"Oval" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... water, by placing the flat right hand before the face, pointing upward and forward, the back forward, with the wrist as high as the nose; then draw it down and inward toward the chin; then with both hands indicate the outlines of a horizontal oval figure from before the body back to near the chest (being the outline of the deck); then place both flat hands, pointing forward, thumbs higher than the outer edges, and push them forward to arms'-length (illustrating the powerful ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... their muscular substance. The cartilage of the nose was gone, but the left eye, in the first moment of exposure, was open and full, though it vanished almost immediately; and the pointed beard, so characteristic of the reign of King Charles, was perfect The shape of the face was a long oval. Many of the teeth remained, and the left ear, in consequence of the interposition of some unctuous matter between it and the cerecloth, was found entire. It was difficult at this moment to withhold ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... awakened by the sight. The moon is the wonder-land of the telescope. Those towering mountains, whose "proud aspiring peaks'' cast silhouettes of shadow that seem drawn with india-ink; those vast plains, enchained with gentle winding hills and bordered with giant ranges; those oval "oceans,'' where one looks expectant for the flash of wind-whipped waves; those enchanting "bays'' and recesses at the seaward feet of the Alps; those broad straits passing between guardian heights incomparably mightier than Gibraltar; those locket-like valleys as secluded among their mountains ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... her veins;-no! her features are beautifully olive, and the intonation of her voice discovers a different origin. Her figure is tall and well-formed; she has delicately-formed hands and feet, long, tapering fingers, well-rounded limbs, and an oval face, shaded with melancholy. How reserved she seems, and yet how quickly she moves her graceful figure! Now she places her right hand upon her finely-arched forehead, parts the heavy folds of glossy hair that hang carelessly over her brown ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... mornings are wont to dawn in Southern California. A light mist hung over the old adobe mission church, through which, with its snow-white towers and cold, clear-cut lines, it rose like a frozen fairy castle. Bell opened her sleepy eyes with the very earliest birds, and running to the little oval window, framed with white-rose vines, looked out at the new day just creeping ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... could reply, I leaned over the chair he had quitted. Lying in the corner of the faded upholstery was an oval of gold. Before he perceived my intention, I had picked it up, and almost at the same moment his hand fell on my arm. I looked up quickly. His face was close to mine, closer than I had ever seen it, placid still, but somehow changed, somehow ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... said Fanny, as the carriage reached the oval in front of the house, and swept around towards the portico. "It's a younger man; and ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built, oval-faced men—real Poles; others had the narrower look of the Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills; others had that look in the eyes, that carriage ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... The fine oval face had indeed fallen away sadly, and the soft golden hair waved away from a brow like marble. Deep dark lines beneath the closed eyes hollowed the cheeks and seemed to speak of pain and sleepless nights. Slow tears welled up to Jeff's eyes and fell ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... head so that the rays of the street lamp, faint as they were, fell full upon her, disclosing a sweet, oval face, out of which the dark eyes gazed ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... slightest record attempted; first the thick creamy curdling overlapping massy form which remains for a moment only after the fall of the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running up the beach; and secondly, the thin white coating into which this subsides, which opens into oval gaps and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore by long dragging streams ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... resistance than the old man gave her credit for. Her face was of the same style of beauty as that of some of the young women he had seen in the villages of the Israelites, but of a higher and finer type. Her face was almost oval, with soft black hair, and delicately marked eyebrows running almost in a straight line below her forehead. Her eyes were large and soft, with long lashes veiling them, but there was a firmness about the lips ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... an oval area in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, whose longer axis extends from north to south through Cincinnati, the Ordovician strata rise in a very low, broad swell, called the Cincinnati anticline. The Silurian and Devonian strata thin ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... the lounge, with my eyes buried in the carpet, I spied a glittering object at a little distance from where I had been standing. I stooped and picked it up. To my great surprise it was not my ruby ear-ring. It was a small oval locket suspended from a few links of a heavy gold chain, one of the uppermost links was ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... medical center, the oval creche containing Orne hung from ceiling hooks in a private room. There were humming sounds in the dim, watery greenness of the room, rhythmic chuggings, sighings. Occasionally, a door opened almost soundlessly, and a white-clad figure would check the graph tapes ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... phrase goes, for all it was worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was literally like a woman's, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite picture. From within this almost saintly oval, however, his face projected suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried forward with a look of cockney contempt. This combination at once tickled and terrified the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... saw a slender girl of thirteen with a delicate oval face and well-shaped features framed in a wealth of gold brown hair. Her eyes were soft and limpid, and they held an expression ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... these brilliant exotic qualities harmoniously housed in their small beautiful elastic and vigorous frames? It was their genius, their character—something derived from their race. But what race? Looking at their mother watching her little ones at their frolics with dark shining eyes—the small oval-faced brown-skinned woman with blackest hair—I could but say that she was an Iberian, pure and simple, and that her children were like her. In Southern Europe that type abounds; it is also to be met with ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... are sitting at a little round table, each with a tall green glass of Mai-Trank before us, and a brisk Uhlanenritt in our ears. I look round with a pleasant sense of dissipation. The still, green trees; the cluster of oval lamps, like great bright ostrich-eggs; the countless little tables like our own; the happy social groups; the waiters running madly about with bif-tecks; the great-lidded goblets of amber-colored Bohemian beer; the young Bavarian officers, in light-blue uniforms, at the next table to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... yesterday, so unaltered was the scene. The tall clock, the old chair, the black cloth mitre with its tarnished gold insignia, the framed plans of St. George's Hall, were all in the same places. The president had not changed in the interim; it even seemed that he had not moved. But beyond the shapely oval of the old man's head a glimpse of wintry landscape was framed by the narrow window, instead of that earlier vision of the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... out of their proper islands. There are, however, several kinds of fruit besides those which have been already mentioned; particularly the sweet-sop, which is well known to the West Indians, and a small oval fruit, called the blimbi, both of which grow upon trees. The blimbi is about three or four inches long, and in the middle about as thick as a man's finger, tapering towards each end: It is covered with a very ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... rather above the middle height, of a slight but unusually elegant figure, with remarkably small hands and feet, the former of which were white and smooth as those of a woman. His features were delicately formed and regular, and the shape of his face a perfect oval; strongly marked eyebrows overshadowed a pair of piercing black eyes; his lips were thin and compressed, and his mouth finely cut; his hair, which was unusually glossy and luxuriant, was jet black, as were his ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... reacted on her body, making her brisk in movement. On each side of her forehead were hard neat undulations of black hair that concealed the tips of her ears. She had laid aside her London hat, and carried a red cotton Contadina's umbrella, which threw a rosy glow onto the oval of her thin face and its colourless complexion. She bore the weight of her forty years extremely lightly, and but for the droop of skin at the corners of her mouth, she might have passed as a much younger woman. Her face was ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... houses, its temples and forum. The style of architecture was peculiar to the city. The Carthaginians abhorred straight lines, and all their buildings presented curves. The rooms were for the most part circular, semicircular, or oval, and all exterior as well as interior angles were rounded off. The material used in their construction was an artificial stone composed of pieces of rock cemented together with fine sand and lime, and as hard as natural ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... very attractive, softly lit as it was by shaded candles in sconces and a porcelain lamp with a crimson shade, which was placed on the small oval table near the fern-filled fireplace; and as Mark placed himself in a low steamer chair and waited for his host to make his appearance, he felt as if he was going ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... fragile little creature, coloured like a flower, and her smooth brown hair hung in silken braids to her sash. The strings of her white pique bonnet lined with pink were daintily tied under her oval chin; there was no dust on her bare legs ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... held down by blocks of snow or ice, helped by spare food-bags, which were all piled round on a broad flounce. Ventilators, originally supplied with the tents, had to be dispensed with on account of the incessant drift. The door of the tent was an oval funnel of burberry material just large enough to admit a man and secured by ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... first. Then mix all into a paste. If the flavor of ginger is not strong enough, add more; they should taste well of it, without being hot in the mouth. Roll the paste a quarter of an inch thick, and cut into small oval or round cakes, sift powdered sugar over them, and bake rather slowly ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... and Freemasonry has much to thank him for. In a history of Westminster Abbey, written by the late Dean Farrar, is to be found the following: "Even the geometrical designs which lie at the base of its ground plan are combinations of the triangle, the circle, and the oval." Masons' marks are to be found in various places ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... of his pictures. The oval faces with the peculiarly small mouth are characteristic. You will most readily recognize the work of this master after you have become a ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... discover the large empty oval of floor, surrounded by little tables for segregation and refreshment, with which the past ten years have made us familiar. The place will be buzzing with the hum of voices, merry with duologues of laughter, and steaming with tobacco smoke. A jazz-band ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... much in love. The next morning appeared in a drizzle of rain that followed the beautiful warmth of the day before. He had the coach all to himself, and in the damp and leathery solitude he drew out the little oval picture from beneath his shirt frill and looked long and fixedly with a fond and foolish joy at the innocent face, the blue eyes, the red, smiling lips depicted upon ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... the mystical Tau, 'the bidden wisdom,' not only of the ancient Egyptians but also of the Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Mexicans, Peruvians, and of every other ancient people commemorated in history, in either hemisphere, and is formed very similarly to our letter T, with a roundlet, or oval, placed immediately above it. Thus it was figured on the gigantic emerald or glass statue of Serapis, which was transported (293 B.C.) by order of Ptolemy Soter from Sinope, on the southern shores of the Black Sea, re-erected within that famous labyrinth which encompassed the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the unoccupied state-cabin, whose dead-lights, for all the mild weather, were hermetically closed and calked—these tenantless balconies hung over the sea as if it were the grand Venetian canal. But the principal relic of faded grandeur was the ample oval of the shield-like stern-piece, intricately carved with the arms of Castile and Leon, medallioned about by groups of mythological or symbolical devices; uppermost and central of which was a dark satyr in a mask, holding his foot on the prostrate ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... divided the six other men into two squads under Theodore Quayle and Dan Happersett. When all was ready, Enrique and myself took up our positions, hiding in the outlying mesquite brush; leaving the loose horses under saddle in the cover at a distance. The thicket was oval in form, lying with a point towards the river, and we all felt confident if the bull were started he would make for the timber on the river. With a whoop and hurrah and a free discharge of firearms, the beaters entered the chaparral. From my position I could see Enrique ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... the daylight: she was growing more beautiful that spring; she was pretty, pretty!—Her bust had become rounder and her waist thinner; her manner gained, day by day, an elegant suppleness. She resembled her brother still, she had the same regular features, the same perfect oval of the face; but the difference in their eyes went on increasing: while those of Arrochkoa, of a blue green shade which seemed fleeting, avoided the glances of others, hers, on the contrary, black pupils and lashes, dilated themselves to look at you fixedly. Ramuntcho had seen ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... noticed among the groups of girls who smiled at our fellowship—old Mourteen says we are like the cuckoo with its pipit—a beautiful oval face with the singularly spiritual expression that is so marked in one type of the West Ireland women. Later in the day, as the old man talked continually of the fairies and the women they have taken, ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... she was a very pretty girl, and quite appropriately dressed, under the circumstances. She wore a boy's suit, with a short skirt over her knickerbockers, and, since she was slim, the garments added to her appearance of immaturity. Her face was oval in outline, and it was of a perfectly uniform olive tint; her eyes were large and black and velvety, their lashes were long, their lids were faintly smudged with a shadowy under- coloring that magnified their size and intensified their brilliance. Her hair was almost black, nevertheless it was of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... misunderstood. DrG. could suggest nothing for almond, but on looking at the drawing of the male Whelk (Buccinum undatum) creeping, in the Penny Cyclopdia, v.9, p.454, col.2 (art. Entomostomata), it is quite clear that the almond must mean the animal's horny, oval operculum on its hinder part. 'Most spiral shells have an operculum, or lid, with which to close the aperture when they withdraw for shelter. It is developed on a particular lobe at the posterior part of the foot, and consists of ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... growth and promise of Buffalo and Detroit, was charmed with "the beautiful flowery prairies and natural groves of Michigan," and wrote of them: "To get an idea of Prairie Round,—imagine an oval plain of some thirty-thousand acres, of surprising fertility, without an eminence; a few small cavities, however, are springs of water the cattle will drink." In the prairie's center was a forest island of some six hundred acres "of the noblest native trees," ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... (Mrs. Travers had already retired on a small pension) and a sum that, judiciously invested, the friend and attorney thought should be sufficient for her needs, even supposing—The friend and attorney, pausing to dwell upon the oval face with its dark ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... feet; hair black, eyes ditto, nose aquiline, mouth large, lips compressed, forehead high, face oval, complexion ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... could with ease have swum across the Hellespont. In his earliest years, in all his amusements and employments, his inventive genius was at work in searching out expedients. To facilitate rapidity in swimming he formed two oval pallets, much resembling those used by painters, about ten inches long, and six broad. A hole was cut for the thumb and they were bound fast to the palm of the hand. Sandals of a somewhat similar construction ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... cool open, and as soon as they are coloured, they are done. Then take them out and place them two bottoms together. Lay them lightly on sieve, and dry them in a cool oven, till the two bottoms stick fast together, so as to form one ball or oval. ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... rounded arch was bent according to the same inflection. The two semicircles could have fitted one into the other, both very narrow, both a little long-shaped and oval and of a restricted radius which was the very character ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... beyond that the Costejo Mountains, rugged and massive and covered in part on their lower slopes with blue-green thickets of pine. Across the river was a choppy sea of sand-dunes stretching away to the north as far as sight could reach. Here and there a high-flung mound, smooth and oval or capped with ledges of black, glistening rode broke the monotony of ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... of a musical friend whom I will call 'Ernest Alexander.' I also wrote the names 'Jessie' and 'David,' folded the sheet once, and retained it under my hand. Upon her return the psychic seated herself at the battered oval table, and, taking up a pair of hinged school slates, began to clean them with a cloth. I am not going to detail my precautions. You must take my detective work for granted. Moreover, in this case I was awaiting the voices; the slate-writing was gratuitous. ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... floated, or seemed to float, a huge red oval—the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. She had heard of it before. But what caught her immediate attention was a tiny flare of intense illumination, right in the very heart of the Spot. Bright orange it was, tinged with yellow, dazzling even ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... would so look at you as she did it that you would hardly dare either to avert your eyes or to return her gaze. Sir Florian had not known whether to do the one thing or the other, and had therefore seized her in his arms. Her face was oval,—somewhat longer than an oval,—with little in it, perhaps nothing in it, of that brilliancy of colour which we call complexion. And yet the shades of her countenance were ever changing between the softest and most transparent white, and the richest, mellowest shades ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I sat down on one end of a deep, semi-circular, or, rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush. It extended right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if all this were make-believe and ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... the various objects and engrave them on his memory. The room, however, contained nothing remarkable. The yellow wood furniture was all very old. A couch with a shelving back, opposite which stood an oval table, a toilet-table with a pier glass attached, chairs lining the walls, and two or three poor prints representing German girls with birds in their hands, completed the inventory. A lamp was burning in ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... stitches or knots a small instrument is used, called a shuttle. This shuttle consists of two oval pieces, flat on one side and convex on the other, and is ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... appeared before them a small glade—oval in shape. Tall firs edged this open space as evenly as graceful columns in a magnificent salle. The blue of the sky above it seemed especially bright, pure and dominant. The glade was full of children of various ages. They were sitting and reclining ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Valley is a district of oval form, two hundred miles long by sixty wide, extending from a short distance below Memphis to Vicksburg, where the hills which form its eastern boundary again reach the Mississippi. The land is alluvial and, when not protected by levees, subject to overflow in ordinary rises of the river, with the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... and blooming plants in the great lower corridors and porticos, and vast hall of entrance, oval and open to the roof, with its marble gallery surrounding it and suspended midway, secured by its exquisite and lace-like screen of iron balustrading. Pictures of the great modern masters adorn ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... "laced" balls; that is, they consist of a rubber bladder, which is inflated and inserted in a leather casing which is then laced firmly to close the opening. Two shapes of balls—round, and so-called "oval"—are official for different organizations. The round ball is prescribed for the "Association" games (American Football Association) and for Soccer, the circumference of the ball to be not less than 27 inches, nor more than 28. The prolate spheroid ("oval") ball is prescribed by the Intercollegiate ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... there came over the river from the Waterfoot of the Rhone the sound of a voice calling. Grace Allen sat thoughtfully looking out of the rose-hung window of the boathouse. Her face was an oval of perfect curve, crowned with a mass of light brown hair, in which were red lights when the sun shone directly upon it. Her skin was clear, pale as ivory, and even exertion hardly brought the latent under-flush of red ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... before her eyes a little oval frame surrounding a profile without shading, a simple pencil sketch in which she recognized herself, surprised to find that she was so pretty, as if reflected in the magic mirror of Love. Tears came to her eyes, although she knew ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... as Yird Houses, Weems and Picts' Houses, underground dwellings in use in Scotland, extant even after the Roman evacuation of Britain. Entrance was effected by a passage not much wider than a fox burrow, which sloped downwards 10 or 12 ft. to the floor of the house; the inside was oval in shape, and was walled with overlapping rough stone slabs; the roof frequently reached to within a foot of the earth's surface; they probably served as store-houses, winter-quarters, and as places of refuge in times of war. Similar ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... voices about her, but Dama Ecciva was quite silent, although there had been a motion of her blanched lips as if to speak, and Madama di Thenouris still held her fascinated gaze. Her eyes had suddenly dilated with a look of terror, yet almost instantly reassumed their long oval shape—the lids closing to more than their narrow wont: her embroidery had slipped to the floor, as she rose, and she was treading it under her feet—bruising and grinding it passionately, as if it were some safe, unnoticed outlet to the fear and anger that might smother ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... richest, and most splendid, and magnificent fortress in the world. It was built upon an oblong rocky hill, the sides of which were perpendicular cliffs, except at one end, where alone the summit was accessible. This summit presented an area of an oval form, about a thousand feet in length and five hundred broad, thus containing a space of about ten acres. This area upon the summit, and also the approaches at the western end, were covered with ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... appropriated to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats round the arena sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors—the magistrates and those of senatorial or equestrian dignity: the passages which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to these seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances for the combatants. Strong palings at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey. Around the parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which the seats ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... see her now—the picture was so pretty! Her hair was dark brown and waved naturally away from her forehead, making her face rather oval than round; her gray eyes were clear and large, and, when she was not smiling or talking, there was a serious shadow far down in them. She had a dear little mouth, and I liked to make her laugh that I might see the dimples come and go in ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... be very large and well cast, in form approaching our astronomical circles; that is all that we could make out. There was, however, thrown into a back yard by itself, a celestial globe of bronze, of about 3 feet in diameter. Of this we were able to take a nearer view. Its form was somewhat oval; the divisions by no means exact, and the whole ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... whisper, subdued, not very steady, but its low tremulousness gave me no thrill now. I could only make out the oval of her face, her uncovered throat, the long, white gleam of her eyes. She was mysterious enough. Her hands were resting on the arms of the chair. But where was the mysterious and provoking sensation which was like ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... a great number of years discarded the conventional glass eyes—glass buttons I have heard them irreverently termed!—for all fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, excepting the smallest, using, in their stead, hollow half-globes rather more oval than round; these are hand-painted on the inside with either water or oil-colours, and when dry are varnished, filled in with wadding and putty, or modelling-wax, not clay, and fixed in the orbits with wax, see ante. These, properly coloured, and, in the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... in appropriate ovaries, where they are retained for a time. They are then transferred to a kind of marsupial pouch, analogous to that of the kangaroo, where their development proceeds. After passing through certain changes here, the egg issues from the maternal pouch as an oval body, clothed with cilia—an animalcule in external aspect, and as unlike its parent as can well be imagined. For awhile the little creature dances freely through the water, and leads a gay, roving life; but at ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... were jealous even of the curl. Anton Trendellsohn was decidedly a handsome man; but his eyes were somewhat too close together in his face, and the bridge of his aquiline nose was not sharply cut, as is mostly the case with such a nose on a Christian face. The olive oval face was without doubt the face of a Jew, and the mouth was greedy, and the teeth were perfect and bright, and the movement of the man's body was the movement ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... wonder that he stood thus rooted to the spot, following her with his eyes; for the countenance which accident had revealed to him was already impressed upon his heart. It was one of those lovely Georgian faces, oval in shape, and with a complexion formed of milk and roses, which have at all times been prized in the East, as the very perfection of female beauty; a face which, without intellectual expression, possesses an ineffable witchery, and all the charms calculated ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... all sides with equal ease. The iris is naturally of a pale blue colour; but, when the animal is irritated, it varies from a very pale blue or lilac to a deep crimson. Its form is also very remarkable, being a small oval, or rather a parallelogram, with the ends cut off, and lying transversely across the ball, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... of the coral garden to be avoided is the balloon fish (TETRAODON OCELLATUS), which distends itself to the utmost capacity of its oval body when lifted from the water. The flesh is generally believed to be poisonous, though of tempting appearance. Authorities assert that the pernicious principle is confined to the liver and ovaries, and that if these are removed ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... presume, can recall the first moment when the chalk-oval surrounding it gave way, and instead of the cavern of limestone which its experience might have led it to expect, it found a world of air and movement and freedom and blue sky—with kites in it. For my own part, I often wished, when a child, that I had ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... with very fine names on the doorposts of each. "Surgeon Haggarty" was emblazoned on Dennis's gate, on a stained green copper-plate; and, not content with this, on the door-post above the bell was an oval with the inscription of "New Molloyville." The bell was broken, of course; the court, or garden-path, was mouldy, weedy, seedy; there were some dirty rocks, by way of ornament, round a faded glass-plat in the centre, some clothes and rags hanging out of most part of the windows of New Molloyville, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... This is a beautiful species, and an old inhabitant of English gardens. Leaves composed of usually three oval-shaped leaflets, and unusually bright of tint. The flowers are very large, and pure white. It should be planted in a warm sheltered corner against ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... stood there in the wide hall, with only the light from the high transom over the door, shedding an afternoon glow through its pleated Swiss oval. She looked more sweet and little-girlish than ever, and he felt a strong desire to take her in his arms and tell her so, only he feared, from something he saw in those wide, sweet eyes, that she might take alarm and run away ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... direction of a Warden and Council. The fine decorative wooden overmantels and doorways still remain, and the joints and edges of the panels are all carved, which gives a very handsome appearance to some of the rooms. The council-room ceiling is a large oval with the figures of four cherubic boys in relief, carrying respectively flowers, a bird, fire, and water, ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... dressed, of course, but there was about her a general appearance of having just gotten out of bed. Her hair, rather elaborately coiffured, had several loose strands sticking out here and there. She wore a gold pin—an oval brooch with a lock of hair in it—at her throat, but one end was unfastened. She wore cotton gloves, with ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of 1920 is bowled and the last wicket in a first-class match falls (as will most probably happen at the Oval this very afternoon, September 15th), I should like to let the Gods of the Game know how I propose to spend the following winter in their interests, so that when the season of 1921 is with us the happiness of the cricket spectator may be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... amphitheatre and the edifice, called Maison Carree—The former of these is counted the finest monument of the kind, now extant; and was built in the reign of Antoninus Pius, who contributed a large sum of money towards its erection. It is of an oval figure, one thousand and eighty feet in circumference, capacious enough to hold twenty thousand spectators. The architecture is of the Tuscan order, sixty feet high, composed of two open galleries, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... of the women, Esle laid out a rough oval on the ground where the two combatants were to meet. Throwing-stones and spears were not allowed in rannag, the two combatants fighting their duel with smiting-stones and flint knives only. At the appointed hour, the two combatants appeared, stripped to their loin-clothes only. ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... good-day. Three boys, just alike in their slender, stolid Indian good looks, except that they differed in size, nodded with the awkwardness of the male. Two babies stared solemnly. A little girl with a beautiful, oval face, large mischievous gray eyes behind long black lashes, a mischievously quirked mouth to match the eyes, and black hair banged straight, both front and behind, in almost mediaeval fashion, twirked a pair of brown ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... taste, the most perfectly handsome room which I have ever seen. The wainscot or sides are walnut and chestnut wood, relieved by beautiful gilt ornaments. The ceiling is also of the same materials; but marked and diversified by divisions of square, or parallelogram, or oval, or circular, forms. This ceiling is very lofty, for the size of the room: but it is a fault (if it be one) on the right side. I should say, that this were a chamber worthy of the cause—and of the actors—in the scene alluded to. It is thoroughly imperial: ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... has the usual structure of the order, viz. 3-carpellary with revolute placentae, so much so, that they are placed near the circumference; seeds very numerous, surrounded with pulp, not arillate: no separation taking place; oval, brown, smooth. In fields here, a wild strong smelling Umbellifera occurs, called Dhunnea, used as a potherb, and esteemed very fragrant by the natives. Besides the absence of an arillus, there is another ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... twenty. Her remarkable beauty and gifts of mind were surer guarantees of happiness than those offered by money. Her features were of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval lines, so noble and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the ideal, and seem to speak of the joys of the East, its unchangeably blue sky, the glories of its lands, and the fabulous riches of life there. She had fine eyes, shaded by deep eyelids, fringed with thick, curled lashes. ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... hospital of Martha's Vineyard was a large and luxurious chamber, with an oval window at its farther end, and its two side walls panelled with portraits of former chairmen and physicians. In great oaken armchairs, behind ponderous oaken tables, covered with green cloth and furnished with writing pads, the Board of Governors sat in three sides of a square, leaving ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... jump, nasty beastly jumps - the next morning we found one all messed with blood where a horse had come to grief - but my Jack is a clever fencer; and altogether we made good time, and got to Malie about dark. It is a village of very fine native houses, high, domed, oval buildings, open at the sides, or only closed with slatted Venetians. To be sure, Mataafa's is not the worst. It was already quite dark within, only a little fire of cocoa-shell blazed in the midst and showed us four servants; the chief was in his chapel, whence we heard the sound ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opening is the food-aperture, which is a large sheet-copper tube, somewhat flattened, thus giving a slightly oval form, closed with a port, such as is used on vessels. The door of the port consists of a heavy brass frame with a heavy glass window and it can be closed tightly by means of a rubber gasket and two thumbscrews. On the outside is used a similar port provided with a tube somewhat ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... did learn to hate those little dishes and their greasy contents! At a London eating-house things are often not very nice, but your meat is put on a plate and comes before you in an edible shape. At these hotels it is brought to you in horrid little oval dishes, and swims in grease; gravy is not an institution in American hotels, but grease has taken its place. It is palpable, undisguised grease, floating in rivers—not grease caused by accidental bad cookery, but grease on purpose. A beef-steak ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... Europe, and extends southward to North Africa; while eastward, it appears in the Crimea and in Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores of the Sea of Aral, in Central Asia. If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circumscribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about 3,000 miles in long diameter—the area of which would be as great as that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the largest ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... shook hands ceremoniously with the punghulo's oldest wife, and tabeked to the rest of his big family, the old man scrambled down the ladder, and sent a boy up a cocoanut tree for some fresh nuts. In a moment half a dozen of the great, oval, green nuts came pounding down into the sand. Another little fellow snatched them up, and with a sharp parang, or hatchet-like knife, cut away the soft shuck until the cocoanut took the form of a pyramid, at the apex of which he bored a hole, and a stream of delicious, cool milk ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... which he lived was called a wigwam. It was circular, or oval, in shape, and made of barks or mats laid over a framework of small poles. These poles were fixed at one end in the ground, and were fastened together at the top, forming a framework shaped somewhat like ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... about two feet, was a carved head of some animal; while the after part also projected six feet or more beyond the actual stern, something like the shape of a Dutch skate. The paddles were neatly made of a hard black wood, highly polished, with slender handles, and the blades of an oval form. I afterwards examined the canoe, and found that it was composed of many pieces of the bread-fruit tree, cut into planks and sewed together with the fibres of the outside shell of the cocoa-nut. The seams were covered inside and out with strips of bamboo sewed to the edge of ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... was a second of blank amaze, and the woman's face stamped itself on our startled vision;—the eyes, liquid and gleaming, behind a veil of black lashes; the smooth firm nose, with its raised and tremulous nostril; the oval of either cheek, with the damask glow in it; and the curled mouth of deepest crimson, with the essence of sensuous languor ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... that, in the dining-room of the old Beacon Street house (now the Aldebaran Club), Judge Anthony Bracknell, of the famous East India firm of Bracknell & Saulsbee, when the ladies had withdrawn to the oval parlour (and Maria's harp was throwing its gauzy web of sound across the Common), used to relate to his grandsons, about the year that ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... buttress-crest still supports a double concentric circle with a maximum diameter of about fifteen feet; the outside is of earth, apparently thrown up for a rampart behind a moat, and the inside is of rough stones. Going south along the dorsum, we found remains of oval foundations; a trench apparently cut in the rock, pottery often an inch and more thick, and broken handmills made of the New Red Sandstone of the Hism. Finally, at the northernmost point, where the cliff-edge ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the line of the condyles, so that if the base of an ordinary-shaped flap be made on a level with the condyles, it will prove insufficient to cover the bone. It may be performed either by the circular method (Velpeau), oval (Baudens), or by a long anterior and short posterior flap (Textor and Dupuytren). Probably the best method is by a long anterior flap when it can be obtained, thus:—The arm being placed in a slightly flexed position, the surgeon transfixes in front of the joint, in a line extending ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Then follows another long pause, and at last footsteps are heard approaching from within. The bolts are drawn, the door is opened, and you are led up to a spacious drawing-room. At the wall opposite the windows there is sure to be a sofa, and before it an oval table. At each end of the table, and at right angles to the sofa, there will be a row of three arm-chairs. The other chairs will be symmetrically arranged round the room. In a few minutes the host will appear, in his long double-breasted black coat and well-polished long ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... this girl was a rounded oval, and each feature as perfectly formed as the heart or imagination of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... moustache—the French like a little hair upon the upper lip of ladies—whilst overhead, forming a part of the extraordinary decoration, is a Madonna, goddess, angel—I can't say what—copied from one of the old masters in the palace of the Luxembourg. Gold-dust blown across a blue oval, with white-and-rose angels in the midst, shuts off the upward gaze in one of the other salons, whilst all around medallions large and small of heads and figures, male, female and infantile, with a variety of vine-wreathed Bacchuses and bow-drawing Cupids, which are considered especially ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... lateral hoofs were annually shed, and grew to the length of five or six inches. The eye was very peculiar, being remarkably prominent, and "resembled a cup and ball, thus enabling the animal to see on all sides with equal ease; the pupil was small and oval, or rather a parallelogram with the ends cut off, and lying transversely across the ball." A new and strange breed might probably have been formed by careful breeding and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... with a horizontal blue stripe in the center superimposed on a vertical red band also centered; five white five-pointed stars are arranged in an oval pattern in the center of the blue band; the five stars represent the five main islands of Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to other edifices more or less fantastic in their design and structure, such as "an apartment built on a single pillar,"[1] a "house of an octangular form," built in the 12th century[2], and another of an "oval," shape[3], erected by ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... method of filling consists in introducing and condensing tin in cavities by means of smooth, highly tempered steel engine or hand burnishers. In the engine set of instruments there is one oval end inverted cone-shaped, one pear-shaped, and one bud-shaped. The revolving burnisher is held firmly against the tin, a few seconds in a place, and moved around, especially along the margins, not running the engine too fast. Complicated cavities are converted into simple ones ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... stamps is in preparation, but for the present the authorities surcharge the current stamp with the words, "Union Postale Universelle" and "Plata," in an oval. The 1c. changes its color to green, the 2c. to carmine, and the 20c. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the markings or shape of the ears. From this sheaf an aged sorceress, with much solemnity, cut a little bundle of seven ears, anointed them with oil, tied them round with parti-coloured thread, fumigated them with incense, and having wrapt them in a white cloth deposited them in a little oval-shaped basket. These seven ears were the infant Soul of the Rice and the little basket was its cradle. It was carried home to the farmer's house by another woman, who held up an umbrella to screen the tender infant from the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... show you the place," she answered; and taking him by the hand, she led him up and up the oval-winding stair in one of the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... alarm,— Not eye to eye, but soul to soul, we held Each other for a moment. All her life Seemed centred in the circle of her eyes. She stirred no limb; her long-drawn, equal breath Swelled out and ebbed away beneath her breast, In calm unbroken. Not a sign of fear Touched the faint color on her oval cheek, Or pinched the arches of her tender mouth. She took me for a vision, and she lay With her sleep's smile unaltered, as in doubt Whether real life had stolen into her dreams, Or dreaming stretched into her outer life. I was not graceless ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the glottis formed an oval orifice, which, with every higher tone, seemed to contract more and more, and so became smaller and rounder. The fine edges of the vocal ligaments which formed this orifice were alone vibrating, and the vibrations seemed at first ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... the loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from the very nature of vision, however perfect it be. It is thus, for instance, that the circle seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval which among geometricians is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into a parabola or a hyperbola, or actually into a straight line, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... her height was awkward and ungainly, but such an effort was beyond imagination. Rosalind was startlingly and wonderfully pretty; she had never seen anyone in real life who was in the least like her. Her eyes were a deep, dark blue, with curling dark lashes, her face was a delicate oval, and the pink and white colouring, and flowing golden locks, gave her the appearance of a princess in a fairy tale rather than an ordinary flesh-and-blood maiden. Peggy looked from her to Mellicent, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... indicated by a round or triangular figure, from which a line extends toward the mouth, generally designated the life line, i.e., that magic power may reach its heart and influence the life of the subject designated. Fig. 20 is a reproduction of the character drawn upon a small oval piece of birch bark, which had been made by a Mid[-e] to insure the death of two bears. Another example is presented in Fig. 21, a variety of animals being figured and a small quantity of vermilion being rubbed upon the heart of each. In some instances the representation of animal forms is ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the Americans. I saw several men in Stockholm who would not have done discredit to California, in point of fine faces and commanding figures. The Swedish ladies are proverbially beautiful. It was really refreshing, after my visit to Russia, to see so many pretty women as I met here. Light hair, oval features, sparkling blue eyes, and forms of intoxicating grace and beauty—ah me! why should such dangers be permitted to threaten the defenseless traveler with instant destruction, when the law provides for his protection against other disasters by land and sea, assault and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... behind her screen of naked roots and branches. He looked a long time at the bottle, shook it, and held it to the sun as he contemplated the little beads that sparkled at the edge of the liquor line. He read its label, and seemed deeply interested in the lines of fine print contained upon an oval sticker that adorned its back. Still holding the bottle, he once more stared out over the bad lands. Then he drew the cork and smelled of the liquor, breathing deeply of its fragrance, and turning, gazed intently toward the little white tent beside ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Harar is about one mile long by half that breadth. An irregular wall, lately repaired [21], but ignorant of cannon, is pierced with five large gates [22], and supported by oval towers of artless construction. The material of the houses and defences are rough stones, the granites and sandstones of the hills, cemented, like the ancient Galla cities, with clay. The only large building is the Jami or Cathedral, a long ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... thirty feet deep, every blade of grass at the bottom is visible. Even a pin, dropped upon the stones below, is seen shining quite distinctly. A stone wall, level with the water, thirty feet high, encloses it, on which I ventured to walk all round the tank, which is of an oval form, with the assistance of our host, going one by one. A fall would be sufficiently awkward, involving drowning on one side and breaking your neck on the other. The water is beautiful—a perfect mirror, with long green feathery ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the shears and with all nature bleating and braying for the violence. Everything was full of expression for Mark Ambient's visitor—from the big bandy-legged geese whose whiteness was a "note" amid all the tones of green as they wandered beside a neat little oval pool, the foreground of a thatched and whitewashed inn, with a grassy approach and a pictorial sign—from these humble wayside animals to the crests of high woods which let a gable or a pinnacle peep here and there and looked even at a distance like trees ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... owned the whole earth, I could not bear to have him claim me and talk of taking me to England and have me go to court and all that;" and Primrose shook her shining curly head defiantly, while her oval ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... roof, its central section was invisible; but the extremities of that part which I had seen in the first instance through the upper plane window of the bow were now clearly visible from the upper windows of either side. What had at first been a mere greatly elongated oval, with a species of rapidly diminishing tail at each extremity, had now become an arc spanning no inconsiderable part of the space above me, narrowing rapidly as it extended downwards and sternwards. Presently it came in view through the upper lens, but did not obscure ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... entertainment given by the Queen my mother, on an island, with the grand dances, and the form of the salon, which seemed appropriated by nature for such a purpose, it being a large meadow in the middle of the island, in the shape of an oval, surrounded on every side by tall spreading trees. In this meadow the Queen my mother had disposed a circle of niches, each of them large enough to contain a table of twelve covers. At one end a platform was raised, ascended by four steps formed ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... The exquisite oval of Mr. Claude Blakely's face merged into outlines more rugged than usual; the conformation of his jaw became perceptible, and it could be seen that he had conceived an idea which was ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... with himself had brought a faint flush to her cheek, but without lowering her eyes she stood regarding him with her warm, grave smile. The pale oval of her face, framed in the loosened waves of her black hair, had for him all the remoteness that surrounded her memory; and yet, though he knew it not, the appeal she made to him now, and had made long ago, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... lips. Her graceful and elegant figure was wrapped in a closely fitting gown of dark-green velvet, richly trimmed with costly furs, and a small bonnet, likewise trimmed with furs, covered her head, and under this bonnet luxuriant dark ringlets were flowing down, surrounding the beautiful and noble oval of her face with a most ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... girl would not have been by five great big worshippers?—and any trivial thing gone wrong with her was a serious matter to them. They were proud of her, and of her beauty and accomplishments were never tired of talking. She had the dark hair and eyes so characteristic of the Zanes; the same oval face and fine features: and added to this was a certain softness of contour and a sweetness of expression which made her face bewitching. But, in spite of that demure and innocent face, she possessed a decided will of her own, and one very apt to be asserted; she was mischievous; ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... appears to have been detached from the greater island by storms: its gravelly soil produces nothing but willows and persicaria, but there is in it a high hill well covered with greensward and very pleasant. The form of the lake is an almost regular oval. The banks, less rich than those of the lake of Geneva and Neuchatel, form a beautiful decoration, especially towards the western part, which is well peopled, and edged with vineyards at the foot, of a chain of mountains, something like those of Cote-Rotie, but which ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... situation, and we all alone between the high brick walls that encircle the secrecy of an inner court—and yet not all alone, fortell it in whispers—some half-dozen shrouded female forms are clustered together in one corner. Yashmaks are drawn aside, and plump oval faces and bright eyes revealed, faces brown and soft of outline, eyes black, large and lustrous, with black lines skillfully drawn to make them look still larger, and lashes deeply stained to impart love and languor to their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... 1. Oval (size 2.1 in. by 1.3). The angel Gabriel kneeling before a standing figure of the Virgin, and holding a scroll, on which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... Tuckahoe river, New Jersey. The tree stood on a declivity twenty yards from the water, and in its hollow and broken top, about six feet down, on the soft decayed wood were thirteen eggs covered with down from the mother's breast. The eggs were of an exact oval shape, the surface smooth and fine grained, of a yellowish color resembling old polished ivory. This tree had been occupied by the same pair, during nesting time, for four successive years. The female had been seen to carry down from the nest ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... spheroidal before Newton or Huyghens turned their attention to the subject. At a meeting of the Royal Society on the 28th of February, 1678, a discussion arose respecting the figure of Mercury which M. Gallet of Avignon had remarked to be oval on the occasion of the planet's transit across the sun's disk on the 7th of November, 1677. Hooke was inclined to suppose that the phenomenon was real, and that it was due to the whirling of the planet on an axis "which made it somewhat ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... first place, were in a great measure due to the singular mixture of races from which she had sprung. One half of her blood was Jewish, one quarter Scotch, and one quarter pure Brahmin. Her face was a long oval, too long and too lanky towards the lower part of it for beauty. Her complexion was somewhat dark, and not good. The mouth was mobile, expressive, perhaps more habitually framed for pathos and the gentler feelings, than for laughter. The jaw was narrow, the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... (long before he made his will) he had planned a complete renovation and this room had been meant for the drawing-room. Furniture had been made for it specially, upholstered in beautiful ribbed stuff, made to order, of dull gold colour with a pale blue tracery of arabesques and oval medallions enclosing Rita's monogram, repeated on the backs of chairs and sofas, and on the heavy curtains reaching from ceiling to floor. To the same time belonged the ebony and bronze doors, the silver statuette at the foot of the stairs, the forged iron balustrade reproducing right up the marble ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... likewise but little known to botanists, is a small oval fruit, of a whitish-brown colour, which, being deprived of its thin outer coat, divides into five cloves, of which the kernels are covered with a fleshy pulp, subacid, and agreeable to the taste. The skin contains a clammy juice, extremely bitter, and, if not ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Linn.) ranks first in these Islands. It is oblong—oval-shaped—flattened slightly on both sides, about five inches long, and of a yellow colour when ripe. It is very delicious, succulent, and has a large stone in the centre from which fibres run at angles. To cut it, the knife must ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... barbed wire for fencing was originally suggested to meet conditions existing in the western states, by reason of the large cattle-raising industry in sections where timber was scarce. Prior to its introduction, a No. 9 round or oval iron wire was popular on the frontier of the United States and in South America, as a fencing material. Large amounts were used annually for this purpose, but iron lacked strength, and single wire strand was not fully satisfactory on account of stretching in warm and contracting in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... entered his name as a student. He was in a class by himself—he knew more than his teachers, and from his nineteenth year they usually acknowledged it. He was a handsome youth, proud, quiet, low-voiced, self-reliant. His form was tall and shapely, his face dark and oval, with almost perfect features, his eyes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... climbed the barrier, and then Dalgard discovered that it was the rim of an arena which must have seated close to a thousand in the days of its use. It was a perfect oval in shape with tiers of seats now forming a staircase down to the center, where was a section ringed about by a series of archways. A high stone grille walled this portion away from the seats as if to protect the spectators ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... unprecedented, that I must have been blind, indeed, not to have foreseen what it prefaced. I had seen her face the first time I entered his house, where her photograph hung on a conspicuous wall: the charming, oval face of a young girl, little more than a child, with great eyes, that one guessed, one knew not why, to be the colour of violets, looking out with singular wistfulness from a waving cloud of dark hair. Afterwards, he told me ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an irregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a tiny anchor engraved among them, and the legend "mud and ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... protectingly above him, but the warriors now gazing at it were evidently animated only by a respectful curiosity. As Christie also looked at the magic emblem, he saw the outline of an animal, that might be meant for a bear, encircled by an oval formed of two serpents. Above the whole was a tiny triangle, enclosing the ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the top of his head to the soles of his feet, but as the soles of his feet touched the floor his anger abated. After all, Jack hadn't meant to hurt him, and having witnessed several games of football, he knew how innately perverse an oval-shaped affair like the ball itself could be. Furthermore, there was Mrs. Jarley, who had disapproved of his purchase from the outset. If he wreaked vengeance upon poor little Jack for his unwitting offence, Jarley ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... famous portrait of Laura which was painted at the request of Petrarch by Simon Menimi and charmed him into verse with its loveliness? It represented simply the head and bust. The face was elongated, the cheeks hollow, the hair smoothed down below the ears. The long, oval, half-shut eyes wore a horrible leer, as though the owner were making a painful effort to close them. On the head was a stiff, ungainly jewelled helmet, which terminated low on the forehead in a triangular ornament. The long, slender throat was encircled by three rows of pearls. The dress ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... understanding put together, and then, abstracting it, affixed a name to it. So that, in truth, every distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence; and the names that stand for such distinct ideas are the names of things essentially different. Thus a circle is as essentially different from an oval as a sheep from a goat; and rain is as essentially different from snow as water from earth: that abstract idea which is the essence of one being impossible to be communicated to the other. And thus any two abstract ideas, that ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... been in love with Elizabeth Thorley ever since one night, almost a year ago, when he had looked across a room and seen her red-brown hair, her oval face with its uplifted pointed chin, and met her laughing eyes. He had held her gaze for the fraction of a moment and in that time his heart had stopped beating. When it began again the world was a very different place to him. But, alas, it was not a different place to her. She ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... looked round the room for something to read; there was nothing. The old-fashioned best bedrooms never did have anything. Only on the large dressing-table, on the left-hand side of the oval swing-glass, was one book covered in red velvet, and on it, very twistily embroidered in yellow silk and mixed up with misleading leaves and squiggles were the ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... her ears, swinging against her olive cheeks, were great hoops of dull gold. Her black shining hair was gathered low on her neck, her unsmiling lips were scarlet as a pomegranate flower, and exquisitely cut; and the fainter, duskier pomegranate bloom on her oval cheeks faded into delicate stains like pale coffee ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... weight supported chiefly by the right leg and left arm, gives to the body a graceful curve which Praxiteles loved. It is the last stage in the long development of an easy standing pose. The head is of the round Attic form, contrasting with the squarer Peloponnesian type; the face a fine oval. The lower part of the forehead between the temples is prominent; the nose not quite straight, but slightly arched at the middle. The whole expression is one of indescribable refinement and radiance. The hair, short and curly, illustrates the possibilities of marble ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... regulation oval cans for holding such plant specimens as they might collect. Prescott promptly offered to carry both cans, but the two girls declared that they were not going to permit ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... At the oval table on the dais the guests were select and chosen. At the right hand of the King sat William; at the left Odo of Bayeux. Over these three stretched a canopy of cloth of gold; the chairs on which each sate were ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... without ornaments or jewels of any description. Her face was slightly flushed, and the colour intensified the pale gold diadem of her blonde hair. The expression—sweet-tempered, yet a little arrogant—of her countenance and its long oval form bore a striking resemblance to the early portraits of Marie Antoinette. Her under-lip had also a slight outward bend, which seemed an encouragement when she smiled, and contemptuous when she frowned. Her figure—though too slight even for a girl of seventeen—was ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... fight of the war in which I was destined to have a part, and that on the wrong side. My gorge rose at these continual insults. I grabbed the French Consul by the nose, and in a moment we were rolling down the oval stairs together, clawing and fighting for all we were worth. I know it was inexcusable, but consider the provocation; after all I had sacrificed to serve his people, to be put out the second time ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... orange-gorgeted flycatcher. A small brown bird with an oval patch of bright chestnut on the throat, and some white at the base of the tail. (This white is very conspicuous when the bird is flying.) This flycatcher, which is very common about Darjeeling, often alights ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... to assign each picture to its original. Here the mere caricaturist would be quite at fault. He would find in neither face anything on which he could lay hold for the Purpose of making a distinction. Two ample bald foreheads, two reg ular profiles, two full faces of the same oval form, would baffle his art ; and he would be reduced to the miserable shift of writing their names at the foot of his picture. Yet there was a great difference ; and a person who had seen them once would no more have mistaken one of them for ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... of Hu and Ceridwen; and like those of the primitive Persians, their Temples were enclosures of huge unhewn stones, some of which still remain, and are regarded by the common people with fear and veneration. They were generally either circular or oval. Some were in the shape of a circle to which a vast serpent was attached. The circle was an Eastern symbol of the Universe, governed by an Omnipotent Deity whose centre is everywhere, and his circumference nowhere: and the egg was an universal symbol of the world. Some of the Temples were winged, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... as soon as they are colored, they are done. Then take them out, and place two bottoms together. Lay them lightly on a sieve, and dry them in a cool oven, till the two bottoms stick fast together, so as to form one oval or ball. ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... collar of the period, fastened in front with cord and tassels. On the left, in the background, is the promontory of Quebec, with the representation of several turreted buildings both in the upper and lower town. On the border of the oval, which incloses the subject, is the legend, Moncornet Ex c. p. The engraving is coarsely executed, apparently on copper. It is alleged to have been taken from an original Moncornet in France. Our inquiries as to where the original then was, or in whose possession ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... We have done what we came for all the same and as our programme was made out. From his tracks we think there were only 2 men, on ski, with plenty of dogs on rather low diet. They seem to have had an oval tent. We sleep one night at the Pole and have had a double hoosh with some last bits of chocolate, and X's cigarettes have been much appreciated by Scott and Oates and Evans. A tiring day: now turning into a somewhat starchy ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real things, and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision changed, the picture changed also. It must, indeed, have been like looking through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... will have all my beds blown up, not stuft; Down is too hard: and then, mine oval room Fill'd with such pictures as Tiberius took From Elephantis, and dull Aretine But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse And multiply the figures, as I walk Naked between my succubae. My mists I'll ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... was low and pleasant and so clear Dunn heard every word distinctly. She seemed quite young, not more than twenty or twenty-one, and she was slim and graceful in build and tall for a woman. Her face, on which the light shone directly, was oval in shape with a broad, low forehead on which clustered the small, unruly curls of her dark brown hair, and she had clear and very bright brown eyes. The mouth and chin were perhaps a little large to be in absolute harmony with the rest of her features, and she was of a dark complexion, with ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon |
