"Axis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... idealist, you dream how life should be, and not as it is in truth! I have listened to you, thinking that you would present some forcible argument upon which to found your pretensions, but I hear only the ravings of a lover, who believes the world turns upon the axis of his happiness. Let me tell you that love is an ephemera, which merrily sports in the sunlight a few short hours, and dies at sunset. Should a king forfeit his word for such a short-lived bliss? Should he reward a man to whom he is ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... to land his passengers on the steps, and his loud, "Woah dar, blast yo' skins!" rang clearly through the resonant building. As it was, the coming of a bridal pair themselves could not have attracted more attention. Every pivotal head turned on its axis; even the visiting parson, with the huge Bible on his thin knees, half rose that he might peer over the pulpit behind ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... us, that of turning our heads so that we can sweep our eyes along the whole stretch of the skyline from right to left, and from left to right, were rendered impossible. This defect was also overcome in a simple manner. The joints between the first and second vertebrae—the atlas and axis—were so modified that a turning movement could take place between them instead of between the atlas and skull. When we turn or rotate our heads, the atlas, carrying the skull upon it, swings or turns on the axis. When we search for the manner in which this has been accomplished, we see again ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... on quibbles, if you please to call distinctions so, rests the axis of the intellectual world. A winged word hath stuck ineradicably in a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout their hard pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... find an outlet. Compared with Goethe we feel that he lacks that serene impartiality of mind which results from breadth of culture; nay, he seems narrow, insular, almost provincial. He reminds us of those saints of Dante who gather brightness by revolving on their own axis. But through this very limitation of range he gains perhaps in intensity and the impressiveness which results from eagerness of personal conviction. If we read Wordsworth through, as I have just done, we find ourselves changing our mind about him ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... due to prompt library service in worrying over errors in a catalogue, or vexing his soul at a faulty classification, is as mistaken as those fussy individuals who fancy that they are personally responsible for the obliquity of the earth's axis. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... the great social trouble of which he was so unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough, and yet curiously insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... commonly known as the grandfather clock. It was in producing this particular type of timepiece that Tompion and Graham excelled. The pendulum was hung from a thin steel spring instead of being placed on an axis carrying pallets and could swing ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities. We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land. It is so, now in the case of an artist, a person seeking for instruction and change; now in the case of a business man who desires ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... levels.—The Church of St. Alban is built so that its axis points considerably to the south of east, a thing that would hardly have been expected, seeing that the sun rises as far to the north of east as it ever does on St. Alban's Day, June 22nd. The orientation of the church may have been due ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... philosopher that was excellently skilled in the noble science or study of astronomy, who told me he had some years studied for some simile, or proper allusion, to explain to his scholars the phenomena of the sun's motion round its own axis, and could never happen upon one to his mind, till by accident he saw his maid Betty trundling her mop: surprised with the exactness of the motion to describe the thing he wanted, he goes into his study, calls his pupils about him, and tells them that Betty, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... on its axis with unfailing regularity, and nights followed mornings and mornings followed nights according to well-established precedent. One man turned up in Bootstrap with radiation burns, but he had not offered himself for check over at the hospital. He was found dead ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... issue from the earth in the northern and southern parts and coalesce with each other over the equatorial, as would be the case in a globe having one or two short magnets adjusted in relation to its axis, and it is probable that the lines of force in their circuitous course may extend through space to tens of thousands of miles. The lines proceed through space with a certain degree of facility, but there may be variations in space, e.g., ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... was situated at the most exact distance from the earth, so as to yield a sufficient quantity of heat, neither too little nor too much, to every part of it. Ho further intimates that there was at first no inclination of the earth's axis, and that the seasons and the degree of heat and cold were, in consequence, the same all the world over, and all the year round. All these statements seem erroneous in the extreme. The supply of heat to the different parts of the earth does not depend altogether on the distance of the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... very remarkable fossils, which are well known under the name of Oldhamia, but the true nature of which is very doubtful. The commonest form of Oldhamia (fig. 29) consists of a thread-like stem or axis, from which spring at regular intervals bundles of short filamentous branches in a fan-like manner. In the locality where it occurs, the fronds of Oldhamia are very abundant, and are spread over the surfaces of the strata in tangled layers. That it is organic is certain, and that it is a calcareous ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... lightenings were already shot, And earth in flames, but that a fire so vast, He fear'd might reach Olympus, and consume The heavenly axis. Also call'd to mind What fate had doom'd, that all in future times By fire should perish, earth, and sea, and heaven; And all th' unwieldy fabric of the world Should waste to nought. The Cyclops' labor'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... partition that shuts it off from the great marts of the world is formed by the chain of the Alleghanies, which stretch along the Atlantic seaboard, from south-west to north-east, for twelve hundred miles. This natural barrier, with a mean altitude of two thousand feet, is destitute of a central axis, and consists, as the two Rogerses, who have most fully explored its ridges, showed, of a series of convex and concave flexures, "giving them the appearance of so many colossal entrenchments." With a broad artificial channel cut ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... casting transparent shadows on the ice and snow, now rising high above them, lingering like loving angels guarding the crystal gifts they had bestowed. Although the range as seen from this Glenora mountain-top seems regular in its trend, as if the main axis were simple and continuous, it is, on the contrary, far from simple. In front of the highest ranks of peaks are others of the same form with their own glaciers, and lower peaks before these, and yet lower ones with their ridges and canyons, valleys and ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... questions to ask: the Cycas observed was a huge seed in a broad and very shallow pot with cocoa-nut fibre as I suppose. It was named only Cycas. Was it Cycas pectinata? I suppose that I cannot be wrong in believing that what first appears above ground is a true leaf, for I can see no stem or axis. Lastly, you may remember that I said that we could not raise Opuntia nigricans; now I must confess to a piece of stupidity; one did come up, but my gardener and self stared at it, and concluded that it could not be a seedling Opuntia, but now that I have seen one of O. basilaris, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... has pointed out the fact that the Galilee porch is not parallel to the axis of the Nave, but has a marked inclination to the north, while the Choir on the other hand (like that of Exeter), inclines to the south. This doubtless was for a symbolical reason. The ground plans of churches, by so frequently assuming a cross form, typify the doctrine ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... surely knew another little plaything, the thaumatrope. Dr. Paris had invented it in 1827. It shows two pictures, one on the front, one on the rear side of a card. As soon as the card is quickly revolved about a central axis, the two pictures fuse into one. If a horse is on one side and a rider on the other, if a cage is on one and a bird on the other, we see the rider on the horse and the bird in the cage. It cannot be otherwise. It is simply the result of the positive afterimages. If at dark we ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... jaws for the author's forceps. The tiny lip projecting down from the upper, and up from the lower jaw prevents sidewise escape of the shaft of a pin, tack, nail or needle. The shaft is automatically thrown parallel to the bronchoscopic axis. Drawing about four ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... liable to the same objection, viz., that of not being astronomically true. I. K. carries his notion of the "inseparable connexion" of the sun "with all planetary motion" too far, when he supposes that a stoppage of the sun's motion round its own axis would have any effect on our planet. The note he quotes from Kitto's Pictorial Bible is anything but satisfactory; and that from Mant is childishly common-place. Good old Scott adverts with propriety to the Creator's power to keep all things in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... to be examined as to his fitness to conduct the tests. Now the Institute is the most learned body in all France. In 1860 one of its members wrote a book to prove that the earth does not revolve upon its axis, nor move about the sun. In 1878, when Edison's phonograph was being exhibited to the eminent scientists of the Institute, one rushed wrathfully down the aisle and seizing by the collar the man who manipulated the instrument, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... play of causes, (With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,) These recitatives for thee,—my book and the war are one, Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee, As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself, Around ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... ME? What can I do to modify them, to encourage the pleasurable, to avoid or inhibit the painful, and so on?" From that moment a new motive was added to life. The mind revolved round a new centre. It began to spin like a little eddy round its own axis. It studied ITSELF first and became deeply concerned about its own pleasures and pains, losing touch the while with the larger life which once dominated it—the life of Nature, the life of the Tribe. The old unity of the spirit, the old ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... fractures: two forms predominate, the plate and the needle; these forms falling through air assume definite position—the plate falls horizontally swaying to and fro, the needle turns rapidly about its longer axis, which remains horizontal. Simpson showed excellent experiments to illustrate; consideration of these facts and refraction of light striking crystals clearly leads to explanation of various complicated halo ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... often tragic, but that was no new thing in feminine history. Tragedy had been woman's lot since Eve. Her problem had been always one of physical strength and it was as physical perfection of force that her Venus had governed nature. The woman's force had counted as inertia of rotation, and her axis of rotation had been the cradle and the family. The idea that she was weak revolted all history; it was a palaeontological falsehood that even an Eocene female monkey would have laughed at; but it was surely true that, if her force were to be diverted from its axis, it must find a new field, and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... and took his millstaff to prove the work he had done. This was made of well-seasoned oak, two pieces put together so that they should not warp. He rubbed the edge with ruddle, and, placing the millstaff on the stone, turned it about on its shorter axis: where the ruddle left its red mark more pecking would be required. There was but one small spot, and this he quickly put right. Even the seasoned oak, however, is not always true, and to be certain on the point Tibbald had a millstaff prover. This is of rigid steel, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... aristocratic than Mrs. Webb's. There were no boys and no very small children. Some of the accomplishments were taught. French, drawing and painting, and what was called the "use of the globe," which meant a large globe with all the countries of the world upon it, arranged to turn around on an axis. This was a new thing. Doris was quite fascinated by it, and when she found the North Sea and the Devonshire coast and the "Wash" the girls looked on eagerly and straightway she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... changes, but is ever guarded from the tread of ordinary men. There took place a most instructive phenomenon. The type of the evolution then preceding, the Tortoise, the Logos in that form, makes Himself the base of the revolving axis of evolution. That is typified by Mandara, the mountain which, placed on the tortoise, is made to revolve by the hosts of Suras and Asuras, one pulling at the head of the serpent, and the other at the tail—the positive and negative forces that I spoke of ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... Possibly these several differences may be connected with the different flow of nutriment towards the central and external flowers. We know, at least, that with irregular flowers those nearest to the axis are most subject to peloria, that is to become abnormally symmetrical. I may add, as an instance of this fact, and as a striking case of correlation, that in many pelargoniums the two upper petals in the central ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... after a plan that is conducive to motion. A moving structure, as a wagon or a bicycle, has within it some strong central part to which the remainder is joined. The same is true of the skeleton. That part to which the others are attached is a long, bony axis, known as the spinal column. Certain parts, as the ribs and the skull, are attached directly to the spinal column, while others are attached indirectly to it. The arrangement of all the parts is such that the spinal column ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... extraordinary system of intrenchments at Juigalpa, in Nicaragua, which so far as I know is quite unique. This is a series of trenches extending for several miles (Fig. 87), varying in width from nine and a half to thirteen feet; at equal distances are oval reservoirs, the longest axis of which measures as much as seventy-eight feet. In each reservoir are two or four mounds, probably serving as watch-towers. We know nothing either of the people who erected these singular structures or of the enemy from whom they formed a protection. Nor can anything ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... scientific activity, no research work, no literary or artistic life. All is leveled down and compressed under one Bolshevist lid. The only burning question is the problem of food. The only blessed object of Bolshevist providence is the remaining bourgeois element, the only axis around which all their creative experiments revolve. On the one hand, those who toil,—and on the other the "parasites," and to the latter class all the members of the liberal professions, all the literateurs, the lawyers and the clergy were assigned. The sympathizers and upholders of the "rule ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... in its place, and the cylinder filled (or nearly so) with the moistened bone ash. The bone ash is then pressed into shape with the piston, and the cupel finished with the help of three or four smart blows from a mallet. Before removing the piston, turn it half-way round upon its axis so as to loosen and smooth the face of the cupel. The cupel is got out by pressing up the disc of metal forming the false bottom; the removal is more easily effected if the mould is somewhat conical, instead ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... figure, bent over a straight line in it, has the two parts perfectly fitting on each other, the figure is symmetrical about that straight line, which may be called an axis of symmetry. Thus every diameter of a circle is an axis of symmetry: every regular oval has two axes of symmetry at right angles to each other: every regular polygon of an odd number of sides has an axis joining each corner to the middle of the opposite sides: every regular polygon of an even number of sides has axes joining ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... sense. That the sun is a million of times larger than the earth; that light flies from his body at the rate of a hundred thousand miles in the hundredth part of a second; and that the earth is whirling round its axis from day to day with a velocity of a thousand miles every hour, are regarded by him as notions far more improbable and extravagant than the story of the "Wonderful Lamp," and all the other tales of the "Arabian Night's Entertainments." In his hours ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... or three breaks. The dark floor appears to be devoid of detail. Schmidt, however, draws two large irregular mounds E. of the centre, and shows four narrow light streaks crossing the interior nearly parallel to the longer axis of the formation. ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... looking at a Viceroy. He is a being so heterogeneous from us! He is the centre of a world with which he has no affinity. He is a veiled prophet. [He wears many veils indeed.] He who is the axis of India, the centre round which the Empire rotates, is absolutely and necessarily withdrawn from all knowledge of India. He lisps no syllable of any Indian tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian life is known to him; all our delightful provinces of the sun that lie off the railway are to ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... assistant's sitting and calculating-room, in the middle; above which is his bed-room, the latter being furnished with sliding shutters in the roof. In the transit-room is an eight-feet transit-instrument, with an axis of three feet, resting on two piers of stone: this was made by Bird, but has been much improved by Dolland, Troughton, and others. Near it is a curious transit-clock, made by Graham, but greatly improved by Earnshaw, who so simplified the train as to exclude two or three ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... The employment of two separately adjustable cutter heads in a single machine, so that the axis of one cutter may be at the angle of the other at a different angle, and both cutters operating at the same time upon the same board, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... moving westward, and Sandy Hook advances to the northward, because the sea rolls in along the axis of the great bay between Long Island and New Jersey, and necessarily sweeps along the beaches, instead of taking the direction of a normal to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... an inspired-looking creature whirled about on his axis, the black ringlets standing out in snaky spirals from his haggard head, his cheek-muscles convulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by the sobbing ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... not due east and west, neither did it directly face Ludgate Hill. Owing to the lie of the land cleared away, both of these peculiarities were increased by the surveyor, and the axis of the New St. Paul's was swung some seven degrees further north than the Old. He thereby made the best of his somewhat cramped site, and avoided the foundations of the old walls. The excavations were not completed nor the site fully cleared ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... as possible it is desirable to replace the colored lines indicating the constructions, the axis, projections, etc., by differently punctuated lines made with India ink. However, if the use of colors be obligatory on the original design, one should trace the red lines with very thick vermilion or sienna, the yellow lines with gamboge, and the blue and green lines with a thick mixture of Prussian ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... swing a bit, strangely, as if gripped by a strong force. Instead of falling directly down toward Earth with a slight pitch, it slanted sideways and spun on its long axis. And then Dan ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder
... up to the top of the mountain, an' turns to the four corners of the heavens, to thry if he can see it; an' when he finds that he cannot, he goes back to Beal Derg. who, afther the other touches him, starts up and axis him, 'Is the time come?' He replies, 'No; the man is, but the hour is not!' an' that instant they're both asleep again. Now, you see, while the soger is on the mountain top, the mouth of the cave is open, an' any one may go in that might happen to see it. ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... a pause.) "By the by, Pratt, Kate has us completely. What fools we two are! Mr. Rumgudgeon, the matter stands thus: the earth, you know, is twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. Now this globe of the earth turns upon its own axis—revolves—spins round—these twenty-four thousand miles of extent, going from west to east, in precisely twenty-four hours. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... solution which present knowledge could produce, or if the critic did not point out a substitute. The substitute is so simple of application, in such agreement with experiments, and so logical in its derivation, that it is surprising that it has not been generally adopted. The neutral axis of reinforced concrete beams under safe loads is near the middle of the depth of the beams. If, in all cases, it be taken at the middle of the depth of the concrete beam, and if variation of intensity of stress in the concrete be taken as uniform from this neutral axis up, the formula for the ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... man in the street. Plainly, here was conceit personified, and yet a conceit mingled with a maddening insolence. His expression told all that this thing which he was about to do was worthy of the closest attention. He was the axis upon which the interest of the ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... point of contact were in the direction of the earth's centre; the meeting would be terrific; the earth's period of revolution would, in all probability, be altered, either by carrying it nearer to or farther from the sun; a different inclination of the axis might be given, and there would be a consequent change of seasons; the diurnal motion might be either accelerated or retarded, by which the length of the day would be affected; the vast continents of the globe would be again covered with the ocean, which, deserting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... much consideration, is content to renounce attempting these; feels that these will remain forever inconceivable to mankind in the now altered times. So small a gentleman; and he feels, dismally though with heroism, that he has got the axis of the world on his shoulder. Poor Majesty! His eyes, proud as Jove's, are nothing like so perspicacious; a pair of the poorest eyes: and he has to scan with them, and unriddle under pain of death, such a waste of insoluble intricacies, troubles and world-perils as seldom was,—even ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Class M state. We know that the compression of any body against resistance generates or releases heat. Now a gaseous star at any instant is in a state of equilibrium. Its internal heat and the centrifugal force due to its rotation about an axis are trying to expand it. Its own gravitational power is trying to draw all of its materials to the center. Until there is a loss of heat no contraction can occur; but just as soon as there is such a loss ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the momentum resides. If the ball of a governor were to be moved in a straight line, the momentum might be said to be concentrated at the centre of gravity of the ball; but inasmuch as, by its revolution round an axis, the part of the ball furthest removed from the axis moves more quickly than the part nearest to it, the momentum cannot be supposed to be concentrated at the centre of gravity, but at a point further removed from the central shaft, and that point ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... that all his laws should remain in force for a hundred years, and he wrote them upon triangular wooden tablets, which revolved upon an axis in oblong recesses, some small remains of which have been preserved in the prytaneum down to the present day. These, we are told by Aristotle, were called Kurbeis. The comic poet Kratinus ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... a pause). "By the bye, Pratt, Kate has us completely. What fools we two are! Mr. Rumgudgeon, the matter stands thus: the earth, you know, is twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. Now this globe turns upon its own axis—revolves—spins around—these twenty-four thousand miles of extent, going from west to east, in precisely twenty-four hours. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was so impressive that they stood motionless, watching the flaming tree and the inky heavens beyond. Suddenly in the sky they saw a figure that resembled a vast balloon slightly inclined to one side, and spinning on its axis with inconceivable swiftness. ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... generally be detected a delicate, colorless sheath that surrounds it, and extends beyond the end cells (Fig. 6, c). The filament increases in length by the individual cells undergoing division, this always taking place at right angles to the axis of the filament. New filaments are produced simply by the older ones breaking into a number of pieces, each of which rapidly grows to ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... which their position was determined. The Creator being intelligent, it is impossible to conceive them placed fortuitously. There must then be a link between Mars and Jupiter, because the law once established cannot be broken. The same law may be observed in the arrangement of leaves around the axis of a plant. If intelligence arranged them they must be arranged in some order, for intelligence never performs the least act without a purpose. Each leaf or pair of leaves is not a mere duplication of the previous ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter
... was built. To use a figure suggested by the calamity which has lately befallen one of the most beloved of our cities, there is a theory that earthquakes are caused by a necessary movement on the part of the globe to regain its axis. Whether or not the theory be true, it has its political application. In America to-day we are trying—whatever the cost—to regain the true axis established for us by the founders of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Far to the southward Mount Whitney lifts its granite summit four or five hundred feet higher than Shasta, but it is nearly snowless during the late summer, and is so feebly individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. The highest point on Mount Shasta, as determined by the State Geological Survey, is 14,440 feet above mean tide. That ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... legislature. But I must not be led away from my theme by the bitter reflections which arise in one who lives in the Iron Age and knows it is Iron, who feels at times like the lost wanderer on trackless fields of ice, which never melt and will not until earth turns from its axis. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... the fact that variations can be transmitted and intensified by selective breeding had been so well established and was so widely known long before Mr. Darwin was born, that he can no more be said to have proved it than Newton can be said to have proved the revolution of the earth on its own axis. Every breeder throughout the world had known it for centuries. I believe even ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... moved only along the east and west axis of the Exposition. The north and south development is not without its charm. The terraced city of San Francisco, on the south, without a doubt looks best on a densely foggy day. With its fussy, incongruous buildings - I hesitate to call them architecture ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... promulgation of the accepted system of astronomy, called the Copernican system, which represents the earth as revolving on its axis and considers the sun as the centre of motion for the earth and other planets, marked the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... light of Tao, affirmative is reconciled with negative; objective is identified with subjective. And when subjective and objective are both without their correlates, that is the very axis of Tao. And when that axis passes through the centre at which all infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend into an ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... by a dab of clay placed at right angles to the axis of the cylinder, at a distance from the bottom determined by the ordinary length of a cell. This wad is not a complete round; it is more crescent-shaped, leaving a circular space between it and one side of the tube. Fresh layers are swiftly ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... axis is simply that of a body turning entirely round upon its own centre. The only centre around which the moon performs a revolution is very far from its own proper axis, being situated at the centre ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of him. For his part, sitting at the turning of the world, he was rejoiced to see behind him the tragic splendor of the night, and, in front of him, the smile of young hope, the uncertain beauty of the fresh, fevered dawn. And he was at the stationary point of the axis of the pendulum while the clock was beginning to go again. Without following its onward march, he listened joyfully to the beating of the rhythm of life. He joined in the hope of those who denied his past agonies. What would be, would be, as he had dreamed. Ten years before, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of value in describing fractures of bone with respect to the manner in which the bone is broken—the direction of the fissure or fissures in relation to its long axis. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... sets out the day after to-morrow, escorted, to add gravity to the embassy, by George Selwyn. The stocks don't mind this journey of a rush, but draw in their horns every day. We can learn nothing of the Havannah, though the axis of which the whole treaty turns. We believe, for we have never seen them, that the last letters thence brought accounts of great loss, especially by the sickness. Colonel Burgoyne(243) has given a little fillip to the Spaniards, and shown them, that though they can ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... subjects which of all others should belong to the common talk of people who enjoy the blessings of freedom. Think, one moment. The earth is a great factory-wheel, which, at every revolution on its axis, receives fifty thousand raw souls and turns off nearly the same number worked up more or less completely. There must be somewhere a population of two hundred thousand million, perhaps ten or a hundred times as many, earth-born intelligences. Life, as we call it, is nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... piece of needle should be stuck through a cork which has a slot cut into its underside, so that it will straddle the lower part of the coil. The height of the needle-point should be fixed so that the horizontal ends of the magnetic needle will be near the axis of the coil, that is, along ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... masses, the stone and earth and chalk are thrown together in confusion, as so many materials for creating a new world. Those who traverse these Saharan desolations, cannot but receive the impression, that old mother earth, slung on her balance, and revolving on her axis, has performed eternal cycles of decay and reproduction. Time was, when these heaps of desolation were fruitful fields of waving corn and smiling meadows, and fair branching woods, meandered about with running rills of silvery streams, where cattle pastured lowing, and birds sang on the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the forest where Lepchas or Nepalese have built themselves a few wooden houses and roughly cultivated the land. Otherwise we are under the same green mantle of forest which extends everywhere over the mountains; and though we are now piercing straight through the main axis of the Himalaya, we seldom catch even a glimpse of the snowy heights ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... breeds, these processes were quite distinct. These processes, when not united, instead of being inclined anteriorly, as in all common breeds, descend at right angles to the lower jaw; and in this case the longer axis of the bony cavity of the ear is likewise more perpendicular, than in other breeds. When the squamosal process is free instead of expanding at the tip, it is reduced to an extremely fine and pointed style, of variable length. The pterygoid and quadrate bones present no differences. The palatine ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... rocket motors, four discharging to the bow and two to the stern. Any one of them, Carpenter said, was ample for motive power. Equilibrium was maintained by means of a heavy gyroscope which would prevent any turning of the axis of its rotation. The entire flyer shell could be revolved about the axis so that oblique motion with our bow and stern motors was readily possible. Direct lateral movement was provided for by valves which would divert a portion of the discharge of either a bow or stern motor out ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... agreeably is the sole occupation of a grand seignior; hence it is that religion and government only serve him as subjects of conversation. The conversation, moreover, occurs between him and his equals, and a man may say what he pleases in good company. Moreover the social system turns on its own axis, like the sun, from time immemorial, through its own energy, and shall it be deranged by what is said in the drawing-room? In any event he does not control its motion and he is not responsible. Accordingly there is no uneasy undercurrent, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... experienced, because such a social and material momentum had never before been acquired by any nation, and then been arrested by so gigantic a calamity. It was as if the earth had been suddenly stopped on its axis, and all things on its surface had felt the destructive impulse of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... towards them with prodigious velocity and, what was worse, its path lay so directly in the course of the Projectile that a collision seemed inevitable. As it moved onward, from west to east, they could easily see that it rotated on its axis, like all heavenly bodies; in fact, it somewhat resembled a Moon on a small scale, describing its ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... arising from the increase of velocity becomes more striking. In converting cast into wrought-iron, a mass of metal, of about a hundredweight, is heated almost to white heat, and placed under a heavy hammer moved by water or steam power. This is raised by a projection on a revolving axis; and if the hammer derived its momentum only from the space through which it fell, it would require a considerably greater time to give a blow. But as it is important that the softened mass of red-hot iron should receive as many blows as possible before it ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... I have confined myself to the discoveries made since the revival of learning. Long ago, on the banks of the Ganges, ages before Copernicus lived, Aryabhatta taught that the earth is a sphere and revolves on its own axis. This, however, does not detract from the glory of the great German. The discovery of the Hindoo had been lost in the midnight of Europe—in the age of faith—and Copernicus was as much a discoverer as though ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... slot is to be made in the side of a limb or trunk the same procedure is followed except that it is necessary before making the slot to remove a notch of bark, at right angles to the axis of the trunk, so as to free the upper end of the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... in the individual. He shewed that the foundations of the skull and of the backbone were laid down in a fashion quite different, and that it was impossible to regard both skull and backbone as modifications of a common type laid down right along the axis of the body. The spinal column and the skull start from the same primitive condition, whence they immediately begin to diverge. It may be true to say that there is a primitive identity of structure between the spinal or vertebral column and the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... current. The bubbles have their reason for being; all the mysteries of molecular attraction and repulsion may be involved in their production; without the solar energy, and the revolution of the earth upon its axis, they would not appear; and yet they are only bubbles upon the river's current, as we are bubbles upon the stream of energy that flows through the universe. Apparently the cosmic game is played for us no more than for the parasites that infest our bodies, or for the frost ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... us that on this day, twenty years ago, the military could not protect the meeting, because the guns were outside in the mob—or the men who should have carried them! There has been a time since when the men were on the outside and the guns too; and as surely as this earth turns on its axis, that time will come again! And it is for you, men, who hear me, to think what you will do when that time comes; and it is for you, women, who hear me, to think what you will do, and what you are willing—I will not say, to consent that those you love should do, but what ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... notable fact that the sun rises immediately over the summit of the "Hele Stone," in a line with the axis of Stonehenge ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... Form Images. Suppose we place an arrow, A, in front of a convex lens (Fig. 73). The ray AC, parallel to the principal axis, will pass through the lens and emerge as DE. The ray is always bent toward the thick portion of the lens, both at its entrance into the lens and its emergence from ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... tank careened, turning completely over on her longer axis, until, as Tom shut off the power, he and his friends once more found themselves standing where they belonged—on the floor of the ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... projecting from all parts of the organisms or from one or both ends, the movement being produced by rapid lashing of these hairs. A bacterium grows until it attains the size of the species, when it divides by simple cleavage at right angles to the long axis forming two individuals. In some of the spherical forms division takes place alternately in two planes, and not infrequently the single individuals adhere, forming figures of long threads or chains or double forms. The rate of growth varies with the species and ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... with vast eclat, and after it two crackers simultaneously gave chase to the operator half-way round the lawn. One of the Catherine-wheels was also prevailed upon to give a few languid rotations on its axis, and some of the squibs, which had unfortunately got damp, condescended, after being inserted bodily into the lantern, to go off. Presently, however, the wind got into the lantern, and the matches being by this time exhausted, and the starlights refusing to depart from their ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... a lively two-step, and soon the floor was covered with couples, each turning on its own axis, and all revolving around a common centre, in obedience perhaps to the same law of motion that governs the planetary systems. The dancing-hall was a long room, with a waxed floor that glistened with the reflection of the lights from the chandeliers. The walls were hung in paper ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... that forms the axis of the Nations of the West is crowned by an animated, imaginative group so perfectly co-ordinated with the realistic main composition that it causes no sense of discord. This group of "Enterprise" and the "Hopes of the Future" by A. Stirling Calder, forms the apex of the pyramidal ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... square slab of stone, and, taking a long staff which one of the men carried, I placed the end on the triangle and calling two others to help me, we bore downwards with all our weight, and when we had thrust awhile on the staff the corner of the slab sank into the floor and it turned on a diagonal axis until it stood upright, leaving a three-cornered space large enough for a man's body to pass through easily. Then I made a sign to one of ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... conceive two things as related in position, years must elapse before it can form a true concept of the Earth, as a sphere made up of land and sea, covered with mountains, forests, rivers, and cities, revolving on its axis, and sweeping round the Sun—if it gets from the one concept to the other by degrees—if the intermediate concepts which it forms are consecutively larger and more complicated; is it not manifest that there is ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... for details of the polar discovery, but Frank, after a rapid sketching of conditions as they had observed them at the world's southern axis, went on to describe the events that had led up to their wild flight and urged immediate negotiations with the rival explorers. Both leaders agreed to advance at once, convinced that their force was sufficiently formidable ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... for a moment. We have left the earth, and are many thousands of miles away from it. You know that which causes night and day on the earth is the rotation of it on its axis. Half the time the part we are living on is turned away from the sun, and the other half of the time turned toward the sun. Now, the sun is fixed in space. We are also in space, and we are so comparatively small that there will never be any shadows ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... the sun were needed before men could take the full historic measures of Luther, Calvin, Knox; the measure of Loyola, the Council of Trent, and all the counter-reformation. The center of gravity is forever shifting, the political axis of the world perpetually changing. But we are now far enough off to discern how stupendous a thing was done when, after two cycles of bitter war, one foreign, the other civil and intestine, Pitt and Washington, within a span of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Vertebrata is to be sought in an Ascidioid form. Goodsir long ago insisted upon the resemblance between Amphioxus and the Ascidians; but the notion of a genetic connection between the two, and especially the identification of the notochord of the Vertebrate with the axis of the caudal appendage of the larva of the Ascidian, is a novelty which, at first, takes one's breath away. I must confess, however, that the more I have pondered over it, the more grounds appear in its favour, though ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in generous honesty are but pale in goodness and faint-hued in sincerity. But be thou what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand majestically upon that axis where prudent simplicity hath fixed thee; and at no temptation invert the poles of thy honesty that vice may be uneasy and even monstrous unto thee; let iterated good acts and long confirmed habits make virtue natural or a second nature in thee; and since ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... ultimate matter is reduced to that of an oblate spheroid described by the revolution of an ellipse on its own minor axis!" ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy |
