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Black spot   /blæk spɑt/   Listen
Black spot

noun
1.
Any of several fungous diseases of plants that produce small black spots on the plant.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Black spot" Quotes from Famous Books



... This being the case it is inevitable that the lines which come from the object to the point must form a pyramid. And if any man seeks to prove that the sense of sight does not reside in this point, but rather in the black spot which is visible in the middle of the pupil, I might reply to him that a small object could never diminish at any distance, as it might be a grain of millet or of oats or of some similar thing, and that object, if it were larger than the said [black] spot would never be seen as a whole; ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... subject will outlive wife or husband; if broken, divorce is implied; if it ends in a cross, the wife or husband will die from an accident. A branch from this line upward implies a high position attained by marriage. A black spot on this line ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... things up in her arms. They looked just exactly alike, for Tipkins had a black spot on the end of his tail, and Trotkins had a black spot on the end of his tail, too; Tipkins' eyes were blue, so were Trotkins'; Tipkins' nose was black, and Trotkins' nose was black, too. Alice often wondered how their mother, Topsy, ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie

... sagacity deserves to be recorded. "During the great flood of the 4th of September, 1829, when the river Tyne was at it height, a number of people were assembled on its margin. A swan appeared with a black spot upon its plumage, which on its nearer approach proved to be a live rat. It is probable, that the latter had been borne into the water by some object, and observing the swan, had taken refuge on its back for safety. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... was a great swell upon the water, and sharp gusts at intervals; and on the horizon, to windward, might be observed a black spot in the sky, no bigger than a fly. But none saw that; Hazel's eye never left the raving wretches in the forepart of the boat; Cooper and Welch sat in gloomy despair amidships; and the others were huddled together forward, encouraging each ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... buntings. Every now and then they uttered a piping, disconsolate note, as if they had a very sorry time of it. They proved to be shore larks, the first I had ever seen. They had the walk characteristic of all larks; were a little larger than the sparrow; had a black spot on the breast, with much white on the under parts of their bodies. As I approached them the nearer ones paused, and, half squatting, eyed me suspiciously. Presently, at a movement of my arm, away they went, flying exactly like the snow bunting, and showing nearly as much white." (I have since ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... dear God of Mercy, both appeal, Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st; And that black spot in each embattled host, Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. Now is it red artillery and white steel; Till on a day will ring the victor's boast, That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. So in all times ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ready to fire at any game which he had a reasonable chance of hitting. One day while he was thus keeping a sharp lookout for anything which gave promise of a meal, Chenowagesic pointed excitedly to a small, black spot just showing above the water, and told the Captain it was an otter. The Captain fired, and to the gratification of all, the animal turned over on its back dead. That day they were unable to bag anything else, and when they encamped for the night the Indians prepared the otter for supper. At first ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... waited, heavy clouds began to rise in the north, and there was already a drizzle of rain. At last they saw a little black spot upon the road, which soon proved to be a cart drawn by a rough pony. On it came, until they could almost hear it splashing through the water where the stream had passed its bounds, or rattling over the rough stones ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... sandpipers settled fearlessly around them, and a shining brown muskrat slipped from the ooze within a few feet of their faces—was to feel themselves a part of the wild life in earth and sky. Not that their own predatory instincts were hushed by this divine peace; that intermitting black spot upon the water, declared by the Indian to be a seal, the stealthy glide of a yellow fox in the ambush of a callow brood of mallards, the momentary straying of an elk from the upland upon the borders of the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... next behind Gypsy, and pulling side by side, are Tiger and Spider. Tiger is a large, good-natured red and white fellow, and Spider, his brother, is black and white. The next is Spot, a great white fellow with a black spot on his neck, which gives him his name. His mate in harness is a tawny yellow dog called Scotty. Then come Rover and Shaver. Rover is a small, black, lop-eared dog, about half the size of Shaver, who looks upon Rover as an inconsequent ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace

... below us lay the plain with the thin current of the San Christobal River sparkling here and there in the sunlight. The black spot on the trail that scarcely moved must be Beverly and Little Blue Flower with Sister Anita. No, there was only the Indian girl there, and something moving in and out of the shadow near them. I could not see for the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... only stirred in this black spot; I only lived—I only drew The accursA"d breath of dungeon-dew. BYRON, Prisoner ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... satisfied with his present success, and by three o'clock that day he had taken up his portmanteau at the turnpike and mounted the coach, relieving Mr. Bulstrode's eyes of an ugly black spot on the landscape at Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the black spot might reappear and become inseparable even from the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... he became aware of a small black spot far ahead in the very middle of the unencumbered track. As he drew near it looked like a great stone. He swerved as he passed it, and, looking, saw that it was a bundle wrapped in a striped blanket. It seemed so odd that it should be lying there that, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... Saxifraga granulata (white saxifrage) gained reputation in the cure of the same disease; and the Euphrasia (eye-bright) acquired fame, as an application in complaints of the eye, because it exhibits a black spot in its corolla resembling the pupil. The blood-stone, the Heliotropium of the ancients, from the occasional small specks or points of a blood-red color exhibited on its green surface, is even at this very day employed in many parts of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... known by sight to Karswell. He must, for one thing, alter his appearance by shaving his beard. But then might not the blow fall first? Harrington thought they could time it. He knew the date of the concert at which the 'black spot' had been put on his brother: it was June 18th. The death had followed on Sept. 18th. Dunning reminded him that three months had been mentioned on the inscription on the car-window. 'Perhaps,' he added, with a cheerless laugh, 'mine may be a bill at three months too. I believe ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... burning, evidently. As nearly as he could judge he had come out of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's consideration he decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon he could distinguish small dots like ants moving in and out about the black spot, and he knew these dots must ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... tolerated as the Gibeonites had been by Joshua. Irish gentlemen who had obtained pardons were obliged to wear a distinctive mark on their dress on pain of death. Persons of inferior rank were distinguished by a black spot on the right cheek. Wanting this, their punishment was ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... selected for observation. A glass hair of extreme tenuity, .75 inch in length, with its end whitened, was cemented with shellac to the frond at right angles to its breadth; and a white stick with a minute black spot was driven into the soil close behind the end of the hair. The white end could be accurately brought into a line with the black spot, and dots could thus be successively made on the vertical glass-plate in front. Any ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... a broad green ledge; and after that, still steeper, the face of a long-deserted sand-pit, where high up a rabbit sits at the mouth of his hole, within range, but certain to escape even if hit, and therefore safe. On the turf below is a round black spot, still showing, though a twelvemonth has gone by since we landed with half a dozen perch, lit a fire and cooked the fishes. For Molly never could 'a-bear' perch, because of the hardness of the scales, saying she would as soon 'scrape ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... over the expanse of heaving ocean I saw a black spot between the ships. In a moment I made out a boat rising and falling, propelled by four oars, and headed for us. Sometimes she would disappear behind a high lump of sea and then she would be on top, and I made out she was coming along ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... upon the autumnal mellowness of the country around the Bavarian lakes and the golden glow of the Wiener Wald. But across all this glory that I drank in leaning back on the comfortable seat in luxurious contentment, there steadily ran an ugly black spot—a flaw in the window-pane. That is the way my obstinate comrade flits across woods and walls, stands still when I stand still, dances over the faces of passers-by, over the asphalt paving wet from the rain, over everything my eyes happen ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... cut by machines having long, winding knives which revolve slowly and cut, on the scissors principle—no two points of the blade bearing on the paper with equal pressure at once. Girls pack the sheets on the tables as they fall from the cutters, and throw out the damaged or dirtied sheets. A small black spot or hole or imperfection of any sort is sufficient to reject a sheet. In some orders fifty per cent. of the sheets are thrown out. There is no waste, as the damaged paper is ground into pulp again. Having been cut, the paper must be counted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... labelled "The Age of Nations—1914," and showed the black spot of Germany, like in size to many of the surrounding countries, the names of which one recited ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... to keep good watch that no one should come near them to milk them. The young man drove out the cows into the fields, and when the heat of the day came on he lay down on his back and looked up into the sky. A while after he saw a black spot in the north-west, and it grew larger and nearer till he saw a great giant coming ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... not been very sure of himself he would not have dared to say what he had said. I believed, as firmly as ever, that there was a black spot in his past, upon which I could put my finger if only I could place him in my mental gallery of photographs, in which his portrait had been so mysteriously blurred or changed. But he and Karine Cunningham would in all probability be man and wife ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... whole party accordingly went back to the river. After searching about for some time, one of the men espied something black on the surface of the snow, at a great distance down the river. They all proceeded to the spot, and were dreadfully shocked on arriving there to find that the black spot was a part of Mr. Lynn's arm and that his body was beneath, frozen, and buried up in ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... floor, sprawling, as falls a lifeless body, lay the long Ichabod. On his forehead, almost geometrically near the centre, was a tiny, black spot, around it a lighter red blotch; his face otherwise very white; his hair, on the side toward which he leaned, a little matted; that ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... pot,' which, the more they crackle, the faster they turn into powdery ash and lose all their warmth. For stable, deep, lifelong, reliable courage and cheerfulness, there must be thorough work made with the black spot in the heart, and the black lines in the history. And unless our comforters can come to us and say, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee,' they are only chattering nonsense, and singing songs to a heavy heart which will make an effervescence 'like vinegar on nitre,' when they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... toward the vaulted ceiling, where the moon was represented as a white disk, in which the painter, with much naivete, had introduced a man bearing a load of coals upon his back; in faithful representation of the popular belief regarding the black spot in the moon, which supposes this to be a man whom the Lord has sent up there because he stole his neighbor's coal. "That great picture on the right, there," pursued he, "is Mrs. Ellen Marsviin; I purchased ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... spherical, about as large as sweet-pea seeds, and have a black spot on one side. They are found embedded many together in a colorless jelly-like substance. The egg-mass should be handled carefully and put whole into a jar or pail of water and thus carried home. It should not stand with the sun shining directly on it, and when the water is changed, every other ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... brown; no white wing bars; the crown dull brown, with a faint grayish line in the middle; white line over the eye; under parts whitish with numerous dark brown streaks on the neck, breast, and sides; a conspicuous black spot in the middle of the breast; bill, legs, and feet are brownish. The female is the ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock

... haunch of the fore-limb is unusually long and powerful. Its object is to throw forward the living trap which does not wait for the victim, but goes in search of it. The snare is embellished with a certain amount of ornamentation. On the inner face the base of the haunch is decorated with a pretty black spot relieved by smaller spots of white, and a few rows of fine pearly spots ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... the part was mortal. But at length I exerted my will, and controlled my fear, and saw my trousers torn. My first wound had deadened my leg, but I felt no great pain—the leg was numb. The new blow was torture. I managed to take down my clothing, and saw a great blue-black spot on my groin. I was confused, and wondered where the bullet went, ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... stubby scout rocket was winging its way over New York. From the air, the grayish-black spot was easy to find. Like a festered wound, it stretched between Lake Placid and Elizabethtown, covering Keene and Keene Valley, and lapping at the ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee

... is true, conventional forms, and there is a certain sameness in his heads with their large oval countenances; the small eyes, outlined round the upper arch of the eyebrow, and with a black spot for pupils, sometimes lack expression, or have a too monotonous one, and the iris is often lost in the white of the cornea; his mouths are always drawn small with a thickening of the lips in the centre, and the corners strongly accentuated; the colour of his faces is either too pink or too yellow; ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... not tell you whose it is. I have not told any one, not even my husband, about seeing it on the road that night. I couldn't somehow. But if it will save a man's life and make clear who killed that good woman, ask any one on the Hill, in what stable you can find a grey horse with a large black spot on his left shoulder, and you will know as much about it as I do. Isn't that enough, sir? Now, I ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... day in the garden at his home, he caught an owl. While struggling with the bird, he broke one of its limbs. Gazing straight into the owl's large, bright eyes, he noticed, at the moment when the bone snapped, the appearance of a black spot in the lower central region of the iris, which area he later found to correspond to the location of ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... an age, to the watchers, before a black spot appeared suddenly, beyond the foaming line of breakers. There was a general shout of "There he is!" But they had scarce time to note the position of the swimmer, when he again disappeared. Again and again he came up, each time rapidly decreasing the distance between himself and ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... is that yonder?" interrupted Aramis, rising suddenly, and pointing out to his friend a black spot upon the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... exactly so and so many come unaddressed, we think nothing of the matter—but when Quetelet counts so and so many criminals to every 100,000 people our moral sense is aroused since it is painful to think that *we are not criminals simply because somebody else has drawn the black spot.'' But really there is as little regrettable in this fact as in the observation that every year so and so many men break their legs, and so and so many die—in those cases also, a large number of people have the good fortune not to have broken their legs nor to ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... hung on, and was jerked headforemost into the river from a rock about twelve feet high; and down the boat shot like an arrow, Basil following us in the rapid current, and exerting all his strength to keep in mid channel—his head only seen occasionally like a black spot in the white foam. How far we went, I do not exactly know; but we succeeded in turning the boat into an eddy below. "'Cre Dieu," said Basil Lajeunesse, as he arrived immediately after us, "Je crois bien que j'ai nage un demi ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... had gone Susan put out the light, ran to the window. She saw the rowboat and Spenser, a black spot far out on the river, almost gone from view to the southwest. Hastily she lighted the candle again, stood at the window and waved a white cover she snatched from the table. She thought she saw one of the oars go up and flourish, but she could not be sure. She watched ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... running as if bewildered, and near them a big white wolf pulling down a calf. Another white wolf stood not far off. My horse jumped as if he had been shot; and the realization darted upon me that here was where the certain something began. Spot—the mustang had one black spot in his pure white—snorted like I imagined a blooded horse might, under dire insult. Jones's bay had gotten about a hundred paces the start. I lived to learn that Spot hated to be left behind; moreover, he would not be left behind; ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... Edgar, and his aristocratic patron was obliged to confess that he had a pleasant face, though it was marred by a black spot on each cheek, probably caused by the contact ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger

... minutes the space about the waiting raccoon on the log appeared lifeless. Then one little black spot, which had seemed like a lump of mud against a dead grass-stalk, moved; then another, and another, and another—all over the pool. Pale throats began to throb rhythmically; and the pipings once more pulsed forth buoyant and strong. The frogs had utterly ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... there that I can't make out. Just as the sun got clear above the horizon I saw a black spot go straight across it, right through the upper and lower limbs. I looked again, and it was plumb in the middle of the disc. Look," he went on, speaking louder in his growing excitement, "there it is again! I can see it without the ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... feeling, now to a system of opinion; as the former it denotes a tendency to dwell on the dark or gloomy side of things, culminating in a sense of their vanity and nothingness, while in the latter it is applied to all systems of opinion which lay the finger on some black spot in the structure of the life of the world or of the universe, which so long as it remains is thought to render ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... seting; it lays it's eggs, which are of a pale blue with black specks, on the ground without any preperation of a nest. there is a kind of larke here that much resembles the bird called the oldfield lark with a yellow brest and a black spot on the croop; tho this differs from ours in the form of the tail which is pointed being formed of feathers of unequal length; the beak is somewhat longer and more curved and the note differs considerably; ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... I forget, but it must have been quite a foot across. In colour it was, or had been, bright golden, but the back sheath was white, barred with lines of black, and in the exact centre of the pouch was a single black spot shaped like the head of a great ape. There were the overhanging brows, the deep recessed eyes, the surly ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... afraid. 'I don't like to think of it,' he said. 'As I told you there was one black spot in my past which I couldn't remember clearly. That's it. But I have dim memories of torture and imprisonment. I know I suffered untold agonies. I have only fitful glimpses of that time, but in those glimpses I see myself fighting, struggling, suffering ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... your eye is a round, black spot, called the pupil. This pupil is only a hole with a muscle around it. When you are in the light, the muscle draws up, and makes the pupil small, because you can get all the light you need through a small opening. When you are in the dark, the muscle stretches, and opens ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews

... the position of the piles as far as they were revealed in one of the excavations and it also shows their presumed continuation, but no reliance can be placed on anything but those actually dug out and indicated with a solid black spot. The piles were made of oak, birch and alder, with very rough pointed ends, and they measured from 6 to 10 inches in diameter. Three other rows cross the Costa in the same neighbourhood separated by a few hundred yards and as they lie at right angles to the stream which ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... bluish grey line running down to the inner margin. The margins of the band and spots are bluish grey. The lower wing is narrowly black at the base, with a transverse band of a king's yellow colour; this is the widest on the inner edge, near its outer end there is an angular black spot; the apical half of the wing is black, with numerous king's yellow spots arranged in two lines, two spots about the middle connected and notched with black. Head, thorax, and base of abdomen black, rest of abdomen ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... experiments, this compound proved to be equally toxic with the copper in Bordeaux mixture. Such a high degree of toxicity was deemed worth further investigation, so juglone was tested as a seed protectant and as a spray in field trials for the control of black spot of roses. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... evident that he was afraid of nothing, not even of Dona Brigida. The dreams of her silent girlhood swirled in her imagination, but looked vague and shapeless before this vigorous reality. For some moments she forgot everything and was happy. But there was a black spot in her heart, and when Sturges left her for a moment to listen, it ached for the head of the priest. She had much bad as well as much good in her, this innocent Californian maiden; and the last week had forced an already well-developed brain and temperament close to maturity. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... with her eyes directed upward, kept up her cries and screaming as before. On looking up in the direction in which she seemed to gaze, I discovered a black spot just under the clouds, but was unable at first to decide what it was. However, it soon appeared to be a bird of prey, though at first at too great a distance to be distinguished. I have seen one of those mother ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown

... was engaged thus the evening grew darker; but before it was as yet too dark to distinguish objects upon the road winding round the back of the cliffs, the landlord perceived a black spot on the distant white, which speedily enlarged itself and drew near. The probabilities were that this vehicle—for a vehicle of some sort it seemed to be—would pass by and pursue its way to the nearest railway-town ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... was stove in, her masts and rudder carried away, her best men swept overboard, and she left in the mercy of the storm as had no mercy, but blowed harder and harder yet, while the waves dashed over her, and beat her in, and every time they come a thundering at her, broke her like a shell. Every black spot in every mountain of water that rolled away was a bit of the ship's life, or a living man, and so she went to pieces, Beauty, and no grass will never grow upon the graves of them as ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... other side of the space, a small black spot becomes a door when the traveler has giddily circled half the dome; it opens upon another staircase, up which he climbs between the two skins of the cupola, or rather between two of the three, like ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... black serge bachelor's gown and hood of rabbit's fur such as he wore at Oxford, looking, as Patrick declared, no better than a begging scholar. But Malcolm had made up his mind that if he appeared before Esclairmonde at all it should be in no other guise; and thus it was that he rode like a black spot in the midst of the cavalcade, bright with the colours of Nevil and of Montagu, and was marshalled up the broad stairs by the silver wand ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... incredible to us; but despite the recommendations to "mercy" usual in a large majority of cases, the law of that time was not more horrible than the temper of the men who administered it. There are good and bad among all, and in all professions, but there is also a black spot in most, possibly in all hearts, which may be developed to almost any extent, and change the justest, wisest, most moral men into "human devils"—the phrase invented by Canon Wilberforce in another connexion. In reading the old reports and the expressions used by the judges in their summings ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... leaves; long shadows darkened the course of the Yonne and stretched across the plain; the water, slightly troubled, reflected a confused outline of its banks and the clouded blue of the sky. The three gentlemen stopped at the end of the terrace and gazed into the already fading distance. A black spot, which they had just observed in the middle of the river, caught a gleam of light in passing a low meadow between two hills, and for a moment took shape as a barge, then was lost again, and could not be distinguished from the water. Another moment, and it reappeared ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... observed the last transit, which occurred on a date equivalent to our 8th May 1905, and was very interested in watching the earth pass, as a small black spot, across the sun's disc. The moon did not commence to cross until 6 hours and 7 minutes later, by which time the earth had passed over three-quarters of the sun's diameter. The earth was 8 hours and 42 minutes in transit, and the moon, which crossed a little lower ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... the rock itself the aspect of the spot was sufficiently striking and peculiar, but to those who viewed it from a boat at a short distance off it was singularly interesting, for the whole scene of operations appeared like a small black spot, scarcely above the level of the waves, on which a crowd of living creatures were moving about with great and incessant activity, while all around and beyond lay the mighty sea, sleeping in the grand tranquillity of a calm summer day, with ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... Peronospora infestans, which grows at the expense of the leaves, stems, and tubers of the plant until it destroys their vitality. If a diseased potato leaf be examined with the naked eye, it will be seen that, on the upper surface, there is an irregular brownish black spot, and if the under surface of the leaf be looked at carefully, the brown spot is also visible, but it will be seen to be covered with a very faint white bloom, due to the growth of the fungus from the microscopic openings ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... Capreolus.... The skull has a very small, shallow suborbital pit, ... tear-bag indistinct, hoofs narrow and triangular.... The color in summer is reddish brown, in winter olive, with paler shades; inside of the ears fulvous, and a black spot at the angles of the mouth.... It is about four feet long.... The horns are used for knife-handles.... They congregate in small families, but not in herds.... From their strong scent they are easily hunted; though they frequently escape by their speed, doublings, springing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... smiled a little at the legend, for the children cried out again, "It is so. 'Deed it is, for doesn't the black spot on the blue-jay come because he gets his wings scorched, and he doesn't have ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... About three miles from Trinite they caught sight of a black spot approaching along the road with great rapidity. As it became more distinct this ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... landward. And then at two o'clock it appeared. Far off in the northeast was a small black dot in the sky. It looked like a seabird; but it grew. In ten minutes the whole deck was excited. Every glass was focused on the growing black spot. And then it loomed up the size of a baseball; it showed colour, a dull yellow in the distance and then it swelled and took form and glowed brighter and came rushing toward us, as large as a moon, as large as a barrel, and ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... appeared, and, taking the glass from his officer, looked through it long and carefully. Then the mizentop was appealed to, and declared that he could see nothing; and at last the sun went down with a jerk, as though it had slipped through a slit in the sea, and the black spot, swallowed up in the gathering haze, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... him slide back this time. No, my dear Adrian, you are hooked for matrimony and a return to the living world. That black-eyed jade too, that Molly sister of my Madeleine, will wake up and lead you a life, by George!... Row on, my lads," once more looking at the diminishing black spot upon the grey waters. "Row on—you have never done ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... until you come to the surface of the skin, and till you draw blood in two or three places. Then rub the part thoroughly over with lunar caustic, and one effective operation of this kind will generally destroy the wart; if not, you cut off the black spot which has been occasioned by the caustic, and apply it again; or you may apply acetic acid, and thus you will get rid of it. Care must be taken in applying these acids, not to rub them on ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... no depths within depths glooming mystery and ancient horror. It was the more desolate that it moved no active sense of dismay. What I saw was a wide stretch of damp-looking level, mostly of undetermined or of low-toned colour, with here and there a black spot, or, on the margin, the brighter green of a patch of some growing crop. Flat and wide, the eye found it difficult to rest upon it and not sweep hurriedly from border to border for lack of self-asserted object on which to alight. It looked low, but indeed lay high; ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... journey home to the cabin was one of profanity; the second of prayer; the third of grim silence. In the first he lost his rifle; in the second his courage; in the third his knowledge of what was about him. Like a crippled rabbit he dragged himself over the snow, a single black spot against the whiteness. The dark forest-trees gathered curiously about his wavering consciousness to look down on him in aloof compassion. And over him, invisible, palpable, hovered the dreadful north-country cold, waiting ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... told you all this. It's been ten years since I've talked it. But your telling me that you threw it all over—that little home out there, and a man that was driving down deeply the stakes of his home—threw it over because the black spot from his collar button made you feel hysterical—Oh, I tell you there is a grin through the scheme of things. A laugh. What old man Metz used ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... and after each fight buried the hatchet, appearing to shake hands with his late adversary. No doubt if he had had a tail he would have wagged it, but Brown had been born with a large, perfectly round, black spot, at the root of his tail, and his then owner, having an eye for the picturesque, had removed his white tail entirely, even to its last joint, to allow of no break in the spot; and when the spirit moved Brown to wag a tail, a violent stirring of hairs in the centre of this spot ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... knees, and pray to Heaven for pardon—make up thy dread account—repine not at the days yet thine to wash the black spot from thy soul. For, while I speak, I foresee too well that her days are numbered, and with her thread of life is entwined thine own. Within twelve hours from her last moment, we shall meet again: but now I am as ice and stone,—thou ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... not b'leeve me ef you min' to, but my grandaddy had a big black spot up yer on he ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... coming—nearer—oh—oh—she comes!' Then I go up Hugh Lupus's tower; I survey the country. You know I have a keen eye for distant objects. At last, amidst the grey mists afar off, between sky and earth, I can just make out a dark speck. The next morning that black spot has grown larger. The Count of Nideck goes to bed with chattering teeth. The next day again we can make out the figure of the old hag; the fierce attacks begin; the count cries out. The day after, the witch is at the foot of the mountain, and the consequence is that the count's jaws are set like ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... of them sauntered a boy with a dog at his heels. The boy was a sturdy young fellow of perhaps fourteen, very shabby as to clothes but very dauntless as to manner. The dog was a fox terrier with one black spot over his left eye like a patch. Bob Strahan whistled and ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen

... plank, wid two ten pound shot, one at each foot. Oh, if you had seen de clear shining blue skin, as de became leetle and leetle, and more leetler, down far in de clear green sea! Oh dear! oh dear! Only to tink dat each wavering black spot was fellow—creature like one—shef, wid de heart's blood warm in his bosom at de very instant of time we lost ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... in the afternoon when Tom Turner came up to the engineer and said, "Do you see that black spot on the horizon, sir—there away to due north of us? That ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... of the skin, and till you draw blood in two or three places. When you have thus denuded the surface of the skin, rub the part thoroughly over with lunar caustic. One effective operation of this kind will generally destroy the wart; if not, cut off the black spot which has been occasioned by the caustic, and apply the caustic again, or acetic acid may be applied in order to get rid ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... mountain where the cleavage had occurred; but as he ascended he was forced to come out upon narrow ledges that had been left here and there on the face of the cliff, where he seemed, to those who were watching far below, like a mere black spot on the face of a gigantic wall. Still upward he went, slowly but steadily, till he reached a spot nearly level with the observatory. Here he had to go out on the sheer precipice, where his ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... At noon, the black spot in a cat's eye is only a narrow slit, but as the light grows less bright, the pupil of the eye grows rounder and larger. In this way her eyes gather in more and more light as darkness comes on, so that at twilight ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... and curious, he and the others had picked up the body and found it to be that of a young Russian whom they had just seen losing, with a very bad grace, at the tables. There was no passion in his face now, and his evening dress was quite unruffled, and only a black spot on the shirt front showed where the powder had burnt the linen. It had made a great impression on him then, for he was at the height of his fortunes, with crowds of sycophantic friends and a retinue of dependents at his heels. And now that he was quite ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... they fell asleep, and there befell them both marvellous adventures. Sir Gawaine him seemed he came into a meadow full of herbs and flowers, and there he saw a rack of bulls, an hundred and fifty, that were proud and black, save three of them were all white, and one had a black spot, and the other two were so fair and so white that they might be no whiter. And these three bulls which were so fair were tied with two strong cords. And the remnant of the bulls said among them: ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... fibers about three fourths of an inch long. Tied in this manner, without any body or tail, the fly will alight on the water with the hook down, and looked at from beneath, against the light, only the little black spot will be noticeable. This I believe represents some of the order Coleoptera (beetles) and also the small black gnat (Empidae). I know if no other ways to tie the Black Gnat small enough to represent the natural insect, and even on the very smallest hook, the artificial ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg

... high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't make it out. First we ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... with rain and lightning, similar in suddenness to the white squall of the West Indies, and experienced off the equatorial region of the west coast of Africa between December and June. It appears first as a small black spot in the east, and barely affords time to put the ship before the wind and clue up all. The wind veers round the compass, and lasts a very ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... on deck before either spoke another word. The mate pointed out, with no little difficulty, the cake of ice floating off to leeward, and its white, glittering surface was broken by a black spot. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... collectively "men of culture," as the writers of Queen Anne's time were "wits," and it is the qualities associated with that term, rather than any distinct gifts or characteristics, that are here called into play. Mr. Trollope's Thackeray was perhaps an exception—a black spot on the otherwise immaculate whiteness. In a different way the general effect would have been still more seriously impaired if Mr. Ruskin's co-operation had been invited. The outcroppings of a vulgar egotism might indicate a substratum necessary to be taken into account, but it would have been a clear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... articulations of the legs and the tarsi ferruginous. Abdomen: the first, second, and base of the third segments red, the apical ones black, very finely and closely punctured, with the apical margins of the segments smooth and shining; a black spot in the ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... bright as sunshine had flashed before his gaze; then, where he had just seen figures and things half veiled by the smoke, he beheld only a scarlet surface, which changed to a violet, and finally a black spot, followed by a violet-blue one, while the vulture continued to rend his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... must admit that one has nothing to learn: one has learnt simply everything in the previous six months." These two young people are unconscious of "the miraculous age which is us." They lived in the Potteries before the Potteries had acquired that big black spot on the map which now dignifies and degrades their existence. They lived in and around the important draper's shop in "The Square," under the wing of their respected parents, the once active citizen, now paralytic, Mr. Baines, and Mrs. Baines, the ruler, the dictator of the household and of ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... absorbed. The sulphate fuses at first to a clear bead, which soon spreads, and is absorbed and converted while boiling into a hepatic mass. If this mass is taken out, placed upon a piece of polished silver and moistened with a little water, a black spot of sulphide of silver is left after washing off the ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... in the case of a solar eclipse occurring at the time of the earth's opposition, they could see the black spot formed by the shadow of the moon, where the end of its cone moved across the earth like the point of an invisible pencil, and could watch it traversing continents and oceans, or thrown out in bold contrast upon the white background of a great area of clouds. ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... rock-cod and haddock, and my friend joined them; they were going out for a night's fishing. I watched them hoist the little sprit-sail, and drift a little until they caught the wind, and then I looked again for Georgie, whose boat was like a black spot ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various

... had been a back-breaking day, in which all of them, except the girl, had climbed miles on foot, they did not linger awake long enough after supper to learn what a wild, weird, and pitch-black spot the outlaw leader had chosen. The little spaces of open ground between the huge-trunked pine-trees had no counterpart up in the lofty spreading foliage. Not a star could blink a wan ray of light into that Stygian pit. The wind, cutting down over abrupt heights farther up, sang in the pine-needles ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... even stretched themselves at full length on the ground, and continued motionless as if dead. In the meantime the mother, with her eyes directed upwards, continued her cries and screaming as before. On looking up in the direction in which she seemed to gaze I discovered a black spot just under the clouds, but was unable at first to determine what it was; however, it soon appeared to be a bird of prey, though at first at too great a distance to be distinguished. I have seen one of those animals continue in ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... I could not have done less in the position in which we two were. Such sacrifices as those count for very little. It is when a man's own happiness is in the scale that the black spot shows itself. I tell you, Gilbert, I am not worth your friendship. It would be better for you to go your own way, and have nothing more ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... The midday sun glittered on the open heath, and in misty distance the carriage rolled before him; it grew smaller and smaller, and at last disappeared as a black spot in ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... among the trees something moved. At least, Jumper thought he saw something move. Yes, there it was, a little black spot moving swiftly this way and that way over the snow. Jumper stared very hard. And then his heart seemed to jump right up in his throat. It did so. He felt as if he would choke. That black spot was the tip end of a tail, the tail of ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess

... down, and whirling about tumultuously in the racing and rain-swollen eddies of the mill-dam. A floating straw hat was already being sucked in by the gurgling rush of water that roared under the mighty circumference of the wheel, and for a moment they saw nothing more. But as they ran up, a black spot emerged from the stream, only a few yards from the mill, and they saw a man, evidently in the last stage of exhaustion, struggling feebly in ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... looked at the earth through the port-light at the bottom, it only looked like a black spot drowned in the sun's rays. No crescent or pale light was now to be seen. The next day at midnight the earth would be new at the precise moment when the moon would be full. Above, the Queen of Night was nearing the line followed by the projectile, so as to meet it at the hour indicated. All around ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... lunch I saw a small black spot on the horizon to the south. Was it a man? How could Dr. Mawson have got there? We stopped and saw that Stillwell had noticed it too. Field-glasses showed it to be a man approaching, about one and a half miles away. We left our sledges in a body to meet him, imagining all kinds of wonderful ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... else she had to face and manage her thoughts as best she could by herself. Perhaps it was the excess of light and colour at San Salvatore which made every other place seem dark and black; and Prince of Wales Terrace did seem a very dark black spot to have to go back to —a dark, narrow street, and her house dark and narrow as the street, with nothing really living or young in it. The goldfish could hardly be called living, or at most not more than ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... certain manual dexterity in the operation. It was "good fun" to throw the cast-off husks into the mighty unfathomable void before him, and watch them linger with suspended gravity in mid air for a moment—apparently motionless—until they either lost themselves, a mere vanishing black spot in the thin ether, or slid suddenly at a sharp angle into unknown shadow. How deuced odd for him to be sitting here in this fashion! It would be something to talk of hereafter, and yet,—he stopped—it was not at ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.—Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... Jackie, rubbing the black spot on his brother's nose with his paw. Just then, if those two puppy dogs didn't see one of Papa Bushytail's boots, and, land sakes alive! if one didn't grab one end and one the other end, and they began to pull and growl. Puppy dogs always do such ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis

... inclosure, a wall pierced with several entrances designated by the names of the roads which ran from them, or rather of the cities at which these roads terminated—Herculaneum, Nola, Stabiae, etc. Two-thirds of the egg are still immaculate; you discover a black spot only on the extreme right, marking out the Amphitheatre. All this white space shows you the part of Pompeii that has not yet been designated. It is a hillside covered with vineyards, gardens, and orchards. It is only on the left that you will find the lines marking the streets, the houses, the ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... deluged the burning village, and Dolly seized Susanna and Posy, free from damage, with the exception of Posy's legs, which were so long, they lay outside the church door, and were burned off. When they cleared away the ruins, there was a round, black spot on the floor, where the village had stood, and the children's hands and clothes were wet ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... illustrate the concept of truth: imagine a black spot on white paper: you can describe the shape of the spot by saying, for each point on the sheet, whether it is black or white. To the fact that a point is black there corresponds a positive fact, and to the fact ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein

... Nature. "His red coat is for summer only. Notice that Lightfoot has a black nose. That is, the tip of it is black. Beneath his chin is a black spot. A band across his nose, the inside of each ear and a circle around each eye is whitish. His throat is white and he is white beneath. Now, Peter, you are so interested in tails, tell me without looking what color ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... The dog with a black spot on his back, is with Tom. See! Tom has his hat in his hand. He has left his ...
— McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition • William Holmes McGuffey

... eastward very slow. Kamelillo went back to his camp fire and made poi, but Kreps and I watched, expecting that Liebchen would go under and Veronica be lost. But they kept on till there was only a black spot near the edge of ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... between the eyes; Prothorax above and beneath vermilion, with a greenish black spot in the middle, and two small black dots, one on each side. Elytra with four double rows of impressed punctures, united at the end. Apex with two sharp points, the outer the longest, a notch between them; the elytra are vermilion, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... of his paddle in the water making the silence seem deeper. Every few minutes a sturgeon leaps forth, sometimes behind you, so that you merely hear the splash, and, turning hastily around, see nothing but the disturbed water. Sometimes he darts straight on end out of a quiet black spot on which your eyes happen to be fixed, and, when even his tail is clear of the surface, he falls down ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... set to work. He began by tearing from the germ letter the piece of gelatine and first examining it with a pocket lens. Then, with a sterile platinum wire, he picked out several minute sections of the black spot on the gelatine and placed them in agar, blood serum, and other media on which they would ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... will judge His people.' And therefore, it becomes us to lay to heart this truth, that we, just because, if we are Christians, we stand nearest to God, are surest to be searched through and through by the light that streams from Him, and to have every flaw and corrupt speck and black spot brought out into startling prominence. Let no Christian man fancy that he shall escape the righteous judgment of God. The great doctrine of forgiveness does not mean that He suffers our sin to remain upon us unjudged, ay! or unavenged. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... I did not, long ago, when we used to fish with sticks in a pond by the cross-roads for what we called "bunches of grapes!" The grapes were little balls of jelly with a tiny black spot in each, and we never guessed that they were really eggs, and that the little black spot in the slimy covering would one day actually turn into a live, leaping, croaking frog. If we had had the patience to watch, we should have seen that ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... seemed to be nothing but a little scarlet bead with a black spot on it. In his surprise, he dropped a piece of paper from the envelope in which the bead had been wrapped up. I thought it was strange, and, as he hurried over to the elevator, I picked ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... let the ladies shoot at," the gallery man laughed. He put up a brilliant affair of different colored rings encircling a large black spot. ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb

... empty. Bare yellow fields lay dry and withered in the place of the green plantation, and the site of the cottage was marked by a black spot. ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai

... recommendations to 'mercy' usual in a large majority of cases, the law of that time was not more horrible than the temper of the men who administered it. There are good and bad among all, and in all professions, but there is also a black spot in most, possibly all hearts, which may be developed to almost any extent, to change the justest, wisest, most moral men into 'human devils.' In reading the old reports and the expressions used by the judges in their summings-up and sentences, it is impossible ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson

... waiting while Curley, his brows knit tensely, quartered here and there like a setter dog. He was a good trailer, you could see that in a minute. He went at it right. After quite a spell he picked up a rock and came back to show it. I should never have noticed anything—merely another tiny black spot among other spots—but Buck nodded instantly ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... some hard thinking. The suggestion made by Dunk that the capture of the thief would be more of a black spot for Yale than the fact of the robberies taking ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... moorings which would have hidden it for a while. He has the right of it this time, for as he passes, straining at his sculls, under the stern of a pleasure-yacht at anchor, his eye is caught by a black spot rising on a wave, and he makes for it. Not too fast at the last, though, but cautiously, so as to grasp the man with the life-belt and hold him firm till help shall come to get him on board. He might easily have overshot him; but he has him now, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan



Words linked to "Black spot" :   plant disease



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