"Pear-shaped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effect of moderating the rotation of the planets. Now, this very rapid rotation of a liquid mass, with a thin crust, would (together with the instability occasioned by its cooling) cause it to bulge at the equator. The bulge would increase until the earth became a pear-shaped body. The small end of the pear would draw further and further away from the rest—as a drop of water does on the mouth of a tap—and at last the whole mass (some 5,000,000,000 cubic miles of matter) was broken off, and began to pursue an independent ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... of "thunderstones" are described as "axes," but Meunier (La Nature, 1892-2-381) tells of one that was in his possession; said to have fallen at Ghardia, Algeria, contrasting "profoundment" (pear-shaped) with the angular outlines of ordinary meteorites. The conventional explanation that it had been formed as a drop of molten matter from a larger body seems reasonable to me; but with less agreeableness I note its fall in a thunderstorm, the datum that ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... "See how perfectly round she is? No oblateness whatever. It proves that she once revolved, otherwise she'd be pear-shaped, from the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... easily and how far one may go astray when one of the links in the chain of argument is only an inference, let me relate that, while riding over James Island, I observed upon trees and bushes numbers of small brown bags, from half an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, pear-shaped, and suspended by strong silken cords. The bags themselves were made of a finer silk so closely woven as to resemble brown paper, and, when opened, were found to contain a mass of loose silk filled with young spiders to the number of five hundred or more. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... This led over undulating savannahs, with grass and jicara trees, and small clumps of low trees and shrubs on stony hillocks. Wild pigeons were very numerous, and their cooings were incessant. On the rocky spots grew spiny cactuses, with flattened pear-shaped joints and scarlet fruit. I reached the Juigalpa river about two miles below the town. Near the crossing it ran between shelving rocky banks, with here and there still reaches and pebbly shores. Shady trees overhung the clear water; and behind were myrtle-leaved shrubs and grassy ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... time the least understood, of Lower Silurian Protozoans belong, however, to the genera Stromatopora and Receptaculites, the structure of which can merely be alluded to here. The specimens of Stromatopora (fig. 38) occur as hemispherical, pear-shaped, globular, or irregular masses, often of very considerable size, and sometimes demonstrably attached to foreign bodies. In their structure these masses consist of numerous thin calcareous laminae, usually arranged ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... York colony there were evolved silver tea pots of a unique design, that was not used elsewhere in the colonies. Mr. Halsey says they were used indiscriminately for both tea and coffee. In style they followed, to a certain extent, the squat pear-shaped tea pots of the period of 1717-18 in England, but ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of the Sumerians and long-headed Chinese are of the agglutinative variety, so are those also which are spoken by the broad-headed Turks and Magyars of Hungary, the broad-headed and long-headed, dark and fair Finns, and the brunet and short-statured Basques with pear-shaped faces, who are regarded as a variation of the Mediterranean race with distinctive characteristics developed in isolation. Languages afford no sure indication of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... faint star is visible within the opening, producing a curious effect upon the sensitive spectator, like the sight of a tiny islet in the midst of a black, motionless, waveless tarn. The dimensions of the lagoon of darkness, which is oval or pear-shaped, are eight degrees by five, so that it occupies a space in the sky about one hundred and thirty times greater than the area of the full moon. It attracts attention as soon as the eye is directed toward the quarter where it exists, and by virtue of the rarity of such phenomena it appears a far ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Bragadoccio. Robbers. Escort. Cuernavaca. Tropical Vegetation. Sugar-cane. Temisco. Sugar-hacienda. Indian labourers. The evensong. The Raya. Strength of the Indians. Xochicalco. Ruins of the Pyramid. Sculptures. Common ornaments. The people of Mexico and Central America. Their civilization. Pear-shaped heads. Miacatlan. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... dead and gone beloved ones to whom, while they lived, my welfare had been dear. While I occupied this kneeling position the flame of my torch fell directly on some small object that glittered with remarkable luster. I went to examine it; it was a jeweled pendant composed of one large pear-shaped pearl, set round with fine rose brilliants! Surprised at this discovery, I looked about to see where such a valuable gem could possible have come from I then noticed an unusually large coffin lying sideways on the ground; it appeared as if it had fallen suddenly and with force, for ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... summit and narrow at the base. FROND. A fern leaf or blade; may include both stipe and blade, or only the latter—called also lamina. GLABROUS. Smooth; not rough or hairy. GLAND. A small secreting organ, globular or pear-shaped; it is often stalked. GLAUCOUS. Covered with a fine bloom, bluish-white and powdery, in appearance like a plum. HASTATE. Like an arrowhead with the lobes spreading. IMBRICATE. Overlapping, like shingles ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... are the ordinary flasks of the chemical laboratory. A good variety, ranging in capacity from 250 to 3000 c.c., should be kept on hand. A modified form, known as the "pear-shaped" (Fig. 2), is preferable for the smaller sizes—i. e., ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... well how to hate. As for me, I have also been inside a prison, to which this man Nick Carter sent me. I had been mixed up in a little diamond robbery from one of the big firms in this town. I don't know but maybe some of you heard about it; it was called the taking of the pear-shaped diamonds, and at the time that happened I was in love with a very beautiful girl, and was outwardly leading a very respectable life. It's enough for me to say now that when the exposure that followed Nick Carter's investigation of that case, and through it the exposure of ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... principles of the brotherhood of which he and they had been members, had seriously exercised the minds of certain of these quondam acquaintances, who had given forcible expression to their feelings by attempting his assassination. The pear-shaped hand grenades of Orsini and his fellow-conspirator were the fruit of Louis's early connection with the secret societies of the Carbonari. They indicate the forces which controlled the policy of the Third Napoleon, and obliged him constantly to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... bruiser type. The term a "tough" fits him closely. He had a punch like a kick from a dray horse but when called upon to use his hands he preferred to rely upon his mascot to ensure success. Freddie's mascot was a few lengths of whalebone bound with twine and socketed into a pear-shaped lump of lead. Scientifically wielded it would go through the helmet of a City policeman like a hot knife through butter. He had a healthy dislike for firearms which was perhaps the primary cause of his failure to serve King and ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... stamens, united by their filaments in a tube, are inserted on the corolla. Broad anthers united around a thick column of pistils terminating in a large, sticky, 5-angled disk. The anther sacs tipped with a winged membrane; a waxy, pear-shaped pollen-mass in each sac connected with the stigma in pairs or fours by a dark gland, and suspended by a stalk like a pair of saddle-bags. Stem: Stout, leafy, usually unbranched, 3 to 5 ft. high, juice milky. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... archaeologists discovered some years ago, in the so-called Acropolis, a town of irregular, rudely pear-shaped outline with a distinct though not yet fully excavated town-plan. Two main thoroughfares ran straight from end to end and crossed at right angles (fig. 3), the longer of these thoroughfares being just a quarter of a mile long and 30 ft. wide. From these two main streets other narrower streets (12-18 ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... quartzose formations topazes, amethysts and sapphires, garnets and rubies, will probably occur, as in the similar rocks of the great Brazilian mining-grounds. The seed-pearl of the Coast-oyster may be developed into a tolerable likeness of the far-famed pear-shaped Margarita of Arabian Katifah, which was bought by Tavernier for the sum, then ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... of the Garden of Eden, that "some of the Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World, and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it." The world then, said Columbus, could not be a perfect round, but pear-shaped. With these conclusions he hastened across to Hayti where his brother was ruling over the little colony in his absence. But treachery and mutiny had been at work. Matters had gone ill with the colony, and Columbus ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... in former talks, the womb is designed as a nest for the babe during its process of development from the egg or ovule. It lies in the center of the pelvis, or lower part of the body cavity, in front of the rectum and behind and above the bladder. It is pear-shaped, with the small end downward, and is about three inches long, two inches wide and one inch thick. It consists of layers of muscles enclosing a cavity which, owing to the thickness of the walls, is comparatively small. This cavity is triangular in shape and has three openings,—one ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... large numbers on Bird Rock in company with the Murres and in still greater numbers off the coast of Labrador. Their eggs are not placed in as exposed positions as the Murres, being generally behind boulders or in crevices. This is necessary because, not being of the pear-shaped form of the Murres, they would be very apt to be dislodged if commonly placed on the narrow ledges. The eggs vary endlessly in marking but do not show the differences in ground color that the Murres do. The color is white, grayish or buffy. But one egg is generally laid, although two are sometimes ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... February come the great ice-storms, when every branch, blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together, the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... Acacia, about fifteen or twenty feet high, with light green bipinnate leaves (from which exuded an amber-coloured eatable gum), formed groves and thickets within it. A Capparis, a small stunted tree, was in fruit: this fruit is about one inch long and three-quarters of an inch broad, pear-shaped and smooth, with some irregular prominent lines. Capparis Mitchelii has a downy fruit, and is common in the scrubs. A small trailing Capparis, also with oblong eatable fruit, was first observed on a hill near Ruined Castle Creek, in lat. 25 degrees ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... follow—at least that was my experience in my boyish days, when I was particularly interested in vermin, and the gamekeeper was my first instructor in natural history. The face is rounded like a cat, but the skull behind the eye is very long and pear-shaped when viewed from above; in proportion to a cat's skull the brain case is a fourth longer. They are most sanguinary in their habits, and their agility is great, so on the whole they are most formidable to many animals, not only smaller, but in many cases four times their own size. The ferocity of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... was carried on with a human head, which peeped above the water, its arms supporting from beneath the growling cur—such a visage as only worn-out poachers, or trampling drovers, or London chiffonniers carry; pear-shaped and retreating to a narrow peak above, while below, the bleared cheeks, and drooping lips, and peering purblind eyes, perplexed, hopeless, defiant, and yet sneaking, bespeak THEIR share in the 'inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.'—Savages without ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... on these Sutherlandshire journeys, to eat my piece of cake with a double relish—I found, on last passing the way, similarly represented. Its grey venerable walls, and dark winding passages of many steps—even the huge pear-shaped lintel, which had stretched over its little door, and which, according to tradition, a great Fingalian lady had once thrown across the Dornoch Firth from off the point of her spindle—had all disappeared, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... information received from the Castilian, belonged to the ancient treasury of the Kings of Calecut. The long dark hair of the King was tied in a knot on the top of his head, and round the knot he wore a string of pearls, at the end of which was a pear-shaped pearl of large size. To his ears were suspended golden fairings ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... skirts, Sophy!" cried Nicholas Jelnik, and poured the glittering things into my lap, boyishly. He was beautiful again, radiant and young-eyed as the choiring cherubim. There were two exquisite, pear-shaped ear-ring drops among the Hynds jewels, and these he took, threaded upon my chain on either side the broken coin, and hung around my neck. He held a ruby against my lip and turquoises ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... chopped turkey and sweetbreads and cook the whole for two minutes longer. Use no seasoning but pepper (white or cayenne) and salt to the taste. This quantity will make twenty-two large croquettes, which are prettiest moulded in a pear-shaped wine glass. With a little practice you can mould them in your hand. Have ready some cracker crumbs rolled very fine and dust like. Fry the croquettes in boiling lard and enough to cover them. When a rich brown take them out and place on sieve or brown ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... crackling of a newspaper close to your ear. It makes a sort of deep reverberating crackle in the air, gradually lessening, until there is a dull boom, and a mile or so away you see a thick little cloud of white smoke in the air or a pear-shaped cloud of grey-black smoke on the ground. Coming towards you a shell makes a cutting, swishing note, gradually getting higher and higher, louder and louder. There is a longer note one instant and then it ceases. Shrapnel bursting close to you has the ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... by architects 'tambours;' the tambours of the cupolas are round, that of the central dome octagonal, and that of the hinder secondary one pentagonal. From all the domes alike there spring inverted pear-shaped stones, each bearing a cross which consists of an upright rod traversed horizontally by three smaller ones; the crosses bear balls and chains, and symbolise the Trinity. On the ground, opposite the portal, and within the stone balustrade which surrounds the church, there is an exquisite little ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... of Eden that some of the Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World, and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it. Columbus, thinking hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to the conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped. He knows that all this fresh water in the sea must come from a great distance and from no ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have been acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... landscape. To ride or drive through it on a Sunday was quite a rest, when there was no risk of one's illusions being dispelled by abominable shells, whose many visible traces on the sward, in the shape of deep pear-shaped pits, were all ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... his work on Ancient Stone Implements, p. 463 (1897), writes: "A pendant, consisting of a flat pear-shaped piece of shale, 2.5 inches long, and 2 inches broad, and perforated at the narrow end, was found along with querns, stones with concentric circles, and cup- shaped indentations worked in them; stone balls, spindle whorls, and an iron axe-head, in excavating ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... fragments—always eagerly seized upon when discovered by the cave people in their wanderings—the spearheads and rude knives and skin scrapers so essential to their needs. The flint nodule was but a small mass of the stone, often somewhat pear-shaped. Though apparently a solid mass, composed of the hardest substance then known, it lay in what might be called a series of flakes about a center, and, in wise hands, these flakes could be chipped or pried away unbroken. The flake, once won, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... dirty-white or grayish looking, minute, pear-shaped bodies, visible to the naked eye, and fastened upon the shaft of the hairs with the small end toward ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... a thin face, sharply pear-shaped, ending in a pointed chin; a tight mouth smiled at the corners; above her narrow eyes and high brows rose a high forehead, surmounted by strands of auburn hair drawn back tightly beneath the little head-dress. It was a strangely ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... semicircle; quadrant, sextant, sector. sphere &c 249. V. make round &c adj.; round. go round; encircle &c 227; describe a circle &c 311. Adj. round, rounded, circular, annular, orbicular; oval, ovate; elliptic, elliptical; egg-shaped; pear-shaped &c 245; cycloidal &c n.^; spherical &c 249. Phr. I watched the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... arm-chair covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, near the window of the salon, and he did not stir as the two ladies entered with Gaudissart. His thoughts were running on the casks of wine. He was a spare man, and his bald head, garnished with a few spare locks at the back of it, was pear-shaped in conformation. His sunken eyes, overtopped by heavy black brows and surrounded by discolored circles, his nose, thin and sharp like the blade of a knife, the strongly marked jawbone, the hollow cheeks, and the oblong tendency of all these lines, together with his unnaturally ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... is an irregularly pear-shaped bag, situated in the upper and left part of the abdomen. It is somewhat flattened from before backward and so has an anterior and posterior surface and an upper and lower border. When moderately distended the thick end of the pear or fundus bulges upward and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Gervaise who was first wounded. Three long scratches from her mouth to her throat bled profusely, and she fought with her eyes shut lest she should be blinded. As yet Virginia showed no wound. Suddenly Gervaise seized one of her earrings—pear-shaped, of yellow glass—she tore it out and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Wheeler, upon occasion, across a Sunday-noon, lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered in orchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't these Yvette ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... to leave her cell, in the spring, the Anthophora destroys the mortar disk that closes the jar and thus reaches the general corridor, which is quite open to the outer air. The abandoned nest provides a series of pear-shaped cavities, of which the distended part is the old cell and the contracted part the exit-neck, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... fortune here. See how beautiful they are." And she held up a string of large, round pearls to which clung an ornament, in shape somewhat like an anchor, of the same precious gems, two of which were pear-shaped and very large. The ear-rings and brooch were of the most exquisite pattern. I had never seen anything so beautiful, and had no word for ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... of the womb or uterus, the ovaries, and a canal called the vagina which leads from the lower end of the uterus to an external opening, the vulva. The ovaries, two in number, are situated one on each side of the uterus. The uterus, which is pear-shaped, with the apex downwards, has three openings, one at the apex and one at each side at the upper part. These two upper openings are provided with a tubule extension, the Fallopian tubes, whose outer ends are fringed ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... obeyed, and stood beside him attentively while he opened a small leather case and took out a pair of earrings each consisting of a tiny, pear-shaped moonstone dangling at the end of ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... belongs to the same class of instruments as the guitar, differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from eight to eleven strings, which in the east ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... other Cacteae, the hypocotyl is from the first much enlarged, and both cotyledons are almost or quite rudimentary. Thus with Cereus Landbeckii two little triangular projections, representing the cotyledons, are narrower than the hypocotyl, which is pear-shaped, with the point downwards. In Rhipsalis cassytha the cotyledons are represented by mere points on the enlarged hypocotyl. In Echinocactus viridescens the hypocotyl is globular, with two little prominences on its summit. In Pilocereus ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... end of August he sent another ambassador, Francesco da Casate, to Ferrara with a magnificent gift for his bride, in the shape of a necklace of large pearls set in gold flowers, with a very fine pear-shaped pendant of rubies, pearls, and emeralds. This costly jewel was duly presented to Beatrice in the name of her affianced husband, and Duchess Leonora wrote forthwith to give her daughter Isabella the good news, informing ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright |
