"Vertebral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are, in a state of nature almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception of smell less so than in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... confidently described as that of the family as a whole" (Romer and Price, 1940:285). The major differences between the two genera are in the increased specialization of the dentition, the shortening of the lacrimal, and the development of long vertebral spines in Dimetrodon. The absence of gross differences in the areas of the skull associated with the groups of muscles with which this study is concerned, implies a similarity in the patterns of musculature between the two ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... hedge-hogs—to wit, the application of madder dye to the Adam's apple, turning it lemon yellow if any sort of reptile is within, and violet if there is a mammal—but it failed to operate as the books describe. Being thus led to suspect a misplaced and wild-growing bone, perhaps from the vertebral column, the doctor decided to have recourse to surgery, and so, after the proper propitiation of the gods, he administered to his eminent patient a draught of opium water, and having excluded the wailing women of the household from the sick chamber, ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... against some supporting substance, that seems as hard as rock. I cannot tell what it is. I cannot even see my own person—neither breast nor body—neither arms nor legs—not an inch of myself. The fastening over my face holds it upturned to the sky; and my head feels firmly set—as if the vertebral column of my neck had become ossified into ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... licking her whiskers, out she passed; And after her,—making (he hoped) a face Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin, Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace Of ancient hero or modern paladin, From door to staircase—oh, such a solemn {330} Unbending of the vertebral column! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson |
