"Dorsal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 dominance, at length ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... inherited 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 ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... inferred from the following fact—Professor H. Schlegel, in a recently published memoir, endeavours to show that the living elephant of Sumatra agrees with that of Ceylon, but is a distinct species from that of Continental India, being distinguishable by the number of its dorsal vertebrae and ribs, the form of its teeth, and other characteristics.* (* Schlegel, "Natural History Review" Number 5 1862 page 72.) Dr. Falconer, on the other hand, considers these two living species as mere geographical ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... bodies like geometrid caterpillars or leeches, as well as by creeping on their setae. The mouth is terminal, and leads into a muscular oesophagus which opens into a straight intestine terminating in an anus, which is said to be dorsal in position. The sexes are distinct. The testis is single, and its duct opens into the intestine and is provided with two chitinous spicules. The ovary is also single, opening independently and anterior to the anus. The nervous system is as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... less, until at last the drainage tube can be removed and the external wound allowed to heal. The large collections of pus which form in connexion with disease of the spinal column in the cervical, dorsal and lumbar regions are now treated by free evacuation of the tuberculous pus, with careful antiseptic measures. The opening should be in as dependent a position as possible in order that the drainage may be thorough. If tension recurs after opening has been ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... That's a fin-back! There's another, and another; three of them with their dorsal fins five or six feet high. Just see them swimming between two waves, quietly, making no jumps. Ah! if I had a harpoon, I bet my head that I could send it into one of the four yellow spots they have on their bodies. But there's nothing to be done ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... across the petals and a foot across the dorsal sepal!" said the young man in a kind of gasp, "and a Cypripedium! Sir, surely you ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... esteemed, I have known them sold at thirty for a penny. It keeps near the bottom commonly, at no great distance from land; but sometimes multitudes will mount together to the surface; and move along with the first dorsal fin above the water: they will even quit their native element, and spring to the distance of a yard; thus imitating the flying gurnard, though not to the same extent. In summer they are found basking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... 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 than to approach your wet flies. A few minutes of ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... 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 vertebras. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... 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 ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... 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 them with a very thick ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... arranged like those of most flowers, around one main vertical axis; it was thus 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 ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... bird called the frigate pelican soars majestically over the vessel, and the tropic 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 ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... 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 ones, which ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... weight. The ford has a 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
... censurable relations between selfishness and ingratitude. The good that he does is purely material. He makes two leaves of fat to grow where but one grew before, lessens the sum of gastric pangs and dorsal chills. All this is something, certainly, but it generates no warm and elevated sentiments and does nothing in mitigation of the poor's animosity to the rich. Organized charity is a sapid and savorless thing; its place among moral agencies is no higher than ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... life. Nature yields to its suggestion and leading, and co- works, with all her best and busiest activities, to realise the human ideal; to put muscle there, to straighten that vertebra, to parallel more perfectly those dorsal and ventral lines, to lengthen or shorten those bones; to flesh the leg only to such a joint, and wool or unwool it below; to horn or unhorn the head, to blacken or blanch the face, to put on the whole body a new dress and make it and its remote posterity wear this new form ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... brown, 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, and some vague spots of the same laterally, the signs, I suspect, of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... 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. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... member of the gapperi group. Dorsal stripe wide, between Chestnut and Bay (capitalized color terms after Ridgway: Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. Washington, D. C., 1912), with slight mixture of black-tipped hairs; sides and venter heavily washed with Ochraceous-Tawny. Skull flattened; rostrum ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall
... name given to a whale which has a dorsal fin. A Finner whale commonly measures from 60 ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 two barbs of a bee's sting by ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... absent student who was apt to forget 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 ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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 and suavely, avoiding ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... external resemblance 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 Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... afternoon one 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 of great weakness. The hand was considerably swollen, with the pain shooting ...
— 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
... 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 ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... 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
... 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 employment—as some frugal housekeepers, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... harmonize admirably with the eel 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
... 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 edges ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... England never scramble. Her father and mother, 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, do move in this way, and such women this unfortunate little lady has been instructed to copy. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... said, when he had wiped the spray off his face. "He had a narrow escape; the knife just grazed the spinal cord. The shock to the dorsal nerves induced temporary paralysis, and that rather misled me. He is much better now. Under ordinary conditions he would be able to get about in a few days. As it is, he will probably live as long as ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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
... stages. In the third and fourth stages, the larvae of S. cecropia and S. gloveri are also 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... cord 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 ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... friends with some difficulty across Palace Yard, eyed suspiciously by the police-dogs on duty. One concentrated his attention on Mr. Punch's dorsal peculiarity. ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... introductions—a long and tedious process, which she performed relentlessly, without haste and without scamping her work. With each member of the aristocracy of his new profession Ashe shook hands, and on each member he smiled, until his facial and dorsal muscles were like to crack under the strain. It was amazing that so many high-class domestics could be ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... "anterior," the "inferior," the "ante-lateral," and the "latero-inferior" valve; the first two of these titles have, moreover, been applied to the rostrum or rostral valve of sessile Cirripedes. The Tergum has been called the "dorsal," the "posterior," the "superior," the "central," the "terminal," the "postero-lateral," and the "latero-superior" valve. The Carina has received the first two of these identical epithets, viz. the "dorsal" and the "posterior;" and likewise has been called ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... swimming. This done, I poised myself upon the spar preparatory to diving off the mast, and had raised my hands above my head, when not half-a-dozen fathoms away, and immediately between me and the spot for which I was bound, I saw the dorsal fins of two enormous sharks sculling quietly to and fro, as though to blockade me and cut me off from ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... nervous disturbance 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 scapulae have been dragged ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... 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; ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... No. 1, KOJETUCK means the fish with the bones; which is very descriptive, from Koje the bones, [Note 28: This was noticed by Governor Grey.] having very singular bones placed vertically in the neck, connecting the dorsal spines to the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Poke relieved my mind considerably; and laying aside the bison-skin, I asked him to have the goodness to examine the localities, with some particularity, about the termination of the dorsal bone, in order to ascertain if there were any encouraging signs to be discovered. Captain Poke put on his spectacles, for time had brought the worthy mariner to their use, as he said, "whenever he had occasion ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 discovered a sepulchre containing thirty ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... foremost, everything was 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 ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... hand, to overlook a fracture—for example, if there is no displacement, or if the line of fracture is crossed by the shadow of an adjacent bone. In deeply placed bones such as those about the hip, or in bones related to dense, solid viscera—for example, ribs, sternum, or dorsal vertebrae—it is sometimes difficult to obtain conclusive evidence ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Osseous Ankylosis of Bodies (a) of Dorsal Vertebrae, 434 (b) of Lumbar Vertebrae following ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the extremity of the dorsal part of the tail is prehensile. This portion is deprived of quills for a ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • 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: ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... 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
... 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, ...
— Distribution of Some Nebraskan Mammals • J. Knox Jones
... but must one go into such minutiae in 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 are committed ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... excite a thoughtful child's interest in botany—not regardless of the sense of beauty either—we should make an investment in Bulbophyllum Lobbii. Bulbophyllum Dearei also is pretty—golden ochre spotted red, with a wide dorsal sepal, very narrow petals flying behind, lower sepals broadly striped with red, and a yellow lip, upon a hinge, of course; but the gymnastic performances of this species are not so impressive as in ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... another glance led Newman to suppose that she had found it. A gentleman was strolling beside her, lending a most attentive ear to her conversation and too entranced to open his lips. Newman did not hear his voice, but perceived that he presented the dorsal expression of a well-dressed Englishman. Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention: the ladies who passed her turned round to survey the Parisian perfection of her toilet. A great cataract of flounces rolled down from the ...
— The American • Henry James
... his pertinacious enemy still 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 him to death. They are armed with strong sharp teeth, and generally seize the whale ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... dorsal branches of subscapular; posterior scapular with costal and muscular branches of subscapular. Thoracic anastomosis between internal mammary and intercostals, with ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... 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 ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... 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, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... genus Balaenoptera are so termed, being distinguished from the right whales by the possession of a small triangular adipose dorsal fin. There are several species, some of which grow to a greater length than any other animals of the order, viz. 80 or perhaps 90 feet. They are very active and difficult to harpoon, yield comparatively ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... century. Insanity, 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 other forms of cutaneous eruptions (the author of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... part of the ear: neck covered with small scales: frill arising from the hinder part of the head, just over the front of the ears, and attached to the sides of the neck and extending down to the front part of the chest, supported above by a lunate cartilage arising from the hinder dorsal part of the ear, and in the centre by a bone, which extends about half its length: this bone appears to be an elongation of the side fork of the bone of the tongue, but it could not be determined with certainty without injuring the specimen; each frill has four plaits, which converge on the under ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... young. There are also instances of the female co-operating with the male in this care of offspring. Thus in the Surinam toad the male spreads the ova on the back of the female, where skin cavities form in which the tadpoles develop. In other cases the eggs are carried in the dorsal pouches of the females. It would almost seem that in this early time Nature was making experiments as to which parent was the better fitted to ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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
... connected area extending laterally onto each shoulder are so lightly furred that the skin shows through conspicuously. In one male of this series a strip approximately four millimeters wide extending along the mid-dorsal line from between the shoulders to the rump is mostly devoid of hair. These sparsely-furred areas are less evident in live animals than in study skins and specimens in alcohol, because the back of the head in life lies against the depression between the ...
— A New Subspecies of Bat (Myotis velifer) from Southeastern California and Arizona • Terry A. Vaughan
... specimens obtained 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 ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... 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 in search of other prey; but the rogue swam to and fro, just like a frigate ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... you need not at the same time bend the dorsal vertebr' of your body, unless you wish to be very reverential, ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... of the external ears. 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
... waters, illuminating every large hole even in the 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, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... inject that amount of the culture corresponding to 1 per cent. of the body-weight of a healthy frog, into the reptile's dorsal lymph sac. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... frequent qu'il soit, n'est guere une maladie proprement dite, mais plutot un symptome de la plus haute importance, comme il indique par le centre dorsal du grand nerf sympathique, qu'il y a une affection des organes generateurs qu'on fera bien de ne point negliger. Aussitot que ces affections ou uterines, ou ovariennes ou renales sont gueries par l'emploi de Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, ce mal de dos tourmentant va ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... the Chikrum of the Singphos; it is a thick, very powerful fish, a good deal resembling the Roach: one of two pounds, measures about a foot in length. Outline ovate lanceolate, head small, mouth with four filaments; eyes very large, fins reddish, first ray of the dorsal large spinous. It affects deep water, particularly at the edges of the streams running into such places. {74b} It takes a fly greedily even in quite still water; but as it has a small mouth, the smaller the flies the better. Black hackle is better for it than small ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... of distinguished chiefs) of the tiger-cat. The whole of the skin in one piece is used, except that the skin of the belly and of the lower parts of the forelimbs are cut away. A hole for the warrior's head is made in the mid-dorsal line a little behind the skin of the head, which is flattened out and hangs over the chest, descending to the level of the navel; while the skin of the back, flanks, and hind limbs in one large flap, covers the back and hind parts of the warrior as far as the bend of the knees. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... least bruise or violence on 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... 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, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... 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 whelk are both called 'mantle,' without any evidence to ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... 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 ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... 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 opens ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... very soon after these seizures. On a Friday she bled from the left side of her chest. On the following Friday this flow was renewed, and in addition, blood escaped from the dorsal surfaces of both feet; and on the third Friday, not only did she bleed from the side and feet, but also from the dorsal and palmar surface of both hands. Every succeeding Friday the blood flowed from these places, and finally other points of exit were established on the ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... his nose. He was as handsome a youngster as you would wish to see, slender, gracefully tapering to the base of the broad, powerful tail, wide-finned, radiant in silver and blue-green, and with a splendid crest-like dorsal fin of vivid ultramarine extending almost the whole length of his back. His eyes were large, and blazed with a savage fire. Hanging poised a few feet above the tops of the waving, rose-and-purple sea-anemones and the bottle-green trailers of seaweed, every fin tense ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 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 appearance; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... 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
... Edwardsii), as it is provincially called; a lizard much like the anoles of the houses, of a rich grass-green colour, with orange throat-disk, but much larger and fiercer; or, in the eastern parts of the island, the great iguana (Cyclura lophoma), with it dorsal crest like the teeth of a saw running down all its back, might be seen lying out on the branches of the trees, or playing bo-peep from a hole in the trunk; or, in the swamps and morasses of Westmoreland, the yellow galliwasp (Celestus occiduus), so much dreaded and abhorred, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... earlier, nescio), nothing was clearly visible; they were simply little yellow balls. After some days, two small dark spots were to be seen marking the position of the eyes, and a longitudinal streak indicated the dorsal ridge. Presently everything became more distinct; the mouth and the nasal opening, the eyes and the tail, which lay in a half circle around the body; the skin was so transparent that the beating of the heart and the blood in the vessels ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... 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 at her best. Her growing charms ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... condition of the same organ in any invertebrate animal; and in like manner the spinal cord in the human vertebrae at no period agrees with the corresponding part of the lower kind of animals. The moment it becomes visible in the human embryo, it is entirely dorsal in position; while in mollusks and articulatas a great part, or nearly the whole, is ventral. The same is true of the heart, or centre of the vascular system, which has always a different relative position in the great nervous centre in the human embryo from what it has in any articulate animal, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... species were observed beyond question. The rarest dolphin seen was Tersio peronii, the peculiarity of which is that it has no dorsal fin. This was seen on October 20, 1910, in latitude 42 deg. 51' S. and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard |
