some of them nearly to the bone; the forehead is low and receding. A restoration is seen in plate 20, a, b. In addition to the missing portions of the skull, most of the ribs, half of the lower jaw, and nearly all the dorsal vertebrae were absent, probably having been dragged away by ground hogs. The bones are all light and fragile. Lying above the skull, in contact with it but supported by the ashes on both sides, was half of a large mortar hollowed on both sides. Above the skeleton, and extending for ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... seven days' incubation inject that amount of the culture corresponding to 1 per cent. of the body-weight of a healthy frog, into the reptile's dorsal ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... the end segment. This luminous aspect of the stern is characteristic of the entire Glow-worm tribe, independently of sex and season. It appears upon the budding grub and continues throughout life unchanged. And we must not forget to add that it is visible on the dorsal as well as on the ventral surface, whereas the two large belts peculiar to the female shine only ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... present the digital extremity, it is as if we said: "I have seen, I have weighed, I have numbered the thing, I understand it from certain knowledge; it is admirable, and I declare it so." These are the three aspects: the palmar, dorsal and digital. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... in man extends only as far downwards as the last dorsal or first lumbar vertebra; but a thread-like structure (the filum terminale) runs down the axis of the sacral part of the spinal canal, and even along the back of the coccygeal bones. The upper part of this filament, as Prof. Turner informs me, is undoubtedly homologous with the spinal ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... radiate in structure, having neither front nor rear, right nor left side. But our little turbellaria, while still without a head, has one end which goes first and can be called the front end. The upper or dorsal surface is usually more colored with pigment cells than the lower or ventral surface, on which is the mouth. It has also a right and left side. It ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... continuous current from the storage-batteries of the cab below. Doctor, hold his mouth open. So. Now, have you a pair of forceps handy? Good. Can you catch hold of the tip of his tongue? There. Do just as I tell you. I apply this cathode to his skin in the dorsal region; under the back of the neck, and this anode in the lumbar region at the base of the spine—just pieces of cotton soaked in salt solution and covering the metal electrodes, to give me a good contact with ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... accompanied by threatening movements, the uncovering of the teeth and the utterance of savage growls. In the Herpestes, I have seen the hair on end over nearly the whole body, including the tail; and the dorsal crest is erected in a conspicuous manner by the Hyaena and Proteles. The enraged lion erects his mane. The bristling of the hair along the neck and back of the dog, and over the whole body of the cat, especially ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... a great many fins, and although they differ sometimes in position and number according to the fish, the most important ones are the Dorsal fin, which stands straight up from the back, the Caudal fin, which is in the end of the tail, and the Pectoral fins, which are at the sides and take the ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... Rainbows, that they were capable of producing works of art and contrivance.... They possessed wings of great expansion, similar in construction to those of the bat, being a semi-transparent membrane united in curvilinear divisions by means of straight radii, united at the back by the dorsal integuments. But what astonished us very much was the circumstance of this membrane being continued from the shoulders to the legs, united all the way down, though gradually decreasing in width' (very much as Fuseli depicted the wings of his Satanic Majesty, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... presents itself with some frequency. The body is thin and badly nourished, and the muscular system especially poorly developed and very lax in tone. The most striking feature is the extreme lordosis, accompanied usually by a secondary and compensatory curve in the cervico-dorsal region, so that the shoulders are rounded, with the head poked forward. Viewed from in front the abdomen is seen to be prominent, overhanging the symphysis pubis, while the shoulders have receded far backwards. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... whether he was reading Greek or English. The presiding genius of the place, with his strange accent, odd sayings, and angular motions, accompanied by good-natured grunts of grotesque wrath, became a sort of household figure. The dorsal breadth of pronunciation with which he would expose Mr Ivory's Erskine, used to produce a titter which he was always at a loss to understand. Though not the fashionable mart where all the thorough libraries in perfect condition went to be hammered off—though it ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... giraffe, it is difficult to believe that the fore-legs are not longer than the hind-legs. They are not so, however, for the greater apparent length results from the remarkable depth of the chest, the great length of the processes of the anterior dorsal vertebrae, and the corresponding length and position of the shoulder blade, which is relatively the longest and narrowest of all mammalia. In the simple walk the neck is stretched out in a line with the back, which gives them an awkward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... lowermost. Here equalization to the right and left of the perpendicular line passing through the centre of gravity is very marked (especially in the Vola division of the group); but the induced right and left aspect corresponds to the dorsal and ventral sides of the animal, not the right and left sides, as in the former case. Lima, a near ally of Pecten, swims with the edges of the valves perpendicular. In this case the geomalic growth corresponds to the right and left sides of ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... from both parents, and suffered all my life fearfully at intervals, from brachycephalic or dorsal neuralgia. Dr. Laborde made short work of this by giving me appallingly strong doses of tincture of aconite and sulphate of quinine. Chemists have often been amazed at the prescription. But in due time the trouble quite disappeared, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... upon the monster trout's exposed gill, and with a cry of triumph he started to pull in; but on one occasion the slender hold his hook had taken broke away; and the second time it chanced that Giraffe had managed to fasten his barb somewhere about the dorsal fin of the fish, so that there was an immediate struggle for supremacy, with the usual result in such cases that the anticipated prize fell back, and was ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... Germany, the well-known experience which befell the normally built traveller in the land of hunchbacks is constantly being repeated. It will be remembered that he was so shamefully insulted there, owing to his quaint figure and lack of dorsal convexity, that a priest at last had to harangue the people on his behalf as follows: "My brethren, rather pity this poor stranger, and present thank-offerings unto the gods, that ye are blessed with ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... few fathoms' lengths of him, hiding behind the hummocks, and then fired. The walrus rolled over, still full of strength; he crushed the ice in his attempts to get away; but Altamont attacked him with his hatchet, and succeeded in cutting his dorsal fins. The walrus made a desperate resistance; new shots finished him, and he remained stretched lifeless on the ice-field stained with his blood. He was a good-sized animal, being nearly fifteen feet long from his muzzle to the end of his tail, and he would certainly furnish many barrels of ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... hearth-rug with your back to whatever is burning, your right hand gesticulating as you tell your hearers what is wrong with the confounded Government, then it does not greatly matter what brings you that pleasant dorsal warmth which inspires you to such eloquence. But if your favourite position is in an armchair facing the fire, and your customary habit one of passive thought rather than of active speech, then you will ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... speculator have had precedence. Fortunes built on slaves and rum and cotton have brought more honor than those made in groceries and dry goods. Odd snobbery of trade! But in that broad, middle ground of the country, its great dorsal column, the merchant found his field, after the War, to develop and civilize. The character of those pioneers in trade, men from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, was such as to make them leaders. They were brave and unselfish, faithful, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... three curves in the human backbone, the cervical curve being convex, the dorsal concave, and the lumbar convex, when each is regarded from the forward aspect. If we consider the sacrum and coccyx, there is really a fourth curve, this being concave, although in animals generally the coccyx curves backwards and is extended to form the tail. In some of the ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... between man and the ape family is more than offset by structural differences which deny kinship. Alfred McCann in his great book "God—or Gorilla" says, p. 24, "Man has 12 pairs of ribs; the gibbon and chimpanzee, 13; man has 12 dorsal vertebrae; the chimpanzee and gorilla, 13; the gibbon, 14. The gorilla has massive spines on the cervical vertebrae above the scapula"; and, like the other quadrumana (4-handed animals) has an opposable thumb on the hind foot. There are wide differences in the shape of the skull, thorax, femur, and ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... bird comes near enough to let you have a fair view of the long feathers in his tail. On the line, when it is calm, sharks of a tremendous size make their appearance. They are descried from the ship by means of the dorsal fin, which is above ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... and plaster, or by smooth boards, quite to the highest part of the roof, whether your rooms are finished to the top or not,—and provided with an abundant outlet at the top. This may also be as simple as the dorsal breathing-holes of a tobacco barn, gorgeously imposing as an Oriental pinnacle, or it may be a part of the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged that an adverse wind shall not prevent ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... organized by genius and consecrated by precedent, they become mighty elements in history, revelling amid the wealthy energy of life, exhausting the forces of the intellect, clipping the tendrils of affection, becoming colossal in the architecture of society and dorsal in its traditions, and tyrannizing with the heedless power of an element, to the horror of the pious soul which called it into existence, over all departments of human activity. Such an art, having passed a period of tameless and extravagant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... motion, without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the same instant, and I have often seen even small snakes glide as fast as I could walk), seems to involve a vibration of the scales quite too rapid to be conceived. The motion of the crest and dorsal fin of the hippocampus, which is one of the intermediate types between serpent and fish, perhaps gives some resemblance of it, dimly visible, for the quivering turns the fin into a mere mist. The entrance of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... minutes at a time. The effect of this second act, by injuring the cerebroid ganglia, is to render impossible the return of action; moreover, it permits the aggressor to satisfy personal gluttony, and to feed on the liquids of the organism of the vanquished, which is easy, because the dorsal blood-vessel passes at this level. It can thus satisfy a personal need while thinking of the future of ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... disposition to leave our neighborhood, or in any other way showed displeasure at the trick we had played him. On the contrary, he drew nearer the vessel, and moved indolently and defiantly about, with his dorsal fin and a portion of his tail above the water. He was undoubtedly hungry as well as proud, and it is well known that sharks are not particular with regard to the quality of their food. Every thing that is edible, and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... petals and a foot across the dorsal sepal!" said the young man in a kind of gasp, "and a Cypripedium! Sir, surely ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... back, posteriority; rear rank, rear guard; background, hinterland. occiput [Anat.], nape, chine; heels; tail, rump, croup, buttock, posteriors, backside scut^, breech, dorsum, loin; dorsal region, lumbar region; hind quarters; aitchbone^; natch, natch bone. stern, poop, afterpart^, heelpiece^, crupper. wake; train &c (sequence) 281. reverse; other side of the shield. V. be behind &c adv.; fall astern; bend backwards; bring up the rear. Adj. back, rear; hind, hinder, hindmost, hindermost^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... were about a hundred salmon laid out on the floor ready for prompt dispatch to market. They averaged 20 lb., but, silvery as they all were, I could pick out the few that had come in that morning. There was one lovely she-fish of about 23 lb., with a ventral fin literally as purple as the dorsal of a grayling, and for suggestions of pearls and opals, maiden blushes, and the like, nothing could have been more perfect than the sheen of this Tay salmon. In another hour the glory would have faded away. And all those fish had been taken by the net. The angler ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Islands there formed during the rains and where the wild ass (Equus Onager, Khar-gadh, in Pers. Gor-khar) still breeds. This would explain the "stallions of the sea" and we find traces of the ass blood in the true Kathiawar horse, with his dun colour, barred legs and dorsal stripe. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... have become fused into a single mass, is a fact only second in significance to the differentiation of its alimentary canal into stomach and intestine. That in the higher Annulosa, a single heart replaces the string of rudimentary hearts constituting the dorsal blood-vessel in the lower Annulosa, (reaching in one species to the number of one hundred and sixty), is a truth as much needing to be comprised in the history of evolution, as is the formation ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... was about a foot square, and plunged in. No mortal blenny could witness this unwarrantable invasion of its hearth and home without being stirred to indignant wrath. With eyes that seemed to flash fire, and dorsal fin bristling up with rage, Little Blenny made five tremendous leaps of full three inches each, and disappeared. Another moment and a miniature storm ruffled the pool: for a few seconds the heavings of ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... hook attached to the end of a stout chain, the chain being fastened to a strong rope. All was now excitement on board. The captain, Hubert, Frank, and Jacob Poole looked over at the monster, whose dorsal fin just appeared above the water. He did not, however, seem to be in any hurry to take the bait, but kept swimming near it, and now and then knocked it with ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Before skinning lay it flat on one side on a piece of soft wood board of the proper thickness and mark out its outline. Though only one side of the mounted fish shows, a little more than precisely one half is preserved in order to include the tail, the vertical and dorsal fins and also to give an appearance ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... should be straight and long, rather loosely hung, or open along the middle part, the result of the distance between the dorsal vertebrae, which sometimes causes a slight depression, or sway back. By some good judges, this mark is regarded as of great importance, especially when the bones of the hind quarters are also rather loosely put together, leaving the rump of great width and the pelvis ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... by Mr. Caldwell at Yen-ping are even more surprising. The old female is coal black, but the young male is distinctly brownish-black with a chestnut stripe from the mane to the tail along the mid-dorsal line where the hairs of the back form a ridge. The horns of the female are nearly parallel for half their extent and approach each other at the tips; their surfaces are remarkably smooth. The horns of the young male diverge like a V from the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... meet, the edges cut a hook like nippers. The Ngwesi seems to be a very ravenous fish. It often gulps down the Konokono, a fish armed with serrated bones more than an inch in length in the pectoral and dorsal fins, which, fitting into a notch at the roots, can be put by the fish on full cock or straight out,—they cannot be folded down, without its will, and even break in resisting. The name "Konokono," elbow-elbow, is given it from a resemblance its extended fins are supposed to bear to a man's ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... lower vertebrata, and getting out results which will interest you greatly. Your suggestion that Rathke's canals in Amphioxus [The Lancelet.] are the Wolffian ducts was a capital shot, but it just missed the mark because Rathke's canals do not exist. Nevertheless there are two half canals, the dorsal walls of which meet in the raphe described by Stieda, and the plaited lining of this wall (a) is, I believe, the renal organ. Moreover, I have found the skull and brain of Amphioxus, both of which are very large (like a vertebrate embryo's) instead of being rudimentary as ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... class Jose de Jesus Brenes are found to be: A femur deteriorated in the upper part of the neck, between the great trochanter and its head. A fibula in its natural state. A radius also complete. The os sacrum in bad condition. The coccyx. Two lumbar vertabrae. One cervical and two dorsal vertabrae. Two calcanea. One bone of the metacarpus. Another of the metatarsus. A fragment of the frontal or coronal bone, containing half of an orbital cavity. A middle third of the tibia. Two more fragments of tibia. Two astragoli. One upper portion of shoulder-blade. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... colourless plain, unbroken by so much as a solitary ripple, save those created by our oar blades, the passage of the gig through the water, the occasional dash of half a dozen flying-fish out of the sea under the boat's stem, and once or twice the thin wake cut by the dorsal fin of a ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... his description,' he says: 'eyelashes, eight killomethres long; eyes, blue an' assymethrical; jaw, bituminous; measuremint fr'm abaft th' left ear to base iv maxillory glan's, four hectograms; a r-red scar runnin' fr'm th' noomo-gasthric narve to th' sicond dorsal verteebree,' he says. 'Tis so. I have th' description at home in th' cash dhrawer. Well, Andy come in about six o'clock that night, lookin' as though he'd been thryin' to r-run a fut race acrost a pile iv scrap ir'n; an' says he, 'Loot,' he says, 'I've got him,' he says. "I didn't ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... is the resemblance existing between parts which are placed one above the other beneath. It is much less general and marked than serial, or lateral homology. Nevertheless, it is plainly to be seen in the tail region of most fishes, and in the far-extending dorsal (back) and ventral (belly) fins of such kinds as ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... to our company, in the shape of three sharks, which suddenly made their appearance close under the stern of the raft, maintaining their position, at about three yards distance, with a perseverance which was worthy of a better cause. The size of their dorsal fins, which were carried well out of the water, assured us that our followers were sharks of the largest size, and enabled us to form a pretty fair idea of what would be our fate should any of us be unfortunate enough to fall or be washed off ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... twenty-five feet in length, and had a dorsal fin that stood up like the sail of a small boat. But even these dimensions cannot convey the feeling of alarm his presence gave me. His next leap brought him within forty feet of us. I recalled a score of accidents I ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in the pies and other gross preparations which delight the British palate. He hath, moreover, a John Bull-like air in his broad and burly shape, his smooth and unscaly superficies and the noli-me-tangere character of his dorsal fin. Pity he was unknown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... beyond with longing eyes. He wore a pair of slippers on account of the laf, which is a very pretty little fish indeed to look at; but he lurks in dark places near the shore, and he is too lazy to get out of the way, and if you put your foot near him he sticks out his dorsal fin, which is prickly and poisoned; and when a man gets that into the sole of his foot he goes home and cuts his leg off, and has to pretend that he lost ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... subspecies of softshell turtle most closely allied to Trionyx muticus muticus but differing from that subspecies in having: (1) a juvenal pattern of large, circular spots, (2) no stripes on dorsal surface of snout, and (3) postocular stripe with thick, black borders immediately behind eye in adult males. T. m. calvatus resembles T. m. muticus, and differs from the several subspecies of Trionyx spinifer in having: (1) no enlarged tubercles on anterior edge of ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... on back and top of head; contrasting, mostly barred, pattern on limbs; ventral surfaces whitish, lacking dark marks, but having minute dark peppering; marbling of dorsal surfaces blackish and ...
— A New Species of Frog (Genus Tomodactylus) from Western Mexico • Robert G. Webb
... nervous system above, and a large tube, or body-cavity, below. This body-cavity contains the viscera, breathing organs, and heart, with its prolongations into the main blood-vessels of the organism. Lastly, on either side of the central axis are to be found large masses of muscle—two on the dorsal and two on the ventral. As yet, however, there are no limbs, nor even any bony skeleton, for the primitive vertebral column is hitherto unossified cartilage. This ideal animal, therefore, is to all appearance ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... our grasp, this display of food was tantalizing. Russell, who was an expert swimmer, volunteered to dive for some conchs and shell-fish; oysters there were none. Asking us to keep a sharp lookout on the surface of the water for sharks, which generally swim with the dorsal fin exposed, he went down and brought up a couple of live conchs about the size of a man's fist. Breaking the shell, we drew the quivering body out. Without its coat it looked like a huge grub, and not more inviting. The general asked Tom to ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... rash man! what are you about?" it added, turning suddenly round. The fact is, Tom was running his fingers down the vertebrae, and counting to see if their number corresponded with that given in his book. "Seven cervical, twelve dorsal!" he cried ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... that Jew-of-Malta tumble down the steps, less damaged by the fall than could have been imagined possible; the fact being that his cat-like nature had stood him in good stead—he had lighted on his feet; and nothing but a mighty dorsal bruise bore witness to the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... fuscus. (Beauvois). BIG BROWN BAT.—One big brown bat was obtained on July 23, 1952, from one mile west of Niobrara, Knox County. While not so dark in dorsal coloration as some specimens of E. f. fuscus from eastern Nebraska (Cass and Sarpy counties), this specimen is noticeably darker than a series of E. f. pallidus from Ft. Niobrara Wildlife Refuge, 4 mi. E of Valentine, Cherry ...
— Distribution of Some Nebraskan Mammals • J. Knox Jones
... irregularly. The surgeon bent over him and asked him if he had been wounded long. He answered in low, hoarse whispers that he had been lying in the mud and rain for several days. Then he turned his eyes up so that only the whites were visible. They remained rigidly fixed in that position. He received a dorsal injection, being too weak for chloroform. The shattered thigh was painted with picric acid and the tourniquet tightened above the injury. The surgeon cut through the leg with a circular sweep of the knife, the splintered bone offering no resistance. The ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... of a fish, made beautifully grotesque for sculptural purposes, like the dolphin of Greek art. It crowns the top of a memorial column; the broad open jaws, showing serrated teeth, rest on the summit of the block bearing the dead man's name; the dorsal fin and elevated tail are elaborated into decorative impossibilities. 'Mokugyo,' says Akira. It is the same Buddhist emblem as that hollow wooden object, lacquered scarlet-and-gold, on which the priests beat with a padded mallet while chanting the Sutra. And, finally, in one place ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... numerous undulated ribbons of enamel are nearly quite as wide as those forming the lozenges of the African. The number of pairs of false ribs (which alone vary, the true ones being always six) is fourteen, one less than in the Africanus, one more than in the Indicus; and so it is with the dorsal vertebrae, which are twenty in the Sumatranus (twenty-one and nineteen, in the others), whilst the new species agrees with Africanus in the number of sacral vertebrae (four), and with Indicus in that of the caudal ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... like a pair of ventrals. I remarked as he pursued the lost articles over the floor, that he wore a microscope strapped in a leathern case, and a geological hammer belted to his side. He walked as if habituated to swimming, and when he shrugged his shoulders I expected to see a dorsal fin burst out of the back of his jacket. He might have been sixty years of age, but looked much older, and behaved like a well-born person, though, superficially judged, he ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... maintained his hold, and was evidently getting the advantage of him. Much alarm seemed to be felt by the many other whales around. These "killers," as they are called, are of a brownish colour on the back, and white on the belly, with a long dorsal fin. Such was the turbulence with which they passed, that a good view could not be had of them to make out more nearly the description. These fish attack a whale in the same way as dogs bait a bull, and worry ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... of trap and basalt. Very old and dry grass only, could be had for the cattle. In the pond were small fishes of a different form from any we had seen, having a large forked tail, only two or three spikes in the dorsal fin, and a large jet-black eye within a broad silvery ring. Mr. Stephenson found three crabs, apparently identical with those about the inlets near Sydney. Latitude, 23 deg. 37' 51". S. Thermometer, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... part of the penis. In the species of the subgenus Neotamias the proximal part of the baculum is termed the shaft, and the distal upturned part is termed the tip. On the dorsal side of the tip there is a longitudinal ridge termed the keel. The proximal end of the shaft is termed the base (see fig. 19). Depending on the species, the shaft varies from 2.11 to 5.28 mm. in length, and the base may or may not be widened ...
— The Baculum in the Chipmunks of Western North America • John A. White
... after bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching thoughts and quivering lips. But his sorrow was not for Izz. That evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home. It was neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of her heart, which ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... on the thorax, one on the abdomen, two on the thighs, one near the patella; turn, please." Alfred turned in the water. "A slight dorsal abrasion; also of the wrists; a severe excoriation ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in Wyoming, and Harrison, Sioux County, Nebraska), the subspecies to the southward, westward, and northward, E. m. silvaticus differs in: General tone of upper parts markedly darker, more reddish and less grayish; dorsal stripes darker; crown markedly darker. External measurements, and measurements and characters of the skull of the two subspecies, do not differ significantly. Unless otherwise specified all comparative material is in the Museum of Natural History ...
— A New Chipmunk (Genus Eutamias) from the Black Hills • John A. White
... file to a spring-hammer close to the floor. This hammer was operated by a lever or tongue at the head of the handle, the connection between the hammer at the distal end and the lever at the proximal end being effected by means of a steel-wire spinal cord down the dorsal side of the handle. Over the fist of a hammer spread a jaw of sharp teeth to take hold of the carpet. The thing could not talk; but it could do almost anything else, so fearfully ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the less manieree. For him and his order, in Portugal as in Spain, the strictest minutiae of demeanour and deportment are laid down. The body should be borne upright, but not stuck up, and when the congregation is addressed the chest is slightly advanced. The dorsal region must never face the Sacrament; this would be turning one's back, as it were, upon the Deity. The elbow may not rest upon the cushion. The head, held erect, but not haughtily, should move upon the atlas gently ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Cubist painter had they not been woven with the softest-toned native dyes—yellow, pale-blue and green and rust. Huge, fierce detached eyes, the Thlinget symbol of intelligence glared from some. Mouths with queer, squared lips and large teeth grinned from others. A school of killer-whales with dorsal fins aloft, disported themselves in rectangles of black on the back of another. From the bottom a two-foot fog-colored fringe dangled about the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... was, to my mind, rather more doleful than the street. It was dark, it was dusty, and cobwebs hung from every corner. The few chairs upon the floor and the books upon a greasy table seemed to be afflicted with some dorsal epidemic, for their backs were either gone or broken. A little bedstead in the corner was covered with a spread made of New York Heralds, with their ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the nose; its belly is of a silvery white; the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal-fin large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail-fin, remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus; the tail-fin is broad, and square at the end. From the breadth and muscular strength of the tail it ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... it off its course, a bidarka was heading in for the beach. Its occupant was paddling with more strength than dexterity, and made his approach along the zigzag line of most resistance. Koogah's head dropped to his work again, and on the ivory tusk between his knees he scratched the dorsal fin of a fish the like of which never swam ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... epilepsy, numerous forms of eye disease, supra-orbital headache, occipital headache (Spitzka), strange sensations at the top of the head (Savage), various forms of neuralgia (Anstie, J. Chapman), tenderness of the skin in the lower dorsal region (Chapman), mammary tenderness in young girls (Lacassagne), mammary hypertrophy (Ossendovsky), asthma (Peyer), cardiac murmurs (Seerley), the appearance of vesicles on wounds (Baraduc), acne and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... common. This sea-slug is about five inches long; and is of a dirty yellowish colour, veined with purple. On each side of the lower surface, or foot, there is a broad membrane, which appears sometimes to act as a ventilator, in causing a current of water to flow over the dorsal branchiae or lungs. It feeds on the delicate seaweeds which grow among the stones in muddy and shallow water; and I found in its stomach several small pebbles, as in the gizzard of a bird. This slug, when disturbed, emits ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... preeminence. Amongst the numerous types which have now come upon the scene for the first time, or which have now a special development, are Spirifera and Pentamerus. In the first of these (fig. 69. b, c), one of the valves of the shell (the dorsal) is furnished in its interior with a pair of great calcareous spires, which served for the support of the long and fringed fleshy processes or "arms" which were attached to the sides of the mouth.[16] In the genus Pentamerus (fig. 70) the shell ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... viscid secretion, and they have the power of absorbing. This latter fact was shown by the glands immediately becoming black, and the protoplasm aggregated, when a leaf was placed in a little solution of one part of carbonate of ammonia to 437 of water. These dorsal tentacles are short, not being nearly so long as the marginal ones on the upper surface; some of them are so short as almost to graduate into the minute sessile glands. Their presence, number, and size, vary on different leaves, and they are arranged rather irregularly. ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... sun warned us that it was time to take our departure from the cave, when, at no great distance from us, we saw the back or dorsal fin of a monstrous shark above the surface of the water, and his whole length visible beneath it. We looked at him and at each other in dismay, hoping that he would soon take his departure, and go in search ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... English beluga, a word of Russian origin, signifying white. The Beluga (Delphinapterus leucas), is a real whale with its most striking characteristic the white, or rather cream-coloured, skin described by some writers as very beautiful. Like the narwhal it has no dorsal fin. Though the smallest member of the whale family it is sometimes more than twenty feet long; but usually ranges from thirteen to sixteen feet. The young are bluish black in colour and may be seen swimming beside their mother who feeds ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... being east, and the course of the former, in its lower part, north-west. Our anglers caught several fine fishes and an eel, in the water-holes of the Mackenzie. The former belonged to the Siluridae, and had four fleshy appendages on the lower lip, and two on the upper; dorsal fin 1 spine 6 rays, and an adipose fin, pectoral 1 spine 8 rays; ventral 6 rays; anal 17 rays; caudal 17-18 rays; velvety teeth in the upper and lower jaws, and in the palatal bones. Head flat, belly broad; back of a greenish silver-colour; belly silvery white; length of the body 15-20 ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... of fishes, classed by Lacepede, belonging to the second lower class of bony, characterised by opercules and bronchial membranes, I remarked the scorpaena, the head of which is furnished with spikes, and which has but one dorsal fin; these creatures are covered, or not, with little shells, according to the sub-class to which they belong. The second sub-class gives us specimens of didactyles fourteen or fifteen inches in length, with yellow rays, and heads of a most fantastic ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... end of the digestive tract, through which the food remnants are passed: the posterior part of the individual: specifically, in Coccidae, a more or less circular opening on the dorsal surface of the pygidium, varying in location as regards the circumgenital gland orifices: ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... altogether pleasing, if once the beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly Lizzie's eye was apt to convey to the beholder. There was no unclean horse's tail. There was no get-up of flounces, and padding, and paint, and hair, with a dorsal excrescence appended with the object surely of showing in triumph how much absurd ugliness women can force men to endure. She was lithe, and active, and bright,—and was at this moment of her life ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... portieres would part and through them would advance a huge bosom protruding above an abdomen cruelly corseted. Afterwards, long afterwards, would appear a white and radiant countenance, a face like a full moon, and while her smile like a night star was greeting the little Ulysses, the dorsal complement of her body kept on coming in—forty carnal ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... transition stages, and this, it is well known, is not the case. Moreover, the fact established by me ("Die Hautfarbe des Menschen", "Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien", Vol. XXXIV. pages 331-352.), that in all races the ventral side of the trunk is paler than the dorsal side, and the inner surface of the extremities paler than the outer side, cannot be explained by sexual selection in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... horse and his rider, but would infinitely lose of its impressiveness, if we could see the spring ligament playing backwards and forwards in alternate jerks over the tubercle at the hock joint. Take again the action of the dorsal fin of the shark tribe. So long as we observe the uniform energy of motion in the whole frame, the lash of the tail, bound of body, and instantaneous lowering of the dorsal, to avoid the resistance of the water as it turns, there ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... of the crew of a boat upon the reef, while incautiously handling a frog-fish (Batrachus) which he had found under a stone, received two punctures at the base of the thumb from the sharp dorsal spines partially concealed by the skin. Immediately severe pain was produced which quickly increased until it became intolerable, and the man lay down and rolled about in agony. He was taken on board the ship in a state ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... which is distinguishable principally by the shortness of its antennae and the presence of wing pads. After a brief existence the pupa emerges from the ground, and, holding on to a plant stem by means of its powerful front legs, sets free the perfect insect through a slit along the median dorsal line of the thorax. In some cases the pupa upon emerging constructs a chimney of soil, the use of which is not known. In one of the best-known species, Cicada septemdecim, from North America, the lifecycle is said to extend over seventeen years. Cicadas are particularly abundant in the tropics, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... feeding on the 'Algae' of the submerged banks, for which purpose the upper lip is very large, thick, and as it turns down suddenly at right angles with the head, it much resembles an elephant's trunk shorn off at the mouth. Its length averages from eight to fourteen feet; there is no dorsal fin, and the tail is horizontal; colour blue, and white beneath. Its means of propulsion are two paddles, with which it also crawls along the bottom, and beneath which are situated the udders, with teats exactly like a cow's. Its flesh is far from bad, resembling ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... who are no more than her chief ministers, walk before her out of the saloon, and then she—swims after them. But swimming is not the proper word. Fishes, in making their way through the water, assist, or rather impede, their motion with no dorsal wriggle. No animal taught to move directly by its Creator adopts a gait so useless, and at the same time so graceless. Many women, having received their lessons in walking from a less eligible instructor, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... note here the meaning of certain terms we shall be constantly employing. The head end of the rabbit is anterior, the tail end posterior, the backbone side of the body— the upper side in life— is dorsal, the breast and belly side, the lower side of the animal, is ventral. If we imagine the rabbit sawn asunder, as it were, by a plane passing through the head and tail, that would be the median plane, and parts on either side of it are lateral, and left ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... flat, oily sea as it was then! So transparent that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, striped like little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... darker along the dorsal line; nose, upper lip, and forehead, with two inches of the end of the tail black-brown; mere edge of upper lip and whole of lower jaw hoary; a short longitudinal white stripe occasionally on the front of the neck, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... hard and pointed dorsal fin acts as a barb and prevents the fish from being drawn back. While I was in Remate de Males the local doctor was called upon to remove a kandiroo from the urethra of a man. The man subsequently died from the ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... hypopyrrhus was said by Nelson (op. cit.:43 and 44) to differ from S. a. aureogaster in darker color, thinner pelage, much stiffer and more shining dorsal hairs, slenderer tail with black predominating, larger and proportionately narrower skull with larger auditory bullae, each bulla being "slightly constricted just in front of middle." Sciurus aureogaster varies greatly in intensity of color ...
— The Subspecies of the Mexican Red-bellied Squirrel, Sciurus aureogaster • Keith R. Kelson
... least use to you about the nature of the parts."—"Life and Letters," III., page 264.) You know the membranous cup or clinandrum, in many orchids, behind the stigma and rostellum: it is formed of a membrane which unites the filament of the normal dorsal anther with the edges of the pistil. The clinandrum is largely developed in Malaxis, and is of considerable importance in retaining the pollinia, which as soon as the flower ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... some human vertebra pierced with flints, the points of which were still imbedded in the bones. In the Villevenard Cave one skull was found containing three arrow-beads with transverse points imbedded in the skull, the bone of which had closed upon them. Another arrow was lodged between the dorsal vertebrae. It is probable that these arrows had remained in the wounds; certainly that is the simplest way to account for their position. About two miles from the caves of which we have been speaking, M. de Baye ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac |
