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More "Configuration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the island to the destination. It is now an all-rail run of twenty-four hours. The project for a "spinal railway" from one end of the island to the other had been under consideration for many years. The configuration lent itself excellently to such a system, and not at all well to any other. A railway map of such a system shows a line, generally, through the middle of the island along its length, with numerous branch lines running north and south to ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little from the ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... come to on the spot (see note p. 512 [footnote to Chapter 24 Paragraph 7]); and that, from the attentive study of the geological map of Mr. Bain and other materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of Mr. Oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the Geographical Society in 1852, but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my information! There was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being thus fairly "cut out" by the man who had foretold ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... says: "It is a fascinating guess that the electrons constitute the fundamental substratum of which all matter is composed. That a grouping of say 700 electrons, 350 positive and 350 negative, interleaved or interlocked in a state of violent motion so as to produce a stable configuration under the influence of their centrifugal inertia and their electric forces, constitutes an atom of hydrogen. That sixteen times as many, in another stable grouping, constitute an atom of oxygen. That some 16,000 of them go to form an atom of sodium; about 100,000 ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the progress of scientific knowledge has enabled man to measure the depths of the ocean, which were formerly believed to be as unfathomable as boundless in extent. From soundings which have been taken, it is ascertained that the configuration of the earth at the bottom of the sea, is similar to that portion which rises above the surface, undulating, and interspersed with hills, and valleys, and plains, and mountain ranges, and abrupt precipices. The greatest depth of water at which soundings have been obtained, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... urged against the promiscuous use of this word in general. It has in fact become customary to designate all morbid manifestations not of traumatic or infectious origin as degenerative. Indeed, Magnan's classification of degenerates makes it possible that the highest general configuration of nervous accomplishment need not exclude the application of the concept of degeneration. Under the circumstances, it is a question what use and what new content the judgment of "degeneration" still possesses. ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... acquainted with the character which the influence of that wayward and melancholy orb creates. Thus, the aspect of Herschel neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and ambition, and pride of heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the felicitous configuration of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at thy birth. That yearning for something beyond the narrow bounds of the world, that love for reverie, that passionate romance, yea, thy very leaning, despite thy worldly sense, to these occult and starry mysteries;—all are bestowed on thee by this new ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty— and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... initial hydrographic meridians, Greenwich and Paris, a prime meridian has been taken, the reign (practical influence) of which is principally over the sea; and this meridian, instead of being chosen with reference to the configuration of the continents, is borrowed from an observatory; that is to say, that it is placed on the globe in a hap-hazard manner, and is very inconveniently situated for the function that it is to perform. Finally, instead of profiting by the lessons of the past, national ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... defence. The Chinese massed there a force of seventeen thousand men, and made preparations for a decisive contest, building parapets, mounting guns, and strengthening the position by every device of modern warfare. Their infantry had the advantage of being armed with repeating rifles, and the configuration of the ground offered little cover for an attacking army. Against this strong position the Japanese moved in two columns; one marching northward from Seoul, the other striking westward from Yuensan. Forty days elapsed before the Japanese forces came into action, and one ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... that it looks as though Providence had just planned the configuration of the country ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... literature, and he had known many of the famous people of the Victorian era. True to my plan of asking questions, I asked him whether he had ever seen Cardinal Newman. He replied by a story which was revealing as to a certain fierceness in Newman's character and mental configuration. In any case, it had both rhetorically and intellectually a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... marked every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage that he ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... from dark horizons. Under such circumstances, how could they distinguish the shape of the ground, the extent of the seas, the position of the islands? How could they recognize the hydrographic network of the country or the orographic configuration, and distinguish the hills and mountains ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... plains, and passes into rolling prairies. Its length is about two hundred miles, and its general direction N. N. W. and S. S. E. Its northern termination (called Tete du Couteau in consequence of its peculiar configuration) is not more than fifteen to twenty miles across; its elevation above the level of the Big Stone Lake is eight hundred and ninety feet, and above the ocean one thousand nine hundred and sixteen ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... track—even Felix could scarcely have told—for the dew and the wind had made the faint traces of the elephants quite indiscernible now to civilized eyes; and Berselius never once looked at the ground under his feet, he was led entirely by the configuration of the land. That to the eyes of Adams was hopeless. For the great elephant country is all alike, and one ridge is the counterpart of another ridge, and one grassy plain of another grassy plain, and the scattered trees tell you nothing when you are lost, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the oldest civilizations of the West concentrated themselves along the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, so the most ancient Chinese civilization is found concentrated along the south bank of the Yellow River. The configuration of the land as shown on a modern map assists us to understand how the industrious cultivators and weavers, finding the flat and so-called loess territory too confined for their ever-increasing numbers, threw out colonies ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... drawing a comparison between him and that peculiar type of per son commonly called a Virginian bean-pole. Nor, when he gets himself (as is not uncommon with him) "all over" native brown homespun, does his configuration materially change, there yet remaining, and boldly refusing to be disguised, that face so full of penetration, and those features so sharp. The waggishly inclined have identified them with the wizardry of dividing storm ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... cried, pointing to it, "this is evidently water, and all this land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas? Where the oceans are upon the outer crust, is land here. These relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the continents ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... scientific speculation has done in the effort to explain these mysteries. Laplace's hypothesis can certainly find no standing ground either in the Orion Nebula or in those of a spiral configuration, whatever may be its situation with respect to the grand Nebula of Andromeda, or the "ring'' and "planetary'' nebul. Some other hypothesis more consonant with the appearances must be found. Among the many that have been proposed the most elaborate ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... his master soon called him back, for the time had not come to commence hunting; that would be attended to later. The engineer was not a man who would allow himself to be diverted from his fixed idea. It might even have been said that he did not observe the country at all, either in its configuration or in its natural productions, his great aim being to climb the mountain before him, and therefore straight towards it he went. At ten o'clock a halt of a few minutes was made. On leaving the forest, the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... copied from some preceding sensible impression, but neither from within nor from without can we have received an impression from which this particular idea can have been copied. No keenest scrutiny of any portion of matter, no study of its external configuration or internal structure could, previously to experience, enable us to conjecture that it could produce any effect whatever, still less any particular effect: could enable us to guess, for instance, that ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... made us acquainted with the interior configuration of bodies; or has shown the existence of a vegetation and of plants, the existence of which we ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... sees the configuration of the country as on a map; the high Jebel Orbata, 1170 metres, now covered with snow, coming forward to meet you on the other side of the wide valley. From this point it is easy to realize, as did the commander of that French expedition, the significance ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... may be said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. Among animals, the mule, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... only with all the forces of my mind; my father and grandfather being known to have served thy illustrious sire in camp with loyal endurance of the toils of war. Relying therefore on thy guidance and regard, I have resolved to begin with the position and configuration of our own country; for I shall relate all things as they come more vividly, if the course of this history first traverse the places to which the events belong, and take their situation as ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... tidal evolution in a fresh light. If the moon now departed to any considerable extent from showing the constant face to the earth, it would seem that its retreat could not have been caused by tides. Some other agent for producing the present configuration would be necessary, just as we found that some other agent than the tides has been necessary in the case ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to pass ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... new and original impression being formed in marble or other material, or any new and useful pattern, or print, or picture, to be either worked into or worked on, or printed, or painted, or cast, or otherwise fixed on any article of manufacture, or any new and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture not known or used by ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Europe—where should the ballad draw pith and sap and colour if not on such a soil and among such a people? If Mr. Buckle was able to trace the complexion and form of Scottish religion in the climate and configuration of Scotland, much more easily should we be able to find the atmosphere and scenery of Scotland ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... hasten to carry into execution the plans which he had originally formed only with the view to aggrandizement. He had delayed too long, either because the favourable configuration of the stars had not yet presented itself, or, as he used to say, to check the impatience of his friends, because THE TIME WAS NOT YET COME. The time, even now, was not come: but the pressure of circumstances no longer allowed him to await ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unreasonably shocked by such vulgarities. But we should at least endeavour to correct the rash judgments which we may be disposed to form on these occasions, and should learn to recognize and to prize a sound texture and just configuration, though disguised beneath a homely or uncouth drapery. It was an Apostle who declared that he had come (to the learned and accomplished Grecians too) "not with excellency of speech, or the wisdom of words." From these he had studiously abstained, lest he should have seemed to owe ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... general configuration of the earth's surface as permanent a continuous and progressive dispersal of species from the centre to the circumference, i.e. southwards, seems inevitable. If an observer were placed above a point ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... island in the Mediterranean, lying off the SW. extremity of Italy, to which it belongs, and from which it is separated by the narrow strait of Messina, 2 m. broad; the three extremities of its triangular configuration form Capes Faro (NE.), Passaro (S.), and Boco (W.); its mountainous interior culminates in the volcanic Etna, and numerous streams rush swiftly down the thickly-wooded valleys; the coast-lands are exceptionally fertile, growing (although agricultural methods are extremely primitive) ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Standing in the midst of this frightful eruption from the heart of the mountains, one sees, as far as the eye can reach, a landscape utterly forbidding. North for sixty miles lie the high chains of the Mission range, and a cuplike configuration of the mountains close to the valley affords a resting-place for the deepest snows of winter and a precipitous escape for the torrents of June. Here, when the sun reaches its summer height or a sweet-grass wind blows soft or a cloudburst above the peaks ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... of one character, it seldom is so on any one farm in this country, but it is all good class. Most of it is a rich black humus, resting on clay and mountain limestone. In configuration it is of the roughest, like the country generally, being an abrupt succession of ranges, gullies, and basins, in every variety of ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... dark, and consolidated. And now the successive flashes of chain lightning caused the whole cloud to appear like a sort of irregular network, and displayed a thousand fantastic images. The driver bespoke my attention to a remarkable configuration in the cloud; he said every flash of lightning near its centre discovered to him distinctly the form of a man sitting in an open carriage drawn by a black horse. But in truth I saw no such thing. The man's fancy was doubtless at ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... properly a voice [Greek omitted] is an articulate sound, which illustrates [Greek omitted] the understanding of man. Epicurus says that it is an efflux emitted from things that are vocal, or that give sounds or great noises; this is broken into those fragments which are after the same configuration. Like figures are round figures with round, and irregular and triangular with those of the same kind. These falling upon the ears produce the sense of hearing. This is seen in leaking vessels, and in fullers when they fan or blow ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Peggy in my eye for you; by the same token, as the night's could, warm your tooth, avick; there's waker wather nor this in Lough Mecall. Sorra sup of it over I keep for my own use at all, barrin' when I take a touch o' configuration in my bowels, or, may be, when I'm too long at my prayers; for, God help me, sure I'm but sthrivin', wid the help o' one thing an' another, to work out my salvation as well as I can! Your health, any how, an' a merry Chris'mas to you!—not forgettin' ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Paris, as our American belles and dandies? The newest cut in garments which was hatched in Paris beneath the crescent-moon, her waning rays see carried to its utmost verge in our bustling marts. We follow the revolutions in the configuration of coats, from square to round, and from round to angular, with as scrupulous and painful a precision as if our national honor depended on the issue. Nay, we are usually a little too faithful, and fairly 'out-Herod Herod.' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... other State by mountains, or valleys, or gulfs, political liberty was engendered. The difficulties of cultivating a barren soil on the highlands inured the inhabitants to industry and economy, as in Scotland and New England, while the configuration of the country strengthened the powers of defense, and shut the people up from those invasions which have so often subjugated a plain and level country. These natural divisions also kept the States from political union, and fostered a principle of repulsion, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... interwoven with a grid of carbon-linked atoms. Now the trick was to produce that stuff. Calculation revealed what elements would be needed, and what spatial arrangement—only how did you get the atoms to assume the required configuration and hook up ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... animal and vegetable life would perish. It draws from the ocean a current of wind laden with moisture which blows steadily for two months toward the northwest and causes what is called the rainy season. That wind is called the southwest monsoon. The quantity of rain that falls depends upon the configuration of the land. Any cause which cools the winds from the sea and leads to the condensation of the vapor they carry—any obstacle which blocks their course—causes precipitation. Through all the northern part of India there is a heavy rainfall during April, May and June, the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... inland sea, and intersected by a few long or easily navigable rivers; all its known chains of mountains are of moderate height, rising in terraces, down which the waters find their way in cataracts, not through deep ravines and fertile valleys. Owing to this configuration, its high table lands are without streams, a phenomenon unknown in any other part of the world; while, in the lower countries, the rivers, when swelled with the rains, spread into floods and periodical lakes, or lose themselves in marshes. According ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... effort bring to mind examples of independent societies in tropical regions, where, these things being neglected, the resultant government is a mockery. Have we any reason to believe that the Filipino, untrained, inexperienced, occupying an undeveloped area of special configuration in a region where continuous effort is disagreeable and initiative distressing, will achieve success where others of greater original fitness have made ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... and shaven, sloped away from a terrace which ran the whole length of the house, meeting the gravelled drive as it curved past the house-door. Beyond lay dim sweet alleys, over-arched by trees, and below, where a sudden dip in the configuration of the land admitted of it, were grassy terraces, gay with beds of flowers, linked together by short flights of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... reposing in an immense armchair, covered with Hungary leather. His two elbows rested on the arms and enabled him to support in his hands the largest, the reddest, the fattest face that had ever ornamented the configuration of a Dutch functionary before. Mr Jansen Pyl wore at that moment the radiant look of satisfaction which only a magistrate can assume who feels conscious that he is in the full sunshine of the approbation of his sovereign. His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. Within his temples dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar aspects and the configuration of constellations. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... were relieved over one fact: they had come upon no broad stream or river. Indeed, they had seen but the one stream which proved such a means of enjoyment to them, and the configuration of the country rendered it unlikely that they would meet any thing of the kind, until after passing the ridge where they expected to ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... studying a paper with the signs of the Zodiac in the usual formulary of a nativity. At the coming of the cry, he arose, and observed the heavens intently; then he shouted, 'There is no God but God! Lo, Mars, Lord of the Ascendant—Mars, with his friends, Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter in happy configuration, and the moon nowhere visible. Hail the Prince!' And while his answer was passing below, the man on the roof marked the planets in their Houses exactly as they were that midnight between Monday and Tuesday in the year 1430. Have I in aught erred, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... showed, The same is true. And if the reason be Unable to unravel us the cause Why objects, which at hand were square, afar Seemed rounded, yet it more availeth us, Lacking the reason, to pretend a cause For each configuration, than to let From out our hands escape the obvious things And injure primal faith in sense, and wreck All those foundations upon which do rest Our life and safety. For not only reason Would topple down; but even our very life Would straightaway collapse, unless we dared ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... the way, point out this valley," said the Emir as to a dog, when they were near enough to observe the configuration of those heights. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... rises in the Argonne, southwest of Verdun. Through the Champagne region its banks are of gradual slope, but shortly after it passes Rethel, on its westerly course, the configuration changes sharply, and at Craonne the bluffs overlooking the river are 450 feet high. It is easy to see what an inaccessible barrier is made by such a line of cliffs. For forty miles this line of bluffs ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... which are mellow with the golden calm of his discovered peace, he tells how, having reached the climacteric which he had set at forty years, he went apart into the solitude of the Ermitage to inquire into the configuration of his own soul, and to fix once for all his opinions and his principles. In the exquisite third Reverie two phrases occur continually. His purpose was 'to find firm ground'—'prendre une assiette,'—and his means to this discovery was 'spiritual honesty'—'bonne foi.' Rousseau's deep concern ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... obvious resource. From the battlements at the top, which is surmounted by an old disused light-house, you see the little com- pact rectangular town, which looks hardly bigger than a garden-patch, mapped out beneath you, and follow the plain configuration of its defences. You take possession of it, and you feel that you ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to 100 feet perpendicularly from the water. It is really difficult to describe the appearance of the banks at this place; so singular were they in character, and so varied in form. Here they had the most beautiful columnar regularity, with capitals somewhat resembling the Corinthian order in configuration; there they showed like falls of muddy water that had suddenly been petrified; and in another place they resembled the time-worn battlements of a feudal castle. It will naturally be asked, of what could these cliffs have been composed to assume so many different forms? and what could have operated ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the summers are temperate and the winters barely sufferable." It is as though there were two distinct regions covering the same area, for there are marked differences throughout, except in topographic configuration, between the lowlands and the uplands or high plateaus. The lowlands present an appearance which is barren and desolate in the extreme, although the soil is fertile and under irrigation yields good crops. Vegetation is limited to a scanty growth of ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... surrounded, the skies that overshadow them,—all these exert a powerful influence on their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... satisfaction. And Gianni, taking note that the place was lonely, made up to her, and had such speech of her as he might, and being taught by her after what fashion he must proceed, if he would have further speech of her, he departed, but not till he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the configuration of the place; and having waited until night was come and indeed far spent, he returned thither, and though the ascent was such that 'twould scarce have afforded lodgment to a woodpecker, won his way up and entered the garden, where, finding a pole, he set ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... work have been photographed from a globe of Mars specially made for the purpose from various charts. In all the maps the south is at the top and the north at the bottom; and the series shows the general surface configuration all round the planet, together with the principal canal lines which have been observed; but many other canal lines exist, especially on the dark areas near the south pole. These lines are usually straight and uniform in width throughout their whole length: indeed it ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the absence of any marked changes in the physical configuration of the district since the same grotto was a place of sepulture, we must remember that it is the normal state of the earth's surface to be undergoing great alterations in one place, while other areas, often in close proximity, remain for ages without any modification. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... to detect in the configuration of the district a certain identity with our own county of Essex, in England, where a cousin of Bill's had a cottage, and where, some day, we were to have a cottage too. Our home is called Wigboro' House, after the cousin's, and we have settled it that, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... stared hard at the low ridge of an outlying island where a cow had been put to pasture. The hillocky back of that lone ruminant grew black as ink in the glow of sunset. The creature exhibited a strange fixity of outline, as if it had been a chance configuration of rocks. Rackby in due time felt a flaming impatience shoot upward from his heels. Water soughed and chuckled at the foot of the crab-apple tree, but these eager little voices could no longer soothe or even detain him with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... particular attributes which we may select for the purposes of definition. There is no assignable reason why a rational animal should have hair on its head or a nose on its face, and yet man, as a matter of fact, has both; and generally the particular bodily configuration of man can only be regarded as an inseparable accident of his nature ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... celebrity on the names of the naturalists and astronomers who have been appointed by various governments to share the dangers of those undertakings; but though these eminent men have given us precise notions of the external configuration of countries, of the natural history of the ocean, and of the productions of islands and coasts, it must be admitted that maritime expeditions are less fitted to advance the progress of geology and other parts of physical science, than travels ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... infancy, should have become imbued with the spirit of this belief, is no more than might have been expected; and hence arose the at one time powerful and generally-accepted doctrine of "Catastrophism." That the succession of phenomena upon the globe, whereby the earth's crust had assumed the configuration and composition which we find it to possess, had been a discontinuous and broken succession, was the almost inevitable conclusion of the older geologists. Everywhere in their study of the rocks they met with apparently impassable gaps, and breaches of continuity that could not be ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... Kaffir has the makings of a politician, and therefore it was no wonder that so many of the well-organised military schemes in this unlucky war came to grief. But in the case at Stormberg there were other difficulties to contend with. The map of the ground was utterly unreliable. The configuration of the hills was incorrectly presented and the distances badly judged. The general knowledge of the direction was so imperfect that none was sufficiently well informed to put a check upon the movements of the guide, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... A strange, shrivelled creature seemed to have taken possession of it. He raised his head, and peered about him. He and three soldiers—youngsters, like himself, who had never before been under fire—appeared to be utterly alone in that hell. They were the end men of the regiment, and the configuration of the ground completely hid them from ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said, giving them absolution with faint damns, "but it will entail a great deal of extra labor. A hundred and nine miles is a great distance to carry equipment, and, actually, the distance is a great deal more, considering the configuration of the terrain. The...." ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... understood, namely, that by a chain or ridge of mountains we do not necessarily intend a continuous elevation, the term may be conveniently used in order to express the configuration of mountains. These chains surround or border upon greater or less basins, which are each distinguished by the name of the principal stream that conveys its surface waters to the ocean, or they may, as has been stated, envelop a table land, whence there is no issue for the waters, or no ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the unfettered use of the natural materials of wealth in her soil and in her people, and of the facilities of internal and external commerce supplied by her physical configuration and her geographical position—if her interests were protected by a Parliament sitting in her capital, securing the expenditure at home of her annual revenue, both public and private, rendering impossible that destructive haemorrhage of her income by which she is impoverished, aiding ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... such stations, you get an insight into the configuration of the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discover at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into other regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... The configuration of the heights and gorges in the direction of the Saltillo road, as visible from the point attained by our advance on the morning of the 19th, led me to suspect that it was practicable to turn all the works in that direction, and thus cut the enemy's line of communication. After ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... it may be said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. Among animals, the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... fell with the population. From that diagram I took the figures for 1913, 1918 and 1919. These figures should be constantly borne in mind by any one who wishes to realize how catastrophic the shortage of labor in Russia actually is, and to judge how sweeping may be the changes in the social configuration of the country if that shortage continues to increase. Here are ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... If the configuration of the theatre of operations be favorable to a movement against the extremity of the enemy's line of defence, this direction maybe best calculated to lead to ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... "Central Asia." "In this," says La Roquette, "he has laid down and systematized the principal scientific results of his expedition in Asia, and has recorded some ingenious speculation as to the shape of the continents and the configuration of the mountains of Tartary, giving special attention to the vast depression which stretches from the north of Europe to the centre of Asia beyond the Caspian Sea and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... is no denying that it looks as though Providence had just planned the configuration of the country to ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... height of the pyramid. Other results which modern science has achieved, but which by merely human means the architects of the pyramid could not have obtained, were also supernaturally communicated to them; so that the true mean density of the earth, her true shape, the configuration of land and water, the mean temperature of the earth's surface, and so forth, were either symbolised in the great pyramid's position, or in the shape and dimensions of its exterior and interior. In the pyramid also were preserved the true, because supernaturally ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... accumulations of seaweed, rolled stones, &c., have been noticed as much as 20 ft. above the present level. But the upheaval does not seem to affect all parts equally. Even in historic times it has vastly changed the aspect and configuration ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... enlargement of the Triple Alliance into a Central European Federation. Our military strength in Central Europe would by this means be considerably increased, and the extraordinarily unfavourable geographical configuration of our dominions would be essentially improved in case of war. Such a federation would be the expression of a natural community of interests, which is founded on the geographical and natural conditions, and would insure the durability of the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... suspected." The jeweller's wife went home and did as she was instructed. In an hour Ahmed followed her, and told the jeweller he had made his calculations, and found by the aspect of the sun and moon, and by the configuration of the stars, that the ruby was at that moment lying under the pillow of his couch on the side farthest from the door. The jeweller thought Ahmed must be crazy; but as a ray of hope is like a ray from ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... singular mortality at this time prevailed amongst the cats of Vienna, Basle, Copenhagen, and other places. Cats being so eminently an electric animal, of course he attributed this epizootic to electricity. During the same period, he persuaded himself that a peculiar configuration of clouds prevailed; this he took as a collateral proof of his electrical hypothesis. His own headaches, too, which in all probability were a mere remote effect of old age, and a direct one of an inability [Footnote: Mr. Wasianski is quite in the wrong here. If ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... formed by a deep indentation in the land on their starboard hand, the shore of which, starting from the rocky point they had just rounded, rapidly rose almost sheer from the water's-edge to about the same height as the precipitous cliff on their left, which it strongly resembled in general configuration, being a steep rocky face densely covered with tropical vegetation, in and out of which, by the way, darted numberless birds of brilliant plumage, whilst monkeys were to be seen here and there gambolling among the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the surrounding plains, and passes into rolling prairies. Its length is about two hundred miles, and its general direction N. N. W. and S. S. E. Its northern termination (called Tete du Couteau in consequence of its peculiar configuration) is not more than fifteen to twenty miles across; its elevation above the level of the Big Stone Lake is eight hundred and ninety feet, and above the ocean one thousand nine hundred and sixteen feet. Starting from this ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... of Lieutenant Myrtle had upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell from an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to narrate, his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airmen, Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield, would ask, with an enigmatic smile: "And where, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation or entanglement of pacifists and militarists. The physical configuration of the earth has separated us from all of the Old World, but the common brotherhood of man, the highest law of all our being, has united us by inseparable bonds with all humanity. Our country represents nothing but peaceful intentions toward all the ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... and showed to the court that there were remarkable features in the head of the child which resembled, on the one hand an unusual configuration in the mother—or the woman who claimed to be the mother—and on the other a well-marked feature in her husband. And as a result the father and mother won their case, and were proclaimed the parents of the child because of the resemblance of these features; and, if we think for a moment, we shall ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... the Gorman incident raised the question, "Is it possible for an object without appreciable shape or known aeronautical configuration to appear to travel at ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... (see illustration). At this part of our journey we met two Bedouins, who greeted us with much ceremony. Here too, scattered about, we found specimens of Caucalis. Our course then lay through drearily uniform sandy ground, of somewhat broken configuration, and covered with bushy vegetation, where we passed a telegraph post bearing the notice that it was half-way between Bir el Abd and Bir el Magara. Here we overtook our camels, which, as usual, had preceded us; but we sent them on again, as we decided to pause for our midday meal. The ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... consciousness is rather the folk, and this folk is in no case mere individual aggregation, i.e., collectivity as sum of the individuals, but as a unity with a peculiar two-sidedness, at the same time "essential totality" (M.H. Boehm). The folk is both a living creature and a spiritual configuration, in which the individuals are included through common racial conditioning, in blood and spirit. It is that force which works on the individual directly "from within or from the side like a common degree of temperature" (Kjellen) and which collects ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... point of giving over his quest, when the unexpected happened. Within a few hundred yards of the break in the canyon he caught sight of Motoza and Tozer holding another consultation. They had evidently just met, and the configuration of the ground enabled Hazletine to steal near enough to catch some of the words spoken ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... precious to him, and, as the two rode back, the advance was resumed without a moment's delay. Instead of proceeding back in a direct line, however, over the path traveled by the scout, they made a detour to the northward, the configuration of the country being such that a much nearer approach, undiscovered, could be made from this direction ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... action or been put under an obligation, it appeared touchy and jealous of its right to an independent judgement. It is often assumed by Russophobe writers that Russia wished and intended to make a Russian province of Bulgaria, but this is very unlikely; the geographical configuration of the Balkan peninsula would not lend itself to its incorporation in the Russian Empire, the existence between the two of the compact and vigorous national block of Rumania, a Latin race and then already an independent state, was an insurmountable obstacle, and, finally, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... of seven stars known as the "Plough" is perhaps the most familiar configuration in the sky (see Plate XIX., p. 292). In the United States it is called the "Dipper," on account of its likeness to the outline of a saucepan, or ladle. "Charles' Wain" was the old English name for it, and readers of ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... Several gigantic vines, in whose powerful and enervating embrace the mighty trunk had perished, still clasped the magnificent colossus with their shining red tendrils, whilst the interior of the tree, hollowed by the tooth of time, was of a fantastical configuration, not unlike a Gothic chapel, and sufficiently spacious to contain twenty men. The care with which the hollow had been swept out, and the neighbourhood of a salt spring, showed that it was used by the Indian hunters as a resting-place and ambush. Canondah cautiously ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... has various meanings in the writers of metaphysic: it is here used simply for those notions of external things, which our organs of sense bring us acquainted with originally; and is defined a contraction, or motion, or configuration, of the fibres, which constitute the immediate organ of sense; which will be explained at large in another part of the work. Synonymous with the word idea, we shall sometimes use the words sensual motion ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... wrought some few changes in the physical configuration of the Universe. Sin and Death built the mighty causeway that connects the orifice of the World with Hell-gates. Provision had to be made under the new dispensation for the peopling of the whole surface of the Earth; so the axis was turned askew, and the beginning ordained of extremes of cold ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... complete circumference of a Circle in the happy region of the Three Dimensions—how shall I make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing one another's configuration? ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... were invariably presented as points of light incapable of being sensibly magnified, even with the highest powers. True, there was a great variety of apparent brightness in these objects and a singular diversity of configuration, but there was no exception to the invariable feature referred to. The point of light was constant, and no striking exception was anticipated until one night—March 13, 1781—Herschel being intently engaged in the examination of some small stars in the region of Gemini, brought ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... [footnote to Chapter 24 Paragraph 7]); and that, from the attentive study of the geological map of Mr. Bain and other materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of Mr. Oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the Geographical Society in 1852, but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my information! There was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being thus fairly "cut out" by the man who had foretold ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... greater part of the day was consumed in calling at two settlements of three houses each, and receiving and delivering mails of one letter, or less. The shores of this fjord are steep hills of bare rock, covered with patches of snow to the water's edge. The riven walls of cliff, with their wonderful configuration and marvellous colouring, were left behind us, and there was nothing of the grand or picturesque to redeem the savage desolation of the scenery. The chill wind, blowing direct from Nova Zembla, made us shiver, and even the cabin ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... exists in some sense at each successive member of a one-dimensional series of extensionless instants of time. Furthermore the mutual relations of the material entities at each instant formed these entities into a spatial configuration in an unbounded space. It would seem that space—on this theory—would be as instantaneous as the instants, and that some explanation is required of the relations between the successive instantaneous spaces. The materialistic theory is however silent ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... what follows), it is readily seen that the simplest hydrocarbon has the formula CH4 named methane, in which the hydrogen atoms are of equal value, and which may be pictured as placed at the vertices of a tetrahedron, the carbon atom occupying the centre. This tetrahedral configuration is based on the existence of only one methylene dichloride, two being necessary if the carbon valencies were directed from the centre of a plane square to its corners, and on the existence of two ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... plan was dictated by the configuration of the frontier and of the obstacles and communications in Northern Natal. The various columns to the north of the Biggarsberg had only to move forward in order to effect their junction on the Newcastle-Dundee road, and their advance southwards on that road would enable ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... change of status is leading, is social equality—that is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a male; there are few exceptions.[51] In woman, the long period of pregnancy and lactation, and the prolonged helplessness ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... somewhat resembled the "suckers" on the tentacles of a giant octopus. Morgana, seating herself in an easy chair of the richly carpeted "drawing-room" of her "air palace," studied every line, turn and configuration of this extraordinary arrangement with a keenly observant and criticising eye. The Marchese Rivardi and Gaspard watched her ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... the large pendants of coral which the Hebrew ladies were accustomed to attach to their ears, either in preference to jewels, or in alternation with jewels, they particularly delighted in that configuration which ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... and IV. contain four star-maps. They not only serve to indicate the configuration of certain important star-groups, but they illustrate the construction of maps, such as the observer should make for himself when he wishes to obtain an accurate knowledge of particular regions of the sky. They are all made to one scale, and on the conical projection—the simplest and ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... parted links, l. 398. As our ideas consist of successive trains of the motions, or changes of figure, of the extremities of the nerves of one or more of our senses, as of the optic or auditory nerves; these successive trains of motion, or configuration, are in common life divided into many links, to each of which a word or name is given, and it is called an idea. This chain of ideas may be broken into more or fewer links, or divided in different parts of it, by the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... geographically in order to overlook it better in its true relations. Had those symbols for a moment descended to the plane of reality they would have lost their meaning and dignity; they would tell us merely that they themselves existed bodily, which would be false, while about the real configuration of life they would no longer tell us anything. Such an error, if carried through to the end, would nullify all experience and arrest all life. Men would be reacting on expressions and meeting with nothing to express. They would all be like word-eating ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... CONFIGURATION. The relative positions of celestial bodies, as for instance those of Jupiter's satellites, with respect to the primary at any ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... marble or other material, or any new and useful pattern, or print, or picture, to be either worked into or worked on, or printed, or painted, or cast, or otherwise fixed on any article of manufacture, or any new and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture not known or ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... whom he is opposing, when he argues thus, imagines to be distinct and separate from the mind. Now this resemblance is more remarkable in beasts, whose souls are void of reason. But the likeness in men consists more in the configuration of the bodies: and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul is lodged; for there are many things which depend on the body that give an edge to the soul, many which blunt it. Aristotle, indeed, says that all men of great genius ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of Sirmium on the Save, the ruins of which may still be seen about eighty miles west of Belgrade, had once belonged to the Western Empire and had been rightly looked upon as one of the bulwarks of Italy. To anyone who studies the configuration of the great Alpine chain, which parts off the Italian peninsula from the rest of Europe, it will be manifest that it is in the north-east that that mountain barrier is the weakest. The Maritime, Pennine, and Cottian Alps, which soar above the plains of Piedmont and Western ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... with certain Green and Blue-green Algae. Some species belonging to the families Squamariaceae nnd Corallinaceae grow attached through their whole length and breadth, and are often encrusted with lime. The forms which grow away from the substratum vary greatly in external configuration. In point of size the largest cannot rival the larger Brown Algae, while the majority require the aid of the microscope ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... motion gentle, the sea was liquid lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with its aesthetic ray through lineaments ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... The distance of the projectile from the moon was not more than six hundred miles. Barbicane, now perceiving that the projectile was steadily approaching the lunar disc, did not despair; if not of reaching her, at least of discovering the secrets of her configuration. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... was perhaps shown in the configuration of the nose. The peculiar connexion of this sense with love was evidently well understood by the artist. Not only is smell peculiarly associated with love, in all the higher animals, but it is associated with reproduction in plants, the majority of which ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... was an island, a point that I never cleared up—were well in sight, the mountain top that stood some miles inland having been visible for hours. In fact, through my glasses, I had been able to make out its configuration almost from the beginning of the voyage. About five we entered the mouth of a deep bay fringed on either side with forests, in which were cultivated clearings with small villages of the ordinary African stamp. I observed from the smaller size of the trees adjacent to these clearings, that much ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... it is "temperate in winter and insufferable in summer; higher up the summers are temperate and the winters barely sufferable." It is as though there were two distinct regions covering the same area, for there are marked differences throughout, except in topographic configuration, between the lowlands and the uplands or high plateaus. The lowlands present an appearance which is barren and desolate in the extreme, although the soil is fertile and under irrigation yields good crops. Vegetation is limited ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... hands a book and pencil; and as the canoe glided onward, he was noting down his memoranda. The trees upon the banks were in leaf—many of them in blossom—and as the little craft verged near the shore, his keen eye followed the configuration of the leaves, to discover any ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... physical configuration of the country explains the existence at a very early date of those gigantic serpents which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... wave. You wonder at first if the road was made merely to gladden the tourist, for it does not seem likely that there could be much traffic other than that of pleasure-seekers thus along the margin of the sea. The configuration of this part of the County Antrim, however, explains the position of the road, and justifies the engineer who was so happily enabled to combine the utilitarian with the romantic. A series of deep cut gorges, ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... impropriety in our drawing a comparison between him and that peculiar type of per son commonly called a Virginian bean-pole. Nor, when he gets himself (as is not uncommon with him) "all over" native brown homespun, does his configuration materially change, there yet remaining, and boldly refusing to be disguised, that face so full of penetration, and those features so sharp. The waggishly inclined have identified them with the wizardry of dividing storm currents. Nevertheless, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... always fancied that that evacuation made Rosecrans over-confident, and led him to think that he could force Bragg south as far as Rome. After the Union army passed the river and Chattanooga fell into our hands; we still kept pressing the enemy's communications, and the configuration of the country necessitated more or less isolation of the different corps. McCook's corps of three divisions had crossed two difficult ridges—Sand and Lookout mountains—to Alpine in Broomtown Valley with intentions against Summerville. Thomas's corps ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... connect them with the coast, I have no doubt are the bottoms of ancient inlets and deep bays, such as at the present day intersect every part of Tierra del Fuego and the western coast. Chile must formerly have resembled the latter country in the configuration of its land and water. The resemblance was occasionally shown strikingly when a level fog-bank covered, as with a mantle, all the lower parts of the country: the white vapour curling into the ravines, beautifully represented ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... have spoken of still existing at a much later period than is generally accepted," replied Adam. "Also, if there were such things, that this was the very place for them. I have tried to think over the matter since you pointed out the configuration of the ground. But it seems to me that there is a hiatus somewhere. Are there ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... line, which could have given shelter for any one to stalk me practically from the start. At another I noticed a farm close by, and from this an assailant could easily have slipped down to the beach and run back again. At a third the configuration of the rocks was such that it would have been simple for him to have waited below the bank till he heard us coming, made a noise to bring me down, and then gone up above without exposing himself against the sky. In fact one could draw no definite ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... no doubt much helped by the superior power of observation obtained by his artillery owing to the configuration of the ground all along the south bank, and this, in fact, was most helpful to the British Army throughout ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... so much aggrandized, that in order to sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course of a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the general and relative position ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... of the cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I could ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... attack the left of the Boer line with the bayonet. Pole-Carew then considered whether, in view of the projected movement of the Guards' brigade, his local attack was still feasible. He decided that, owing to the configuration of the ground over which both bodies of troops would have to move in the darkness, the danger was so great lest his detachment should enfilade the Guards as to prohibit an advance from Rosmead. All, therefore, that could be done was to ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... gorges with extremely precipitous sides; continuous parallel cliffs between whose forbidding precipices dashed the torrent towards the sea. Having thus entrapped itself, the turbulent stream, by the configuration of the succeeding region, was forced to continue its assault on the rocks, to reach the Gulf, and ground its fierce progress through canyon after canyon, with scarcely an intermission of open country, for a full thousand miles from the beginning of its entombment, the entrance ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... structure is influenced by castration at an age when the mental development is no longer affected. This explains the fact that many oriental eunuchs, in whom castration is commonly effected shortly before the seventh or eighth year of life, while they exhibit the bodily configuration characteristic of the eunuch, are nevertheless capable of experiencing heterosexual feelings, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... action, is based on a strong foundation of granite and other igneous rocks, which are exposed in many places in the shape of massive blocks; otherwise the hill-range is covered in the upper part with sandstone, and in the bottoms with alluvial clay. This is the superficial configuration of the land as it strikes the eye; but, knowing the elevation of the interior plateau to be only 2500 feet above the sea immediately on the western flank of these hills, whilst the breath of the chain is ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... acknowledge, because there exist really but two initial hydrographic meridians, Greenwich and Paris, a prime meridian has been taken, the reign (practical influence) of which is principally over the sea; and this meridian, instead of being chosen with reference to the configuration of the continents, is borrowed from an observatory; that is to say, that it is placed on the globe in a hap-hazard manner, and is very inconveniently situated for the function that it is to perform. Finally, instead of profiting ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... prosperity in those parts of the country where they are most mastering; and the nation has grown great in their charge. What, in brief, are the results, so clear, so grand, so vast, that they stand out like mountain ranges, the configuration of a national life? The diffusion of material comfort among masses of men, on a scale and to an amount abolishing peasantry forever; the dissemination of education, which is the means of life to the mind as comfort is to the body, in no more narrow bounds, but through the State universal, abolishing ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... auburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes, and that "bar of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... was no wonder that so many of the well-organised military schemes in this unlucky war came to grief. But in the case at Stormberg there were other difficulties to contend with. The map of the ground was utterly unreliable. The configuration of the hills was incorrectly presented and the distances badly judged. The general knowledge of the direction was so imperfect that none was sufficiently well informed to put a check upon the movements of the guide, nor had the position been reconnoitered ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... extraordinary undertaking. He himself was clad in a long robe charactered with strange hieroglyphs; he had described the magical circles in the hall, and he arranged everything with his utmost skill, to be certain of the result. He had searcht diligently into the configuration of the stars, and was now awaiting ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... and omnipresent Christ guarantees also the sufficiency of Scripture. Here, however, there is an obvious limitation. Scripture is not sufficient for all the kinds and purposes of human science. It will not tell us the configuration of the hinder side of the moon, nor reveal the future uses of electricity. It is not with such things that Scripture deals. But in religious matters, such as our relation to God and salvation, it is sufficient as a rule of faith and ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... as if artificially flattened, thereby giving great prominence and width to the hinder part of the skull. Altogether this man appeared so different from the rest, that for some time he was supposed to belong to a different class of people, but I afterwards often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark coloured skin and ...
— 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
... delta, the archipelago in its mouth (for, like our own St. Lawrence, it has its Bay of a Thousand Isles) not being an alluvial formation, but having a rocky base. The great island of Marajo, in physical configuration, resembles the mainland of Guiana. The deltoid outlet is confined to the tributaries, nearly all of them, like "the disembogning Nile," emptying themselves by innumerable embouchures. To several tributaries the Amazon gives water ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... The configuration of the Grecian territory, so like in many respects to that of Switzerland, produced two effects of great moment upon the character and history of the people. In the first place, it materially strengthened their powers of defense: it shut up the country against ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... sparkling eyes can be recognised to this day, so soon as this change is made in its configuration, whereas no one can recognise the remotest resemblance to a dragon's head in profile. The star barbing the Dragon's tongue would be Xi of the Dragon according to Aratus's account, for so only would ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... little inclined to admire it, that we seek in its territorial configuration for the essential explanation of its success. Is it so difficult to maintain good order and liberty at home when one has immense deserts to people, when land offers itself without stint to the labor of man?—I ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... looking at as an ornament, even if nothing is put into it. The aperture in the lid might be closed, and the box could then be hung up beside the doorway lamp, so that its proportions might be fairly realised. The interior of the church is broad and lofty, but through its Norman configuration it is stiff and coldly ponderous in effect. Massive bare walls, high narrow windows, and a semi-sexagonal ceiling dependent upon rather ungainly beams and rafters, like a series of hanging frames, chill you a little; but on looking northward, to the end of the building, the chancel ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... quite of masculine type, as also the thighs; clitoris, with enlarged glands, readily erectile; nymphae thickened and enlarged; vulvar orifice patent, for she had in early youth been a prostitute; the voice was almost contralto. Her partner was of low type, but eminently feminine in configuration and manner. In this case I heard that 'the man' went to a local ascetic and begged his intercession with the deity, so that she might impregnate her partner. ('The Hindoo medical works mention the possibility of a woman uniting with another woman in sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... us consider what scientific speculation has done in the effort to explain these mysteries. Laplace's hypothesis can certainly find no standing ground either in the Orion Nebula or in those of a spiral configuration, whatever may be its situation with respect to the grand Nebula of Andromeda, or the "ring'' and "planetary'' nebul. Some other hypothesis more consonant with the appearances must be found. Among the many that have been proposed the most elaborate is ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... is not all of one character, it seldom is so on any one farm in this country, but it is all good class. Most of it is a rich black humus, resting on clay and mountain limestone. In configuration it is of the roughest, like the country generally, being an abrupt succession of ranges, gullies, and basins, in every variety of form ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... commercial character. As the Union grew in power and increased in membership, Pennsylvania lost nothing of her prestige. She held to the new States as intimate relations as she held to the old. The configuration of the country and the natural channels of communication have bound her closely to all sections. Her northern border touching the great lakes, connected her by sail and steam, before the era of the railway, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... relates to the affections, we put the will for the deed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is removed, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and reunites itself to that image of good which is but a reflection and configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the long perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and enriched by countless recollections, become interesting; the most painful, broken and softened by time, soothe. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... to a common origin for all the American nations, and even for those of Mexico, that their monuments should present so great a variety in the configuration of the head and face; a fact which forcibly impresses every one who examines the numerous effigies in baked clay in the collection of the American Philosophical Society; yet they are all made of the same material and by the same national ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... strained through the blackness across the room. He could just make out the configuration of the doorway. The Wolf was just on the other side of it, just inside the kitchen, he was sure of that. Almost a smile was flickering over Jimmie Dale's tight-pressed lips. There was a way—there was a way now, if the Wolf did not get him with a chance ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Ricca is a sporadic one, such as may crop up anywhere and at any time. It is like that of Musolino—the case of an isolated outlaw, who finds the perplexed geographical configuration of the country convenient for offensive and defensive purposes. Calabrian brigandage, as a whole, has always worn a ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... his social development, in moulding his character. To enumerate all the external factors operating upon individual and social life is outside our present purpose, but they may be briefly summed up as climate, moisture, soil, the configuration of the earth's surface, and the nature of its products. These natural phenomena, either singly or in varying degrees of combination, have unquestionably played a most prominent part in making the different races of mankind what they at present are. We have only to look at the low type ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... from Chateau Dianet, whither M. d'Orbec went on horseback, and Madame d'Auffray and M. Livret were driven. The portrait of Diane of Dianet was praised for the beauty of the dame, a soft-fleshed acutely featured person, a fresh-of-the-toilette face, of the configuration of head of the cat, relieved by a delicately aquiline nose; and it could only be the cat of fairy metamorphosis which should stand for that illustration: brows and chin made an acceptable triangle, and eyes and mouth could be what she pleased for mice or monarchs. M. Livret did not gainsay the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... again I had slackened my pace down to a stealthy cat-like tread that took me along with an incredible absence of noise. As I moved forward I began to turn the configuration of the place over in my mind and wonder to what practical use I could put the fine natural cover of the bushes. As I could see none I put the matter out of my head and devoted all my energies to coming to immediate grips with the men who had murdered the eternal peace ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... roofs of the Hotel d'Alencon, and the Petit-Bourbon. This hydra of towers, giant guardian of Paris, with its four and twenty heads, always erect, with its monstrous haunches, loaded or scaled with slates, and all streaming with metallic reflections, terminated with wonderful effect the configuration of the Town ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... have had a very cheap bargain, but for the intervention of the troublesome English. And certainly, if the Spaniards and Portuguese had been left to themselves, although, favoured by the mountainous configuration of the country, they might long have kept up a desultory contest, they would never have succeeded in expelling the invaders; for the simple reason that they were wholly unable to meet them in the plain. Most true it is that, during ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... forest; and but for these marks, they could not be followed. Sometimes, however, large spaces occur in which no trees are to be seen, where, indeed, none grow. There are extensive lakes, always under water, even at the lowest ebb of the inundation. They are of all sizes and every possible configuration, from the complete circle through all the degrees of the ellipse, and not unfrequently in the form of a belt, like the channel of a river running for scores of miles between what might readily be mistaken for banks ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... an accidental, peculiar beauty," said Hardy. "The configuration of the land is adapted to form a shelter to the beech trees, while the little lake is just in the right place to produce a pretty effect. The landscape is, as you say, a Jutland landscape; the grass in the meadows is coarse, and the arable ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... for the purposes of definition. There is no assignable reason why a rational animal should have hair on its head or a nose on its face, and yet man, as a matter of fact, has both; and generally the particular bodily configuration of man can only be regarded as an inseparable accident of his nature as ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... tropical regions, where, these things being neglected, the resultant government is a mockery. Have we any reason to believe that the Filipino, untrained, inexperienced, occupying an undeveloped area of special configuration in a region where continuous effort is disagreeable and initiative distressing, will achieve success where others of greater original fitness ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Chapala, 5000 feet, on July 12, 1949. Each specimen of A. jamaicensis listed above lacks epiphyseal sutures and both an upper and a lower third molar on each side. In size, coloration of ventral pelage, and configuration of skull, the specimens agree with the description of specimens from Guerrero and differ from other species as reported by Lukens and ...
— Neotropical Bats from Northern Mexico • Sydney Anderson
... unbroken by any estuary, or inland sea, and intersected by a few long or easily navigable rivers; all its known chains of mountains are of moderate height, rising in terraces, down which the waters find their way in cataracts, not through deep ravines and fertile valleys. Owing to this configuration, its high table lands are without streams, a phenomenon unknown in any other part of the world; while, in the lower countries, the rivers, when swelled with the rains, spread into floods and periodical lakes, or lose themselves in marshes. According to this view of the probable ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... gain of land has been uniform, it has not been far from seven thousand years since the lake washed round the ancient settlement. Of course the land may have gained faster at one time than at another, but from the general configuration of the valley it is considered ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... anchored, presents very curious physical peculiarities: it is twenty-two miles in length from east to west, and fifteen miles in breadth from north to south. This sheet of water is formed into an immense bay by the configuration of the land, and its depth, in places, is from one hundred and thirty to two hundred feet. Inside it all the navies in the world might ride at anchor, were it not for the fact that the entrance is ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... gives this response. We find a specific chemical composition and generally a specific physical structure already existing. We have no reason to suppose that such particular reactions would take place until a specific chemical configuration had been acquired. Where did this constitution come from? This is the question that the scientist asks himself. I suppose Bergson would have to reply that it came into existence at the moment that the first specific stimulus was applied. But if this is the answer we have passed ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
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