"Wedge-shaped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Bonn, quoted in Karl Vogt's "Vorlesungen ueber den Mensohen," distinguishes four chief forms of the pelvis in mankind—the oval in Aryans, the round among the Red Indians, the square in the Mongols, and the wedge-shaped in the Negro. Examining this question mechanically it would seem that the longer a race had remained in an upright position the lower is the sacrum, and the greater is the tendency to approximate to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... escape death itself. I was one day standing in the woods upon a flat stone, in what at certain seasons was the bed of a stream, when one of these weasels came undulating along and ran under the stone upon which I was standing. As I remained motionless, he thrust his wedge-shaped head, and turned it back above the stone as if half in mind to seize my foot; then he drew back, and presently went his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like the British stoat. When I was a boy, my father one day armed me with an old musket and sent me to shoot ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Cutting boards, wedge-shaped boards somewhat like backing boards, but with the top edge square; used in cutting the edge of a book ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... time of Charles the First the width was increased, and a contrivance was introduced for doubling the area of the top when required, by two flaps which drew out from either end, and, by means of a wedge-shaped arrangement, the centre or main table top was lowered, and the whole table, thus increased, became level. Illustrations taken from Mr. G.T. Robinson's article on furniture in the "Art Journal" of 1881, represent a "Drawinge ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... "the wedge-like attack of his own division"; see Grote, "H. G." x. 469 foll. I do not, however, think that the attacking column was actually wedge-shaped like the "acies cuneata" of the Romans. It was the unusual depth of the column which gave it the force of an ironclad's ram. Cf. "Cyrop." ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... concealed in the belly of a hare, and Darius signed a decree which his nobles presented to him in writing. In common with the Babylonians they used the same alphabetic system, though their languages were unlike,—namely, the cuneiform or arrow-head or wedge-shaped characters, as seen in the celebrated inscriptions of Darius on the side of a high rock thirty feet from the ground. We cannot determine whether the Medes and Persians brought their alphabet from their original settlements ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... invariably shown from the side, yet the artists used to make them look as if they were squared round in the upper part to show the chest and both shoulders, so that Egyptians in pictures always look oddly wedge-shaped, being very broad at the top and narrow below. The eye was also put into the profile face as if it were seen from the front! Look at any typical Egyptian picture and you will soon pick out these peculiarities. It seems ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... SACRUM, so called because the ancients offered it in sacrifices, is a wedge-shaped bone, that is placed between the innominata, and to which it is bound by ligaments. Upon its upper surface it connects with the lower vertebra. At its inferior, or lower angle, it is united to the coccyx. It is concave upon its anterior, and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... by this time and, after Perez had put on his coat and hat, they went out once more into the gale. The point of which Perez had spoken was a wedge-shaped sand ridge that, thrown up by the waves and tide, thrust itself out from the beach some few hundred yards below the station. They reached its tip, and stood there in the very midst of the storm, waiting for the lulls, now more frequent, and scanning ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... bag and, taking out the wedge-shaped cap of the birdmen, set it on his head and went out. He took the same path he had followed home. On top of the cliff he stopped to look down on Squitty Cove. In a camp or two ashore the supper fires of the rowboat trollers were burning. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... were handed down.—In the earliest days of the settlement in Canaan very few Hebrews, if any, could read or write. Possibly Moses understood the Egyptian picture-writing, or the wedge-shaped letters of the Babylonian clay tablets. The Hebrew letters, however, in which the books of the Old Testament afterward were written, were invented by the Phoenicians, and the Phoenicians passed on their ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... Papyri were not used as in Egypt. Nor was ink required. Babylonian letters were shapely little bricks resembling cushions. The angular alphabetical characters, bristling with thorn-like projections, were impressed with a wedge-shaped stylus on tablets of soft clay which were afterwards carefully baked in an oven. Then the letters were placed in baked clay envelopes, sealed and addressed, or wrapped in pieces of sacking transfixed by seals. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... with wind and sun, was pulled well down to his ears, pressing against his forehead and neck thin locks of gray hair. A grizzle of beard edged his chin, a poor and scanty growth that showed the withered skin through its sparseness. His face, small and wedge-shaped, was full of ruddy color, the cheeks above the ragged hair smooth and red as apples. Though his mouth was deficient in teeth, his neck, rising bare from the band of his shirt, corrugated with the starting sinews of old age, he had a shrewd vivacity of glance, an alertness of poise, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... or canister, it might have done a good deal of damage. But the cannon had been loaded with Geoffrey's tankette in mind, and the tribesmen only jeered. One of them dashed forward, under the cannon's smoking muzzle, and jammed a wedge-shaped stone between the left side track and the massive forward track roller. The track jammed, broke, and whipped back in whistling fragments. The tankette slewed around while the unharmed tribesman danced out of the way. The noble in the turret could only watch helplessly. Apparently he had no ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... doubtful. The line thundered steadily down on them; then it swayed violently, as two or three of the brutes immediately in front fell beneath the bullets, while their neighbors made violent efforts to press off sideways. Then a narrow wedge-shaped rift appeared in the line, and widened as it came closer, and the buffaloes, shrinking from their foes in front, strove desperately to edge away from the dangerous neighborhood; the shouts and shots were redoubled; the hunters were almost choked by the cloud of dust, through which ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... story which is well worth repeating runs as follows: A farmer had called in the local "joyner" to do sundry repairs at the homestead. One day, whilst enjoying a humble meal, he sat watching some doves as they hopped about the yard. Struck by the movement of their wedge-shaped tails, it occurred to him to joint his timber by the interlocking method; hence ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... he had managed the rectification of the matter; did he take the upper table off? "Oh no, without that. I simply opened or loosened the left side of the table about and above the upper corner, then, having cut and glued a slight thin wedge-shaped piece of wood, through the narrow opening caused by the loosening of the table, I passed it on a thin knife long enough to reach to the upper block, between which and the part of the upper table ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... floated to these Assyrians. The slabs against the walls were carved with representations of battles, hunts, sacrifices, triumphs, and all the scenes in the kings' histories, nay, in the building of the city; and there were explanations in the wedge-shaped letters of the old Assyrian alphabet. The Ninevites had numerous idols, but their honour for the Lord had not quite faded away; and about the year 830, about the time of Amaziah in Judah, and Jeroboam II. in Israel, the prophet Jonah was sent to rebuke them for their many ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... have never beheld in any human face a more sorrowful, thoroughly indifferent—what is called an "overwhelmed"—expression. The features of that face were of the ordinary rustic type: a wrinkled forehead, small grey eyes, a large nose, a wedge-shaped beard, a swarthy, sunburned skin.... But the expression! ... the expression!... In that dim gaze life barely burned, and sadly at that; and his voice also was, somehow, lifeless ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... wanted for Negotiation to stand upon, and Transactions to be carried out over. No room here for anything else, thought the smoker, as, after a quarter of an hour's saunter, he threw away the end of his cigar. But his conclusion was premature. For lo and behold!—there, in a strange little wedge-shaped corner, of all things in the world, a barber's shop; maybe a relic of the days of Ben Jonson or earlier—how could a mere loafer tell? Anyhow, his hair wanted cutting sufficiently to give him an excuse to see the old place ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... get his living, as do the other woodpeckers, by boring into old trees and stumps for the insects that live on the decaying wood. For this purpose she gave him the straight, sharp, wedge-shaped bill, just calculated for cutting out chips; the very long horn-tipped tongue for thrusting into the holes he makes; the peculiar arrangement of toes, two forward and two back; and the stiff, spiny tail-feathers for supporting himself ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... of a clump of brown seaweed, which had fallen apart like the neatly dressed hair of a woman, was a black streak, signifying the gape of a wedge-shaped mollusc known as a pinna. The gape was about as long as the parting of a woman's hair and about thrice as wide. As I crouched to note the functions of the animal, my shadow intervened and the caution of the creature was roused, the valves closing so that no sign of the presence ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... money to put up on the result, and running his hand down in his watch-pocket he pulled out a ten-dollar bill. I covered it, and the planter told the nigger he would give him $10 more if he downed me. I cocked my eye on the nigger's head, and saw that it was one of those wedge-shaped cocoanuts so peculiar to people of African descent; so I inwardly resolved to hit him on one side of his wedge-shaped cranium. The nigger had his face to the sun, so that I felt confident that I could hit him pretty near ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... or stocks, the common method is to employ the cleft-graft (Fig. 176). This consists in cutting off the stock, splitting it, and inserting a wedge-shaped cion in one or both sides of the split, taking care that the cambium layer of the cion matches that of the stock. The exposed surfaces are then securely covered ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... sharpening the rough edge is worked smooth on a slip stone, the cross section of which is wedge-shaped and the edges of which are rounded. The toe and heel of the beveled side of the gouge are brought into contact with the flat side of the stone. As the sharpening proceeds the wire edge is worked to the inside of the gouge. The rounded edge of the stone is then placed inside ...
— A Course In Wood Turning • Archie S. Milton and Otto K. Wohlers
... for sale, but many people like to have an eraser in the end, and this requires still more work. These erasers are round or flat or six-sided or wedge-shaped. They are let into the pencil itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap, so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit his taste, for a single factory in the United States ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... outer curve of a wedge-shaped stone used for building an arch. Now, mark you, those are words of merit. Wedge, arch—wedges of fact which shall construct the arch of evidence. We'll have our man in the dock across that bridge before ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... very bright now. The black shadow to the right had become a wedge-shaped, compact, seething mass, sweeping rapidly toward them. There was a rushing swish in the air, and the sound of hoarse shouts. A few moments later the maddened beasts swept across their ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... Sphenophyllales, which are chiefly represented by the large genus Sphenophyllum, ranging through the Palaeozoic from the Middle Devonian onwards. These were plants with rather slender, ribbed stems, bearing whorls of wedge-shaped or deeply forked leaves, six being the typical number in each whorl. From their weak habit it has been conjectured, with much probability, that they may have been climbing plants, like the scrambling Bedstraws of our hedgerows. The anatomy of the stem is simple and root-like; the cones are ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... it now these dozen winters running. Let's go into Boston and take that suite of wedge-shaped rooms we looked at last fall in Hotel Huntington, at the intersection of the Avenue and the railroad tracks. The boys can count freight cars until they are exhausted, and watch engines from their windows ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... day; but about nine it cleared off, and we sailed slowly along, close by the shore of a very beautiful island, forty miles from Cuxhaven, the wind continuing slack. This holm or island is about a mile and a half in length, wedge-shaped, well wooded, with glades of the liveliest green, and rendered more interesting by the remarkably neat farm-house on it. It seemed made for retirement without solitude—a place that would allure ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... power, as infinitely minute cylinders scattered over the field. The larger Foraminifera are attacked, and instead of being vividly white and delicately sculptured, they become brown and worn, and finally they break up, each according to its fashion; the chamber-walls of Globigerina fall into wedge-shaped pieces, which quickly disappear, and a thick rough crust breaks away from the surface of Orbulina, leaving a thin inner sphere, at first beautifully transparent, but soon ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Lucien that the woodpecker, aided by its wedge-shaped beak, could, in case of need, rip up the bark under which its prey was to be found; that his tongue, covered with spines bending backward, is well adapted to seize the larvae; and, lastly, that the stiff and elastic feathers of its tail afford it ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... and single under the highest magnifying power which could be applied to most excellent instruments—the great refractor of Pulkowa alone, with a magnifying power of a thousand, continuing to indicate, by the wedge-shaped form of the disc of the star, its ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... shaft. The whole of the barb turned on a stout pivot of steel, but was kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg which passed through barb and shaft, being then cut off smoothly on both sides. The point of the harpoon had at one side a wedge-shaped edge, ground to razor keenness, the other side was flat. The shaft, about thirty inches long, was of the best malleable iron, so soft that it would tie into a knot and straighten out again without fracture. Three ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... from under the pillow, a mechanical arrangement, a memory of his Indian life in the midst of untrusted subordinates, the officer seized in his left hand the Sikh tulwar, which was his own "property saber" of Thibetan royalty. Its naked, wedge-shaped blade was as keen as that ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... undisturbed. Should the end of the tap root project below the end of the cylinder, the thready end should be pinched off with the thumb nail. By placing the lower end of the cylinder on the bottom of a box and inserting a wedge-shaped piece of wood in the slot, the cylinder is sprung open and can be withdrawn, leaving the young tree, with a cylinder of earth around its roots, standing on the bottom of the box. This operation can be repeated until the box is full of the young trees, when it is carried to the field and ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... the form by means of hammering tight together two wedge-shaped iron pieces, several sets of them between type and iron frame which were supposed to hold the type in the form like a vise; raised it carefully, and there remained on the tin-covered make-up table about a quarter of a column of the set type. She slammed ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... rising tide lapped up the sands at the back of the Bar. The faint yellow-pink after-thought of sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky. Heading for the French coast, a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries and the beat of strong-winged flight. The barrow creaked again, wheeled some few yards ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned Io weep? And know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid? ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... centre of the base, is very large in proportion to the size of the animal. It is formed of five shelly, wedge-shaped pieces, each ending in a hard, triangular tooth. The whole mouth is a conical box, called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... built of several pieces, sewed together in so neat a manner that on the outside no join could be seen. They were of two kinds, double and single. The single were from twenty to thirty feet long, and twenty-two inches broad in the middle, with wedge-shaped heads and sterns, and decked over at both ends, leaving only a third part open. They had outriggers, and some few carried sails, but were generally impelled by short paddles, the blades of which were broadest in ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... a region of malformed city blocks—some of them pentagonal, some irregularly quadrangular, some wedge-shaped—Howard Street sets forth upon its way, running first southwest as far as Richmond Street, then turning south and becoming, by degrees, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... found opposite the upper islands of this group, where the accidental juxtaposition of Magdalena island, which indents the continent over half a degree at this point, and the basin of Lake Fontana, which gives the Argentine boundary a sharp wedge-shaped projection westward, narrows the distance between the two to about 26 m. The Taytao peninsula, incorrectly called the Tres Montes on some maps, is a westward projection of the mainland, with which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of other foot). It is probable that the usual three "battles'' were drawn up in line, each with its archers on the flanks and the dismounted men-at-arms in the centre; the archers being thrown forward in wedge-shaped salients, almost exactly as at Crecy (q.v..) The French, on the other hand, were drawn up in three lines, each line formed in deep masses. They were at least four times more numerous than the English, but restricted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... answer to his questions, and he had invested in this brief word a conception of a power, similar to the power of God. He glanced at the speakers: one of them was a gray little old man, with a kind face; the other was younger, with big, weary eyes and with a little black wedge-shaped beard. His big gristly nose and his yellow, sunken cheeks reminded Foma ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Then, raking the surface smooth, I set a line along its length on one side. A man took a spade, sunk its length in the soil, and pushed it forward strongly. This action made an almost perpendicular wedge-shaped aperture just back of the spade. The asparagus plant, with its roots spread out fan-shape, was sunk in this opening to a depth that left the crown of the plant between three and four inches below the surface. Then the spade was drawn out, and the soil left to fall over the ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... nearly vertical precipices, varying from 200 to 600 feet in height, which bound the valley through which the river Magnan flows. Although, in a general view, the strata appear to be parallel and uniform, they are nevertheless found, when examined closely, to be wedge-shaped, and to thin out when followed for a few hundred feet or yards, so that we may suppose them to have been thrown down originally upon the side of a steep bank where a river or Alpine torrent discharged itself into a deep and tranquil ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... commencement of the season, and others which originate as an elongated cell; this becomes septate, and ultimately separates at the joints. During the greater part of the year, both kinds of spores are to be found in the same pustule. In Melampsora, the winter spores are elongated and wedge-shaped, compacted together closely, and are only matured during winter on dead leaves; the summer spores are pulverulent and globose, being, in fact, what were until recently regarded as species of Lecythea. In Cystopus, the spores are sub-globose, or somewhat angular, generated ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... reason. The arrangement of carbons and dielectric in this device is shown in Fig. 208; mica is cemented to the line carbon and is large enough to provide a projecting margin all around. The spark gap is not uniform over the entire surface of the block but is made wedge-shaped by grinding away the line carbon as shown. It is claimed that a continuous arcing fills the wedge-shaped chamber with heated air or gas, converting the whole of the space into a field of low resistance to ground, and that this gas in expanding drives out every particle ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... zigzag form for thirty miles, so that the stream had to change its course from right to left and left to right, and went through the hills boiling and roaring, sending up columns of steam, formed by the compression of the water falling into its narrow wedge-shaped receptacle. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... spears, which formed an impenetrable hedge against cavalry, he found a remedy for the disadvantages of the ground, which afforded no protection to either of his flanks. After advancing in these two lines Alexander manoeuvred his troops into a phalanx, or wedge-shaped figure, and this wedge he drove into the masses of the enemy to force the wings asunder. In spite of local reverses in parts of the field, the depth and weight of the main attack carried it through the enemy's forces: the survivors ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... be described as a heterogeneous mass of clay, with sand and gravel in varying proportions, inclosing the transported fragments of rock, of all dimensions, partially rounded or worn into wedge-shaped forms, and generally with surfaces furrowed or scratched, the whole material looking as if it had been ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... of his lithe and sinewy adversary, keeping his determined head and sharp, deadly tusks ever facing his stealthy and treacherous foe. The bristles of the boar's back were up at a right angle from the strong spine. The wedge-shaped head poised on the strong neck and thick rampart of muscular shoulder was bent low, and the whole attitude of the body betokened full alertness and angry resoluteness. In their circlings the two brutes were now nearer to each other and nearer to ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... deep or very pale; about 1 inch broad, on slender footstalks, in terminal clusters. Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, much enlarged in fruit, sticky; 5 petals with claws enclosed in calyx, wedge-shaped above, slightly notched. Stamens 10; pistil with 3 styles. Stem: 4 to 10 in. high, hairy, sticky above, growing in tufts. Leaves: Basal ones spatulate; 2 or 3 pairs of lance-shaped, smaller leaves ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... of a calm winter's day was unbroken. From the west high above the reach of the heaviest gun, and almost beyond the carry of the rifle, came the long-expected vanguard of the migrating hosts of heaven. Flock upon flock, each in the wedge-shaped phalanx of two converging lines, which ever characterize the flight of these birds, each headed by a wary, powerful leader, whose clarion call came shrill and clear down through the still ether, came in one common line of flight, hundreds and thousands of geese. All that afternoon ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... black mustache, which gave dignity and character to his otherwise almost too delicately feminine features. And he stood on the open moor just a hundred yards outside his own front door at Penmorgan, on the Lizard peninsula, looking westward down a great wedge-shaped gap in the solid serpentine rock to a broad belt of sea beyond without a ship or a sail on it. The view was indeed, as Eustace Le Neve admitted, a somewhat bleak and dreary one. For miles, as far as the ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... grounds have remained in the undisputed possession of the same families for generations. Family hunting grounds are usually delimited by natural boundaries, such as hills, valleys, rivers, and lakes. The allotments of land generally take the form of wedge-shaped tracts radiating from common centres. From the intersection of these converging boundary lines the common centres become the hubs of the various districts. These district centres mark convenient summer camping grounds for the reunion of families after their arduous ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... French coin, in turn from Latin cuneus, wedge, suggestive either of an earlier wedge-shaped piece, or of a wedge-shaped mark on the piece. The German word Muenze is from the Latin moneta (as is the English mint, the place where coins are made), which meant money, that name being taken from the temple of Juno, called Moneta, where ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... course be cut off at any length. This is best done with a piece of hard wood planed down to a cutting edge, i.e., wedge-shaped. Mr Trench has devised a kind of brass frame, into which the gelatine issuing from the nozzle of the cartridge machine is forced, finding its way along a series of grooves. When the frame is full, a wooden frame, which is hinged to one end of the bottom frame, and fitted ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... lowered and hauled up, and which also served as a buoy line, was fastened to one of the end frames of the bottom or sill, as it is called, at the intersection of the hoop. The buoys generally consist of a tapering piece of cedar or spruce, wedge-shaped, or nearly spindle shaped, and about 18 inches long. They are usually painted in distinctive colors, so that each fisherman may easily recognize his own. Small kegs ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... was toneless. Her face in the darkness gleamed wedge-shaped and unfamiliar between the falling waves ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... feet across at the bottom," he said; "the wall by the passage goes straight up, on the other side it is the bare rock, so it is almost wedge-shaped. It is twenty feet long, and five feet high up to its roof, that makes it nearly seven to the upper part of the mouth." The vault was absolutely empty. He moved about for a minute and then said: "Gold has been stored here. There are particles of gold at the bottom, and there is gold-dust ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... in a small clearing, consisted of two tents, both of the wedge-shaped kind. The sleeping-tent was nearly filled by the bed it contained; and this, lifted a few inches above the ground on pole supports, was of browse or brush and straw, covered with blankets. A square canopy of mosquito-netting protected ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... more so than the rising generation. The rest have followed them here, aware that these old hands know every inch of the country, and are certain to be in the right place. The spot is not far from the park wall, where the wood runs up into a wedge-shaped point, and ends in a low mound and hedge. Most of the company at the meet in the park have naturally cantered across the level sward, scattering the sheep as they go, and are now assembled along the side of the wood, near where a green 'drive' goes through it, and apparently gives direct ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of wedge-shaped blocks, which by reason of their shape give support one to another, and to the [Sidenote: Arches.] super-imposed weight, the resulting load being transmitted through the blocks to the abutments upon which the ends of the arch rest. An arch should be composed of such materials and designed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... plane from a common centre, where the insect had its station; but only two of the rays were connected by a symmetrical mesh-work; so that the net, instead of being, as is generally the case, circular, consisted of a wedge-shaped segment. All ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the old text were reprinted in every land and by the middle of the nineteenth century, the cuneiform language (so called because the letters were wedge-shaped and "cuneus" is the Latin name for wedge) had given up its secrets. Another human mystery ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... handicraft. These are the sort of people who would regard a grand piano as a fortuitous concourse of atoms. But the shapely stone hatchet of the later neolithic farmer and herdsman is usually a beautifully polished wedge-shaped piece of solid greenstone; and its edge has been ground to such a delicate smoothness that it seems rather like a bit of nature's exquisite workmanship than a simple relic of prehistoric man. There is something very ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... savannas of the prairie regions, as devoid of wood, remote from transportation facilities, and suited only to grazing, they entered the hard woods—and in the early twenties they were advancing in a wedge-shaped ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... yielding to its sweep in a broadening valley only to press on it beyond and thrust it back on its way northward. It was all splendid and simple; if you please, nothing but a stream filling the intersecting slopes of a wedge-shaped valley and turning off because it had to. But the serenity of the whole composition: gray rocks, shining waters, green slopes; white mists, enveloping the crests, smiling in the afternoon sun! Jaded as were our faculties of admiration by the ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... 53. The wedge-shaped dash over the note (staccatissimo) was formerly employed to indicate a tone still more detached than that indicated by the dot, but this sign is really superfluous, and is seldom used ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... spectacle of the end in view, that is, of the part in its setting of the whole—going without a piece of mince pie. If one could only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not be difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of coupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to this planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate would ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... its appropriate thickness. The outer surface is then finally smoothed to form about one-third of a cylinder, and the foundation is complete. It only remains to lash the cross-benches to their supports, to raise the sides by lashing on a gunwale, and to fit in wedge-shaped blocks at bow and stern. The gunwale consists of a tough plank some ten inches wide overlapping the outer edge of the shell, and lashed firmly to it by rattan strips piercing both shell and planks at intervals ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... well, although on a wedge-shaped pillow, I bid you good-morning, my heart. The whole panorama before me is bathed in such a bright, burning sun that I cannot look out at all without being blinded. Until I begin my calls I am sitting here breakfasting and smoking all alone in a very spacious apartment—four rooms, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... copper for the manufacture of weapons; and the first period of the bronze age may be dated from 1800 to 1500 B.C. The bronze celts at first differed little from those made of copper, but gradually the type developed from the plain wedge-shaped celt to the beautiful socketed celt, which appears on the scene in the last, or fifth, division of the bronze age (900-350 B.C.). It was during the age of bronze that spears came into general use, as did the sword and rapier. The early spear-heads were ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... and there a fruit something like the cannon-ball, though not quite as large. On breaking the soft rind you find it full of white meal, probably eatable, and in the meal three or four great hard wrinkled nuts, rounded on one side, wedge-shaped on the other, which, cracked, are found full of almond-like white jelly, so delicious that one can well believe travellers when they tell us that the Indian tribes wage war against each other for the possession of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... from tree and thicket fall, And on the ground their autumn carpet strew; And overhead the wild geese honking call, In wedge-shaped ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... waves. As we advanced southwards hopes ran high, for we still had the dogs and five ponies to help us. Scott expected to camp on the Beardmore itself after the next march, but bad luck, alas, was against us. The land visible extended from S.S.W. through S. to N.W. More wonderful peaks or wedge-shaped spines of snow-capped rock. The first and least exciting stage of our journey was practically complete. A fifth pony was sacrificed to the hungry dogs—"Michael," of whom Cherry Garrard had only good words to say—but then the altruistic Cherry only spoke good words. We did over 17 miles ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... humerus the patient is to be bound in the supine position, a wedge-shaped stone wrapped with yarn placed in the axilla, and the surgeon, pressing against the padded stone with his foot and raising the humerus with his hands, reduces the head of the bone to its natural position. If this ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... it illuminated with strange radiancy the dainty disorder of deserted lunch, made prisms out of the wine-glasses, painted the white cloth with wedge-shaped rainbows, and flooded the cavernous interiors of the half-eaten fowl with a pathetic ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... the material of the continental delta grow more and more feeble as they pass into deeper and more quiet water away from shore. Coarse materials are therefore soon dropped along narrow belts near land. Gravels and coarse sands lie in thick, wedge-shaped masses which thin out seaward rapidly and give place ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... in the air; with my men around me we hovered. Then Georg's command from the instrument room sounded in my ears. I gave the signal; and flying wedge-shaped, we hurled ourselves forward. It was like lying on the air, diving head foremost. The rush of wind sang past me; the ground, a hundred feet below, was a ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... and oranges according to the directions previously given. Slice the banana crosswise into 1/4-inch slices and cut each slice into four sections. Dice the apples and cut the pineapple in narrow wedge-shaped pieces. Mix the fruit just before serving. Add the salad dressing, which may be fruit-salad dressing, French dressing, or some other desirable salad dressing, by mixing it with the fruit or merely pouring it over the top. Serve on ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... are kept clean by cells especially adapted to this purpose, known as the ciliated epithelial cells. These are slender, wedge-shaped cells which have projecting from a free end many small, hair-like bodies, called cilia (Fig. 35). They line the mucous membrane in most of the air passages, and are so placed that the cilia project into the tubes. Here they keep up an inward and outward wave-like movement, which ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... camels across the desert towards Metammeh. Lord Wolseley remained behind to guard the new base of operations. At Abu Klea wells, when nearing the Nile, the column was assailed by a great mass of Arabs. They advanced in five columns, each having a wedge-shaped head designed to pierce the British square. With a low murmuring cry or chant they rushed on in admirable order, disregarding the heavy losses caused by the steady fire of three faces of the square. Their leaders soon saw the weak place in the defence, namely, at one of the rear corners, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... same museum is a curious wedge-shaped boxwood fiddle, decorated with allegorical scenes, and dated 1578. Dr. Burney states that it has no more tone than a violin with a sordine. It is said to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, and bears both ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... a red cloth, and having placed it in the centre of the arena, he took from his turban a curious reed pipe, and blew through it. In a few moments the cloth began to move, and as the pipe grew shriller and shriller two green and gold snakes put out their strange wedge-shaped heads and rose slowly up, swaying to and fro with the music as a plant sways in the water. The children, however, were rather frightened at their spotted hoods and quick darting tongues, and were much more pleased ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... Into the wedge-shaped, elastic clot which now fills the wound from bottom to top like jelly in a mould, the leucocytes or white blood-cells promptly migrate and convert it into a mesh of living cells. They are merely the cavalry and skirmishers of the repair brigade and are quickly followed by the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... combination of the box, hub, or shell, B, reverse wedge-shaped blocks, C C', and bolts, D D', with their nuts, E E', or the equivalents of these devices, arranged for operation together, substantially as and for the purposes herein ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... magnetic railway, on which the cars are wedge-shaped at both ends, and moved by huge magnets weighing four thousand tons each, placed fifty miles apart. On passing a magnet, the nature of the electricity charging a car is automatically changed from positive to negative, or vice versa, to that of the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... write this, one corner of her territory remains to her, a wedge-shaped piece, ten miles or so in width at the coast, narrowing to nothing at a point less than thirty miles inland. And in that tragic fragment there remains hardly an undestroyed town. Her revenues are gone, being collected as an indemnity, for God ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... four vessels of our squadron, and one of the American brigs,—the "Advance" under Lieutenant De Haven,—all safe at the floe-edge. The floe had drifted during the gale considerably towards the shores of North Somerset; and the wedge-shaped island, called Cape Bunny, was distinctly visible: the other of the American brigs had, in the height of the gale, blown adrift and disappeared in the darkness and snow-drift. For her, as well as Her Majesty's brigs under Captain Penny, much anxiety was entertained. The American leader ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... opposite to Dick Varley was a huge projection from the precipice that hemmed in the gorge, or species of cape or promontory several hundred yards wide at the base, and narrowing abruptly to a point. The sides of this wedge-shaped projection were quite perpendicular; indeed, in some places the top overhung the base, and they were at least three hundred feet high. Broken and jagged rocks, of that peculiarly chaotic character which probably suggested the name to this part of the great American ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... seem as if the panels were thickly coated with clay. Into this clay was then driven small, smoothed blocks of wedge-shaped stones, in such a way as to cover them with geometrical ornamentations, which, though not absolutely symmetrical, present a striking and agreeable appearance. Each section of the wall presents a different pattern, but this difference is so slight that the general effect ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... reef, about three miles South-West from QUOIN ISLAND, which is a small wedge-shaped rock: it is in the neighbourhood of this reef that the merchant ship, Morning Star, was lost. Quoin Island is in latitude 12 degrees 24 minutes, and longitude 143 degrees 23 minutes ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... stem. Leaves fleshy, wedge-shaped. Flowers small, sessile, terminal, pale yellow. Calyx of 2 large teeth, deciduous. Corolla, 4-5 petals with a notch at the end. Stamens 9-14. Style of equal length with the stamens. Stigma in 4-6 divisions. The ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... angular, bent, crooked, aduncous^, uncinated^, aquiline, jagged, serrated; falciform^, falcated^; furcated^, forked, bifurcate, zigzag; furcular^; hooked; dovetailed; knock kneed, crinkled, akimbo, kimbo^, geniculated^; oblique &c 217. fusiform [Micro.], wedge-shaped, cuneiform; cuneate^, multangular^, oxygonal^; triangular, trigonal^, trilateral; quadrangular, quadrilateral; foursquare; rectangular, square, multilateral; polygonal &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... writing—as revealed to us now through the recent excavations—had ceased to have that pictorial aspect which distinguishes the Egyptian script. What had originally been pictures of objects—fish, houses, and the like—had come to be represented by mere aggregations of wedge-shaped marks. As the writing of the Babvlonians was chiefly inscribed on soft clay, the adaptation of this wedge-shaped mark in lieu of an ordinary line was probably a mere matter of convenience, since the sharp-cornered implement used in making the inscription naturally made a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of a ray-fish. The same divinity bore priests from isle to isle about the archipelago, and by his aid, within the century, persons have been seen to fly. The tutelar deity of each isle is likewise helpful, and by a particular form of wedge-shaped cloud on the horizon announces the coming of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heard the splash, and after a few restless movements, as though unwilling to leave us, darted off toward the ship. I saw the horrid triangular fins cleaving the surface of the glassy water, each leaving its own delicate wedge-shaped wake spreading astern as it went, until the small ripples of the different wakes met and crossed each other; then, as the distance between them and their prey lessened, there was a sudden increase of speed ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... a few of the most noticeable examples that came under my attention, and which have not been described by other authors. Amongst these were the striking modifications of some beetles belonging to the Mordellidae. These, in their normal form, are curious wedge-shaped beetles, which are common on flowers, and leap like fleas. In some of the Nicaraguan species the body is lengthened, and the thorax and elytra coloured, so as to resemble wasps and flies. In the Mordellidae the head is small, and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... The wedge-shaped stones forming an arch, the centre one of which is the keystone and those at the impost or starting point of the ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... train reaches its terminus at Laruns, we are fairly among the highlands. Rising wedge-shaped beyond the town, dividing all progress, is a mountain,—not a hill. To the left and right of it pass the roads we are in turn to follow. On the left, two miles beyond the fork or three from the railway's ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... wide. Tape loops were then sewed on as before, and ropes were fastened on at the top of the side walls, that is, 3 feet 6 inches from the ends of the strips. We thought it would be better to have a slanting ridge on the annex, so we cut out a wedge-shaped piece from the center of the two strips, as shown by dotted lines B B in Fig. 46. This wedge-shaped piece measured 2 feet at the outer end of the annex, and tapered down to a point at the inner end. The canvas was then sewed together along these edges. Tie strings were sewed ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... ylfa gescot; that is, if it were an asa-shot or an elf-shot. On this subject Grimm says: It is a very old belief that dangerous arrows were shot by the elves from the air. The thunder-bolt is also called elf-shot, and in Scotland a hard, sharp, wedge-shaped stone is known by the name of elf-arrow, elf-flint, elf-bolt, which, it is supposed, has been sent by ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... In the wedge-shaped doorway between the windows stood two men, one middle-aged and one old, one bareheaded and the other with a beaver hat, engaged in conversation. They were talking easily, pleasantly, with free gestures, the younger looking down in deferential smiles at the elder, and the elder looking ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... floes of six- months-old ice lay close together. Some of these floes presented a square mile of unbroken surface, and among them were patches of thin ice and several floes of heavy old ice. Many bergs were in sight, and the course became devious. The ship was blocked at one point by a wedge-shaped piece of floe, but we put the ice-anchor through it, towed it astern, and proceeded through the gap. Steering under these conditions required muscle as well as nerve. There was a clatter aft during the afternoon, and Hussey, who was at the wheel, explained that "The ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... were contained about twenty skeletons, lying in a row, close to each other, north and south, their arms pressed to their sides. The head of each individual rested on a stone, fashioned with care, but to no certain pattern. Some were fusiform, others wedge-shaped, and others irregularly oblong. In general, the stones did not appear to be the production of the country. One was oriental jade, another German agate. In the tomb were also a few cinerary urns; whence it appears that the people, by whom it was constructed, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the adjoining bunk, the thud of bare feet on the floor, and Jessup's face loomed, wedge-shaped and oddly white, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... that came, and he is a too attentive lover. The battle had been going on some seconds without apparent result, possibly because the voles had to bite upwards, shark-fashion, owing to the fact that their fighting-teeth are wedge-shaped incisors, instead of stabbing fangs, when there was a hrrr! That ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... variety would not hold together. Roughly speaking the whole of this dark frame of tones from the accented point of the trees at the top to the mass of the rock on the left, may be said to gradate away into the distance; cut into by the wedge-shaped middle tone of the hills ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... forward many others to England. The native women search for and find them not only near the beds of streams, but also about the alluvial diggings. Nearly all are shaped like the iron axe or adze of Urua, in Central Africa, a long narrow blade with rounded top and wedge-shaped edge. This tool is either used in the hand like a chisel, or inserted into a conical hole burnt through a tree-branch, and the shape of the aperture makes every blow tighten the hold. The people mount it in two ways, either as an axe in line with, or as ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... knee-boots, the whole crowned with a portentous peaked cap, with absurd brass ventilators, and powdered with many thicknesses and shades of dust. His hair was dusty. The very eyelashes of the honest, ugly light eyes, set wide apart in the thin wedge-shaped, tanned face that the absurd cap shaded, were dusty as a miller's; dust lay thick in all the chinks and creases of his leading features, and a large black smudge of oily grime was upon his wide upper lip, impinging ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the rocker in time of heavy weather special appliances are necessary, which, of course, must be easily operated from the deck. Wedge-shaped pieces with rails attached may be driven down by screws upon the sides of the vessel, thus having the effect of gradually narrowing the amplitude of the rocking motion until a condition of stability with reference to the ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... subsequently following other professions. Finally, after passing examinations in law he became a lawyer, but drink reduced him to the Captain's dosshouse. He was tall, round-shouldered, with a long, sharp nose and bald head. In his bony and yellow face, on which grew a wedge-shaped beard, shone large, restless eyes, deeply sunk in their sockets, and the corners of his mouth drooped sadly down. He earned his bread, or rather his drink, by reporting for the local papers. He sometimes earned as much as fifteen roubles. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... predatory fish are long and slim, like the alligator-gar and pickerel. But the piranha is a short, deep-bodied fish, with a blunt face and a heavily undershot or projecting lower jaw which gapes widely. The razor-edged teeth are wedge-shaped like a shark's, and the jaw muscles possess great power. The rabid, furious snaps drive the teeth through flesh and bone. The head with its short muzzle, staring malignant eyes, and gaping, cruelly armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... often weighing from one to four thousand pounds each. The skin of the shark is rough, and is used for polishing wood, ivory, &c.; that of one species is manufactured into an article called agreen: spectacle-cases are made of it. The white shark is the sailor's worst enemy: he has five rows of wedge-shaped teeth, which are notched like a saw: when the animal is at rest they are flat in his mouth, but when about to seize his prey they are erected by a set of muscles which join them to the jaw. His mouth is so situated under the head that he is obliged to turn ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... country house known as Zamanilovka was anywhere in the neighbourhood the peasants replied by doffing their caps; after which one of them who seemed to boast of a little more intelligence than his companion, and who wore a wedge-shaped beard, made answer: ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol |
