"Elliptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time has it coalesced or been joined to any belt in its proximity, as has been alleged by some observers. During the year 1885 the middle of the spot was very much paler in colour than the margins, causing it to appear as an elliptical ring. The ring form has continued up to the present time. While the outline of the spot has remained very constant, the colour has changed materially from year to year. During the past three years (1884-'86) it has at times been very faint, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... magnificent scene ever witnessed in the United States. Castle-garden lies at a very short distance from Battery-street, which is a spacious and elegant promenade, on the south westerly part of the city. It was formerly a fort, and is about one hundred and seventy feet in diameter, of a circular or elliptical form. It has lately become a place of great resort in the warm season of the year. Everything which labor and expence, art and taste could effect was done to render it convenient, showy and elegant. An awning covered ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... box with three compartments,—for betel-nut, buyo-leaf, and calcined shell,—cast in brass or bell-metal from a wax mould. This type has rectangular surfaces, and is to be distinguished from the kapulan, a type marked by its circular, or elliptical, ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... number travel in long elliptical or parabolic orbits round the sun at great velocities. They seem to consist partly of glowing vapours, especially hydrogen, and partly of meteoric stones. 'Shooting stars,' that is to say, stones which fall to the earth, are known to swarm in their wake, and are believed to ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... elliptical. Thus, it was common to add at the end of the letter something like, "I leave it to you to decide." This might be put, "As the king, my lord, sees fit, let him do." But a scribe would often merely say, "As the king sees fit." Such elliptical sentences are often very difficult to complete. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... it was cloudy, and the moon had, for several hours, an immense elliptical ring round it—a common ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... combustion chamber, excepting through the opening afforded by a connecting tube, is an advantage in the same direction, and avoids almost entirely the racking strains due to irregular furnace action. The weight of water carried is less, and that of the boiler may also be made less; while the elliptical form of the two ends ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... the end of the web for the first turn. Sew into an elliptical form three and one-half inches long for the sole. Sew two more rows without widening for the sides of the foot; then sew two rows across the front for the toe; the third row bring all around the top to complete ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been a Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... tremendous tempest was blowing, the wind coming from the north, and the Ark, notwithstanding her immense breadth of beam, was canted over to leeward at an alarming angle. On the larboard side the waves washed to the top of the great elliptical dome and broke over it, and their thundering blows shook the vessel to her center, causing many to believe that she was ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... is Art! See—Elliptical wheels on a Cart! It looks very fair In the Picture up there; But imagine ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... narrow loopholes. There was no window on it, but here and there slits, old embrasures of pierriers and archegayes. At the foot of this high wall was seen, like the hole at the bottom of a rat-trap, a little wicket gate, very elliptical in its arch. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Olivaria (3, 3, Fig. 58) are two elliptical prominences, placed exterior to the corpora pyramidalia. By some physiologists these bodies are considered as the nuclei, or vital points, of the medulla oblongata. Being closely connected with the nerves of special sensation, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... band of interlacing work round the head of the actual window opening. Inside the church has been more altered. Formerly the aisle was separated from the nave by two arches, but when the south aisle was built the central pier was taken out and the two arches thrown into one large and elliptical arch, but the capitals of the chancel arch and the few others that remain are all well wrought and well designed. The west door is a good simple example of the first pointed period, with plain moulded arches and shafts which bear simple French-looking capitals. Other churches of the same class are ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... he said inquiringly, and as he asked his question he fitted his long, elliptical shield well upon his left arm and arranged his assagais handy ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... progress and the wretched consequences which are its end. But various causes prevented him from fully realising his own ideal, and thus becoming the best as well as the first of our satirical poets. His style—imitated from Persius and Juvenal—is too elliptical, and it becomes true of him as well as of Persius that his points are often sheathed through the remoteness of his allusions and the perplexity of his diction. He is very recondite in his images, and you are sometimes ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... known as "crabs." They were not large, and the only part of them which projected above the water was the middle of an elliptical deck, slightly convex, and heavily mailed with ribs of steel. These vessels were fitted with electric engines of extraordinary power, and were capable of great speed. At their bows, fully protected by the overhanging ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... OF LIGHT This astronomical phenomenon may be defined as an apparent motion of the heavenly bodies; the stars describing annually orbits more or less elliptical, according to the latitude of the star; consequently at any moment the star appears to be displaced from its true position. This apparent motion is due to the finite velocity of light, and the progressive motion of the observer with the earth, as it performs its yearly course about the sun. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his army, the captive supplicating for his life, all are represented as speakers in one unvaried style,—a style moreover wholly unfit for oratorical purposes. His mode of reasoning is singularly elliptical,—in reality most consecutive,—yet in appearance often incoherent. His meaning, in itself sufficiently perplexing, is compressed into the fewest possible words. His great fondness for antithetical expression has not a little conduced to this effect. Every one must have observed how much ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... good cheer still remaining, so many ages after those who enjoyed them have passed away like exhalations or transient meteors! I would have sat down, and, with a better conscience than Don Juan, have invoked their ghosts over a bottle of the honest gardener's currant-wine; but he had filled up the elliptical area of the trees with a pile of fagots, of which the old table serves as a ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... hill terminates in a long, elliptical mound, about one-third of a mile in length. We made the tour of it, and were surprised at finding a large number of columns, each of a single piece of marble. They had once formed a double colonnade, extending from the church ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... distinguished as the fluting apparatus, the instrument that really produces the varied vocalization of the bird realm. But the music is not the product of vocal cords, as is the case in the human larynx, for at the upper end of the avian larynx there is a slit or fissure, somewhat elliptical in form, and set in the fork of the hyoid bone, which constitutes the bifurcated root of the tongue. This fissure is called the glottis. At the bird's fiat, it can be opened and closed and made to assume a great variety of forms. Moreover, just in front of it there is ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... and often absent; it is pointed-elliptical, and is rarely above the 1/40th of an inch long. After arriving at this full size, calcareous matter is added to the under surface over a less and less area, so that it becomes internally pointed, and finally, in place of ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... to observe and imitate the impersonal and elliptical construction of Malay sentences. Notice how much more is left to the imagination than in English, and get rid of the notion that it is necessary to express invariably by nouns or pronouns the agents or objects ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... revolve in an orbit which takes a hundred and forty-two years to traverse! So that only every one hundred and forty-second year could we hope to see a good display. When all these facts had been gathered up, it seemed without doubt that certain groups of meteors travelled in company along an elliptical orbit. But there remained still something more—a bold and ingenious theory to be advanced. It was found that a comet, a small one, only to be seen with the telescope, revolved in exactly the same orbit as the ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... struck his horse with a passion that astonished the animal and the next moment shamed himself. He stooped instantly and apologized to the quivering creature; and was as instantly forgiven. Then he began to talk to himself in those elliptical, unfinished sentences, which the inner man understands, and so thoroughly finishes—" If I were not morally sure—It is as plain as can be—How in the name of wonder?—I'll say so much for myself—I am sorry that ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the contrary, by forming a clear and consistent idea of one body's moving upon another, and of its rest immediately upon the contact, or of its returning back in the same line in which it came; or of its annihilation; or circular or elliptical motion: and in short, of an infinite number of other changes, which we may suppose it to undergo. These suppositions are all consistent and natural; and the reason, Why we imagine the communication of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... wall of the King's Palace; and this queer old lane running up through the walls like a sewer is Cuckoo lane; and that is Bugle street, where in olden times the warden blew; and here are the remains of Canute's palace, with its elliptical and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... sausage-shaped. These are either hyaline or coloured of some shade of brown. Coloured sporidia of this kind are common in Xylaria and Hypoxylon, as well as in certain species of the section Superficiales. Coloured sporidia are often large and beautiful: they are mostly of an elongated, elliptical form, or fusiform. As noteworthy may be mentioned the sporidia of Melanconis lanciformis, those of Valsa profusa, and some species of Massaria, the latter being at first invested with a hyaline coat. Some coloured sporidia have hyaline appendages at each extremity, as in Melanconis ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... meal at which the entire family gathered that day. It was eaten in an almost unbroken silence, the younger boys plainly hesitating to speak to either Judith or their father. Save for elliptical requests for food, the only conversation was when Wade offered the opinion that it looked like it might rain before morning, and his father replied that he did not think it would. Leaving the table without further word, Jephthah returned to ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... when it may be rendered, it may be so, so it is, is it so, &c. Sometimes ironically, sometimes expressing chance, &c.; in the course of time it became superseded by the more modern term perhaps. Instances of similar elliptical expressions are common at the present day, and will readily suggest themselves: the modern please, used for entreaty, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... insertion of on before a date, as "on April 30," but general usage justifies its omission. With equal force they might urge the use of in before 1789. The entire expression of day, month, and year is elliptical. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... interior devoured. Duppo, on seeing it, began to search about in the neighbourhood, and came before long on a conical pile of dead leaves, from among which he dug out upwards of twenty eggs. They were nearly twice the size of those of a duck, and of an elliptical shape. The shells were very hard, of the texture of porcelain, and extremely rough on the outside. Duppo rubbed them together, producing a loud sound. Then he shook his head, as much as to say, "If the mother were alive that would bring her, but there ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... London improvements. The committee were, however, just enough to be unanimous in favouring the young unknown Scotchman, and he carried off the prize. Directly it was known that Mylne's arches were to be elliptical, every one unacquainted with the subject began to write in favour of the semi-circular arch. Among the champions Dr. Johnson was, if not the most ignorant, the most rash. He wrote three letters to the printer of the Gazetteer, praising Gwynn's plans and denouncing the Scotch conqueror. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... like flyers, which poise at one spot, are able to do so because, instead of moving forwardly, or changing the position of its body horizontally, in performing the undulatory motion of the wing, it causes the body to rock, so that at the point where the wing joins the body, an elliptical motion is produced. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... there is a frontispiece representing a portable universal furnace, made of strong wrought iron plates and lined with bricks bedded in fire-proof loam. The height of the furnace is two feet. The body of the furnace is elliptical. There are three openings in front of the furnace, one above the other, furnished with sliding doors, and fitted with stoppers made of ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... jousted on a lovelier field than the green little valley toward which the Hon. Sam waved one big hand. It was level, shorn of weeds, elliptical in shape, and bound in by trees that ran in a semicircle around the bank of the river, shut in the southern border, and ran back to the northern extremity in a primeval little forest that wood-thrushes, even then, were making musical—all of it shut in ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... was a small slightly projecting stage of two planks only. The paddles were six and a half feet in length, much clumsier than those seen in other parts of New Guinea, and without the carving on the handle, the blade also differed slightly in shape, being more elliptical. After paddling inshore a short distance they made sail and landed near the point. The sail resembled the common one of the Louisiade, being long, narrow, square at the ends, and stretched between two yards or masts, and in setting was merely stuck ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... daylight ahead, and in a few more strides the last trees were passed, and they came out suddenly in an amphitheatre of bare rocks, almost elliptical, but coming together at the head, and bending away like ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... language of this sentence is somewhat obscure and elliptical, but would seem to indicate that the Portuguese fear the diminution of their trade in China with its natives, and the loss of their prestige in the carrying ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... a singular way. They have their apexes or points on the outer edge of the bone; and these apexes or points are so contrived, that, lying upon, and seemingly losing themselves, on the processes of the anterior maxillary, they complete, superiorly and posteriorly, that elliptical bony opening into the nose which was commenced by the maxillary anteriorly and inferiorly. The nasal cavity of the dog, therefore, and of all carnivorous animals, terminates by a somewhat circular opening, more or less in the form of an ellipse. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... The elliptical basin in which Denver is built, sloping north and east, gives it a picturesque and extended view; the mountains losing themselves in one direction in the now historic "Black Hills," and in the other merging into the "Spanish Peaks" and ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... more elaborate theory was advanced by Dr. Croll, and is still entertained by many. The path of the earth round the sun is not circular, but elliptical, and there are times when the gravitational pull of the other planets increases the eccentricity of the orbit. It was assumed that there are periods of great length, separated from each other by still longer periods, when this eccentricity of the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... Bromley. During the investigation, her garrulity was so incessant that the mayor was under the necessity of sending for the 'scold's bridle,' an iron instrument of very antique construction, which, in olden times, was occasionally called into use. It is formed of an elliptical bow of iron, enclosing the head from the lower extremity of one ear to the other, with a transverse piece of iron from the nape of the neck to the mouth, and completely covers the tongue, preventing its movement, and the whole ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... into a heterogeneous assemblage of everything musty, and dusty, and old, that could well be imagined. His verdict on the armour was satisfactory, and his companion at once concluded the purchase. As they were leaving the place, Cosmo's eye was attracted by an old mirror of an elliptical shape, which leaned against the wall, covered with dust. Around it was some curious carving, which he could see but very indistinctly by the glimmering light which the owner of the shop carried ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... behind, and earth could not be seen because of the sun. There was nothing to do now but ride out the rest of the trip as comfortably as possible until it was time to throw the asteroid into an ever-tightening series of elliptical orbits around earth, known as braking ellipses. The method would use earth's gravity to slow them down to the proper speed. A single atomic bomb and a half dozen tubes of rocket ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... this made no change in the direction of the succeeding ellipse. The next day I watched a plant similarly secured until the tendril (which was highly sensitive) made an ellipse in a line exactly to and from the light; the movement was so great that the tendril at the two ends of its elliptical course bent itself a little beneath the horizon, thus travelling more than 180 degrees; but the curvature was fully as great towards the light as towards the dark side of the room. I believe Dutrochet ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... lamp, his steps echoing on the floor of polished granite. What had set the thing swinging? It had a leisurely elliptical motion, as from a moderate push sideways. The lamp was wrought in bronze, antique of fashion and ornament. It had capacity for gallons of oil, and would burn for weeks without refilling. The altar beneath was a plain black marble prism, highly polished, resting upon ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the diary of Razumov. It is a favourite device of Conrad's which might be described as, structurally progressing from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. His novel, Chance, is a specific instance of his intricate and elliptical method. Several personages of the story relate in almost fugal manner, the heroine appearing to us in flashes as if reflected by some revolving mirror. It is a difficult and elusive method, but it presents us with many ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... off, the elliptical figure of Abdul Said Bey, on the lowest step of the landing, speeded its departure with a gesture of ceremonious farewell—fingers sweeping heart, lips and forehead. "If you go to shop in Stamboul," he shouted after them, "have a care. The ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... constructed by twigs stuck in the ground and arched over, the ends being artfully entwined so as to give support to each other; the whole was covered with a thatch of dried grass and reeds; they were not larger than two people could conveniently occupy. In one of the huts, which was of a more elliptical shape and of larger dimensions than the other, was a bunch of hair that had been recently clipped from either the head or beard. This proves that these operations are not done solely by fire, as Captain Cook supposed,* but by means of a sharp-edged ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... People were heard conversing in a broad Northumbrian accent, with a burr in most of their words. They were broad-shouldered men, capable of doing any amount of hard work. We came in sight of a fine stone bridge with nine elliptical arches, which connects Newcastle with Gateshead, on the opposite bank. Above it is another magnificent bridge; it is double, the lower roadway, ninety feet above the river, being used for carriages ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... Report, is thus described by Mr. Strachan Jones: [Footnote: Report for 1866, p. 321.] "Deer-skins are dressed with the hair on, and sewed together, forming two large rolls, which are stretched over a frame of bent poles. The lodge is nearly elliptical, about twelve or thirteen feet in diameter and six feet high, very similar to a tea-cup turned over. The door is about four feet high, and is simply a deer-skin fastened above and hanging down. The hole to allow the smoke to escape is about four feet in ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... remains, and of it the most interesting part is the spire. In the Chapelle des Bourbons (15th cent.) are enormous corbels under the empty niches. About 300 yards distant is the Maison Abbatiale, 15th cent., with flattened elliptical-headed windows and ogee arches over the doors. At the entrance is a collection of columns, capitals, etc., from the first church founded in the 10th cent. Upstairs there is a small museum; ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... parole). It is difficult, however, in this instance as in many others, to discover with certainty Boccaccio's exact meaning, owing to his affectation of Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of construction; whilst his use of words in a remote or unfamiliar sense and the impossibility of deciding, in certain cases, the person of the pronouns and adjectives employed tend still farther to darken counsel. E.g., if we render affezione sentiment, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric showers about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... VII. 75. "Nay, his style," says Miss Rossetti, "is more than concise: it is elliptical, it is recondite. A first thought often lies coiled up and hidden under a second; the words which state the conclusion involve the premises and develop ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... and of different sizes, which revolve in elliptical orbits round the sun, and at different distances, the chief of them eight in number, two of them, viz., Mercury and Venus, revolving in orbits interior to that of the earth, and five of them, viz., Mars, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... lies, where it was found, on a high tomb with panelled sides, each having seven recesses separated by tiny buttresses. The canopy, ogee-shaped above, and with a plain elliptical arch below, was much mutilated, but seems to have been crocketed and terminated by a finial. It owes its present form to Mr. Cottingham, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... in advance of this. The scientist observing the path of a planet travelling round the sun, finds that its course is that of an ellipse. He studies the path of a second planet, and finds that this also travels along an elliptical orbit. Later he finds that all planets he is able to observe travel in the same kind of path—then he hazards a general statement, and says, "All planets travel round their suns in elliptical orbits." But now he has left the realm of certainty for that of uncertainty. There may be innumerable ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... another error sometimes made. It is said that the shadow of a satellite appears elliptical when near the edge of the disc. The shadow is in reality elliptical when thus situated, but appears circular. A moment's consideration will show that this should be so. The part of the disc concealed by a satellite ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... PATRIAE MAESTAM (sic). (A victory brilliant for thee, sorrowful for thy country). A funeral urn upon a tomb is surrounded with naval emblems; a crown of laurel is hanging from a trident, and in a cartoon of elliptical form: W. (William) BURROWS. ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... freshness and spontaneity of Mr. MILNE'S humour. The only question was whether an author so fastidiously unstagey, who never underlines his intentions, would be able to accommodate himself to the conditions of a medium that discourages the elliptical method. Well, he did it, and very artfully. He began by making concessions to the habits of his new audience. He wouldn't try them too high at first. In the person of Robert Crawshaw, M.P. (Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR), he introduced them to a more or less conventional type—exposed, it is true, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... give no idea of the peculiar charm and vividness of his talk. In a crowd he was nearly always silent. Even for his classroom he had no platitudes, no stock of professorial anecdotes. When he was tired his lectures were clouded, obscure, elliptical; but when he was interested they were wonderful. I believe that Gaston Cleric narrowly missed being a great poet, and I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... inference that the force by which the planet moves round that focus varies inversely as the square of its distance therefrom. He demonstrated that a planet acted upon by such a force could not move in any other curve than a conic section; and he showed when the moving body would describe a circular, an elliptical, a parabolic, or hyperbolic orbit. He demonstrated, too, that this force or attracting, gravitating power resided in even the least particle; but that in spherical masses it operates as if confined to their centres, so that one sphere or body will act upon another sphere or body ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... as thus presented was one of the most difficult we can perceive of, but the difficulty was only an incentive to attacking it with all the greater energy. So long as the motion was supposed purely elliptical, so long as the action of the planets was neglected, the problem was a simple one, requiring for its solution only the analytic geometry of the ellipse. The real difficulties commenced when the mutual ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Between the happier passages we have to cross stretches of flat prose twisted into rhyme; Pope seems to have intentionally pitched his style at a prosaic level as fitter for didactic purposes; but besides this we here and there come upon phrases which are not only elliptical and slovenly, but defy all grammatical construction. This was a blemish to which Pope was always strangely liable. It was perhaps due in part to over-correction, when the context was forgotten and the subject had lost ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... use the west-bound route as an illustration—traveled in an elliptical course through Springfield, Missouri, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Van Buren, Arkansas, where the Memphis mail was received. Continuing in a southwesterly course, they passed through Indian Territory and the Choctaw Indian reserve—now Oklahoma—crossed the Red River at Calvert's ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... chief entrance is a simple but effective arched doorway, now plastered and whitewashed. The double door frame projects pilaster-like, with a four-membered cornice above, from which rises an elliptical arch, with an elliptical cornice about a ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... bright golden dot, at first. It decelerated swiftly. In minutes it was a rounded, end-on disk. Then it swerved lightly and presented an elliptical broadside to the Niccola. The Niccola was in full deceleration too, by then. The two ships came very nearly to a stop with relation to each other when they were hardly twenty miles apart—which meant ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... reached a village of considerable size, and were led to what I supposed was the house of the principal chief, the father of the young man who had captured us. It stood on a raised platform of stone, and was built entirely of wood, with elliptical ends, the beams ornamented with coloured cocoa-nut plait. The side walls were solid, with windows, the frames of which were bound together to represent a kind of fluting, and which had a very ornamented appearance. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Indian maiden standing on a pedestal 23 feet high and holding in her outstretched hand a bundle of tobacco. A miniature log cabin advertised a special brand of tobacco. The horticultural exhibit consisted of an open, three-towered elliptical pavilion and a horn of plenty, apparently pouring apples on a pyramid of natural fruit below. This was made primarily an apple exhibit, more than 800 barrels being used for the purpose. Peaches, melons, pears, cranberries, and other fruits were ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... of the arch of the skull be measured perpendicularly from this line, it will be found to be 4.75 inches. Viewed from above, Figure 23, A, the forehead presents an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of the sides and back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical curve. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the theory of the winds, of rain, of aerial and oceanic currents, of vegetation and climate with all their multifarious and important differences. While the inclined position of the earth on its axis and its movement in its elliptical orbit influence the general amount of heat, it is rather to the consequences of these in detail that we are called when we speak of temperature. If the sun shone on a uniformly level surface, everywhere of the same conducting and radiating power, there would be but little difficulty ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... have the most brilliant display of meteors in two distinct groups, or orbits. Those of August come from a point in the constellation of Perseus and those in November from a point in the constellation Leo. They are believed to fill two distinct orbits or rings making an elliptical orbit round the sun. In such orbits, comets are believed by astronomers to be formed by a concentrated swarm of incandescent meteorites rendered luminous by collisions. But this hypothesis of innumerable collisions between meteorites travelling in the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... of the valley would suggest the existence of the grand elliptical crater of some extinct volcano. But instead of the black sulphuric scoria, that you might expect to see strewed over its base, you behold a verdant landscape of smiling loveliness, park-like plains interposed with ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... striking exhibition of this kind. The same phenomena of rapidly varying refraction may often be witnessed at sunset, when the sun, sinking into the lake, undergoes a most striking series of changes. At one moment it is drawn out into a pear-like shape; the next it takes an elliptical form; and just as it disappears, the upper part of its disk becomes elongated into a ribbon of light, which seems to float for a moment upon the surface ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Haddon refers (Geographical Journal, Vol. XVI., p. 422) to conical ground houses with elliptical and circular bases found in villages on the top of steep hills behind the Mekeo district and on the southern spur of Mt. Davidson, and says that in some places, as on the Aduala affluent of the Angabunga (i.e., St. Joseph's) river, the houses ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... Monday Pops: The billiard sharp whom any one catches His doom's extremely hard - He's made to dwell In a dungeon cell On a spot that's always barred; And there he plays extravagant matches In fitless finger-stalls, On a cloth untrue With a twisted cue, And elliptical billiard balls! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... a tail 50,000,000 miles in length, and that it will require two days to pass round the sun. Now the tail, being always in a line drawn through the center of the sun and center of the nucleus, will, when it reaches the long axis of the elliptical orbit, stand perpendicularly to the orbit of the nucleus. That is, the extremity of the tail farthest from the sun, in addition to its onward motion, has acquired a lateral motion that has lifted it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... Eddy to preach to us in rhetoric? 'Before you attempt composition, be sure that you have a rounded thought.' This isn't round, it's elliptical. Big Olaf is a friend useful. He's a shrewd fellow, who's been looking stupid for some time. The 'bunch' hasn't been treating him square. You can guess what that means. Anyway, he is sore as well as shrewd, and now I fancy he belongs ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Townshend at last determined to demesmerise me. He began to make elliptical movements with his hands, the reverse of those which he had made at the commencement; I could now open my eyes without any kind of effort, my whole muscular system became perfectly obedient to my will; I was able to get ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... cupellation in flattened elliptical buttons, adhering but only slightly to the cupel. Its upper surface should show faint markings as if it were crystalline. The presence of platinum renders it still more crystalline, but removes the characteristic lustre and renders the metal dull and grey. Copper, if not completely ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... resumes his original position, and the drawer opens to return the medallion. There are twenty of these medallions, all containing different questions, to which the magician returns the most suitable and striking answers. The medallions are thin plates of brass, of an elliptical form, exactly resembling each other. Some of the medallions have a question inscribed on each side, both of which the magician answered in succession. If the drawer is shut without a medallion being put into it, the magician rises, consults his book, shakes his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... crois bien: on l'entendait d'une lieue, 'I should rather think it was talking, you could hear it a mile off.' The sentence is elliptical, vous demandez being understood before s'il. Note the idiomatic use of bien, and cf. je le veux bien, 'I am perfectly willing'; voulez-vous bien vous en aller, 'won't you go away!' je donnerais bien un franc, 'I shouldn't mind ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... a full constructed hill, surrounded by an innumerable number of others, differing in shape and dimensions, arched in various forms, circular, and elliptical, which communicate by passages, occupied by guards and attendants, and surrounded by nurseries and magazines. But when the community is in an infant state, these are contiguous to the royal residence; and in proportion as the size ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... by means of which the sago within is shortly granulated very fine, and becomes what is technically termed "pearled." It is then taken out and put into iron vessels, called quallies, for the purpose of being dried. These quallies are small elliptical pans, and resemble in form the sugar coppers of the West Indies, and would each hold about five gallons of fluid. They are set a little inclining, and in a range, over a line of furnaces, each one having its own fire. Before putting in the sago to be dried, a cloth, which contains a ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... and Taplow, with Brunel's masterpiece of bridge-building connecting them, its elliptical brick arches being the broadest of their kind in the kingdom. Below this, as beauties decrease, we are compensated by scenes of greater historical interest. Near Maidenhead is Bisham Abbey, the most interesting ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... pigment of the iris and the coloring matter of the albino's hair is absorbed, giving it a silvery white appearance, and converting him into a clairvoyant at night. According to Professors Brown, Seidy and Gibbs, the negro's hair is not tubular, like the white man's, but it is eccentrically elliptical, with flattened edges, the coloring matter residing in the epidermis, and not in tubes. In the place of a tube, the shaft of each hair is surrounded with a scaly covering like sheep's wool, and, like wool, is capable of being felted. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... much preoccupied to be careful about trifles; he probably had John in his mind, and did not bother himself about Alfonso; King Ferdinand, to whom he was writing, did not need to have such points minutely specified, and could understand an elliptical statement; and the fact stated by Columbus was simply that during a residence of fourteen years in Portugal he had not been able to enlist even that enterprising government in ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... h, consists of an oblong rectangular soft iron frame having at one end a small pulley and at the other end an elliptical boss, i, which is arranged obliquely to form in conjunction with the spring, j, a circuit closer and opener, which closes the circuit twice during each revolution of the armature, just as one of its side bars is approaching the poles of the magnet and breaks it as the bar comes opposite the poles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... and elliptical to an unusual degree; often a curious suspension and withholding in a statement, a suggestive incompleteness, both ends of his thought, as it were, left in the air; sometimes the substantive, sometimes the nominative, is wanting, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... them, and with a sharp grating sound as of iron cutting into ice, came suddenly to a stop, and the persons gathering round had an opportunity to examine it. It was the work of a village genius, and consisted of some boards, cut in an elliptical form (as, perhaps, the most convenient), supported by two pieces of iron, parallel to each other, to which the boards were fastened, and running the whole length from bow to stern. In the forward part was rigged a mast, to which was attached a sail, like the mainsail ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... horses, tracks, stables, farms, etc., is enormous. The tracks are level, with start and finish directly in front of the grand stand, and are either one mile or one-half mile in length. They are always of earth, and are usually elliptical in shape, though the "kite-shaped track" was for a time popular on account of its increased speed. In this there is one straight stretch of one-third mile, then a wide turn of one-third mile, and then a straight run of one-third mile back to the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... waiting ever since Frederick's arrival to show him his collection of Japanese art objects, invited him to his room. It was a small room on the top floor, cluttered up with a mass of antiques. He first placed before Frederick a number of Japanese sword-guards, tsubas, as the Japanese call them, small elliptical pieces of metal, about which a man's hand can easily reach. They are decorated with figures in slight relief, partly of the same metal as the ground, partly damascened, or inlaid ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... upright stamens. Fruit usually ripens the first week in October and does not keep well in storage; clusters large to medium, broad, loose, frequently irregular because of poor setting of fruit; berries large, oval to elliptical, rather dull green, with thin bloom; skin thick, tender, neutral; flesh greenish, translucent, juicy, meaty, tender, sweet; quality of ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... with hyphae tissue. In old plants the tops break in, the powder is dissipated, and there remains (Fig. 833) a bundle of carbonous tubes, the walls of the perithecia. Finally, these break up and disappear, leaving the upper part of the plant hollow. The spores are elliptical, 6-7 x 16-18 mic., smooth, light colored. The asci which disappear at at very early stage, are shown by Moeller as oval, each containing ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... by the telescope, Gertrude gazed into the immensity of space, whispering sometimes to her own soul, "How grand this vast world-making, this frightful velocity of the giant dynamos in their elliptical pathways through space!" ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... defective in some parts than in others. "Measure for Measure" is an example of this, and we are not satisfied with being told that its ruggedness of verse is intentional, or that its obscurity is due to the fact that Shakespeare grew more elliptical in his style as he grew older. Profounder in thought he doubtless became; though in a mind like his, we believe that this would imply only a more absolute supremacy in expression. But, from whatever original we suppose either the quartos or the first folio ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... persons of strong imagination profess to see remains of an ancient fortification, but to my mind this is mere fancy. Mounds in our region vary from 6 to 50 feet in height, and from 60 to 130 feet in diameter. Some are circular at the base, others are elliptical. ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... carefully collecting and comparing facts, proposed the following theory: The meteors of November 13th, 1833, emanated from a nebulous body which was then pursuing its way along with the earth around the sun; that this body continues to revolve around the sun in an elliptical orbit, but little inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, and having its aphelion near the orbit of the earth; and finally, that the body has a period of nearly six months, and that its perihelion is a little ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... direct agent of the heart, the interpreter of speech. It is elliptical discourse. Each part of this ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... suspend a spiral spring above a pail of water, then raise the pail until the coils, one after another, become immersed. The spring would represent the helix, and the surface of the water the moving plane. Concentrating attention upon this surface, you would see a point—the elliptical cross-section of the wire where it intersected the plane—moving round and round in a circle. Next conceive of the wire itself as a lesser helix of many convolutions, and repeat the experiment. The point of intersection would then continually return upon its own track in a series of minute loops ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... the wilderness of ranges, with its waters starting for either ocean. From the first ridge we crossed after leaving Canyon we had a singular view of range beyond range cleft by deep canyons, and abounding in elliptical valleys, richly grassed. The slopes of all the hills, as far as one could see, were waving with fine grass ready for the scythe, but the food of wild animals only. All these ridges are heavily timbered with pitch pines, and where they come down on the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Luneta, the garden spot of the city. It is laid out in elliptical form and its green lawns are covered with benches for the people. A broad driveway surrounds it and hundreds of electric lights transform the ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... deep, had been dug, to carry away the water which fell from the roof. Near the middle of this house, which measured about forty feet from side to side, a large fire had been kept burning for several hours, the ashes being removed from time to time. The ash bed was elliptical in form, measuring about thirteen feet from east to west, and five from north to south. Under the center of it was a hole, ten inches across and a foot deep, filled with clean white ashes in which was a little charcoal, packed very hard. At the western end, on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... of the objects. His epithets and single phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of his mixed metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech. These, however, give no pain from long custom. They have, in fact, become idioms in the language. They are the building, and not the scaffolding to thought. We take the meaning ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... wall of this cluster to the unaided eye appears to be elliptical, but it will be seen from the plan that the ellipse is somewhat pointed on the side farthest from the cliff. As in other cases of ancient pueblos with curved outlines, the outer wall seems to have been built first, and the inner rooms, while kept as ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... ends; and the thickness of the mass at the summit of the arch about 40 feet. A part of its thickness is constituted by a coat of earth, which gives growth to many large trees. The residue, with the hill on both sides, is one solid rock of lime-stone. The arch approaches the semi-elliptical form; but the larger axis of the ellipsis, which would be the cord of the arch, is many times longer than the transverse. Though the sides of the bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rock, yet few men have resolution to walk to them, and ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... circles away, and substituted the conception of an exact ellipse. Even this is found not to represent with complete correctness the accurate observations of the present day, which disclose many slight deviations from an orbit exactly elliptical. Now Dr. Whewell has remarked that these successive general expressions, though apparently so conflicting, were all correct: they all answered the purpose of colligation; they all enabled the mind to represent to itself ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... when he had to reach over to the utmost stretch of his arms, grasp the blade, and in that awkward position scramble to his feet. This he also managed, when a further comparatively easy climb enabled him to reach the boss. He now found himself standing on the boss and leaning against the smooth elliptical stern of the vessel. His next task was to climb up over this smooth rounded surface and so make his way along the upper surface of the hull to the superstructure, when he would soon find means to reach the deck. This also, though a task of immense difficulty, he actually accomplished; finally ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... 'annual State levees,' the great doors of the 'East Room,' 'Blue Elliptical Saloon,' 'Green Drawing Room,' and 'Yellow Drawing Room' are thrown open at twelve o'clock 'precisely' to the anxious feet of gayly appareled noblemen, honorable men, gentlemen, and ladies of all the nations and kingdoms of the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... evidence in favor of this theory. There is a "ring nebula'' in Lyra with a central star, and a "planetary nebula'' in Gemini bearing no little resemblance to the planet Saturn with its rings, both of which appear to be practical realizations of Laplace's idea, and the elliptical rings surrounding the central condensation of the Andromeda Nebula may be cited for the same ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Mulberry A D Ovate, serrate, oblong { Shadbush { Plums { Cherries A D Oval or oval-oblong, spines, evergreen Holly A D Broad-ovate, one-sided, serrate Linden A D Obovate, oval, lanceolate, oblong Chestnut oaks A D Broad-ovate to broad-elliptical, thorny Thorns A E F Lobes rounded Sassafras A E F Base truncate or heart-shaped Tulip tree A E F Obtuse, rounded lobes White oaks A E F 3-5-lobed, white-tomentose to glabrous beneath White poplar A E G 5-lobed, finely serrate Sweet gum A E G Irregularly 3-7-lobed, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... form than the preceding, more elliptical in outline, with a thinner shell and with large granules throughout the endoplasm. The nucleus is spherical and subcentral in position and possesses a distinct central granule. This may be a ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... four horsepower. The power was transmitted from the motor to the countershaft by a belt and from the countershaft to the rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds—one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour—obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... United States bureau of fisheries,[123] Dr. Evermann asserted concerning Clinton's drawing of Otsego bass, which he had examined, that "the cut, although crude, plainly shows Coregonus clupeaformis. The form is elliptical, and the back shows the dark streaks along the rows of scales usually characteristic of that species." The same author, in collaboration with Dr. Jordan,[124] says concerning the common whitefish: "This species, like others of wide distribution, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Dunckley, 'produce beautiful women—it is one of the surest signs that they are going to pieces. The Romans did at the last, and Rome and England are parallel cases. As Mrs. Le Roy Jennings says, they are parasitic nations. What did the Romans add to Greek art? The Greeks had this'—he made an elliptical movement of his hands—'the Romans did that to it'—he described a circle, then shrugged his shoulders, convinced that he had said ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... right so far, that it is possible by just a touch to convert the noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary. The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife said and what she felt might not be the same; that persons, who have no great command ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... infinitely greater distance than did the ancients, to account for the absence of any observed alteration (parallax) in the position of the stars during the year. He also retained the old conception of circular orbits for the planets, though at one time he considered the possibility of their being elliptical, as they are. Unfortunately for his immediate followers the section on this subject found in his own manuscript was cut out of his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... irregular outline, and very variable in size and depth, are frequently found on the outer slopes of the border. Some of them consist of great elliptical or sub-circular cavities, displaying many expansions and contractions, called "pockets," and suggesting the idea that they were originally distinct cup-shaped hollows, which from some cause or other have coalesced like rows of inosculating craters. While many of these ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... which, towards the top, divides into large and spreading branches. The leaves of this tree are of a remarkable deep green, are notched about the edges, and are generally from a foot to eighteen inches in length. The fruit itself grows indifferently on all parts of the branches; it is in shape rather elliptical than round, is covered with a rough rind, and is usually seven or eight inches long; each of them grows singly and not in clusters. This fruit is fittest to be used when it is full grown, but is still green; in which state its taste has some distant resemblance to that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... grasped in one hand with the convex edge forward and the flat side up and thrown upward. After going some distance and ascending slowly to a great height in the air with a quick rotary motion, it suddenly returns in an elliptical orbit to a spot near the starting point. If thrown down on the ground the boomerang rebounds in a straight line, pursuing a ricochet motion until the object is struck at ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... of France, Professor Paul Broca says (in a paper read before the Congress of Pre-historic Archaeology in 1868)—"The great capacity of the brain, the development of the frontal region, the fine elliptical form of the anterior part of the profile of the skull, are incontestible characteristics of superiority, such as we are accustomed to meet with in civilised races;" yet the great breadth of the face, the enormous development of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... which must be considered the most important is that of the "line." A line is described in chalk or paint upon a large space of floor. Instead of one line, there may also be two concentric lines, elliptical in form. The children are taught to walk upon these lines like tight-rope walkers, placing their feet one in front of the other. To keep their balance they make efforts exactly similar to those of real tight-rope walkers, except that they have ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... might enter still further into detail, and show that the polarization between the plane and the circular is elliptical, and even the positions of the longer and shorter axes and the direction of motion in each case. But sufficient has, perhaps, been said ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... a kindred usage to that in the last note. Que is frequently used in this elliptical and emphatic manner at the beginning ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Eden was unanimously adopted. That this valley must be our future place of abode was at once decided by all of us. A more careful examination showed its superficies to be over sixty-two square miles. Allowing thirteen miles for the elliptical lake stretching out under the Kenia cliffs, and fifteen miles for the woods which clothed the heights around the valley, there remained above thirty miles of open park-land surrounding the lake, except where the Kenia cliffs touched the water, stretching in narrow ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... tale of King Charles and Buckingham." He read it. "Now here is the scene as I picture it." In quick elliptical phrases he gave the tale from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ollier's Comet and Halley's, are known to return into sight after intervals of seventy-four and seventy-six years, during which they have visited portions of space a few hundred millions of miles further than the orbit of Neptune. Six comets travel in elliptical orbits that are never so far from the sun as the planet Neptune, and return into visibility in short periods that never exceed seven or eight years. These interior comets of short period seem to be regular members of our ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... knees, in the act of adoration. Having passed the first gate, long arched galleries are discovered, about twelve feet wide and twenty feet high, cased with stucco, sculptured and painted; the vaults, of an elegant elliptical figure, are covered with innumerable hieroglyphics, disposed with so much taste, that notwithstanding the singular grotesqueness of the forms, and the total absence of demi-tint or aerial perspective, the ceilings make an agreeable whole, a rich and harmonious ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... [FN358] Elliptical "he rode out in great state, that is to say if greatness can truly be attributed to man," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... there is no appeal, and which have never been rivalled in importance except those made by Newton himself,—laws which connect the mean distance of the planets from the sun with the times of their revolutions; laws which show that the orbits of planets are elliptical, not circular; and that the areas described by lines drawn from the moving planet to the sun are proportionable to the times employed in the motion. What an infinity of calculation, in the infancy of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... strip of ground, called the Jardin de l'Infante, is decorated externally with large pilasters of the Composite order, which run from top to bottom, and with pediments alternately triangular and elliptical, the tympanums of which, both on the side of the Louvre, and towards the river, are charged with emblems of the Arts and Sciences. The other part is ornamented with coupled pilasters, charged with vermiculated rustics, and other ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... elliptical orbit and a full degree off its normal course. A large part of the control room was demolished and there was a lengthy split in the hull. There was no sign of the pilot and some of the cargo was missing also. The investigating ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... and long effeminate black lashes. You would have expected his dress in the city to be just a trifle flashy, not enough so to be loud, but sinning as to the trifles of good taste. The two men conversed in short elliptical sentences, using many ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune. Two facts with reference to him have long been well known, the one, that the polar compression in his case is much greater than it is in any of the interior planets, so that when seen through a telescope of very moderate power his disc is evidently elliptical, while the compression of the interior planets can only be detected by the most delicate micrometrical measurements—the other, that his apparent surface is always crossed by several alternating belts of light and shade, which though ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... appreciation of her bounty and her bravery. "Be patient with me," he pleaded. "Enid will recoup you for all you have suffered. It will win back all your funds. I have made it as near pure poetry as our harsh, definite life and our elliptical speech will permit." And straightway his mind was filled with dreams of conquering, even while he faced his love, so strangely are courtship and ambition mingled in ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... in his elliptical style. "You're one them dames uses a fella like he was a napkin, then trows him down. You used me twice and used me good. I desoived the second one, for I'm the kind o' guy gets his once and comes back ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... commenced in 1814, and finished in 1819. It has three arches, and the central arch is two hundred and forty feet, which is the greatest span in the world. In this bridge are five thousand three hundred and eight tons of iron. Blackfriars Bridge was commenced in 1760, and opened in 1770. It has nine elliptical arches, of which the middle one is one hundred feet in width. Recently this bridge has been thoroughly repaired. I think this is my favorite stand-point for the river and city. Nowhere else have I obtained such a view up and down the river. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... obscured by the fact that in most cases what is in form a mere part of the demonstrative gesture is in fact a part of the proposition which it is desired directly to convey. In such a case we will call the phraseology of the proposition elliptical. In ordinary intercourse the phraseology of ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... tissue, which usually shows a distinctive yellowish color. Being homogeneous and elastic, the moist, jellylike tissue composing the tumor may be easily destroyed or crushed. When cut through, these tumors soon collapse from the loss of their fluids. They sometimes inclose elliptical cavities ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Conkey. This point was rightly regarded as one of the most important on the whole overland route; for near it passed the favourite highway of the Indians on their yearly migrations north and south, in the wake of the strange elliptical march of the buffalo far beyond the Platte, and back to the sunny knolls ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience. When we see an object, say a penny, we seem to be aware of its "real" shape we have the impression of something circular, not of something elliptical. In learning to draw, it is necessary to acquire the art of representing things according to the sensation, not according to the perception. And the visual appearance is filled out with feeling of what the object would be like to touch, and so on. This filling ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... with its cells in long filaments. Two contiguous cells of two parallel filaments push each a little projection from its cell-wall toward the other. When these meet, the protoplasm of each of the two cells contracts, and assumes an elliptical form—it undergoes rejuvenescence. Next an opening forms where the two cells are in contact, and the contents of one cell pass over into the other, where the two protoplasmic bodies coalesce, contract, and develop a cell-wall. The zygospore thus formed germinates after a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... Wallenstein, that soldier of fortune, [Footnote: See below, pp. 223, 226.] he nevertheless established several of the fundamental laws of modern astronomy, such as those governing the form and magnitude of the planetary orbits. It was Kepler who made clear that the planets revolve about the sun in elliptical rather than in strictly ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... comet is visible only when near the sun. The same curve around the sun may be an orbit that will bring it back again, [Page 127] or one that will carry it off into infinite space, never to return. One rate of speed on the curve indicates an elliptical orbit that returns; a greater rate of speed indicates that it will take a parabolic orbit, which never returns. The exact rate of speed is exceedingly difficult to determine; hence it cannot be confidently asserted that any comet ever visible will not return. They may all belong ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... insit (Ceiba pantadra Gaertn.), also known by the Ilocano as kapas sanglay. This so-called "Chinese cotton" is a small tree with few, but perfectly straight, branches, which radiate from the trunk in horizontal lines. It produces elliptical pods which burst open when ripe, exposing a silky white cotton. The fiber is too short for spinning, but is used as tinder ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... edition of his Apolog.) suppose the word to be erroneously pointed. They propose to read [Hebrew: wlh], compounded of [Hebrew: w] for [Hebrew: awr], and the suffix [Hebrew: h] for [Hebrew: v]. They suppose the language to be elliptical: "Until He come to whom the dominion or sceptre belongs, or is due." The principal argument in support of this exposition is, that most of the ancient translators seem to have followed this punctuation. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... epicycloid[Geom], epicycle; semicircle; quadrant, sextant, sector. sphere &c. 249. V. make round &c. adj.; round. go round; encircle &c. 227; describe a circle &c. 311. Adj. round, rounded, circular, annular, orbicular; oval, ovate; elliptic, elliptical; egg-shaped; pear-shaped &c. 245; cycloidal &c. n[obs3].; spherical &c. 249. Phr. "I watched the little ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... average distance from the earth is about 91,500,000 miles. Since the orbit of the earth is elliptical, and the sun is situated at one of its foci, the earth is nearly 3,000,000 miles further from the sun in aphelion than in perihelion. As we attempt to locate the heavenly bodies in space, we are immediately startled by the enormous ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... uttered these last words, throwing into them a threat more in the tone than the language, I became aware of a thin ray of light penetrating the seemingly solid wall just in front of me, and bending silently forward could dimly distinguish the elliptical head of Bungay as he applied one eye to a small opening he had industriously made between the logs. Grasping Mrs. Brennan firmly by the hand so that we should not become separated, I crept across the intervening blackness, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... his moons sweeping splendid round the sun. Every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger. And the result of that attraction? Inevitably Jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would "describe a curved path," and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our earth. "Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... The pit was elliptical, nine feet deep, and about twenty-four feet long. Wood was piled in it, and rocks from the dismantled Kaumakapili church. The fire burned until the stones became red and then white, and they, too, were turned ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... The elliptical roof, under which the boat at first passed, suddenly rose; but the darkness was too deep, and the light of the lantern too slight, for either the extent, length, height, or depth of the cave to be ascertained. Solemn silence reigned in this basaltic cavern. Not a sound could ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... of the fact that at the long ranges the angle of fall of the bullets is much greater than at short ranges, it follows that at short ranges the elliptical figure (beaten zone) is much more elongated than at long ranges. In other words, the longer the range, the shorter is the depth of the beaten zone. This is shown ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... flaring; top of head flat; nostrils protuberant; internarial distance, 2.8 mm.; interorbital distance, 3.3 mm., much broader than width of eyelid, 2.8 mm. A heavy dermal fold from posterior corner of eye above tympanum to insertion of forelimb, covering upper edge of tympanum; tympanum elliptical, its greatest diameter equal to its distance from eye. Forearm robust with a distinct fold on wrist; pollex moderately enlarged without nuptial spines; second and fourth fingers equal in length; subarticular tubercles round; none is ...
— Descriptions of Two Species of Frogs, Genus Ptychohyla - Studies of American Hylid Frogs, V • William E. Duellman
... this tree was slight but graceful, and it was loaded with a fruit of an elliptical form, as large as a coconut. This fruit was enclosed in a rind, closely resembling that of the almond, and inside the rind was a shell containing a soft white pulp, in which were placed a species of almond, very ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... the sun is so very elliptical, or, to use the exact technical term, so very "eccentric," that the planetoid does not keep all the time entirely in the space between our orbit and that of Mars, which latter happens to be the next ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... a square gambler, so called. People there were who sneered at this description and considered it a contradiction as absurd as a square circle or an elliptical cube. An elementary knowledge of the principles of geometry and of the retail liquor business proved the non-existence of such a thing as a straight crook, so they maintained. But be that as it may, Ben Miller certainly differed ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... on the great valley of the Arno, perhaps twenty-five miles long, and five or six broad, lying like a long elliptical basin sunk among the hills. I can liken it to nothing but a vast sea; for a dense, blue mist covered the level surface, through which the domes of Florence rose up like a craggy island, while the thousands of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... commanding eminence of the second hill. To perpetuate the memory of his success, he chose the same advantageous position for the principal Forum; which appears to have been of a circular, or rather elliptical form. The two opposite entrances formed triumphal arches; the porticos, which enclosed it on every side, were filled with statues; and the centre of the Forum was occupied by a lofty column, of which a mutilated fragment is now degraded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... overweight of the head in the Virgin as compared with the slightness of her frame. The features are the old ones of the 13th century; only softened, as regards the expression of the eye, by an exaggeration of elliptical form in the iris, and closeness of the curves of the lids. In the angels the absence of all true notions of composition may be considered striking; yet their movements are more natural and pleasing than hitherto. One indeed, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of a series of marls and limestones, many of them thinly laminated, and which appear to have slowly accumulated in a lake probably fed by springs holding carbonate of lime in solution. The elliptical area over which this fresh-water formation has been traced extends, according to Sir Roderick Murchison, for a distance of ten miles east and west from Berlingen, on the right bank of the river to Wangen, and to Oeningen, near Stein, on the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... horizontal bands of blue (top), white, red (double width), white, and blue, with the coat of arms in a white elliptical disk on the hoist side of the red band; above the coat of arms a light blue ribbon contains the words, AMERICA CENTRAL, and just below it near the top of the coat of arms is a white ribbon with the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... long; anther prominent and large for so small a flower, viz., 3/4in. long and hardly 1/4in. in diameter. The stems are stout, round, hollow, and glaucous; they are furnished with leaves of various shapes at the nodes, as lance-shaped, long oval, heart-shaped and plain, elliptical and pointed, wavy and notched, and arrow-shaped, lobed, and toothed. The root leaves are mostly ovate, lanceolate, and entire. The whole plant is smooth and glaucous. From the description given, it may readily be seen that when in flower it will be effective—massive heads of ruby flowers topping ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood |
