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Spiral   Listen
adjective
Spiral  adj.  
1.
Winding or circling round a center or pole and gradually receding from it; as, the spiral curve of a watch spring.
2.
Winding round a cylinder or imaginary axis, and at the same time rising or advancing forward; winding like the thread of a screw; helical.
3.
(Geom.) Of or pertaining to a spiral; like a spiral.
Spiral gear, or Spiral wheel (Mach.), a gear resembling in general a spur gear, but having its teeth cut at an angle with its axis, or so that they form small portions of screws or spirals.
Spiral gearing, a kind of gearing sometimes used in light machinery, in which spiral gears, instead of bevel gears, are used to transmit motion between shafts that are not parallel.
Spiral operculum, an operculum whih has spiral lines of growth.
Spiral shell, any shell in which the whorls form a spiral or helix.
Spiral spring. See the Note under Spring, n., 4.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books



... O'er whose grey wreck the shading ivy crawls, Compos'd a graceful mansion, whose fair mould Led from the road the trav'ller, to behold. Oft, when the morning ting'd the redd'ning skies, Far off the spiral smoke was seen to rise; At noon the hospitable board was spread, Then nappy ale made light the weary head; And when grey eve appear'd, in shadows damp, Each casement glitter'd with th' enliv'ning lamp; Here the laugh titter'd, there the lute of Love Fill'd with its melody the ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... the court was crowded with Gallas, some lounging about, others squatting in the shade under the palace walls. The chiefs were known by their zinc armlets, composed of thin spiral circlets, closely joined, and extending in mass from the wrist almost to the elbow: all appeared to enjoy peculiar privileges,—they carried their long spears, wore their sandals, and walked leisurely about ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... going at such speed that the fifty rounds he loosed off apparently missed his opponent, in spite of the fact that but forty yards separated them when the last bullet left Parker's gun. The German went down in a clever spiral for a couple of thousand feet. When he flattened out, however, Parker, who had dived with and after him, was close behind. More, he was in an ideal position, from which he fired another fifty rounds. These steel messengers reached their billet, ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... unbroken. It is often, as one has said, a spiral rather than a straight line. It is not an unceasing advance: there are backward movements, or what appear to be such. Of particular nations it is frequently evident, that, intellectually and morally, as well as in power and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... American altiloquent was once talking of liberty, when he said, "White-robed liberty sits upon her rosy clouds above us; the Genius of our country, standing on her throne of mountains, bids her eagle standard-bearer wind his spiral course full in the sun's proud eye; while the Genius of Christianity, surrounded by ten thousand cherubim and seraphim, moves the panorama of the milky clouds above us, and floats in immortal fragrance—the very aroma of ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... stones. Oh, what a queer thing has just come loose, all in one piece! It is turned spiral-wise, like certain flat snails that come out of the cracks of old walls in rainy weather. With its gnarled sides, it looks like a little ram's horn. Shell or horn, it is very curious. How do things like that find their ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... runs slowly round and round into the center, and can either wind the children up tightly or can turn them on nearing the center and run out again. For another change the long line can start running and so unwind the spiral. ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... with it), staring petrified at Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman, swayed and whirled and beckoned. A slender spiral of smoke rose from the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room. Three or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... lilies lie Like maidens in the lap of death, So pale, so cold, so motionless Its Stygian breast they press; They breathe, and toward the purple sky The pallid perfumes of their breath Ascend in spiral shapes, for there No wind disturbs the voiceless air— No murmur breaks the oblivious mood Of that tenebrean solitude— No Djinn, no Ghoul, no Afrit laves His giant limbs within its waves Beneath the wan Saturnian light That swoons in the omnipresent night; But only funeral forms ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... tell us, however, that all things move in an ascending spiral. We do in order to be. What we are bears unconscious fruit in what we do. A woman who is cultivated in the true sense exerts a constant influence for good. One rich woman says, "I will not live to ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... of the corridor I found a spiral stairway leading to the floors above and below. The three had evidently left the floor by this avenue. That they had gone down and not up I was sure from my knowledge of these ancient buildings and the methods of ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... well made were many of the trials. One boy showed a bow of two great horns joined together, which only Thorolf the Strong could bend. Another showed an oxhorn, with the tip cut off and ornamented, and the whole horn carved in spiral grooves; and raising it to his lips he blew a blast that could be heard a mile! There seemed to be as many different things as there were boys and girls to make them; and Jarl Sigurd was pleased indeed ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... small children wade about the river and pick up quantities of small crabs, called "ag-ka'-ma," and also a small spiral shell, called "ko'-ti." It is safe to say that every hour of a rainless day one or more persons of Bontoc is gathering such food in the river. Immediately after the first rain of the season of 1903, coming April 5, there were twenty-four persons, women ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... the silent toil That spread the lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the last year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step the shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... sleep, one with an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other, The smell of apples, aromas from crush'd sage-plant, mint, birch-bark, The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming, The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and content to the ground, The no-form'd stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with, The hubb'd sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one, The sensitive, orbic, underlapp'd ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... the time when they first passed the house. We then mentioned that there was a person in the turret watching their movements. As they disappeared in the direction of Ludgate, this individual quitted his post of observation, and, descending the spiral staircase, threaded a long passage in the darkness, like one familiar with the place, until he arrived at a particular chamber, which he entered; and, without pausing, proceeded to a little cabinet beyond it. The moonlight ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... dresses, and that golden flower on a silver stalk—all of pure, [212] soft gold, unhardened by alloy, the delicate films of which one must touch but lightly, yet twisted and beaten, by hand and hammer, into wavy, spiral relief, the cuttle-fish with its long undulating arms ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... coral floor. With my small spears I pried out dozens of them, Mao, starfish, clams, oysters, furbelowed clams, sea-urchins, and sponges. The mao is the turbo, the queer gastropod sold in the market in Papeete. He lives in a beautiful spiral shell, and has attached to him a round piece of polished shell, blue, green, brown, or yellow, which he puts aside when he wishes to feed on the morsels passing his door, and pulls shut when he wants privacy. He fits himself tightly into a hollow in the reef and dozes away ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... large ball, which made a clean, pretty hole, without tearing. "Now," he explained kindly to Lawrence, "the ball from one of these infernal rifled concerns goes gyrating and tearing its way through you, and makes an orifice like a posthole." He illustrated his meaning with a sweeping spiral motion ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... one of these jays mounting from branch to branch around the stem of a pine tree, from the lower limbs to the top, as if he were ascending a spiral staircase. This seems to be one of their regulation habits when they find themselves under inspection. If you intrude on their domestic precincts, their cry is quite harsh, and bears no resemblance to the quaint calls of the eastern jays; nor does the plaintive note of the eastern representative, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... which we call the Milky Way. And we direct our telescopes to this Milky Way and find that what we took for nebula is for the most part an accumulation of countless millions of suns, each perhaps with its planets. Then, as we sweep the sky with our glass, we discover numberless little wreath-like spiral cloudlets, and find that they also are just such wreaths of countless millions of suns and solar systems, and that these seemingly tiny wreaths are revolving round some central body or system, which itself must ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... rarely vibrating his pinions, he mounts and mounts in an ascending spiral till he appears a mere speck against the summer sky; then, if the mood seizes him, with wings half closed, like a bent bow, he will cleave the air almost perpendicularly, as if intent on dashing himself to pieces against the earth; but on nearing the ground he suddenly mounts again on broad, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... phenomena. A light vapour, the lightest, airiest of the airiest, swept gently along the surface of the ground, but as if unimpelled by any secret influence. It was also dead calm. The vapour continued to sweep before us, till at length it suddenly rose up to the sky in the form of a spiral column of air, and then disappeared. In this valley, which widened as we advanced, we once or twice saw the mirage running along the ground like prostrate columns of foam, striking out sparklings ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... of that mediaeval building, half monastic, half military, exposed even then to the searching winds many bare and roofless chambers; broken vaults filled with driven sands; more than one spiral stair with hanging steps leading into space. But the massive square keep had been substantially restored. Although roofless its upper platform was as firm as when it was first built; and in a corner, solidly ensconced, rose the more ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... of the animal would have caused you to suspect. To overcome the resistance of this sort of spring coiled upon itself, you have to force it, so much so that you are afraid, if you persist, of seeing the indomitable spiral suddenly burst and shoot forth ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... facing you, a pile of buildings like an inverted L. The basement was occupied by domestic offices: at the angle of the [inverted L] was the main entrance. On your right, and much nearer to you than the main entrance, a door opened on a narrow spiral staircase, so dark that it was ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... an easy, spiral flight of steps, to the door of a room, which he threw open. Cornelia was sitting in a large cushioned chair by the fire, with a papier-mache writing-desk beside her, covered with letters. There was ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... quickly off his horse and ran out on the big flat rock from which they had often fished together. At his feet the turbid current rolled ponderously against the solid wall of rock and, turning back upon itself, swung round in an ever-lessening circle until it sucked down suddenly into a spiral vortex that spewed up all it caught in the boiling channel below. There in years past the lambs and weaklings from the herds above had drifted to their death, but never before had the maelstrom ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... consists of a compound bar wound into a spiral and fastened at one end, to which a terminal of a circuit is connected. The bar may be made of two strips of brass and iron riveted together, and wound into a spiral. When such a bar is submitted to changes of temperature it bends in different directions, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... mind if any curiosity fell in his way. Years passed, and as no communication reached him, Mr. Owen was disposed to class the promise with too many others made in the like circumstances. But on his first return to this country Livingstone presented himself, bearing the tusk of an elephant with a spiral curve. He had found it in the heart of Africa, and it was not easy of transport. "You may recall," said Professor Owen, at the Farewell Festival in 1858, "the difficulties of the progress of the weary sick traveler on the bullock's back. Every pound weight was ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... spacious that it would have been waste and desolate, had it not been well filled with handsome, but heavy old-fashioned furniture, covered with crimson damask, and one side of the room fitted up with a bookcase, so high that there was a spiral flight of library steps to give access to the upper shelves. Opposite were four large windows, now hidden by their ample curtains; and near them was at one end of the room a piano, at the other ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... up a bit higher," Tom yelled into his chums ear when they were near their destination. "Then I can make a spiral glide to earth. ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton

... curves, beautiful, spiral, rhythmic, in a normal and healthy human being. These curves depend upon this expansion of ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... dozen yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom—a bit of smoke climbing weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter—and then, between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came creeping toward him on all fours, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... under his charge, led them outside the church, and then conducted them to a door leading into a small round tower, which was built at an angle of the wall. This tower, though small in size, was as high as the church, and it contained a spiral staircase of stone, which conducted up into the upper parts of the edifice. Mr. George and Rollo, however, found that they could not go up to the towers but only to what were called the galleries. But it proved in the end that they had quite enough of climbing ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott

... when snow begin to fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound and force imprisoned ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... give the ship a line: the ball is fired from this mortar, the line being fastened to the shot by a spiral wire. Mortar, powder and matches are set, you see, ready for instantaneous use. The ball must be shot so that the line falls over the ship. Not an easy mark to hit in the night and the storm driving. Sometimes it is not done until after many trials: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... but that so very valuable a piece of watch-work (for I do really think, from the experience I have had of it, that a superior piece of work was never made) would be better fixed upon a small horizontal table, made on purpose, and well secured; and under the box which contains the watch, a kind of spiral spring or worm, which, with every jerk or pitch of the ship, would yield a little with the weight of the watch, and thereby take off much of that shock which must in some degree affect ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... the Chimaphila, Yellow Lily, Mullein, Ghost Flower, Indian Pipe, Lysimacha Stricta, Wild Chamomile. August will bring forth a variety of other plants, amongst others the Spirantes, or Ladies' Tresses, a very sweet-scented Orchis, with white flowers placed as a spiral round the flower stalk, the purple Eupatorium, the Snake's head, and crowds of most beautiful wild flowers, too numerous to be named here. [244] ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... asked Choulette if he had finished the portrait of Misery on his stick. Misery had now become a figure of Piety, and Choulette recognized the Virgin in it. He had even composed a quatrain which he was to write on it in spiral form—a didactic and moral quatrain. He would cease to write, except in the style of the commandments of God rendered into French verses. The four lines expressed simplicity and goodness. He ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... answered the youth, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke in a delicate spiral up into the morning sky; "but I've really told you all ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... our greatest problem, which I control by a paper wrap made by cutting two inch sections from a 36 inch roll of cheap felt-base wall paper. It gradually weathers away during the second summer. I wrap from the top down in a spiral, and when I reach the bottom, I place a hand full of earth on the end of the paper. No tying is required. In this way I have reduced the mortality rate of young nut trees greatly. I am also a strong believer in cover crops and mulching, for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... she not rehearsing there with them? she asked herself. At once the answer came. Because your husband hates you—because he wants to make love to another woman. Then, like one crazed, she clattered down the iron spiral staircase to the stage. She did not even hear Mortimer and Dubois cry out as she pushed ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... quickly than a man could walk; at any rate so it seemed to us. But we had no means of judging its real rate of progress whereof we knew as little as we did of the course it followed in the bowels of the earth. Perhaps that was spiral, from the world's deep heart upwards, and this was the highest point it reached. Or perhaps it remained stationary, but still spinning, for scores or hundreds of years in some central powerhouse of its own, whence, in ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... Twenty feet away a weary-faced sailor was calking the deck. As his eyes lingered on the man, he saw suddenly arise from under his hands a faint spiral of haze that curled and twisted and was gone. By now he had reached the deck. His bare feet were pervaded by a dull warmth that quickly penetrated the thick calluses. He knew now the nature of the ship's distress. His eyes roved swiftly forward, where the full crew of weary-faced ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... this than in the other sex. Thus in many breeds the horns are deficient in the ewe, though this likewise occurs occasionally with the female of the wild musmon. In the rams of the Wallachian breed, "the horns spring almost perpendicularly from the frontal bone, and then take a beautiful spiral form; in the ewes they protrude nearly at right angles from the head, and then become twisted in a singular manner." (3/82. 'Youatt on Sheep' page 138.) Mr. Hodgson states that the extraordinarily arched nose or chaffron, which is so highly developed in several foreign breeds, is ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... Ross forthwith illustrated on the back of a menu card the spiral shape and progress of a cyclone. He so thoroughly mystified the girl by his technical references to northern and southern hemispheres, polar directions, revolving air-currents, external circumferences, and diminished atmospheric pressures, that she was too bewildered to reiterate a desire to ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... to find out where the flashing static on the radar is coming from," explained Strong. "We'll make wide circles, starting outside and working in. Blast in a continuous circle inward, like a spiral. If there's anything around here, we'll find it ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... precipice we come to a new phase of coastal scenery. From the high land above us green scrub-covered spur after spur shoots downward to the shore, enclosing numerous little beaches of coarse sand and many coloured spiral shells—"Reddies" we boys called them—with here and there a rare and beautiful cowrie of banded jet black and pearly white. The sea-wall of rock has here but few pools, being split up into long, deep, and narrow chasms, into which the gentle ocean swell comes with strange gurglings and hissings, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... old, and wan, See yon wretched beggar man; Once a father's hopeful heir, Once a mother's tender care. When too young to understand He but scorch'd his little hand, By the candle's flaming light Attracted, dancing, spiral, bright, Clasping fond her darling round, A thousand kisses heal'd the wound. Now abject, stooping, old, and wan, No mother tends the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... in its journey across the ages, is a microcosm which has, like the world itself, successive stages of youth, maturity, and old age; but it never dies—it renews itself perpetually. It is not like a perfect circle; it is like a spiral, and in its growth is always mounting higher. I believe in making students follow the same path that art itself has followed, so that they shall undergo during their term of study the same transformations that music itself has undergone during the centuries. In this way they will ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... taken from his pocket and the table—on which stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle—moved close to the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in the stillness of the night, reading it by the faint light under the green shade, did he grasp its ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... stronger than the lodge fire when from far away on the hills beyond the river came a faint sound borne on the morning wind, yet it electrified the camp, and from in front of the Fire Eater's tent a passing man split the air with the wolfish war-yell of the Chis-chis-chash. As though he had been a spiral spring released from pressure, the Fire Eater regained his height. The little boy sat briskly down in the ashes, adding his voice to the confusion, which now reigned in the great camp in a most disproportionate way. The old chief sprang to his doorway in time to see a mounted rider ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington

... mine in the Press Gallery used to represent "I have yet to learn that the Government" by a little twirl, and "What did the right honourable gentleman do, Mr. Speaker? He had the audacity" by two spiral dots. ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... I went down a spiral staircase leading to the foot of the Horseshoe Fall, where I could have passed 153 feet behind the falling sheet, but I soon got wet, and returned. Table Rock projects out many feet above this place, and will come down ere long, as it is much cracked. I then visited an Episcopal church at ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore

... for a moment, then turned his eyes up, to the sky. Somewhere up there a tiny satellite spun wildly about the earth, a little silver ball in some celestial roulette wheel. Gradually it would spiral closer and closer, caught by the planet's implacable grasp, until it flared brightly like a cigarette in the heavens before dissolving into ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry

... American people, at least —is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation, and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think the restored Union neither possible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... staircase three or four stairs at a time sprang the baron; then he walked quickly with beating heart down the long corridor to the west wing, where the nursery was, and pausing at the top of a spiral staircase which led to the side door he intended to go out by, he shouted impatiently to the housemaid who was left ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... the bickering breeze That issues from beneath Aurora's car, Shudder the sombrous waves; at every beam More vivid, more by every breath impelled, Higher and higher up the fretted rocks Their turbulent refulgence they display. Madness, which like the spiral element The more it seizes on the fiercer burns, Hurried them blindly forward, and involved In flame the senses and in gloom the soul. Determined to protect the country's gods And asking their protection, they adjure Each other to stand forward, and insist With zeal, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... lens as before. The field presented to the eye is depicted in Fig. 1, B, where it is visible that while the original organism persists yet a new organism has arisen in and invaded the fluid. It is a relatively long and beautiful spiral form, and now the movement in the field is entrancing. The original organism darts with its vigor and grace, and rebounds in all directions. But the spiral forms revolving on their axes glide like a flight of swallows over the ample ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... think one moment of Correggio at Parma. Before the macchinisti of the seventeenth century had vulgarised the motive, Correggio's bold attempt to paint heaven in flight from earth—earth left behind in the persons of the Apostles standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring upward with a spiral vortex into the abyss of light above—had an originality which set at nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy of jubilation, such rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain our eyes from below, feel we are in the darkness of the grave which Mary left. A kind of controlling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Motley was twice sacrificed to personal feelings No man is safe (from news reporters) Our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future Played so long with other men's characters and good name Progress should be by a spiral movement Public which must have a slain reputation to devour Reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them Recall of a foreign minister for alleged misconduct in office Shall Slavery die, or the ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... with a peal of the most delirious laughter—laughter that was of the underground, the cavern, the deep secret places of the earth, laughter of elfs and hidden rivers—to the light of the moon. The shepherd boy could see seven distinct spiral issues of sparkling water and they took the shape of nymphs, more exquisite than anything he had ever seen even in his dreams. Something seemed to happen in the very heavens above; the moon reached down from the sky, swiftly and ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... not gone twenty yards when he found a halfpenny lying on the grass. He laid hands on it, and made for the confectioner's, where he expended it on a sickly sweet called 'paper-suck'—a treacly, sticky abomination with a spiral of old newspaper twined about it Brother Dick appeared by chance, and shared the treat. Paul at this time had taken to making verses on his own account, incited by a great deal of miscellaneous reading. This was an exercise ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... examples will be sufficient. No one can doubt that the figure of the serpent was sometimes used in pictorial art to represent the lightning, when he reads that the Algonkins straightly called the latter a snake; when he sees the same adjective, spiral or winding, (helikoiedes) applied by the Greeks to the lightning and a snake; when the Quiche call the electric flash a strong serpent; and many other such examples. The Pueblo Indians represent lightning in their pictographs by a zigzag line. A zigzag ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... the south, then to the west, and back again to the north. If the movement had been quite regular, the apex would have described a circle, or rather, as the stem is always growing upwards, a circular spiral. But it generally describes irregular elliptical or oval figures; for the apex, after pointing in any one direction, commonly moves back to the opposite side, not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... or sees a man, it rouses itself by shaking its tail, which makes a rattling noise that may be heard at several paces distance, and gives warning to the traveller to be upon his guard. It is much to be dreaded when it coils itself up in a spiral line, for then it may easily dart upon a man. It shuns the habitations of men, and by a singular providence, wherever it retires to, there the herb which cures its bite, is likewise to ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... gigantic figure of a woman in Greek draperies, holding in her right hand a torch.... A spiral stairway leads from the base of this pedestal to the torch. We climbed up to the head which will hold forty persons, and viewed the scene on which Liberty gazes day and night, and O, how wonderful it was! We did not wonder ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... dissolution of the central cells or by the secretion of fluid internally. Some of the glands, such as the sudoriferous, do not ramify (Figure 2.284 efg). These glands, which secrete the perspiration, are very long, and have a spiral coil at the end, but they never ramify; so also the wax-glands of the ears. Most of the other cutaneous glands give out buds and ramify; thus, for instance, the lachrymal glands of the upper eye-lid that secrete tears (Figure 2.286), and the sebaceous glands which secrete the fat in the skin ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... Squire Merritt's house stood open into the hall the night was so warm, some girls in white were coming down the wide spiral of stair within, pressing softly together like scared white doves, in silence save for the rustle of their starched skirts. From the great rooms on either side of the hall, however, came the murmur of conversation, with now and ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... a lot, Siddhartha, there is still much to learn. We are not going around in circles, we are moving up, the circle is a spiral, we have ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... what a first-rate substitute for roast oysters these are?" asked Alan, twirling the great metal spider with purplish back and spiral wire legs that hung from the ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... for use, measuring twelve inches and upwards in length, and an inch in diameter, nearly cylindrical, often irregular, and sometimes assuming a spiral or cork-screw form; skin white and smooth; flesh white, not so firm as that of most varieties, and considerably pungent; ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... tunnel was so low that Gaydon, though a shortish man, could barely hold his head erect. He followed Edgar to the end and up a flight of winding steps. The air grew warmer and dryer. They had risen above ground, the spiral wound within the thickness of a wall. The steps ended abruptly; there was no door visible; in face of them and on each side the bare stone walls enclosed them. Edgar stooped down and pressed with his finger ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... his head. "No," he said, "it is nod der ring, but der elastic spiral. Der progress she march, it is true, round und round, but she is arrive always der one turn higher, und der pressure on ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... of an axis of hollow brass tube, eighteen inches in length, through which, upon a semi-spiral inclined at fifteen degrees, pass a series of steel wire radii, two feet long, and thus projecting a foot on either side. These radii are connected at the outer extremities by two bands of flattened wire—the whole in this manner ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... both the current eschatologies to scorn. And the higher they ascend, as they follow the path, the more vividly do they realise how unimaginably high above them is the summit of the mountain which the path is ascending in spiral coils. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... lively congratulations. I am told by some one standing near me, that the orator is a monthly nurse, who used to be a somnambulist in her youth. But the crowd opens now to give place to a male orator, who mounts the spiral staircase, passes his hand through his hair, and darts a piercing glance on the multitude ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... were generally chain-stitch, split-stitch, petit point, and lace-stitch; and the patterns were most frequently outlined with a gimp made of flattened spiral wire, or purl, which was a fine copper wire covered with coloured silks and cut in lengths for use. Very often, also, small silver spangles were employed, either stitched down with a piece of purl or a seed-pearl. Frequently the covers ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... dangling queue above with a look of yearning unspeakable. Mr. Beeson groaned, and again spread his hands upon his face. A mild odor of opium pervaded the place. The phantom, clad only in a short blue tunic quilted and silken but covered with grave-mold, rose slowly, as if pushed by a weak spiral spring. Its knees were at the level of the floor, when with a quick upward impulse like the silent leaping of a flame it grasped the queue with both hands, drew up its body and took the tip in its horrible yellow teeth. To this it clung in a seeming frenzy, grimacing ghastly, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... singing leaves Around the secret Flame, Like mating swallows 'neath the eaves In rustling silence came, And flowing through the silent air Creation fluttered in a prayer Descending on a spiral stair, And calling me ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... which are in some large, in some small, in others wanting to the female, or altogether absent from the breed. The most important varieties in Europe are the Spanish breeds, some with fine, others with crisp wool, in which the rams have long spiral horns; the English breeds, which differ greatly in size and in the quality of the wool; and, in the southern parts of Russia, the long-tailed breed. The breeds of sheep in India and in Africa are remarkable for the length of their legs, a very convex forehead, and pendant ears; these also ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... and ordered the Sabah's engines stopped. In horror they beheld the crazy column careen about, obeying its master, the capricious wind, and following any stray current; around and around the spiral, grinding mass of water veered and circled aimlessly. It danced and capered about the ocean like some malignant monster loosed from torment, and finally, as if by direct intent, started for the river's mouth. The Dyaks saw it coming, and ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... the void of space, for, though the sun blazed with a splendour they had never before seen, the firmament was intensely black, and the stars shone as at midnight. Here they began to change their course to a curve beginning with a spiral, by charging the Callisto apergetically, and directing the current towards the moon, to act as an aid to the lunar attraction, while still allowing the earth to repel, and their motion gradually became the resultant of the two forces, the change from a straight ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... stock-corral. And at the edge of the clearing was another building, long and very low, with one single door and several little square windows. A stove-pipe protruded from the far end of this house, and from it rose a thin spiral of smoke. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... wires, one weighing 107 pounds a nautical mile or knot, covered with three coats of gutta-percha, weighing 261 pounds a knot, and wound with tarred hemp, over which a sheath of eighteen strands, each of seven iron wires, was laid in a close spiral. It weighed nearly a ton to the mile, was flexible as a rope, and able to withstand a pull of several tons. It was made conjointly by Messrs. Glass, Elliot & Co., of Greenwich, and Messrs. R. S. Newall & Co., ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... I know," Laloi said. "I do not mean to say such things. I am twisted by my sorrow ..." As if to express her self-abnegation, she corkscrewed out of the clover and into a thin spiral of near-nothingness. ...
— Reluctant Genius • Henry Slesar

... of the hall was brightly lit with green and red candles. The chandeliers which held these candles were of a very queer shape. They each represented the trunk of a tree with a seven-headed cobra wound round it. From each of the seven mouths rose a red or a green wax candle of spiral form like a corkscrew. Draughts blowing from behind every pillar fluttered the yellow flames, filling the roomy refectory with fantastic moving shadows, and causing both our lightly-clad gentlemen to sneeze very frequently. Leaving the dark silhouettes ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... to reach this planet, I went back far enough, using Earth as the spatial referent, to move with Earth a little more than a third of the way around this spiral nebula that is our Galaxy. Then I shifted my frame of reference to that of the group of galaxies of which ours is such a ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher

... window-space nearest to them. A thin spiral of blue-grey smoke curled through it and evaporated into the shadows of the trees. After a moment it was followed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... iron galleries, midway between the floor and the ceiling. The side walls form one continuous shelving, of a capacity sufficient for 100,000 volumes. This is reached by means of the main gallery, in connection with which are four iron spiral stairways and an intervening gallery, of a lighter and smaller description, connected by its eight staircases with the main gallery. The whole are very ingeniously arranged and appropriately ornamented, in a style corresponding with the general architecture of the building. At an elevation of fifty-one ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... frieze below the Bowman represents the Burden Bearers. This, with the Bowman, is the work of H. A. MacNeil. The spiral of ships ascending the shaft symbolizes the upward course of man's progress. Around the base is the frieze by Isidor Konti, on three sides striving human figures, on the fourth celestial trumpeters announcing victory. The whole signifies man's ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... were seen along the canals outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the shell and often sold by measure to be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips the spiral point from each shell with a pair of small shears. This admits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by suction when the lips are applied to the shell. In the canals there are also large numbers of fresh water eel, shrimp and crabs as well ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... woods live a large, yellowish, black-spotted Limax, and two Helices of middling size. In the bay itself are found a few of the gilled snails with spiral shells; and a considerable number on the outward coast, which is washed by the ocean. Here are several species of the genera Murex, Fusus, Buccinum, Mitra, Trochus, and Turbo. Further, there are found here a large Fissurella, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... grace of the eagle and the speed of the wind. It was so very large that it seemed, to Chick, that if all the other birds he had ever known were gathered together into one they would still be as the swallow. Down, down it came in a tremendous spiral, until it gracefully alighted in a splash of molten colour on the bosom of the silver sea. For a moment it was lost in a shower of water jewels—and then lay still, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... wait the signal rocket, Till . . . Barrow, show that locket, That turquoise-studded locket, Which you slipped from out your pocket And are pressing with a kiss! Turquoise-studded, spiral-twisted, It is hers! And I had missed it From her chain; and you have kissed it: Barrow, ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the element of constant return are found everywhere in the economy of nature. All her evolutionary expressions are cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed circles. It represents a spiral. The "evolutionary ladder" that the soul climbs is a winding stairway. In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it is always mounting and never returns to the same point. In each cycle, that is made up of the journey from the heaven world through the astral plane, into the physical ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... electricity is set in motion, or stopped in a conductor, a neighboring conductor has a current produced in the opposite direction. Henry proved that this principle might be made available to produce an action of a current upon itself, by forming a conductor in the whirls of a spiral, so that sparks and shocks might be obtained by the use of such spirals, when connected with a pair of galvanic plates, a current from which could give no sparks and no shocks. Henry's discoveries of the effects of a current in producing several alternations in currents in neighboring ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... inch and a half thick. All the others have an efflorescence of lime and one of the nitrates only, and some are covered thickly with shells. These shells are identical with those of the mollusca of Lake Ngami and the Zouga. There are three varieties, spiral, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... spot, in another festoons of hops hang gracefully, and so thick as to hide everything beyond them. There is scarce a stole without its woodbine or hops; many of the poles, though larger than the arm, are scored with spiral grooves left by the bines. Under these bushes of woodbine the nightingales when they first arrive in spring are fond of searching for food, and dart on a grub with a low ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... continued to descend until it had arrived half way between the cloud and the sea. The water beneath, then ruffled on its surface, increasing its agitation more and more until it boiled and bubbled like a large cauldron, throwing its foam aside in every direction. In a few minutes a small spiral thread of water was perceived to rise into the air, and meet the tongue which had wooed it from the cloud. When the union had taken place, the thread increased each moment in size, until it was swelled into a column of water several feet in diameter, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... tracking down pictures and spiral staircases and such-like things, and my brains were busy all the time with such things as a comparison of Venice and its nearest modern equivalent, New York, with the elaboration of schemes of action ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... in the corner of the hall, which Hugh had never seen open. Passing through a long low passage, they came to a spiral staircase of stone, up which they went, arriving at another wide hall, very dusty, but in perfect repair. Hugh asked if there was not some communication between this hall ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... Zealand, in 1902. The bronze chariot consisted of a bronze disk mounted on wheels and drawn by a horse, the gold disk being affixed to the bronze one. The ornamentation of the Irish disks is somewhat different, as the spiral does not appear, its place being taken by the concentric circle. The Trundholm sun-chariot is dated by Prof. Sophus Muller at before 1000 B.C. The Trundholm disk is admittedly connected with sun-worship, ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey

... time to reach the cars before they started. I shook the reins upon her neck, and with a plunge, startled at the energy of my signal, away she flew. What a stride she had! What an elastic spring! She touched and left the earth as if her limbs were of spiral wire. When I reached the car my friend was standing in front of it, the gang-plank was ready, I leaped from the saddle and, running up the plank into the car, whistled to her; and she, timid and hesitating, yet unwilling to be separated from me, crept slowly and cautiously up the ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray

... the narrow, spiral stair more closely resembled that which leads to the imperiale of the Paris omnibus than anything found ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... grain was gone. I saw several red squirrels running up and down a large pine-tree, which had been broken by the wind at the top; and there, no doubt, they had laid up stores. These squirrels did not follow each other in a straight line, but ran round and round in a spiral direction, so that they never hindered each other, nor came in each other's way: two were always going up, while the other two were going down. They seem to work in families; for the young ones, though old enough to get their own living, ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... nebulas is remarkably actinic, so that photography has a specially fine field in revealing details imperceptible in the telescope. In 1885 the brothers Henry photographed, round the star Maia in the Pleiades, a spiral nebula 3' long, as bright on the plate as that star itself, but quite invisible in the telescope; and an exposure of four hours revealed other new nebula in the same district. That painstaking and most careful observer, Barnard, with 10-1/4 hours' exposure, extended this nebulosity ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... endowed. Such an array of paddles prophesies of a mercurial temperament and an energetic character. It can, however, anchor itself and lie by when occasion offers. It is provided with two long cables, prettily set with spiral filaments or tendrils, by means of which it can make fast to any point. When not in use, it can retract them, and stow them away in two sacs or pouches within the body, where they may be seen coiled ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... from the front, so that Nick was seated in reverse position on his back. The object which he grasped was the spiral tail of the animal, but, before he could make his grip certain, the porker swerved so suddenly to one side that Nick rolled off and bumped ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... who came to Rome for business established themselves, like other foreigners, in a distinct colony during the Renascence. Upon the chapel of Saint Ives, unconsecrated now and turned into a lecture room of the University, a strange spiral tower shows the talents of Borromini, Bernini's rival, at their lowest ebb. So far as one can judge, the architect intended to represent realistically the arduous path of learning; but whatever ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... behind him. As his mask touched water he saw the white coral sand of the bottom a few inches down. The only sign of life was a hermit crab, perhaps a half inch in length, dragging his home of the moment—a tiny spiral shell. ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... boy entered the base of the tower. He was so familiar with every crook and passage, that the small light of a gas jet, inside, was not necessary to show him the way. Up he ran, sometimes clearing two steps at a jump, slipping his hand lightly along the rough wooden banister. A few spiral turns brought him to the bell, which hung in an open framework of timber. He gave the huge bronze a familiar tap as he passed, and wound on and upward until he came to a trap door, which Uncle Ith held invitingly open. Then he sprang into the little room at the top of the tower, and Uncle ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... the UC-1 (Uranexite Carrier Number One) was one of the most sensational events old Earth had ever known. Air and space craft went clear out to Emergence Volume Ninety to meet them. By the time the UC-1 was coming in on its remote-controlled landing spiral the press of small ships was so great that all the police forces available were in a lather trying to ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... Up the spiral stone stairway of the tower ran Rafaela, passing the first landing where burned an electric light. Jack was close at her heels. At length they reached the top landing, and stood before the single door there. It was of stout oak, heavy ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... the latest mode in the province, somewhat exaggerated, I thought, as to length of the bronze shoes and glaring color of the waistcoat. All these details I noted, as he turned somewhat indolently in my direction, calmly flipping the ash from off a cigarette, and permitting a spiral of thin blue smoke to curl slowly upward from his lips ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... spiral path of the pit they bore him, encircling the sheening, glowing Red One that seemed ever imminent to iridesce from colour and light into sweet singing and thunder. And over bones and logs of immolated men ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... who swore by his tail that he would catch Rabbit, if he had to hunt forever and run himself to death. So, taking the house for a centre, he kept going round and round it, all the time a little further, and so more around and still further. [Footnote: While telling this, Tomah described a spiral line. It is evident that if the volute were only continued long enough it must inevitably end in finding any trail, if the point of departure be only known. This device is familiar to all Indians, and it is mentioned in other stories.] Then at ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... expiring satellite will be a slow spiral described round the planet. The spiral will at last, after many years, bring the satellite down upon the surface of the primary. Its final approach will be accelerated if the planet possesses an atmosphere, as Mars probably does. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... labyrinths of its tortuous passages, its gloomy halls of audience, with the vast corridors which surmounted the innumerable flights of stairs— some noble, spacious, and in the Venetian taste, capable of admitting the march of an army—some spiral, steep, and so unusually narrow as to exclude two persons walking abreast; these, together with the numerous chapels erected in it to different saints by devotees, male or female, in the families of forgotten Landgraves through four centuries back; and, finally, the tribunals, or gericht-kammern, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... was too thick to be plaited; it needed rather to be twisted round and round, and have its fine silkiness compressed into massive coils, that encircled her head like a crown, and then were gathered into a large spiral knot behind. She kept its weight together by two large coral pins, like small arrows for length. Her white silk sleeves were looped up with strings of the same material, and on her neck, just below the base of her curved and milk-white throat, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... again. The evening was by this time far advanced, but there still remained a part of the ceremony which could not possibly be dispensed with. This was the smoking of the pipe of peace. The pipe was no ordinary one, but about four feet long, the bowl carved of stone, and the stem of wood in spiral form, dyed with alternate lines of red and blue. With this in his hand, duly prepared and lit, old Shingwauk stood in the centre of the group, and, first taking a few preliminary whiffs (for the ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... towered like a pillar of snow against the dense blue of the sky. Below it a massively sculptured lion, also of white granite, lay couchant, holding a shield between its paws,—and on either side two fine fountains were in full play, the delicate spiral columns of water being dashed up beyond the extreme point of the obelisk, so that its stone face was wet and glistening with ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... nearer, ever faster, Towards us his spiral track wheels round and round? And if my senses suffer no confusion, Behind him ...
— Faust • Goethe

... his admirers, indeed, almost carried by them, he went slowly up the narrow spiral staircase. Arrived at the top, the soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of the bells. From the centre of the vault hung the famous "Gorda," an immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... with jointed ribs so as to fold back, and was likewise self-opening. The rod was a metallic tube, and contained a spiral spring which acted upon and pressed upwards an inner rod. To this inner rod were jointed the stretchers, which in this construction were placed above the ribs instead of below, as in the ordinary form, beside which ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... its final dash in a tightening spiral, its detector screen flickering on and off. It struck the battleship at a matched speed, with a thump and ringing of metal as the magnetic grapples fastened the cruiser like a leech to ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... back to the same point, again and again; but they are progressive; and if often they seem to return to their point of departure, we see, on close examination, that the return is always on a higher plane. The motion is a spiral one, ever advancing to loftier and loftier ranges. Now this progressive motion is something that no accidental play of the atoms will account for. For chance builds no such rational structures. Chance writes no such intelligent dramas, with ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... landscape. The scene was such as Salvator might have painted: wild blocks of stone heaped under walnut-shade; here the white plunge of water down a wall of granite, and there, in bluer depths, a charcoal burner's hut sending up its spiral of smoke to the dark raftering of branches. Though it was but a few hours since Odo had travelled from Oropa, years seemed to have passed over him, and he saw the world with a new eye. Each sound and scent plucked at him in passing: the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... Indies. In-fest'ed, troubled, annoyed. 3. Sub'tile, acute, piercing. In-fus'es, intro-duces. 4. Ob-structs', hinders. De-lir'i-um, a wandering of the mind. 5. Ran'kle, to rage. Par'ox-ysm, a fit, a convulsion. 7. Worm, a spiral metallic pipe used in distilling liquors. Still, a vessel used in distilling ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... merely lounged there, his head against the side of the cushioned chair, the brilliant, surprised gaze changing slowly to amused contempt. His cigarette hung between the long fingers of one hand, its blue spiral of smoke rising tranquilly into a bar ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... old tower of Stormount was being fitted for a modern habitation, the original arrangements of the interior had been in a great measure restored. Entering at the gateway, a narrow passage led to the foot of a spiral stair which ran up to the top of the building. On each story there was a landing-place, into which the rooms opened. Most of them were in shape like a slice of cake, the largest, used as a sitting-room, almost semi-circular. At each window ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... delightful than tossing pebbles into some still, dark pool, and watching the ripples that rise responsive, as they run in ever widening circles to the shore. Most of us have felt its fascination second only to that of the dotted spiral of the skipping-stone, a fascination not outgrown with years. There is something singularly attractive in the subtle force that for a moment sways each particle only to pass on to the next, a motion mysterious in its immateriality. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... and dagger, and darted straight for the tower entrance, stopping just inside the doorway. By the light of a lantern hanging against the wall, I saw a kind of small vestibule, beyond which was an inner wall, and at one side of which was the beginning of a narrow spiral staircase, that ran up between walls until it wound out of sight. On a bench against the inner wall I have mentioned, sat a man, who rose at sight of me, with one hand grasping a sword, and with the other a pike that ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of the patient causes that dreadful disease which ends in sleeping sickness belongs here as well as do several other similar kinds that produce serious troubles for various mammals and birds. The Spirochaeta, about which there has been so much recent discussion, also belong here. These are simple spiral-like forms (Fig. 10), that are sometimes classed with the simple plants, bacteria, but Nuttall and others have shown very definitely that they should be classed with the simplest animals, the Protozoans. These are the cause of relapsing fevers in man and of several diseases of domestic animals. ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... "loud-patterned" cotton goods, which are waving overhead in the sluggish evening breeze. Nothing can be more suggestive of lazily industrious Jewry than this short, thick-set clothier, with the curved nose, and spiral, oily hair, who sits out on the sidewalk and blows clouds from his meerschaum pipe. The women who lounge here are generally stoutish and slatternly, with few clothes on, but plenty of frowzy hair. Here and there one may see a pretty face among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... the induction of electrical currents have already been recognised and described: as those of magnetization; Ampere's experiments of bringing a copper disc near to a flat spiral; his repetition with electro-magnets of Arago's extraordinary experiments, and perhaps a few others. Still it appeared unlikely that these could be all the effects which induction by currents could produce; especially as, upon dispensing with iron, almost the whole of them disappear, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... by washing salt water over them to see them open their tiny cups of shell. In the pool itself a beautiful lavender-colored jelly-fish was floating about, and just beyond lay a star-fish clinging to a bunch of seaweed. She found other treasures scattered about by the largess of the tide—tiny spiral shells, stones of all colors, and a horseshoe crab, besides seaweed with pretty little pods which popped delightfully when she squeezed them with her fingers. Then she heard the cries of gulls overhead and watched them as they wheeled and circled between her and the ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... painted black, with a white bow, which ends in a long upstanding spiral beak plated with shining tin. The upper deck is shaped like a roof, with narrow steps up to it, and a flat bridge leading from one side to the other. The forward part of the raised deck ends in a double cabin, containing ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... and by the industry of friar Elias. After the friar's death twelve strong towers were erected about the lower church in order that the vast erection should never be destroyed; in each of these is a spiral staircase ascending from the ground to the summit. In the course of time, moreover, several chapels were added and other rich ornaments, of which it is not necessary to speak further, as enough has been said ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... and southern halves, for he wished to look down from the hill of the Paneum on the combined effect as a whole of all that he had seen in detail. The carefully-kept gardens which surrounded this elevation swarmed with men, and the spiral path which led to the top was crowded with women and children, who came here to see the most splendid spectacle of the whole day, which closed with performances in all the theatres in the town. Before the Emperor and his escort could reach ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... saw what he had to work with, he began making arrangements with them, laying them out in odd circular and spiral patterns. Each time he finished a pattern, he would yeek happily to call attention to it, sit and look at it for a while, and then take it apart and start a new one. Little Fuzzy was capable of artistic gratification too. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... support the stone should have a spiral at the bottom in which to lay the gem, and this should be so placed that the latter will be completely submerged at all times, but not touching bottom or sides of ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... column is characterized by the spiral volutes of the capital. This form was borrowed from the Assyrians, and was principally employed by the Greeks ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... standing alone in front of the closed door, and there was none around but myself. Then I was aware of a gust in the night-breeze blowing up for rain. Time had changed. Something had been taken from the future and something had been added to the past. The spiral gusts lifted the unseen litter of the street, and with them the harpies rose in my breast. And words impetuous would have burst out like the torrents of rain which ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... the ground, thirty or forty feet high. At the ground, ten feet from the foot of the mast, there commenced an inclined plane, formed of a plank about a foot or eighteen inches wide, which ascended in a spiral direction round and round the mast till it reached the top. A man ascended this plane by means of a large ball, about two feet in diameter, which he rolled up standing upon it, and rolling it by stepping continually ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott

... and my entrance to the house is arranged for. Frenhofer will tamper with the electric lights in the kitchen premises and I shall arrive in response to his telephonic message, in the clothes of a working-man and with a bag of tools. Then he smuggles me on to the spiral stairway which leads out on to the roof where the flag-staff is. I can crawl the rest of the way to my place. The trouble is that notwithstanding the ledge around, if it is a perfectly clear night, just a ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... altitudes. To most observers it appeared as an ill-defined object with a somewhat nebulous border, standing on an irregularly-shaped dusky area, with two or more small dark craters and many low ridges in its vicinity. A little E. of it stands a curious spiral mountain called the Schneckenberg. The question as to whether Hyginus N. (as the dusky spot is called) is a new object or not, cannot be definitely determined, as, in spite of a strong case in favour of it being so, there remains a residuum ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... finding the range, since their shots did not come near the Frenchman. At the moment when the one Farman turned toward the south, I started for the other, who was flying somewhat lower. He saw me coming, and tried to avoid an engagement by spiral glides. As he flew very cleverly, it was some time before I got within range. At an altitude of five or six hundred meters I opened fire, while he was still trying to reach his own lines. But in pursuing him, I had ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke



Words linked to "Spiral" :   twist, corkscrew, spiral ratchet screwdriver, spiraling, turn, rotation, double helix, helix, decoration, ornament, helical, structure, coiling, rotary motion, wind, spiral nebula, voluted, turbinate, coiled, spiral galaxy, whorled, deflationary spiral, gyrate, inflationary spiral, ornamentation, spiral-shelled, curve, volute, spiral bandage, whorl, coil, spiral spring, construction, curved shape



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