"Concave" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the life is, such is the form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally inexhaustible in forms;—each exterior is the physiognomy of the being within,—its true image reflected and thrown out from the concave mirror;—and even such is the appropriate excellence of her chosen poet, of our own Shakespeare,—himself a nature humanized, a genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even than ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... creatures who are denominated ugly. I am particularly so. My complexion is a bright snuff-colour; my eyes are grey, and unprotected by the usual verandahs of eye-lashes; my nose is retrousse, and if it has a bridge, it must be of the suspension order, for it is decidedly concave. I wish Rennie would turn his attention to the state of numerous noses in the metropolis. I am sure a lucrative company might he established for the purpose of erecting bridges to noses that, like my own, have been unprovided by nature. I should be happy to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us there is between them and us a great, impassable gulf of mud. There are two roads through the Park, but the new one is so convex and the old one so concave, that by this extreme of faults they agree in the common one of being, like the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... and still the fever raged in the city. The cerulean was bright and unflecked with a speck of vapor, like a concave mirror of burnished steel. It hung above, and the red sun seemed to burn his way through the azure mass. The leaves drooped as if weighted with lead, and in the shade kindly thrown upon the wilting grass by the tulips, oaks, and pecans about the yard, the poultry lifted their wings and panted ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of the nets thus arranged, armed with their spears and darts, to prevent any of the game escaping; the rest of the men, whom we accompanied, then extended themselves in another semi-circle on the concave side of the net, at the distance of a mile or more from it. Thus we advanced, the dogs barking, and the men shouting, while we held our guns ready to shoot, and the natives had their darts prepared for instant action. We might ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... difficult to determine merely by touch whether a thing is straight or crooked, flat, convex or concave. Weber has shown that a glass plate drawn before the finger in such wise as to be held weakly at first, then more powerfully, then again more powerfully seems to be convex and when the reverse is done, concave. Flatness is given when the distance is ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... proved that the sun is by nature hot and not cold, as has already been stated. If rays of fire play on a concave mirror when it is cold, the rays refracted by the mirror will be hotter than {156} the fire. The rays emitted from a sphere of glass filled with cold water, which are reflected from a fire, will be warmer than the fire. It follows from these two experiments that ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... the Figures in Architecture, there are none that have a greater Air than the Concave and the Convex, and we find in all the Ancient and Modern Architecture, as well in the remote Parts of China, as in Countries nearer home, that round Pillars and Vaulted Roofs make a great Part of those ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... white and membranaceous. From behind proceeds a tube, k. a canal also white and membranaceous, but it is difficult to judge of its diameter, for the membranes, of which it consists, are evidently in folds. To one side of this pipe is attached a fleshy part, p. somewhat pallet shaped, one side is concave, and the edges plaited; the other side is convex. In certain places the plaits rise and project from the rest of the outline, and form a kind of rays; the pallet appears prettily figured. Though lying with the concave side applied to the lentil, it is not fixed to it. Swammerdam ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... in combination with a mold wheel having a series of cogs interposed by a series of concave stops, blanks or abutments upon its periphery, a drive wheel having cogs and a blank surface on its perimeter so that the mold wheel may be moved, stopped and locked by said drive wheel which has a continuous movement, substantially as and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... Nathusius' work, with its excellent figures, should be studied. The whole of the exterior of the skull in all its parts has been altered; the hinder surface, instead of sloping backwards, is directed forwards, entailing many changes in other parts; the front of the head is deeply concave; the orbits have a different shape; the auditory meatus has a different direction and shape; the incisors of the upper and lower jaws do not touch each other, and they stand in both jaws above the plane of the molars; the canines of the upper jaw stand in front of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... be kept all winter by laying them in a heap in the cellar, with the concave side upwards to hold in the liquor. Sprinkle them every day with strong salt and water, and then with Indian meal. Cover them with matting or ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... feet deep. The front end of the beam is provided with a mud or stone boat to prevent sinking in the mud, and with a jack screw for regulating on uneven ground. Attached to it, and following the mole, is a carrier 200 feet long, made concave in form. On this the tile are laid and carried into the ground. A start is made at an open ditch or hole of required depth; when the carrier is drawn in full length a hole is dug just back of the coulter, two by three feet, down to the tile, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... common-sense genius—beautiful through its very simplicity. The result was Maudslay's self-tightening collar, the action of which a few words of description will render easily intelligible. A collar of sound leather, the convex side upwards and the concave downwards, was fitted into the recess turned out in the neck of the press-cylinder, at the place formerly used as a stuffing-box. Immediately on the high pressure water being turned on, it forced its way into the leathern concavity and 'flapped out' the bent edges of the collar; ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... thus chanted to her comity, the chorus straightway shrills with trembling tongues, the light tambour booms, the concave cymbals clang, and the troop swiftly hastes with rapid feet to verdurous Ida. Then raging wildly, breathless, wandering, with brain distraught, hurrieth Attis with her tambour, their leader through dense woods, like ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... longer in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the globes ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... romantic and picturesque, and reminded Joshua Rylands—whose ideas of art were purely reminiscent of boyish reading—of some picture in a novel. The heavy black columns of the pines, glancing out of the concave shadow, also seemed a fitting background to what might have been a scene in a play. So strongly was he impressed by it that but for his anxiety to reach his home, still a mile distant, and the fact that he was already late, he would have penetrated ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is easily explained on scientific grounds. It arose from the concave form of the gallery and the conducting power of the rock. There are many examples of this propagation of sounds which remain unheard in the intermediate space. I remember that a similar phenomenon has been observed in ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... same way with curves; given two lines of equal length and enclose one with convex and the other with concave curves, and the line enclosed convex will ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... changes in shade or light in a manner and to a degree which no other material can equal. In the Doric, mouldings were few, and almost always convex; they became much more numerous in the later styles, and then included many of concave profile. The chief are the OVOLO, which formed the curved part of the Doric capital, and the crowning moulding of the Doric cornice; the CYMA; the BIRD'S BEAK, employed in the capitals of the antae; the FILLETS under the Doric capital; ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... this chapel employed the invention and the chisels of the most able architects. The groined roofs rose from six columns on each side, carved with the rarest skill; and the manner in which the crossings of the concave arches were bound together, as it were, with appropriate ornaments, were all in the finest tone of the architecture of the age. Corresponding to the line of pillars, there were on each side six richly-wrought niches, each of which contained the image of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... stars dropped from Heaven on the holy pile. I went in and walked down the aisle, listening for awhile to the grand choral, while the clustered tapers under the dome quivered and trembled, as if shaken by the waves of music which burst continually within its lofty concave. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... prow, watching our course; when suddenly I heard the waters break with redoubled fury. We were certainly near the shore—at the same time I cried, "About there!" and a broad lightning filling the concave, shewed us for one moment the level beach a-head, disclosing even the sands, and stunted, ooze-sprinkled beds of reeds, that grew at high water mark. Again it was dark, and we drew in our breath with ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... in night: all nature shudders. Then, in an instant, loose from every point The storm, in frightful gusts and devilish uproar Breaks; the axis of the globe grates fearful,— And thunders, clap on clap, resound the concave: The waves, din-maddened, tower to mountains. Wildly, gone her helm, the half-crushed craft Tumbles ungovernable. Now despairing shrieks Mingling with ocean's roar and crash of heaven, Rise from the peopled deck: ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... Bleriot monoplane," said Weber. "I can tell the type almost as far as I can see it. It's much like a gigantic bird, with powerful parchment wings mounted upon a strong body. The wings as you see now present a concave surface to the earth. They always do that. The flyer sits between the two wings and has in front of him the lever with which ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tree; at their thickest part, in the centre, they are between four and five inches in width. Here, where the foot rests, there is a piece of birch bark fastened, over which there is a loop, and through this loop the foot passes. That part of the skee under the foot is concave, and here it is thickest, so that where it supports the weight of the person it cannot bend downward. The under part of the skee is grooved and polished, and soon becomes by use as smooth as glass. The forward end turns ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... in saffron robe Young HYMEN steps, and traverses the globe; O'er burning sands, and snow-clad mountains, treads, Blue fields of air, and ocean's briny beds; Flings from his radiant torch celestial light O'er Day's wide concave, and illumes the Night. With dulcet eloquence his tuneful tongue Convokes and captivates the Fair and Young; His golden lamp with ray ethereal dyes The blushing cheek, and lights the laughing eyes; 420 With ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Fosbroke, in his "Antiquities,") was a temporary structure of boards, removed after the performances were closed. This fashion continued till the erection of the theatre of Bacchus, at Athens, which served as a model for the others. The Greek theatre was no more than a concave sweep, scooped out of the hollow side of a hill, generally facing the sea. The sweep was filled with seats, rising above each other, and ascended by staircases, placed like the radii of a circle. This semi-circular form was adopted not merely for convenience of vision, but for ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... steadying, began to play alternately against the horse's flanks, and, being armed with long-rowelled spurs, overcame the patience of the animal, which bounced and plunged, while poor Gibbie's entreaties for aid never reached the ears of the too heedless butler, being drowned partly in the concave of the steel cap in which his head was immersed, and partly in the martial tune of the Gallant Grames, which Mr Gudyill whistled with ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for these purposes, it may be very useful; but it supplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestick for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify, by a concave mirror, the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... these I fix very strongly together by the help of very hard Cement, and then fit the whole Glass ABCDEF into a long Board, or Frame, in such manner, that almost half the head AB may lye buried in a concave Hemisphere cut into the Board RS; then I place it so on the Board RS, as is exprest in the first figure of the first Scheme; and fix it very firm and steady in that posture, so as that the weight of the Mercury ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... and their treasures widely diffused, there may be parts chosen, which, by a proper combination and arrangement, may contribute not only to entertainment but use; like the rays of the sun, collected in a concave mirror, to serve particular ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the maps of monthly isothermals, we observe how strikingly those lines change, becoming convex to the north as summer approaches, and concave as winter. They by no means observe a parallelism to the mean, but change their flexures, assuming new sinuosities. In their absolute transfer they move with a variable velocity, and through spaces far from insignificant. The line of 50 deg. F., which in ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... (as Ruskin explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the Matterhorn peak) that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely to rush up again in long concave curves, was merely an illusion of perspective, nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower, let alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds. But to how things might look from a balloon, or under a microscope, that man did ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... burning signs Exulting measures the perennial wheel Of Nature, and looks back on all the stars, Whose blended light, as with a milky zone, 200 Invests the orient. Now amazed she views The empyreal waste, [Endnote B] where happy spirits hold, Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode; And fields of radiance, whose unfading ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing "the gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night with their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more unctuous sayings—how he would fit the tit bits to the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier links for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... standing upright on their footstalks, about a foot in length, and four inches in breadth, ovato-oblong, coriaceous, somewhat fleshy, rigid, smooth, concave, entire on the edges, except on one side towards the base, where they are more or less curled, on the upper side of a deep green colour, on the under side covered with a fine glaucous meal, midrib hollow ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... can we suppose burning mirrors to have been made of glass without supposing the magnifying powers of glass to have been known? The Greeks, as Plutarch affirms, employed metallic mirrors, either plane, or convex, or concave, according to the use for which they were intended. If they could make burning mirrors of glass, they could have given any of these forms to glass. How then could they have avoided observing that two glasses, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... in length which should be massive enough to protect the city from any similar attack. Its top, which is five feet thick, is three feet above the highest point reached by the water. The bottom of the wall is sixteen feet thick. This wall, which is built concave toward the gulf, is protected by earth and stone filled in for two hundred feet, thus providing a driveway thirty feet wide with walks on either side, beautified with ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... immersion in boiling water, which causes them to swell to twice their natural size, and are then dried and packed for market. The insects shrivel in drying, and assume the form of irregular grains, fluted and concave. The best sorts have a silvery-grey colour, with a purplish reflection, and seem to be dusted with a white powder. This appearance is often given by means of heavy spar, carbonate of lead, Venice talc, &c. A good ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first showed me the scene you may behold from the Public Gardens at the end of the long concave line of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Lounging there upon the southern parapet of the Gardens, I turned from the dim bell-towers of the evanescent islands in the east (a solitary gondola gliding across the calm of the water, and striking its moonlight silver into multitudinous ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... their astrolabe to take the altitude of the sun, moon, and stars, I am satisfied merely by looking into people's faces, in order to see if their eyes are encircled with dark lines, and if the mouth describes a convex or concave arc." ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... say, A curved line. If they are then asked how they may know it is D, they will say, Because it is made of a perpendicular line and has a curved line behind. Further information may then be given. Turn the D letter up thus , and say, I want to teach you the difference between concave and convex: the under part of the curve is concave and the upper part of it is convex. Then say, I shall now take the letter away, and wish you to shew me concave and convex on one of your fingers; when they ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... after it has passed through the thorax, and pierced the diaphragm, enters the stomach, which is a membranous bag, situated under the left side of the diaphragm: its figure nearly resembles the pouch of a bagpipe, the left end being most capacious; the upper side is concave, and the lower convex: it has two orifices, both on its upper part; the left, which is a continuation of the oesophagus, and through which the food passes into the stomach, is named cardia; and the ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... when they saw his chariot but appear, Did they not make an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks To hear the replication of their sounds Made in her concave shores?" ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the room under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been carelessly wiped. She ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... without anything in it that resists or is protruded by body. This is the idea of pure space, which they think they have as clear as any idea they can have of the extension of body: the idea of the distance between the opposite parts of a concave superficies being equally as clear without as with the idea of any solid parts between: and on the other side, they persuade themselves that they have, distinct from that of pure space, the idea of SOMETHING THAT FILLS SPACE, that can be protruded by the impulse of other bodies, or resist their ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... 'healthy.' Completely healthy; mens sana in corpore sano. A man all lucid, and in equilibrium. His intellect a clear mirror geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive to all objects and impressions made on it and imaging all things in their correct proportions; not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything so that he cannot see the truth of the matter, without endless groping and manipulation: healthy, clear, and free and discerning truly all ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... of the Royal Society on March 12th, 1668, "Mr. Smethwick's glasses were tried again; and his telescope being compared with another longer telescope, and the object-glasses exchanged, was still found to exceed the other in goodness; and his burning concave being compared with a spherical burning-glass of almost twice the diameter, and held to the fire, it burnt gloves, whereas the other spherical ones would not burn at all."—"Sir Robert Southwell being lately ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... against vanes mounted on a revolving wheel. Fig. 36 shows the nozzles and a turbine wheel. The wheel is made as a solid disc, to the circumference of which the vanes are dovetailed separately in a single row. Each vane is of curved section, the concave side directed towards the nozzles, which, as will be gathered from the "transparent" specimen on the right of our illustration, gradually expand towards the mouth. This is to allow the expansion of ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... behind the low earthwork, the opposite arm of the causeway stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so low around me,—for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an oarsman,—that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and nodded above; where the stars ended, the great Southern fire-flies began; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the only time I was ever taken to any place of entertainment was when my Father and I paid a visit, long anticipated, to the Great Globe in Leicester Square. This was a huge structure, the interior of which one ascended by means of a spiral staircase. It was a poor affair; that was concave in it which should have been convex, and my imagination was deeply affronted. I could invent a far better Great Globe than that in my ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... or hand mill, which consists of a concave tablet and a rubbing stone, was an important adjunct to the household appliances of nearly all the more cultured American nations. It is found not only in those plain substantial forms most suitable for use in grinding grain, seeds, and spices by manual means, but in many cases it has been elaborated ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... believe it is, in a double connection with its office as a measurer of time or motion and its relation to the transit of the sun in the sky, that Hermes forms it from the tortoise-shell, which is the image of the dappled concave of the cloudy sky. Thenceforward all the limiting or restraining modes of music belong to the Muses; but the more passionate music is wind music, as in the Doric flute. Then, when this inspired music becomes degraded in its passion, it sinks into the pipe of Pan, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... to bring. They found the taxi and drove out at once across the great stone bridge leading from the Bastide Station and suburb on the east bank to the main city on the west. In front of them lay the huge concave sweep of quays fronting the Garonne, here a river of over a quarter of a mile in width, with behind the massed buildings of the town, out of which here and there rose church spires and, farther down-stream, the three imposing columns of the ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... struck also his spectacle case on the outer concave surface of the gun metal material of which the case was constructed. It had passed through a double fold of his heavy suspenders ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... object appears straight when looked at out of the water, and crooked when in the water; and the concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colours to which the sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by ...
— The Republic • Plato
... eye, too, prince," Seaton said, as he seated himself, swung a large, concave disk in front of him, and experimented with levers and dials. "You certainly can't call this thing a periscope—it's no more a periscope than I am a polyp. When you look through this plate, it's better than looking out of a window—it subtends more than the angle of vision, so that you can't see ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... result, perceived form not as an appearance, but as a reality; saw with the eye the complexities of projection and depression perceivable by the hand. His craft was that of measurements, of minute proportion, of delicate concave and convex—in one word, of planes. His dull, malleable clay, and ductile, shining bronze had taught him nothing of the way in which light and shadow corrode, blur, and pattern a surface. His fancy, his skill, embraced the human ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... broken and repaired that a complete study of it would be a heavy task; some parts rest on nineteenth dynasty building, and even Roman patchwork is seen. Its general character is shown with alternating portions, the first set consisting of towers of brickwork built in concave foundations, and then connecting walls between; formed in straight courses. The purpose of this construction has long been a puzzle. The alternate concave and straight courses are the natural result of building isolated masses, on a concave bed ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... they turned into a half-invisible little lane, whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the woodland. From this self-contained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and flitches. It was one of those ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... mirrors it is made perspicuous that, when the sun is eclipsed, the moon is in a direct line below it. Anaximander, that the sun is eclipsed when the fiery mouth of it is stopped and hindered from respiration. Heraclitus, that it is after the manner of the turning of a boat, when the concave seems uppermost to our sight, and the convex nethermost. Xenophanes, that the sun is eclipsed when it is extinguished; and that a new sun is created and rises in the east. He gives a farther account of an eclipse of the sun which remained for a whole month, and again of an eclipse which changed ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... convex nape, and the face descending in a very slightly concave line. The mouth is on a level with the middle height of the body, and forms the obtuse end of the oval. The white teeth have their points ranged evenly, the eye is high up but does not touch the profile, and the two contiguous openings of the nostrils are immediately before it. The gill ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... resemblance extended to his astonished countenance. His big chest heaved. Like many another wounded giant before him, he experienced the insufficiency of interjections to solace pain. For them, however, the rocks were handy to fling, the trees to uproot; heaven's concave resounded companionably to their bellowings. Relief of so concrete a kind is not to be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... here—that was numbing in its vastness. This was the concave, inner surface, doubtless deep within the atom of some material substance. A little empty ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... clay deposited and the lake became silted up, i.e. it became so shallow that it was little more than a lake of mud. The same facts were brought out at the bend of the river. On its convex side, Fig. 55, the water has rather further to go in getting round the bend than on its concave side B, it therefore flows more quickly, and carries away the soil of the bank and mud from the bottom. But on its concave aide where it flows more slowly it deposits material. There is at the bend a marked difference ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... distance apart, entirely precludes a rotation of the wings. The whole structure and form of the wings of insects, moreover, indicate an action in flight quite analogous to that of birds. I believe that a careful examination will show that the wings of almost all insects are slightly concave beneath. Further, they are all constructed with a strong and rigid anterior margin, while the outer and hinder margins are exceedingly thin and flexible. Yet further, I feel confident (and a friend here agrees with me) that they are much more rigid against upward than against downward ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the resemblance of open gates. These were made wholly of silver, and polished, and that all over, excepting the bases, which were of brass. Now on each side of the gates there stood three pillars, which were inserted into the concave bases of the gates, and were suited to them; and round them was drawn a curtain of fine linen; but to the gates themselves, which were twenty cubits in extent, and five in height, the curtain was composed of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... his face and a full understanding of his condition. His hair, somewhat dry, had fallen upon his forehead. His fine, smooth skin was darkened by the exposure of his daily wanderings. His cheek-bones, a trifle high, asserted their place above the softly concave cheeks. His mouth was closed and the lips were slightly compressed; the chin small, gracefully turned, not weak,—not strong. His eyes were abstracted, deep, pensive. His dress told much. The fine plaits of his shirt had sprung apart and been neatly sewed together again. His ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... husband, and designed by Mr. G.F. Bodley. It is made of Verde di Prato marble, octagonal in shape, and rests upon a circular base surrounded by detached pillars, all of the same material. The faces of the octagon are concave, and without decoration, except that towards the east, which displays a star in a ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... wonderful in his finishing of all the Flemish masters, although the number of artists of that school who have excelled in this particular style are quite large. The pictures he first painted were portraits, and he wrought by the aid of a concave mirror, and sometimes by looking at the object through a frame of many squares of small silk thread. He spent so much time in these works that, notwithstanding they were extremely admired, his sitters became disgusted, and he was obliged to abandon ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... of the Christian era, but has again turned towards the sharp-pointed, vigorous leaf of the Greeks. Its lobes are divided into three or five tines, each sharp at the tip; its centre lines, radiating from a central stem, bend like flames; its surfaces are concave, with deep V cutting, and it has one very marked peculiarity, that is, that as far as possible no tine is left displayed alone on the ground, but the tip of each is made to touch either the tip of a neighboring ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... he raised them to his breast, Around the joyful Mercians prest, And made their shouts of triumph rise, To the fair concave of the skies. ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... machine, but in many instances it is also threshed with a clover huller. The huller does the work less quickly, but probably, on the whole, more perfectly. Threshing machines, with or even without certain adjustments in the arrangement of the teeth in the cylinder and concave, and with extra screens, are now doing the work with much despatch, and with a fair measure of satisfaction. But the opinion is held by competent judges that a machine that would more completely combine the qualities of the thresher and the huller would be still more satisfactory. It is ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... contents are in a state of decomposition; the bulging being occasioned by the gases generated during the chemical changes. If the contents of the canister be sound, the top and bottom will be either quite flat, or slightly concave. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... on the globe, had 4 iron supporters, and was a table about 20 inches in diameter, and 6 in thickness! The edge was cut into 12 concave superficies like so many half-cylinders; on each of which was a dial showing the hour by the shade of a fleur-de-lis fixed at the top of each half-cylinder. From the top of this table issued 4 iron branches, with glass bowls, like those of the first, second, and third pieces, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... scarce ruffled by the breeze, Methought, last night, I saw the man i' th' moon; As in the hollow bowl of silver spoon A broad reflected face the gazer sees; (Who trifling, dinner done, with bread and cheese, Abstractly lifts the spoon aforesaid up;) Or the same thing beholds in polished cup, Or concave snuff-box, whence the vocal sneeze! Sight of the man suggested HOTSPUR'S boast; But the night froze; and to express such hope Sounded far softer than the softest soap To me, who rather chose my heels to toast In the warm vicinage of glowing stove, Than pluck the moon's-man's ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Now look through my magnifying glass. You see that the fang is hollow from the base to the point, from the former the poison is pressed up out of the poison-bag and exudes through the fang point, which, as you see, is in the form of a narrow slit on its concave side." ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... wild nightmare begot by my first impression of the Encantadas tortoise. But next evening, strange to say, I sat down with my shipmates, and made a merry repast from tortoise steaks, and tortoise stews; and supper over, out knife, and helped convert the three mighty concave shells into three fanciful soup-tureens, and polished the three flat yellowish ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... matter which has been removed. Nearly this whole line of coast consists of a series of greater or lesser curves, the horns of which, and likewise certain straight projecting portions, are formed of hard rocks; hence the concave parts are evidently the effect and the measure of the denuding action on the softer strata. At the foot of all the cliffs, the sea shoals very gradually far outwards; and the bottom, for a space of some miles, everywhere consists of gravel. I carefully examined the bed of the sea ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... restful, meditative, a place where the feeling of magical allure takes a deeper, more subjective character. It might well be called the Court of Pools, for two, quiet pools, one circular, one oblong except for its concave side to hold the other, fill the floor of its sunken garden and reflect its pensive as well as its physical charms. The Caryatids repeated throughout this court are the joint work of John Bateman and A. Stirling Calder. They inject into the court ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... were used. Nine of them were of bone and were fashioned in figures typifying fish, serpents, etc. One side of each was painted red and had dots burned in with a hot iron. The brass pieces were circular having one side convex and the other concave. The convex side was bright, the concave dark or dull. The red pieces were the winning pieces and each had an arithmetical value. Any number of players might play. A wooden bowl, curiously carved and ornamented, was used. This form of the game may have been modified by contact with the whites. ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... people, and saw the flashing torches all bent upon this one point in the dark midnight, behold the bright gold crucifix on the coffin glittered as if in the clear light of the sun; and the blaze of the torches was reflected from the black concave of heaven, so that a glory seemed to rest around and above the bier, and all shone and glittered in that radiant circle, so that it was a pleasure and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... new form and color to the common and familiar objects it has printed in its still, pellucid depths. Every little basin of clear water by the roadside is a magic mirror, and transforms all that it encloses. There is a vastness of depth, too, in that concave hemisphere, through which the vision sinks like a falling star, that excites and fills the imagination. What it shows is only a shadow, but all things seen are mere shadows painted on the retina, and you have, at such times, a realistic sense of the beautiful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... formed a parallelogram, whose enclosure wall was often divided into vertical panels easily distinguished by the different arrangements of the building material. At El-Kab and other places the courses of crude brick are slightly concave, somewhat resembling a wide inverted arch whose outer curve rests on the ground. In other places there was a regular alternation of lengths of curved courses, with those in which the courses were strictly horizontal. The object of this method of structure is still unknown, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the Mississippi runs easily yields to the action of the fierce current. The land worn away at one point is often deposited, in the form of a bar or tongue of land, in the concave of the next bend. The area thus added becomes the property of whoever owns the river front. Many a man has seen his plantation steadily falling into the Mississippi, year by year, while a plantation, a dozen miles below, would annually find its area increased. Real estate on the banks of the Mississippi, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Augustine, where the negroes are chiefly Roman Catholics; and it will be interesting to see how their type of character combines with that elder creed. It is time for rest; and I have just looked out into the night, where the eternal stars shut down, in concave protection, over the yet glimmering camp, and Orion hangs above my tent-door, giving to me the sense of strength and assurance which these simple children obtain from their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... could shake The firm foundation of the earthly globe; Could I but grasp the poles in these two hands I'd pluck the world asunder. He would scale heaven, and when he had ——got beyond the utmost sphere, Besiege the concave of this universe, And hunger-starve the gods till they confessed What furies ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... vertical, and they generally form a ridge parallel to the southern skirts of the Grampians. The superior strata, Nos. 2 and 1, become less and less inclined on descending to the valley of Strathmore, where the strata, having a concave bend, are said by geologists to lie in a "trough" or "basin." Through the centre of this valley runs an imaginary line A, called technically a "synclinal line," where the beds, which are tilted in opposite directions, may be supposed to meet. It is ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... instead of paddles, and moved slowly and silently along. It was a clear and lovely night; the moon shone gloriously as a silver shield, and reflecting the starry firmament on the unruffled surface of the water, the real concave of heaven with its reflection seemed to form a perfect world. The scenery on the borders of the river appeared wild and striking, though not magnificent. In the delicious moonshine it was far from uninteresting: the banks were low and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... specific gravity of each substance is given. Then he discusses the reason why refraction takes place. Promises to write on the Rainbow; but will merely say at present that it is to be explained by the reflection on the concave superficies and the refraction at the convex superficies ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... for beads and buttons are made in a concave matrix by means of a round-pointed bolt which I will call a die. These tools are always made by the Indians. On one bar of iron there may be many matrices of different sizes, only one die fitting the smallest concavity, is required to work the metal in all. In the picture ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... hear—the aiders and the aided swept in one torn, depleted tumult, shattered, confounded, and made the more impotent by their own clamor. Here was the many-ravined, tree-dotted, southward rise by which, in concave line, the Northern brigades and batteries, pressing across the bends of the branch, advanced to the famed Henry house plateau—that key of victory where by midday fell all the horrid weight of the battle; where the guns of Ricketts and Griffen for the North and of Walton and ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... standing to him, he shortly stood on the great round-topped rock cut away beneath by the action of the waves over the entrance of the seal cave, where the water was fathomless. There he stood in comparative safety, for the concave shape of the rock beat back the waves with their own force, and though the water below him seemed to boil like a seething cauldron, just beyond the spot there was a space of almost calm. The rock, too, seemed here to shut off the sound of the gale, and he listened as well as watched. As ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... by Hansen and Lehmann in their experiments consists of two large concave reflectors. These are placed at a convenient distance, one facing the other, so that two experimenters may be seated, the first having his mouth at the focal point of one reflector, the second with his ear at the focal point of the other. As the first ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... immense observatory and of the telescope is of American production, with the single important exception of the cast glass disc from which the two principal lenses, the one double convex and the other plano-concave, are produced. These were cast by Mantois, of Paris, whose superiority to the American manufacturers ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... tour-de-force, which consisted in swallowing with outstretched neck a whole bumper of wine at one gulp or, to use his own technical expression, without a single hiccough. Now, such a feat naturally requires for its performance an extraordinarily concave and well-practised throat, and, with the exception of Bandi, there were not above one or two others ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the earth, and rivers of ore in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and circulated, and this portion of time was but the current hour. Let us wander where we will, the universe is built round about us, and we are central still. If we look into the heavens they are concave, and if we were to look into a gulf as bottomless, it would be concave also. The sky is curved downward to the earth in the horizon, because we stand on the plain. I draw down its skirts. The stars so low there seem loath to depart, but by a circuitous path ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... with the same result: he could see rifts and places in plenty where he could have climbed high enough to be beyond reach of the water even if it rose thirty or forty feet; but they were all on the other side, which was slightly convex, while their side, as the guide had pointed out, was concave, and would have matched exactly if the sides had been ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... fodder; and there are nooks for pigeons in an adjoining cave. In many cases there are cisterns; in one is a well. The cisterns had to be filled laboriously. They are provided with bungholes for the purpose of occasional cleaning out. The walls are scored with concave grooves slanting downwards, uniting and leading into small basins. The moisture condensing on the sides trickled into these runnels and supplied the basins with drinking water. The mangers have holes bored in the stone through which passed the halters. There are indications ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the same effect can be had by using a double concave lens. The picture is not reversed, but it is ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... at the illustration entitled "Women grinding chocolate," he will see how the brittle roasted bean is reduced to a paste in primitive manufacture. A stone, shaped like a rolling-pin, is being pushed to and fro over a concave slab, on which the smashed beans have already been reduced to a paste ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp |
