"Elliptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... western extremity of an oblong valley, looking up it lengthwise. It is not a valley, though so called in the language of Spanish America, but a plain walled in on all sides by mountains. It is elliptical in form, the diameter of its foci being ten or twelve miles in length. Its shortest diameter is five or six miles. It has the surface of a green meadow, and its perfect level is unbroken by brake, bush, or hillock. It looks like some quiet lake ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... banneret, from banniere, banner, elliptical for seigneur or chevalier banneret, Med. Lat. banneretus), in feudalism, the name given to those nobles who had the right to lead their vassals to battle under their own banner. Ultimately bannerets obtained a place in the feudal hierarchy between [v.03 p.0354] barons ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the Brachyderes and the Balaninus in common in the eyes of the townsman, the peasant, the child or the Cerceris? Absolutely nothing. The first has an almost cylindrical figure; the second, squat, short and thickset, is conical in front and elliptical, or rather shaped like the ace of hearts, behind. The first is black, strewn with cloudy, mouse-grey spots; the second is yellow ochre. The head of the first ends in a sort of snout; the head of the second tapers into a curved beak, slender as a horse-hair and as long as the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... was drab and dreary and existence seemed a double-blank, my orderly mentioned that he had discovered some old 'golfing bats' in one of the hutments. Evidently they were the remains of the spoils of a lightning foray on the Base. A further search revealed a couple of elliptical balls, quite good in places. So I tipped my cub, Laxey, out of his bunk and we proceeded to resurrect our pre-war form. By-and-by we got adventurous, and Laxey challenged me to play him a match after lunch for ten francs a side. The details required some arranging, as there were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... modern village, the hill terminates in a long, elliptical mound, about one-third of a mile in length. We made the tour of it, and were surprised at finding a large number of columns, each of a single piece of marble. They had once formed a double colonnade, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... with a yellowish-grey tinge, more or less rufous on the head, neck, shoulder and sides of body; a hairy brown muzzle, with pale under-lip; long whiskers, some white, the posterior ones dark; under-parts white; fur soft and fine. The upper lip is lobed as in the hare; ears elliptical, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... (a species of Empis) has been described which excites the female by manipulating a large balloon. "This is of elliptical shape, about seven millimeters long (nearly twice as long as the fly), hollow, and composed entirely of a single layer of minute bubbles, nearly uniform in size, arranged in regular circles concentric with the axis of the structure. The beautiful, glistening whiteness of the object when the sun ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... independent synchronous discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the elliptical basin, and catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the positions and movements of the planets during the period covered by the outward voyage of the Areonal is sufficiently explained by the notes printed thereon. It may, however, be pointed out that though the orbits of the planets are all elliptical, especially those of Mercury and Mars, they are so nearly true circles that, when reduced to the scale of these diagrams, they practically become circles. The exaggerated ellipses so often found in astronomical books are ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... holes, scorpions, and large square gratings over narrow loopholes. There was no window on it, but here and there slits, old embrasures of pierriers and archegayes. At the foot of this high wall was seen, like the hole at the bottom of a rat-trap, a little wicket gate, very elliptical in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... is constructed a large stone basin, open at the bottom, through which springs bubble. From this reservoir the new aqueduct leads. It is an elliptical tunnel of brick, placed under ground, and marked by turrets of brick and stone placed along ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... any discoveries more truly original, or which required for their establishment a more powerful and vigorous mind. The speculations of his predecessors afforded him no assistance. From the cumbrous machinery adopted by Copernicus, Kepler passed, at one step, to an elliptical orbit, with the sun in one of its foci, and from that moment astronomy became a demonstrative science. The splendid discoveries of Newton sprung immediately from those of Kepler, and completed the great ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... of the fact that at the long ranges the angle of fall of the bullets is much greater than at short ranges, it follows that at short ranges the elliptical figure (beaten zone) is much more elongated than at long ranges. In other words, the longer the range, the shorter is the depth of the beaten zone. This is ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... and spreading branches. The leaves of this tree are of a remarkable deep green, are notched about the edges, and are generally from a foot to eighteen inches in length. The fruit itself grows indifferently on all parts of the branches; it is in shape rather elliptical than round, is covered with a rough rind, and is usually seven or eight inches long; each of them grows singly and not in clusters. This fruit is fittest to be used when it is full grown, but is still green; in which state its taste has some distant ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Silkolene coated with varnish is used for the coverings. Ribs (spruce) are curved one inch to the foot, the deepest part of the curve (4 inches) being one foot back from the front edge of the horizontal beam. Struts (also of spruce, as is all the framework) are elliptical in shape. The main beams are in three sections, nearly half round in form, and joined ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... and art forms. It is usually claimed that low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, and completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures which value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context communication (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. What then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... a connecting tube, is an advantage in the same direction, and avoids almost entirely the racking strains due to irregular furnace action. The weight of water carried is less, and that of the boiler may also be made less; while the elliptical form of the two ends gives greater ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... With respect to the extent of the order in the Islands of New Zealand, some recent specimens gathered upon the northern, prove one of its pines to be a Podocarpus; and another, producing a cone, and solitary, alternate scattered elliptical leaves, shows its relation to Agathis of Salisbury, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... AND IRREGULAR CURVES.—This is the hardest thing to do with drawing tools. A properly constructed elliptical figure is difficult, principally, because two different sized curves are required, and the pen runs from one curve into the other. If the two curves meet at the wrong place, you may be sure you will have a ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... orbit of Mars and of the very great difference between his apparent diameters at different times which first led Copernicus to conceive the heliocentric idea. Of Reinhold it is recorded that he considered the orbit of Mercury elliptical, and that he advocated a theory of the moon, according to which her epicycle revolved on an elliptical orbit, thus in a measure anticipating one of the great discoveries of Kepler to which we shall refer presently. The Landgrave of Hesse was ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... equally eloquent; some are copious and fluent as it were in their utterance, while others are confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is quite mute, though some are rather silent. The language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood. (* See Spectator, Vol. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... order in any branch of natural phenomena is but the prelude to the formulation of a set of laws, the simpler as the order is more universal, which describe, and as we say, explain it. Thus the perception of the even, elliptical courses of the heavenly bodies led to the statement of the law of gravitation and the ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the manner requisite to make the Object appear Green, Blew, &c. the Figures of these Particles have a great, but not the only stroak. 'Tis true indeed that the protuberant Particles may be of very great variety of Figures, Sphaerical, Elliptical, Conical, Cylindrical, Polyedrical, and some very irregular, and that according to the Nature of these, and the situation of the Lucid body, the Light must be variously affected, after one manner from Surfaces (I now speak of Physical Surfaces) consisting of Sphaerical, and in another ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... altogether radical on my part, then, for me to assert that many of the stylistic peculiarities found in these Sonnets are attributable to the locale of their inspiration the rear platform of a Sixth Avenue car. One can plainly hear the jar and jounce of the elliptical wheels, the cry, "Step lively!" the six o'clock stampede, the lament of the strap-hanging multitude in ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... used loosely; he was too much preoccupied to be careful about trifles; he probably had John in his mind, and did not bother himself about Alfonso; King Ferdinand, to whom he was writing, did not need to have such points minutely specified, and could understand an elliptical statement; and the fact stated by Columbus was simply that during a residence of fourteen years in Portugal he had not been able to enlist even that enterprising government in behalf ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... bodies which the sun maintains in their elliptical orbit by the great law of gravitation, some possess satellites of their own. Uranus has eight, Saturn eight, Jupiter four, Neptune three perhaps, and the Earth one; this latter, one of the least important of the solar world, is called the Moon, and it is that one that the enterprising genius ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... travel in long elliptical or parabolic orbits round the sun at great velocities. They seem to consist partly of glowing vapours, especially hydrogen, and partly of meteoric stones. 'Shooting stars,' that is to say, stones which fall to the earth, are known to swarm in their wake, and are believed to be ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... flues, filled with straw, are erected, either one at the center or, if the heap is elliptical, one near each end, and the stone and coal are built up around them; thus, when they are burned out, a chimney or two is secured, which may be damped by pieces of stone or sod. Upon this first layer of stone is spread a layer of coal, and upon that a thicker layer of stone (12 inches), ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... that it is possible by just a touch to convert the noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary. The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Mercury, which of course is within that of the Earth, is not circular, but elliptical, and very eccentric, so elongated that at certain times of the year this planet is extremely remote from the solar focus, and receives only half as much heat and light as at the opposite period; and, in consequence, his distance from the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... old ever jousted on a lovelier field than the green little valley toward which the Hon. Sam waved one big hand. It was level, shorn of weeds, elliptical in shape, and bound in by trees that ran in a semicircle around the bank of the river, shut in the southern border, and ran back to the northern extremity in a primeval little forest that wood-thrushes, even then, were ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... passages we have to cross stretches of flat prose twisted into rhyme; Pope seems to have intentionally pitched his style at a prosaic level as fitter for didactic purposes; but besides this we here and there come upon phrases which are not only elliptical and slovenly, but defy all grammatical construction. This was a blemish to which Pope was always strangely liable. It was perhaps due in part to over-correction, when the context was forgotten and the subject had lost its freshness. Critics, again, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... on the map) 40 miles long from east to west, 28 miles wide, and about 886 square miles in area. The next isoseismal (2) includes the places in which some buildings were ruined, but not as a rule completely, and in which there was no loss of life. Its bounding line is also elliptical, the longer axis being about 71 miles long and running nearly east and west. Towards the south this zone is interrupted by the sea. It will be noticed that these isoseismals are not concentric, the second extending much farther to the west and south-west than in the opposite direction. ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... as thus presented was one of the most difficult we can perceive of, but the difficulty was only an incentive to attacking it with all the greater energy. So long as the motion was supposed purely elliptical, so long as the action of the planets was neglected, the problem was a simple one, requiring for its solution only the analytic geometry of the ellipse. The real difficulties commenced when the mutual action of the planets was ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... the Battle of Paardeberg has been somewhat inaccurately given. Paardeberg is a prominent hill on the right bank of the Modder, four miles W.S.W. of the battle centre, Cronje's laager at Vendutie Drift, and lies on the extreme edge of the elliptical arena on which the battle was fought. It seems to have been chosen as the official word because the hill was the only distinctive physical feature shown on the banks of the river in the incomplete surveys of the time, and because the alternative would have been Stinkfontein, a farm ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... to the west, and back again to the north. If the movement had been quite regular, the apex would have described a circle, or rather, as the stem is always growing upwards, a circular spiral. But it generally describes irregular elliptical or oval figures; for the apex, after pointing in any one direction, commonly moves back to the opposite side, not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards other irregular ellipses or ovals are successively described, with their longer [page 2] axes directed to different points ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... evidently impossible for us to attempt to climb it that evening, and we looked about the desolate recesses for a sheltered camping-spot. A high granite wall surrounded us upon three sides, recurring to the southward in long elliptical curves; no part of the summit being less than 2,000 feet above us, the higher crags not infrequently reaching 3,000 feet. A single field of snow swept around the base of the rock, and covered the whole amphitheatre, except where ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... an elliptical carriage spring composed of a single piece, F, or two separate pieces, E E, of steel, united by means of blocks and bolts, substantially as herein ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... shade of brown. Coloured sporidia of this kind are common in Xylaria and Hypoxylon, as well as in certain species of the section Superficiales. Coloured sporidia are often large and beautiful: they are mostly of an elongated, elliptical form, or fusiform. As noteworthy may be mentioned the sporidia of Melanconis lanciformis, those of Valsa profusa, and some species of Massaria, the latter being at first invested with a hyaline coat. Some coloured sporidia ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... Fitch wandered to the banks of the Ohio, where opium helped him end his life in an obscure Kentucky inn, while his steamboat rotted on the shores of the Delaware. Then John Stevens of Hoboken began a series of experiments in 1791, trying elliptical paddles, smoke-jack wheels, and other ingenious contrivances, which soon found the oblivion of Fitch's inventions. Subsequently Rumsey, another ingenious American, sought with no better success to drive a boat by expelling water from the stern. When it was announced ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... form. The grave king of Sparta, the furious demagogue of Athens, the general encouraging his army, the captive supplicating for his life, all are represented as speakers in one unvaried style,—a style moreover wholly unfit for oratorical purposes. His mode of reasoning is singularly elliptical,—in reality most consecutive,—yet in appearance often incoherent. His meaning, in itself sufficiently perplexing, is compressed into the fewest possible words. His great fondness for antithetical expression has not a little conduced to this effect. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wild growths. From the summit of the southern front we sighted the Cima de Ginamar, popularly called El Pozo (the Well). It is a volcanic blowing-hole of oval shape, about fifty feet in long diameter, and the elliptical mouth discharged to the north the lava-bed before seen. Apparently it is connected with the Bandana Peak, further west. Here the aborigines martyred sundry friars before the Conquistadores 'divided land and water' amongst them. The guide declared that the hole ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... old Eddy to preach to us in rhetoric? 'Before you attempt composition, be sure that you have a rounded thought.' This isn't round, it's elliptical. Big Olaf is a friend useful. He's a shrewd fellow, who's been looking stupid for some time. The 'bunch' hasn't been treating him square. You can guess what that means. Anyway, he is sore as well as shrewd, and now I fancy he belongs ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... visible in the sky. Two of them, Ollier's Comet and Halley's, are known to return into sight after intervals of seventy-four and seventy-six years, during which they have visited portions of space a few hundred millions of miles further than the orbit of Neptune. Six comets travel in elliptical orbits that are never so far from the sun as the planet Neptune, and return into visibility in short periods that never exceed seven or eight years. These interior comets of short period seem to be regular members of our world-system in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... succeeding ellipse. The next day I watched a plant similarly secured until the tendril (which was highly sensitive) made an ellipse in a line exactly to and from the light; the movement was so great that the tendril at the two ends of its elliptical course bent itself a little beneath the horizon, thus travelling more than 180 degrees; but the curvature was fully as great towards the light as towards the dark side of the room. I believe Dutrochet was misled by not having secured the internodes, and ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... further, its apparent identity with a substance used by the ancient inhabitants of the northern part of the country in the manufacture of their rude ornaments, as occasionally found in sepulchral urns, such as beads of an elliptical form, and flat parallelograms, perforated edge-wise by some four or five holes a-piece; but I had failed hitherto in detecting in the stone, portions of sufficient bulk for the formation of either the beads or the parallelograms. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... light we can get to see this object well, and so, although the three-inch will show it, we shall use the five-inch. Beginning with a power of one hundred diameters, which exhibits it as a minute elliptical ring, rather misty, very soft and delicate, and yet distinct, we increase the magnification first to two hundred and finally to three hundred, in order to distinguish a little better some of the details of its shape. Upon the whole, however, we find ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... kuklos, a circle; eidos, form). Applied to those scales of fishes which have a regularly circular or elliptical outline ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... observe and imitate the impersonal and elliptical construction of Malay sentences. Notice how much more is left to the imagination than in English, and get rid of the notion that it is necessary to express invariably by nouns or pronouns the agents or objects of the actions spoken of. Ideas are conveyed ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... unrest in the balcony because Faust was singing through laryngitis and a cloud of fog in his throat. A critic who wrote in terms of elliptical rhythms and tonal arabesques tiptoed out for a smoke. One of those sympathetic fits of coughing swept the house. But Lilly sat hunched in her habitual beatific attitude against the chair back, the old opera flowing back to her in association that ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... with a sharp grating sound as of iron cutting into ice, came suddenly to a stop, and the persons gathering round had an opportunity to examine it. It was the work of a village genius, and consisted of some boards, cut in an elliptical form (as, perhaps, the most convenient), supported by two pieces of iron, parallel to each other, to which the boards were fastened, and running the whole length from bow to stern. In the forward part was rigged a mast, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... that of Righistan, it is in my opinion rather more picturesque. There are strangely grouped ruins, the remains of arcades, half-unroofed cupolas, columns without capitals, the shafts of which have retained all the brightness of their enamelling; then a long row of elliptical porticoes closing in one side of the vast quadrilateral. The effect is really grand, for these old monuments of the splendor of Samarkand stand out from a background of sky and verdure that you would seek in vain, even at the Grand Opera, if our actor does not ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... where it was found, on a high tomb with panelled sides, each having seven recesses separated by tiny buttresses. The canopy, ogee-shaped above, and with a plain elliptical arch below, was much mutilated, but seems to have been crocketed and terminated by a finial. It owes its present form to Mr. Cottingham, who restored ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... also used as a special exhibit, and was featured by an Indian maiden standing on a pedestal 23 feet high and holding in her outstretched hand a bundle of tobacco. A miniature log cabin advertised a special brand of tobacco. The horticultural exhibit consisted of an open, three-towered elliptical pavilion and a horn of plenty, apparently pouring apples on a pyramid of natural fruit below. This was made primarily an apple exhibit, more than 800 barrels being used for the purpose. Peaches, melons, pears, cranberries, and other fruits were ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... elliptical. Thus, it was common to add at the end of the letter something like, "I leave it to you to decide." This might be put, "As the king, my lord, sees fit, let him do." But a scribe would often merely say, "As the king sees fit." Such elliptical sentences are ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... May, walking in the woods, I came upon the nest of a whip-poor-will, or rather its eggs, for it builds no nest,—two elliptical whitish spotted eggs lying upon the dry leaves. My foot was within a yard of the mother bird before she flew. I wondered what a sharp eye would detect curious or characteristic in the ways of the bird, so I came ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... which must be considered the most important is that of the "line." A line is described in chalk or paint upon a large space of floor. Instead of one line, there may also be two concentric lines, elliptical in form. The children are taught to walk upon these lines like tight-rope walkers, placing their feet one in front of the other. To keep their balance they make efforts exactly similar to those of real tight-rope walkers, except that they have no danger with which to reckon, ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... be mostly circular in plan, ranging from about thirty to fifty feet in diameter, with walls averaging three feet in thickness, one or more of these being surrounded by an outer wall, approximately elliptical in plan, of some five feet in thickness. There were five of these structures still standing in a sufficient state of preservation to render them recognisable at a distance as buildings, and a great many more—the precise number ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... The elliptical roof, under which the boat at first passed, suddenly rose; but the darkness was too deep, and the light of the lantern too slight, for either the extent, length, height, or depth of the cave to be ascertained. Solemn silence reigned in this basaltic cavern. Not a sound could ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... approaches the semi-elliptical form; but the larger axis of the ellipsis, which would be the cord of the arch, is many times longer than the transverse. Though the sides of this bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... end of the web for the first turn. Sew into an elliptical form three and one-half inches long for the sole. Sew two more rows without widening for the sides of the foot; then sew two rows across the front for the toe; the third row bring all around the top to ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... wilderness of ranges, with its waters starting for either ocean. From the first ridge we crossed after leaving Canyon we had a singular view of range beyond range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding in elliptical valleys, richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far as one could see, were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but the food of wild animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Haddon refers (Geographical Journal, Vol. XVI., p. 422) to conical ground houses with elliptical and circular bases found in villages on the top of steep hills behind the Mekeo district and on the southern spur of Mt. Davidson, and says that in some places, as on the Aduala affluent of the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... Shortly afterwards, however, the computation of a terrestrial degree given by Abbe Picard, and the determination of the Meridional arc, arrived at by the Cassinis, father and son, led scientific men to an entirety different result, and induced them to consider the earth an elliptical figure, elongated towards the polar regions. Passionate discussions arose from this decision, and in them originated immense undertakings, from which astronomical and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Wallenstein, that soldier of fortune, [Footnote: See below, pp. 223, 226.] he nevertheless established several of the fundamental laws of modern astronomy, such as those governing the form and magnitude of the planetary orbits. It was Kepler who made clear that the planets revolve about the sun in elliptical rather than ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... heard conversing in a broad Northumbrian accent, with a burr in most of their words. They were broad-shouldered men, capable of doing any amount of hard work. We came in sight of a fine stone bridge with nine elliptical arches, which connects Newcastle with Gateshead, on the opposite bank. Above it is another magnificent bridge; it is double, the lower roadway, ninety feet above the river, being used for carriages and foot ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... fight?" he said inquiringly, and as he asked his question he fitted his long, elliptical shield well upon his left arm and arranged ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... as it is rendered, without authority by the philosopher Partington) of an ellipse, where it slowly grinds on for ever about its own axis, while the planets, turning about their axes, revolve in elliptical orbits of various dimensions and different ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... of the valley would suggest the existence of the grand elliptical crater of some extinct volcano. But instead of the black sulphuric scoria, that you might expect to see strewed over its base, you behold a verdant landscape of smiling loveliness, park-like plains interposed with groves and copses, here and there a mound of ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... those of the planets. In the case of the latter the orbit is that of an ellipse, while in the case of the comet the orbit may be either that of a parabola or a hyperbola, which may be looked upon as elongated ellipses open at one end. There are, however, some comets whose orbits are perfectly elliptical, and whose return may be calculated with a fair ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... touch with it, just as potently as ever it did. And simply as a wild story, one fancies that it will appeal quite as effectually, no matter how many editions may be its future, to a public perhaps unsympathetic toward its elliptical satire, its caustic wit, its fantastic course of narrative, and its incongruous wavering between the flippant, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... English Gothic she had been rereading an analysis of the structural features of the principal English cathedrals; and she was murmuring over to herself the phrase: "The longitudinal arches of Lincoln have an approximately elliptical form," when there came a knock on the door, and Maria's voice announced: "There's a lady ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... hundred yards or more to the bushy margin of a creek beyond. A smaller stream or a branch of this same appears at one time to have run close to the hill, leaving faint traces of its contour on the meadow, and one small elliptical swale or soft, boggy spot, a few yards across, near the lower corner of Mr. Newell's barn. It was while digging a shallow pit in this swale that the relic was found. It is a gigantic human figure lying on its back, with ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... been was an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the egg-head, with its converging ends curving around the ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... A construction of bricks or stones so placed as by mutual pressure to support each other and a superincumbent weight. They may be semi-circular, segmental, elliptical, stilted, horse-shoe, pointed, trefoiled, ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... was elliptical, nine feet deep, and about twenty-four feet long. Wood was piled in it, and rocks from the dismantled Kaumakapili church. The fire burned until the stones became red and then white, and they, too, were turned with long poles to make the heat even. I inspected the heating process several times. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Balances, and Escapements: and I find applications of Babbage's symbolism to an escapement which I proposed. I have various investigations about the Earth, supposed to project at middle latitudes above the elliptical form. In November an account of the Dolcoath failure (by Whewell) was ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... each of the several intervals a severed ring. Most of these rings broke up, their fragments conglomerated and forming a sphere; one in particular separating into a multitude of minuter spheres, others assuming a highly elliptical form, condensing here and thinning out there; while the central mass grew brighter and denser as it contracted; till there lay before me a perfect miniature of the solar system, with planets, satellites, asteroids, and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... freshness and spontaneity of Mr. MILNE'S humour. The only question was whether an author so fastidiously unstagey, who never underlines his intentions, would be able to accommodate himself to the conditions of a medium that discourages the elliptical method. Well, he did it, and very artfully. He began by making concessions to the habits of his new audience. He wouldn't try them too high at first. In the person of Robert Crawshaw, M.P. (Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR), he introduced them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... bright daylight ahead, and in a few more strides the last trees were passed, and they came out suddenly in an amphitheatre of bare rocks, almost elliptical, but coming together at the head, and bending away like ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... rather broad, pubescent. Proboscis small, withdrawn; eyes pubescent; antennae very short, arista very long; scutellum large, conical, very prominent, extending beyond the base of the abdomen; abdomen nearly elliptical, not longer than the thorax; legs rather broad, pubescent, without bristles; wings rather long and broad; veins of equal size, costal vein ending at rather before half the length of the wing, radial ending at somewhat in front of the tip of the wing, cubital ending at hardly in front of the tip, ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... as a school. Of the abbey church an insignificant portion alone remains, and of it the most interesting part is the spire. In the Chapelle des Bourbons (15th cent.) are enormous corbels under the empty niches. About 300 yards distant is the Maison Abbatiale, 15th cent., with flattened elliptical-headed windows and ogee arches over the doors. At the entrance is a collection of columns, capitals, etc., from the first church founded in the 10th cent. Upstairs there is a small museum; entrance, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... he struck his horse with a passion that astonished the animal and the next moment shamed himself. He stooped instantly and apologized to the quivering creature; and was as instantly forgiven. Then he began to talk to himself in those elliptical, unfinished sentences, which the inner man understands, and so thoroughly finishes—" If I were not morally sure—It is as plain as can be—How in the name of wonder?—I'll say so much for myself—I am ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... bands of blue (top), white, red (double width), white, and blue, with the coat of arms in a white elliptical disk on the hoist side of the red band; above the coat of arms a light blue ribbon contains the words, AMERICA CENTRAL, and just below it near the top of the coat of arms is a white ribbon with ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... genius, the German Kepler, worked out the mathematical laws which govern the movements of the planets. He made it clear that the planets revolve around sun in elliptical instead of circular orbits. Kepler's investigations afterwards led to the discovery of the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... passages in this document are very involved and elliptical, and in some places the sense is not at all clear. The translation is necessarily somewhat free, at times, in wording; but it is believed that the author's meaning is, as a rule, accurately rendered.—Rev. T. C. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... permitted, I might enter still further into detail, and show that the polarization between the plane and the circular is elliptical, and even the positions of the longer and shorter axes and the direction of motion in each case. But sufficient has, perhaps, been said ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... power of illumination which strike most vertically;) and note that there is, therefore, to every solid curvature of surface, a necessarily proportioned gradation of light, the gradation on a parabolic solid being different from the gradation on an elliptical or spherical one. Now, when your purpose is to represent and learn the anatomy, or otherwise characteristic forms, of any object, it is best to place it in this kind of direct light, and to draw it as it is seen when we look at it in a direction at right angles to that of ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... is a full constructed hill, surrounded by an innumerable number of others, differing in shape and dimensions, arched in various forms, circular, and elliptical, which communicate by passages, occupied by guards and attendants, and surrounded by nurseries and magazines. But when the community is in an infant state, these are contiguous to the royal residence; and in proportion as the size of the queen increases, her chamber is ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... in a singular way. They have their apexes or points on the outer edge of the bone; and these apexes or points are so contrived, that, lying upon, and seemingly losing themselves, on the processes of the anterior maxillary, they complete, superiorly and posteriorly, that elliptical bony opening into the nose which was commenced by the maxillary anteriorly and inferiorly. The nasal cavity of the dog, therefore, and of all carnivorous animals, terminates by a somewhat circular opening, more or less in the form of an ellipse. This bony aperture varies in size in different ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... properly furnished, will supply a more convenient form of free elevator. One side will be used by those who are going up and the other by those who wish to come down. The "well" of the staircase for such a lift is made in elliptical form, like the shadow projection of a circle. Steps can be provided so that, when not in motion, the lift will be a staircase not differing much from ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... outer wall of this cluster to the unaided eye appears to be elliptical, but it will be seen from the plan that the ellipse is somewhat pointed on the side farthest from the cliff. As in other cases of ancient pueblos with curved outlines, the outer wall seems to have been built first, and the inner ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... fame, and he could not but choose life for him. Yet, as the multitudinous sounds about him yielded for a moment to that brother's shout, and he knew that the moment had come, which would soon settle all, he found himself staring at the elliptical edge of the hangar, with an anticipation which held in it as much terror as joy, for the end of a great hope or the beginning of a great triumph was compressed into this trembling ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... I struck it stood an extraordinary hill or ridge, consisting of a huge red turtle back having a number of enormous red stones almost egg-shaped, traversing, or rather standing in a row upon, its whole length like a line of elliptical Tors. I could compare it to nothing else than an enormous oolitic monster of the turtle kind carrying its eggs upon its back. A few cypress pine-trees grew in the interstices of the rocks, giving it a most elegant appearance. Hoping to find ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... riches of the people," said Mr. de Saint Cricq, a minister who has laid not a few shackles upon our commerce. This was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor constitute the riches of the people." No,—this statesman intended to say, that it is the intensity of labor, which measures riches; and the proof of this is, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... were of our English make, but though very good of the kind, yet far short of what might be expected, could we once find a way of making Glasses Elliptical, or of some more true shape; for though both Microscopes, and Telescopes, as they now are, will magnifie an Object about a thousand thousand times bigger then it appears to the naked eye; yet the Apertures of the Object-glasses ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the posterior part of the cranial cavity, immediately above the medulla oblongata; it is globular or elliptical in shape, the transverse diameter being greatest. The body of the cerebellum is composed of gray matter externally and of white matter in the center. The cerebellum has the function of co-ordinating movements; ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... emanation which should produce the irregular refraction, I wished to try what Elliptical waves, or rather spheroidal waves, would do; and these I supposed would spread indifferently both in the ethereal matter diffused throughout the crystal and in the particles of which it is composed, according to the last mode in which I have explained transparency. It seemed ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... was unanimously adopted. That this valley must be our future place of abode was at once decided by all of us. A more careful examination showed its superficies to be over sixty-two square miles. Allowing thirteen miles for the elliptical lake stretching out under the Kenia cliffs, and fifteen miles for the woods which clothed the heights around the valley, there remained above thirty miles of open park-land surrounding the lake, except where the Kenia cliffs touched the water, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... of three stories, not placed one above the other, but descending in terraces from the top of the hill, deserves a visit or two. You will there see a pretty court surrounded with columns and small rooms, one of which—of an elliptical shape and opening on a garden, and lighted by the evening twilight, but shielded from the sun by windows and by curtains, the glass panes and rings of which have been found—is the pleasantest nook cleared out among these ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... President April 30, 1789." Some critics insist upon the insertion of on before a date, as "on April 30," but general usage justifies its omission. With equal force they might urge the use of in before 1789. The entire expression of day, month, and year is elliptical. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... the preceding, more elliptical in outline, with a thinner shell and with large granules throughout the endoplasm. The nucleus is spherical and subcentral in position and possesses a distinct central granule. This may be a small variety ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... profound because he was obscure, and many other people, hardly less mistaken, have supposed him to be obscure because he was profound. He was frequently profound, he was occasionally obscure, but as a matter of fact the two have little or nothing to do with each other. Browning's dark and elliptical mode of speech, like his love of the grotesque, was simply a characteristic of his, a trick of is temperament, and had little or nothing to do with whether what he was expressing was profound or superficial. Suppose, for example, that a person well read in English poetry but unacquainted with Browning's ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... interruptions in the surface of the mirror indicate a diminution in the quantity of the milk, with the exception, however, of small oval or elliptical plates which are found in the mirror, on the back part of the udders of the best cows, as represented in the cut already given, marked A. These ovals have a peculiar tint, which is occasioned by the downward direction of the hair which forms them. In the best cows these ovals exist with the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... moving forwardly, or changing the position of its body horizontally, in performing the undulatory motion of the wing, it causes the body to rock, so that at the point where the wing joins the body, an elliptical motion ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... rotation would suffice to differentiate that part of the ether from the rest, and give to it a degree of individuality not possessed by the rest; and such an atom might be called a state of ether. In like manner, if other forms of motion, such as transverse waves, circular and elliptical spirals, or others, exist in the ether, then such movements give special character to the part thus active, and it would be proper to speak of such states of the ether, but even thus the word would not be used in the ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... covers the gills of the young plant and later is seen as a collar-like ring on the stem, soft, lax, deflexed, in old specimens it is often destroyed. The spores are white and broadly elliptical. ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... classes, or he may go lengthwise of the building and see what the various nations have to show in a given class. No better plan could be devised if they are all to be assembled under one roof. The same plan has been tried before, especially in the great elliptical building at Vienna. It is probable that the Philadelphia plan of isolated buildings may find imitators in the future, and then this plan of national and subjective arrangement may be carried out without the violent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... strata consist of a series of marls and limestones, many of them thinly laminated, and which appear to have slowly accumulated in a lake probably fed by springs holding carbonate of lime in solution. The elliptical area over which this fresh-water formation has been traced extends, according to Sir Roderick Murchison, for a distance of ten miles east and west from Berlingen, on the right bank of the river to Wangen, and to Oeningen, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... of the people," say some theorists. This was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor constitute the riches of the people." No; these theorists intended to say, that it is the intensity of labor which measures riches; and the proof of this ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... pronounced movements of natural objects. If the reader will turn to the poem, "A Roxbury Garden", he will find in the first two sections an attempt to give the circular movement of a hoop bowling along the ground, and the up and down, elliptical curve of a ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... occurred between Peronne and Montdidier. To his father he wrote with more precision, but in his usual elliptical style. ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... of the water. It will be understood that the motion of the walking bar being circular, and that of the heads of the paddles being vertical and nearly rectilinear, the motion of the blades of the paddles must be elliptical, inclining to the horizontal; and that the position of the paddles is kept so nearly vertical that they will meet with less resistance in entering or leaving the water than those of a common paddle wheel, ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... theory was advanced by Dr. Croll, and is still entertained by many. The path of the earth round the sun is not circular, but elliptical, and there are times when the gravitational pull of the other planets increases the eccentricity of the orbit. It was assumed that there are periods of great length, separated from each other by still longer periods, when this eccentricity of the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... forms a large shrub or low tree with oblong, elliptical, sub-evergreen leaves. The flowers are white and borne in large corymbs, which are followed by scarlet berries ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... is formed by the fitting of the ovoid (egg-shaped) end of one bone into an elliptical cavity of a second bone. Examples of condyloid joints are found at the knuckles and where the wrist bones articulate with the radius and ulna. They move easily in two directions, like hinge joints, and ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... the star is becoming more and more elliptical," Arcot replied. "As the other sun pulls us, the star beneath us grows smaller with the distance; then, as we begin to fall back toward it, it grows larger again. Since this is taking place many ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... additional complication; until at last Kepler swept all these circles away, and substituted the conception of an exact ellipse. Even this is found not to represent with complete correctness the accurate observations of the present day, which disclose many slight deviations from an orbit exactly elliptical. Now Dr. Whewell has remarked that these successive general expressions, though apparently so conflicting, were all correct: they all answered the purpose of colligation; they all enabled the mind to represent to itself with ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of languages in Geneva, based on the diary of Razumov. It is a favourite device of Conrad's which might be described as, structurally progressing from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. His novel, Chance, is a specific instance of his intricate and elliptical method. Several personages of the story relate in almost fugal manner, the heroine appearing to us in flashes as if reflected by some revolving mirror. It is a difficult and elusive method, but it presents us with many facets of character ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the usual form. The retained que is therefore emphatic.—Voeux very frequent in poetry for prieres, for metrical reasons. The whole expression is elliptical: qui te rend [a moi ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... stables, farms, etc., is enormous. The tracks are level, with start and finish directly in front of the grand stand, and are either one mile or one-half mile in length. They are always of earth, and are usually elliptical in shape, though the "kite-shaped track" was for a time popular on account of its increased speed. In this there is one straight stretch of one-third mile, then a wide turn of one-third mile, and then a straight run of one-third mile back ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead |
