"Undulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... extravagant growth of the prolific soil. Mrs. McKinstry gazed at it anxiously. There was no sign of life or movement near or around it; it stood as it had always stood, deserted and solitary. But turning her eyes to the right, beyond the water-course, she could see a slight regular undulation of the grassy sea and what appeared to be the drifting on its surface of half a dozen slouched hats in the direction of the alders. There was no longer any doubt; a party from the other side was ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... Or liker still to one who should take leave Of pale immortal death, and with a pang As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse Die into life: so young Apollo anguish'd: 130 His very hair, his golden tresses famed Kept undulation round his eager neck. During the pain Mnemosyne upheld Her arms as one who prophesied.—At length Apollo shriek'd;—and lo! from all his limbs Celestial * * * * * * * * * ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... with the head and shoulders above water. A slight undulation of the waves gave it the appearance of nodding its head; while the rays of the moon enabled us to trace the remainder of the body underneath the surface. For a few moments, I felt a horror which I cannot describe, and contemplated the object in ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... north-west, behind us, a projecting ridge of rock—Madigan Nunatak—came into sight. From the camp of the previous evening it had evidently been hidden from view by an undulation in the surface. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... rapidly, partly from the undulation of the earth when a heavy train passes over it at a high velocity, but chiefly from the resistance of the atmosphere and blast pipe, which constitute the greatest of the impediments to motion at high speeds. At a speed of 30 miles an hour, the atmospheric resistance has been found in ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... tides. Beside her Patrick prayed, And mightier than his preaching was his prayer, Sheltering that crisis dread. At last beneath The great Life-Giver's breath that Human Soul, An inner world vaster than planet worlds, In undulation swayed, as when of old The Spirit of God above the waters moved Creative, while the blind and shapeless void Yearned into form, and form grew meet for life, And downward through the abysses Law ran forth With touch soul-soft, and seas from ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"—the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... where the river escapes, except that formed by the gradually increasing throw of the fault. The pool is simply due to the reversal of the natural slope of the river-bed, caused by the formation of a roll or undulation in the ground on the upthrow side of the fault. Its recent origin is evident from the number of dead trees and bamboo clumps still standing ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... IV.! Bare is the soil of corn and of trees,—it disdains meaner fruit; it grows kings! Hark!" The sound of a bugle was heard at a little distance, and in a few moments a troop of about a hundred men were seen rising above an undulation in the ground, and as the two bands recognized each other, a shout of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... between us," continued Paul Barr addressing me. "Which is better, the free undulation ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... remembrance their victory over Claverhouse when their numbers were few, and then much worse disciplined and appointed for battle than now; showed them that the ground on which they lay afforded, by its undulation, and the thickets which intersected it, considerable protection against artillery, and even against cavalry, if stoutly defended; and that their safety, in fact, depended on their own ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Inner Horde, who occupy the country to the southward, in the direction of the Caspian. Here for the first time I saw the genuine Steppe in the full sense of the term—a country level as the sea, with not a hillock or even a gentle undulation to break the straight line of the horizon, and not a patch of cultivation, a tree, a bush, or even a stone, to diversify the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... apart as the celestial bodies are from each other in space. This distance is less than the 1/3000000 x 1/1000', or the one trillionth of a foot. The vibrations of the molecules of this ether produce the sensations of light and heat, by making 430 trillions of undulations per second, each undulation being hardly more than the one ten-millionth of an inch ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... myself," the woman said, her hands caressing a dial. Slowly, with gentle undulation, his chair rose from the floor and cradled the aged tiredness that was Oliver Symmes to his bed. With almost tender devotion, his body was mechanically shifted from the portable chair to ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... is several miles broad, and the opposite shore is so low that the snow causes it to appear but a slight undulation of the frozen bed of the river. Indeed, it would not be distinguishable at all, were it not for the willow bushes and dwarf pines, whose tops, rising above the white garb of winter, indicate that terra ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... age, went by. The troops had disappeared, hidden by an undulation of the ground; but over yonder, on the side of the Nores plain, the insurgents soon perceived the bayonets shooting up, one after another, like a field of steel-eared corn under the rising sun. At that moment Silvere, who was glowing with feverish agitation, fancied he could see the gendarme ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... entrance here I plainly see A line of footsteps printed in the sand. Here are the fresh impressions of her feet; Their well-known outline faintly marked in front, More deeply towards the heel; betokening The graceful undulation of her gait. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... head outstretched and curving over his fore paws, his hind legs drawn up under his belly, his back highly arched, and his flanks quivering with a supple undulation that betokened activity and power, was seen the royal beast of the American jungle. The dying rays of the sun falling upon his glossy skin displayed his splendid coat of bright yellow ocellated with spots of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... glimmered whitewashed cots along a winding road. Still lower down extended marshy common land, laced with twinkling watercourses and dotted with geese; while beyond, in many a rise and fall and verdant undulation, the country rolled onwards through Teign valley and upwards towards the Moor. The expanse seen from this lofty standpoint extended like a mighty map, here revealing a patchwork of multicoloured fields, here exhibiting tracts of wild waste and wood, here beautifully ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... advanced at the heads of his troops. "Go and tell the First Consul that I am about to charge," said he to his aide-de- camp, Savary; "I need to be supported by cavalry." He was crossing an undulation in the ground when a ball struck him in the breast; from daybreak he had been oppressed by gloomy presentiments. "I have been too long making war in Africa," said he; "the bullets of Europe know me no longer." On falling he said to General Boudet, "Conceal my death; it ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... gold abounds most at the swells, or highest points of the waves of rock, and that the scarcely less valuable mispickel appears to follow the same law. The spaces between are not found to be so rich as these points of undulation; and this structure must explain the signal contrast in thickness and productiveness which is everywhere seen in sinking a shaft in this district. As the cutting passes through one of these original swells, the thickness of the vein at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... with eyes fixed upon those of the great bust of Berenice, he was startled by a sudden cry from within the house, the hoarse yell of a man in agony; it was repeated, and became a long shriek, rising and falling in terrible undulation. He had stepped forward to seek an explanation, when Heliodora's eunuch smilingly came to ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... passionate love for Nature was stirred to its depths. His Alpine walks were a revelation of Nature in her most decided moods, and one particular walk over the Wengern Alp was destined to be long remembered. The mountain summits were glittering in the morning air, every undulation and the face of every hill clear and distinct. Formerly it was their height alone that had impressed him, 'now it was their boundless extent that he particularly felt—their huge, broad masses; the close ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the western part of the island, I sailed to Loloway, near the eastern point, one of the loveliest spots in the archipelago. Lofty cliffs flank two sides of a round bay; at the entrance a barrier-reef breaks the swell, which glides in a soft undulation over the quiet water, splashing up on the sandy beach. All around is the forest, hanging in shadowy bowers over the water, and hardly a breeze is astir. The white whale-boat of the Anglican missionary floats motionless on the green mirror; sometimes a fish leaps up, or a pigeon calls from the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... along the mountain, even changing into sear where its sides felt the north wind. On all that shore the full sunlight lay. The opposite hills, on the east, were in dainty sunshine and shadow, every undulation, every ridge and hollow, softly marked out. With what wonderful sharp outline the mountain edges rose against the bright sky; how wonderful soft the changes of shade and colour adown their sloping sides; what brilliant little ripples ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... ever alone. The green space was bare around her as if cleared by the sweep of her gown. She moved quietly, with a long and even undulation, a yielding of her whole body to the rhythm of her feet. She had reached the far end of the lawn as Lucy neared her, and he looked for her to ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... in this plain, delicate beauty and a weird charm, despite its lack of undulation. Its lonely unplowed sweep gave me the satisfying sensation of being at last among the men who held the outposts,—sentinels for the marching millions who were approaching from the east. For two hours I walked, seeing Aberdeen fade to a series of wavering, grotesque ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless, and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... down the ice-cliff to the sea-ice, they proceeded towards Castle Rock. While in this course they picked up sledge- tracks, and, following these, they found a route down to the sea-ice. Mackintosh decided to depot the sledge on top of a well-marked undulation and proceed without gear. A short time later the three men, after a scramble over the cliffs of Hut Point, reached the door of ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... another, but only himself, and what we call character-painting is at the best but a poor mixing of painter and painted—a third something between these two, just as what we call colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism. Very likely this is putting the case too strongly. But be this as it may, it is impossible to open a play of Shakespeare’s without being struck with the way in which the meditative side of Shakespeare’s mind strove with and sometimes nearly strangled the dramatic. ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... spot whence we viewed them, looks very much like Beacon Street, in Boston, bordering on the Common, allowing for a considerable enlargement of scale in favor of the Park residences. The Park, however, has not the beautiful elms that overshadow Boston Common, nor such a pleasant undulation of surface, nor the fine off-view of the country, like that across Charles River. I doubt whether London can show so delightful a spot as that Common, always excepting the superiority of English lawns, which, however, is not so evident in the London parks, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stretched south from the great Bapaume-Cambrai road. It was from these trenches that the northern part of the surprise attack against Cambrai was launched on 20th November. The enemy was ensconced in his Hindenburg Line, which took advantage of every undulation in the bare tableland. The villages in our occupation, Hermies, Doignies and Beaumetz, had all shared in the systematic devastation of the spring. The foremost British line was still a matter of partially connected outposts, each Platoon forming as a rule a self-contained ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... autumn along its topmost boughs—the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,—and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver grey, and tender like the down on a bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of the mountains;—these it had been well for them to have seen and drawn, whatever they had left unstudied ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... I who will see strange things," she said; and the prophecy was amply fulfilled. For as they went along the broad path, and came better into view of the splendid undulation of woodland and pasture and fern, when on the one hand they saw the Thames far below them flowing through the green and spacious valley, and on the other hand caught some dusky glimpse of the far white houses of London, it seemed to her that she had got into a new ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of undulation, and of the wave-power in the sea itself, which is always expressed by the serpentine bodies either of the sea-gods or of the sea-horse; and when Athena carries, as she does often in later work, a serpent for her shield-sign, it is not ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... It was rising gradually to my side, within the bell, through the gloom of which the pale skin and light robes sent a sickly gleam. I had no power to move myself away from it. My body was bent so that my face was within a few inches of it; and a slight undulation of the waters that were rising into the bell inch by inch, imparted to the corpse a motion that made it dodge upwards and downwards, as if it made efforts to touch my countenance. All was as silent ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... its strange sheen. It began to lean stiffly toward one side—as if falling. It straightened and leaned the other way. Then undulation crept into it, till the top-end followed the outline of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... developed, it is to be observed, that country is always most beautiful when it is made up of curves, and that one of the chief characters of Ausonian landscape is the perfection of its curvatures, induced by the gradual undulation of promontories into the plains. In suiting architecture to such a country, that building which least interrupts the curve on which it is placed will be felt to be most ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... swayed by the strong current, approached her. Her whole attitude, as she shrank back, suspended from the rope, reminded one of those sea goddesses which sculptors carve upon galleys. A slight tremor, caused partly by the cold and partly by the movement of the river, gave her something of the undulation of the water. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... acknowledging his Supremacy. About two miles from hence is a Curiosity, in the shape of a Building, where, if you fire off a Pistol; the Sound returns about Fifty times. 'Tis done, they told me, by two Parallel Walls of a considerable length, which reverberate the Sound to each other till the undulation is quite spent. The which, being so informed, I was as wise concerning the Echo as I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... form, which, without being absolutely regular, had so near an approach to a circle as to justify the use of the appellation. The face of this charming field was neither waving, or what is called "rolling," nor a dead flat, as often occurs with river bottoms. It had just enough of undulation to prevent too much moisture, and to impart an agreeable variety to its plain. As a whole, it was clear of the forest; quite as much so as if the axe had done its work there a thousand years before, though wood was not wanting. On the contrary, enough ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the sober brown hue which is slowest to show signs of use. One hand lifted her dress daintily above the impurities of the road; the other held a little nosegay of the commonest garden flowers. Noiselessly and smoothly she came on, with a gentle and regular undulation of the print gown; with the love-lock softly lifted from moment to moment in the evening breeze; with her head a little drooped, and her eyes on the ground—in walk, and look, and manner, in every casual movement that escaped her, expressing that subtle mixture of the voluptuous ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... repeats the whole series of transformations (the Mueller-Haeckel "biogenetic-law.") 2. New characters are first acquired by strong adult males (the law of male dominance). 3. New characters appear on definite parts of the body, spreading especially from the rear to the front, (the law of undulation). 4. Varieties are stages in the process of development, through which all the individuals of the respective ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... completely abated, and we had a very fine passage, till within about a hundred miles of our port, when it fell calm. Never do I recollect a more perfect calm. The sea was like lead in colour, but as smooth as glass, though every now and then there came a long, slow, gently-moving undulation, as if there were some unseen power beneath the water. There was something, I thought, very ominous in the whole appearance of the atmosphere. The barometer, the seaman's warning friend, began also to sink, and each hour the quicksilver got lower and lower. Thus ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... railway station drew up on a rise of road fronting an undulation, where our modern English architect's fantasia in crimson brick swept from central gables to flying wings, over pents, crooks, curves, peaks, cowled porches, balconies, recesses, projections, away to a red village of stables and dependent cottages; harmonious in irregularity; and coloured ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a sob in the shadow of the end gallery. We turned back, and the undulation of her walk seemed to throw me ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... mountains mentioned in my former letter, and which I have since distinguished in my map by the name of the Lindesay Range. These mountains terminate abruptly on the west, and I entered a fine open country at their base, from whence plains (or rather open ground of gentle undulation) extended westward as far as could be seen. On turning these mountains I directed my course northward, and to the eastward of north, into the country beyond them, in search of the river KINDUR; and I reached a river flowing westward, the bed of which was deep, broad, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... their graceful carriage, and it is indeed the poetry of motion, singular as it may appear, when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not the simple progressive motion alone, but also the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and the modulation of voice, that engage the beholder and lend a happy charm to every attitude ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... square miles, agitating, by a single impulse, the lakes of Scotland and Sweden, and the islands of the West Indian Sea. Not, however, by a simultaneous shock, for the element of time comes in with the distance of undulation; and, together with this, another complexity of action in the transmission of earthquake movements through the sea, arising from the different rate of progression at different depths. In the fact that the wave of the Lisbon ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... observe how the least change of position—if you do but move an inch—alters the outline and curve of the work; the breast, not visible before, is now apparent as the bust rises; another inch and it becomes a demi-lune, till it swells to its full undulation. At every step the figure alters, but no matter at how many angles it is looked at, it always has beautiful curves. They adapt themselves, these curves, to the position of the eye, and wherever the eye is placed they satisfy its demands for beauty. Examine ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... nothing in the settled portions of Western Australia equal to it, either in extent or quality; but the absence of permanent water is a great drawback; . . . the country is very level, with scarcely any undulation, and becomes clearer ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... its echo reverberated out over the river, every man clutched his musket more firmly. Boom! went a second close upon the first, and each soldier drew a deep breath as if to prepare for some exertion. Boom! went a third, and a restless undulation swept along the lines. Boom! for a fourth time roared a cannon, and some of the men laughed nervously. Boom! rolled out yet a fifth, and the ranks stood tense and rigid, every ear, every ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the snow-field, and on the other stooping in one tremendous cliff to a distorted glacier thousands of feet below. The faint blue line across the upper neve, scarcely distinguishable to the eye, represents to one observer nothing but a trifling undulation; a second, perhaps, knows that it means a crevasse; the mountaineer remembers that it is the top of a huge chasm, thirty feet across, and perhaps ten times as deep, with perpendicular sides of glimmering blue ice, and fringed by thick rows of enormous pendent icicles. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... everywhere audible a deep fundamental tone and a soft continuously-singing upper voice, and you will get the right idea of his playing. But it would be an error to think that Chopin permitted every one of the small notes to be distinctly heard. It was rather an undulation of the A flat major chord, here and there thrown aloft anew by the pedal. Throughout all the harmonies one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody, while once only, in the middle of the piece, besides that chief song, a tenor voice became prominent in the midst of chords. After the Etude ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... field of view and the illumination of the object, increase the motion with which (owing to the earth's motion) the image moves across the field, and magnify all defects due to instability of the stand, imperfection of the object-glass, or undulation of the atmosphere. A good object-glass of three inches aperture will in very favourable weather bear a power of about 300, when applied to the observation of close double or multiple stars, but for all other observations much ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have been trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the least hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury by the wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... with small ponds and marshes, to a small brook twelve feet wide; the Bois des Sioux prairie, a smooth, flat prairie, without knoll or undulation— an immense plain, apparently level, covered with a tall, coarse, dark-colored grass, and unrelieved with the sight of a tree or shrub; firm bottom, but undoubtedly wet in spring; small brook, when the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... and respectability, stood well back from the river, to whose brink the smooth, green lawn swept in scarcely perceptible undulation. The river here was broad, almost resembling an arm of the sea it was moving languidly to join. There was no haste about it, and no fret of ever active current; as all large bodies should, it moved ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... from some association of ideas of innocence that he always annexes to the dove; but, if he pretends to defend the preference he gives to one or the other by endeavouring to prove that this more beautiful form proceeds from a particular gradation of magnitude, undulation of a curve, or direction of a line, or whatever other conceit of his imagination he shall fix on as a criterion of form, he will be continually contradicting himself, and find at last, that the great Mother of Nature will not be subjected to such narrow rules. Among the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the frontier—and set off, at the same astonishing speed that the first had displayed, heading inward from the frontier line. They watched him for about five minutes, and then lost sight of him over the brow of a slight undulation. Beyond the roughly constructed blockhouses there was not a sign of inhabitants in any direction; the land was rough and uncultivated, there were neither cattle nor sheep to be seen; and if, as they strongly suspected, the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... the palace, and the scene became to the eye only a motionless ocean of roofs and gables, amid which one mountainous undulation was distinctly visible. Serapion urged his mule forward, my own at once followed at the same gait, and a sharp angle in the road at last hid the city of S——— for ever from my eyes, as I was destined never to return thither. At ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... call the living—I mourn the dead—I break the lightning." These words are inscribed on the great bell of the Minster of Schaffhausen—also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air caused by the sound of a bell, broke the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... between the surfaces be rarer than the surrounding mediums; then the impulse reflected at the second surface, meeting a subsequent undulation at the first, will render the particles of the rarer medium capable of wholly stopping the motion of the denser and destroying the reflection, while they themselves will be more strongly propelled than if they had been at rest, and the transmitted light will be increased. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... beaten about 'Oval Harbour,' as he named the place, for half an hour, before he was struck by the circumstance that the even character of its surface appeared to be a little disturbed by a slight undulation which seemed to come from its north-eastern extremity. Tacking the Bridget, he stood in that direction, and on reaching the place, found that there was a passage through the rock of about a hundred yards in ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... through which we travelled appeared dreary in the extreme: its level, sandy surface being nowhere varied by the pleasing undulation of hill and dale. This is not the general aspect of Sweden, I know; but, perhaps, I perceive this deficiency the more, being so lately arrived from Denmark, where the landscapes are soft and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... tombs on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their quivering wings. The recently plowed earth, the yellowing roads, the dark woodland, everything was pulsating in weariless undulation. The soil seemed to be clamoring, and its words were the vibrations of the restless little flags. And the thousands of cries, endlessly repeated across the days and nights, were intoning in rhythmic chant the terrible onslaught which this earth had witnessed ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... readiness, according as their direction more or less nearly coincides with the line of the waves. The fissures in the ground generally, though not uniformly, extended in a S.E. and N.W. direction, and therefore corresponded to the lines of undulation or of principal flexure. Bearing in mind all these circumstances, which so clearly point to the S.W. as the chief focus of disturbance, it is a very interesting fact that the island of S. Maria, situated in that quarter, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... occasional baying below, the rustling among the limbs, and the undulation caused by the animals leaping upward among the branches; but they ceased to disturb him after a time, and became like the sound of falling water in the ears of the hunter by his camp-fire. It was not long before slumber stole away his senses, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... had disappeared. The elephants which had taken to flight roamed in the horizon with their fired towers. These burned here and there in the darkness like beacons nearly half lost in the mist; and no movement could be discerned in the plain save the undulation of the river, which was heaped with corpses, and was drifting them away to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... the waterfowl. Ducks swam among the flags, or rose with a rush and splashing. Coots and moorhens dived and hid in the reeds. The lesser grebe sank at the sound of the paddle like a stone. A strong northern diver raised a wave as he hurried away under the water, his course marked by the undulation above him. Sedge-birds chirped in the willows; black-headed buntings sat on the trees, and watched him without fear. Bearded titmice were there, clinging to the stalks of the sedges, and long-necked herons rose from the reedy places where they love to wade. Blue dragon-flies darted to and fro, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... tense minutes Pickett's division disappeared in an undulation of the ground. Then, at less than point-blank range, it seemed to spring out of the very earth, no longer in three lines but one solid mass of rushing gray, cresting, like a tidal wave, to break in fury on the shore. Instantly, as if in answer to a single word, Hunt's guns ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... dye, without we resort to the miraculous, which at once obliterates the connection between cause and effect, which it is the peculiar province of physical science to develop. Let us take another view. The present doctrine of light teaches that light is an undulation of an elastic medium necessarily filling all space; and this branch of science probably rests on higher and surer grounds than any other. Every test applied to it by the refinements of modern skill, strengthens ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... endless space of air, the sun's warmth, the clouds that are described to my understanding spirit, the frequent breaking through the soil of a brook or the expanse of the wind-ruffled lake, the tactual undulation of the hills, which I recall when I am far away from them, the towering trees upon trees as I walk by them, the bearings that I try to keep while others tell me the directions of the various points of the scenery, and you will begin to feel surer of my mental ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... look again. He heard her singing with all the light-heartedness of youth and he caught a few notes as clear and cheerful as a grey bird's. Then, still walking quickly, she dwindled into one bright spot upon the moor, dipped into an undulation, and was gone—a creature of the heath and wild lands whom it seemed impossible to imagine pent ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... crowned with groves of pine, and others exhibiting only barren precipices of grayish marble, except where the crags were tufted with myrtle and other aromatic shrubs. The sea slept in a perfect calm; its waves, dying in murmurs on the shores, flowed with the gentlest undulation, while its clear surface reflected in softened beauty the vermeil tints of the west. Emily, as she looked upon the ocean, thought of France and of past times, and she wished, Oh! how ardently, and vainly—wished! that its waves would bear her to ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... dived while yet well out in the stream, and so entered their door unseen. When they came out they were quite as careful, always swimming some distance under water before coming to the surface. It was several days before my eye could trace surely the faint undulation of the water above them, and so follow their course to their doorway. Had not the water been shallow I should never have found it; for they are the most wonderful of swimmers, making no ripple on the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... which he witnessed in the madua of a temple at Alittane, between Anarajapoora and Dambool. When about a yard apart, each discerned the other and stood still, the spider with his legs slightly bent and his body raised, the cockroach confronting him and directing his antennae with a restless undulation towards his enemy. The spider, by stealthy movements, approached to within a few inches and paused, both parties eyeing each other intently: then suddenly a rush, a scuffle, and both fell to the ground, when the blatta's wings ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... horrible that it had no definite shape. Something bulky, dark, yellowish-black, spotted like a lizard's belly, not a storm-cloud, and not smoke, was crawling with a snake-like motion over the earth. A wide rhythmic undulating movement from above downwards, and from below upwards, an undulation recalling the malignant sweep of the wings of a vulture seeking its prey; at times an indescribably revolting grovelling on the earth, as of a spider stooping over its captured fly.... Who are you, what are ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Silent and uncreated, save the sky: While a brief truce Is made with Death, who shall forbear The little remnant of the past creation, To generate new nations for his use; This remnant, floating o'er the undulation Of the subsiding deluge, from its slime, When the hot sun hath baked the reeking soil Into a world, shall give again to Time 190 New beings—years, diseases, sorrow, crime— With all companionship of hate and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the choir-screen, and falling on her knees at a chair, she buried her face in her hands. She prayed for a long time, and he, standing behind her, could see that she was crying. She wept noiselessly, like women do weep when they are in great, poignant grief. There was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which was hidden ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... reader by explaining the simple process that carried us happily through the deluge. By keeping the canoe bow on, we nobly resisted the shock of every wave, and gradually fell back under the impulse of each undulation. Thus we held on till the heavy clouds discharged their loads, beating down the sea and half filling the canoe with rain water. While the Krooman paddled and steered, I conducted the bailing, and as the African dipper was not sufficient ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... fair boundaries of the counties of Hereford and Worcester rise in a long undulation the sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills. Consulting a big red book on the castles and manors of England, we found Lockley Park to be seated near the base of this grassy range, tho in which county I forget. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... skilful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monotonous surface of Blenheim,—making the most of every undulation,—flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed,— putting in beauty as often as there was a niche for it,—opening vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throwing a veil of impenetrable foliage ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that they must be either overwhelmed in the ruins of the houses or buried in some abyss about to open under their feet; some, falling to their knees in the snow, cry for mercy; others pass the rest of the night in prayer, because the earthquake still continues with a certain undulation, almost like that of ships at sea, and such that some feel from these shocks the same sickness that ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... distance, growing larger and larger as they approached the house and then diminishing again when they had passed it, till they looked like two insects at the end of the long white line which stretched as far as the eye could reach, rising and falling with the undulation of the earth. When the grass again sprang up a little girl passed the gate every morning with two thin cows which browsed along the side of the road, and in the evening she returned, taking, as in the morning, one step every ten minutes as she ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... come to the rod E. Cailliaud and Rosellini show an undulation at the one end a, but do not make the other end clear. Wilkinson shows a small hook at the end a, which appears to me to be a transcriber's development of the curved end of his two predecessors; in the text ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... of this discourse ran into my head, and the dregs of the cup still rested in my hand, when a traveller, as passing by, entered the outer circle of the congregation, and its expiring undulation lit upon him. He sent forth such a groan that the others in sympathy with him joined in lamentation, and the rawest of the assembly bubbled in unison. I exclaimed, "Praise be to God! those far off are present ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... have not heard anything which can prejudice the case of my august client." Darwin's theory was an explanation of phenomena in Natural History, as the undulatory theory was of the phenomena of light. No one objected to the latter because an undulation of light had never been arrested and measured. Darwin offered an explanation of facts, and his book was full of new facts, all bearing on his theory. Without asserting that every part of that theory had ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Convolution. — N. winding &c. v.; convolution, involution, circumvolution; wave, undulation, tortuosity, anfractuosity[obs3]; sinuosity, sinuation[obs3]; meandering, circuit, circumbendibus[obs3], twist, twirl, windings and turnings, ambages[obs3]; torsion; inosculation[obs3]; reticulation &c. (crossing) 219; rivulation[obs3]; roughness &c. 256. coil, roll, curl; buckle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... quiet enough. Treenail was coolness itself, and I aped him as well as I could. The loud murmur, increasing to a roar, of the sea, was trying enough as we approached, buoyed on the last long undulation. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... foot into it. This was fifteen miles from the last camp, and I suppose they had brought on his bag for three or four miles in case they might find him still alive. Half-a-mile from our last camp there was a very large and quite unmistakable undulation, one-quarter to one-third of a mile from crest to crest: the pony walls behind us disappeared almost as soon as we started to go down, and reappeared again on the other side. There were, I feel sure, other rolls, but this was the largest. We have seen ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the lonesome and still snow-covered prairie the steed which they were going to rescue stood on a low mound or undulation of the plain surrounded by wolves. It was a pitiful sight to see the noble mare, almost worn-out with watching and defending herself, while the pack of those sneaking hounds of the wilderness sat or stood around her licking their chops ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... unity, and this is the unity of the clouds, as they are driven by the parallel winds, or as they are ordered by the electric currents, and this the unity of the sea waves, and this of the bending and undulation of the forest masses, and in creatures capable of will it is the unity of will or of inspiration. And there is unity of origin, which we may call original unity, which is of things arising from one spring and source, and speaking always of this their brotherhood, and this in matter is the unity ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the well, or heard across running water, or among the flocks; the tuning of instruments; people with intent faces, as if listening, like those described by Plato in an ingenious passage of the Republic, to detect the smallest interval of musical sound, the smallest undulation in the air, or feeling for music in thought on a stringless instrument, ear and finger refining themselves infinitely, in the appetite for sweet sound; a momentary touch of an instrument in the twilight, as one passes through some unfamiliar ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... hesitated between an instinct which urged him to fly and an instinct which commanded him to remain, he perceived in the snow at his feet, a few steps before him, a sort of undulation of the dimensions of a human body—a little eminence, low, long, and narrow, like the mould over a grave—a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to resemble with wonderful accuracy the average colour and aspect of the soil in the district they inhabit. The Rev. H. Tristram, in his account of the ornithology of North Africa in the 1st volume of the "Ibis," says: "In the desert, where neither trees, brush-wood, nor even undulation of the surface afford the slightest protection to its foes, a modification of colour which shall be assimilated to that of the surrounding country, is absolutely necessary. Hence without exception the upper plumage of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... way in which these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to find how the touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimiled from an etching of Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure and firm lines; it will also show you how ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... of projectiles, etc. The registering drum, T, is revolved by hand through a winch, L, and the time is inscribed thereon by an electric tuning fork, S, set in motion by the large electro-magnet, E F. Each undulation of the curves corresponds to a hundredth of a second. The tuning-fork and the registering electro-magnets, G and H, are placed upon a regulatable support, C, by means of which they may be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... senvola, senintenca. Undignified malinda. Undisciplined malobeema. Undo malfari. Undo (the hair) malligi. Undress (one's self) malvesti, senvestigi. Undulate ondolinii. Undulating ondolinia. Undulation ondolinio. Unearthly supernatura. Uneasiness maltrankvileco. Uneasy maltrankvila. Unemployed senokupa. Unendurable nesuferebla. Unequal neegala. Unerring neerara, certa. Uneven neebena, malglata. Unexpected neatendita. Unexpectedly neatendite. Unexpressed ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... usages of society permitted, seemed to have been formed in a mould, and was very white. His hands were as beautiful as if they had been the works of art. His figure left nothing to be desired, particularly by those who found rather a grace than a defect in a certain light and gentle undulation of the person when he entered a room, and of which you hardly felt tempted to enquire the cause. Indeed it was scarcely perceptible,—the clothes ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... wagons, of all shapes and builds, some of them entirely open and exposed, and others protected more or less by canvas tilts. These wagons seemed to stretch back indefinitely into space, and even when there was no undulation of the surface to obstruct the view, the naked eye could not determine to any degree the length of the procession. Near the front of the great cavalcade was a wagon different in build and appearance to any of the others. It was handsomely and even gaudily decorated, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... in so mighty a ruin perhaps I ought not to allude. I should not presume even to mention that fatal convulsion which shook all Europe and has since left the nations in that state of agitated undulation which succeeds a tempest upon the ocean, were it not for the opportunity it gives me to declare the bounty of my benefactresses. All my own property went down in the wreck; and the mariner who escapes only with his life can never ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... which looked as if they had scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then, and unused to disguise ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... string of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of life along which they are strung like beads, runs unbroken, it is ever that particular line, never any other. It is therefore individual—an individual vital undulation—which is careering through the objective side of Nature, under the impulse of Karma and the creative direction of Tanha and persists through many cyclic changes. Professor Rhys-Davids calls that which passes from personality to personality along the individual chain, "character" ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... fleet began. The bou-boats, two by two, were moored to the harbor wharfs, dipping their masts on the swell as though curtseying to the people ashore, while their hulls went up and down in graceful undulation. Those tiny sea-dogs, with their rough profiles of ancient galleys, made one think of the old armadas of Aragon, or of the fleets of doughty pinnaces with which Roger de Lauria used to spread terror along the coasts ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... heroes, pirates or princes, when they mean to set anything at defiance, choose nothing less than heaven and earth as their object; they divide the world between them as if it were an orange; they rush to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of the head which sends a majestic undulation round the wig worn by them, even by the Moors, as we may see in one of the very rare dramas then published with engravings. They are represented there with embroidered justaucorps, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... alongside, receives its cargo at the gangway, and is then beached through the surf. It is no uncommon circumstance for the boat alongside, assisted by the rolling of the ship, to rise and fall twenty-five feet relatively to the height of the ship's deck at each undulation. Ladies are lashed into chairs, and from the ship's yard-arm lowered into the boat. In 1860 some improvement was effected by the construction of an iron pier, about nine hundred feet in length, and twenty feet in height. But a spacious and sheltered harbour is now being provided, by means of ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... this morning, to the left high hills are picturesquely darkened in the soft and unruffled solemnity of their own still unbroken shade. Opposite, rising in pretty wavy undulation, with occasional abruptions of jagged rock and sunken hollow, the steep hill-sides are brought out in the brightest coloring of delicate light and shade by the golden orb of early morn; towering majestically ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... surely the most beautiful scazons[664] in the Latin tongue; the metre limps no more; a master-hand has wrought it to exquisite melody; the quiet undulation of the sea, the yacht's easy gliding over its surface, live before us in its music. Even more delicate is the homelier description of the gardens of Julius Martialis on the slopes of the Janiculum. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... color of the desert. Thus, for instance, the lion, the antelope, and the wild ass are all sand-colored. "Indeed," says Canon Tristram, "in the desert, where neither trees, brushwood, nor even undulation of the surface afford the slightest protection to its foes, a modification of color which shall be assimilated to that of the surrounding country is absolutely necessary. Hence, without exception, the upper plumage of every bird, whether lark, chat, sylvain, or sand grouse, and also ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... that the water there would be smooth. Nor was I deceived, for I saw that the rock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good way beyond it. I thereupon steered for the starboard of this rock, and when I was within it found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my sail, and, standing to the oar, sculled the boat to a low lump of ice, on to ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... two directions that cross each other at right angles. When the seismograph has been arranged according to such directions, no matter from what part the first horizontal shock comes, one of the four pendulums will be set in motion. If, after the first undulation in one direction, another occurs in the opposite, the pendulum facing the first will in its turn begin to move; and if other undulations make themselves felt in diametrically opposite directions, the other pendulums will begin to act. These pendulums, in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... loudest and most magnificent crescendo, exactly as she pleased. One of her favorite caprices of ornament was to imitate the swell and fall of a bell, making her tones sweep through the air with the most delicious undulation, and, using her voice at pleasure, she would shower her graces in an absolutely wasteful profusion. Her greatest defect was that, while the ear was bewildered with the beauty and tremendous power of her voice, the feelings were untouched: she never touched the ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing colored lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of colored fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... to the hull of the Flying Fish, at one moment lifting her sharp-pointed nose and some twenty feet of her fore-body clear out of the blue, sparkling brine, and anon causing her to dive into the on-coming undulation until she was buried nearly midway to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... imposing impression caused by the extremely subitaneous changes to which these waters are subjected. The wide bosom of the lake that sometimes lies motionless and glassy, without a breath of air to cause the slightest undulation, in a very short time may be scourged by a sudden gale. The wild gambols of the waves, accompanied by the roar of the disturbed elements, may well cause the timid to fear; for, as the swell lifts, you would think the bases of ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Satan. His breath was coming more and more laboured. It seemed to Dan's dim consciousness that some of the spring was gone from that glorious stride which swept on and on with the slightest undulation, like a swallow skimming before the wind; but so long as strength remained he knew that Satan would never falter in his pace. As the delirium swept once more shadow-like on his brain, he allowed himself to fall forward, ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... with his skirmishers, lost sight of the blue infantry now behind an orchard-clad undulation. "Billy Maydew! come climb this tree and tell ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... sunset on those purple fields; and a score of cities flash back the last red light, which shows each inequality and undulation of Lombardy outspread four thousand feet beneath. Both ranges, Alps and Apennines, are clear to view; and all the silvery lakes are over-canopied and brought into one picture by flame-litten mists. Monte ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ocean stretch'd immense survey, Deep, deep beneath; and triumphing in pride, With clouds and winds commixed, innumerous ride; 'Tis wild obstreperous clangour all, and heaven Whirls, in tempestuous undulation driven. Nor less the alarm that shook the world below, Where marched in pomp of war the embattled foe; Where mannikins with haughty step advance, And grasp the shield, and couch the quivering lance; To right and left the lengthening lines they ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... Wave (noun), billow, breaker, swell, ripple, undulation. Wave (verb), brandish, flourish, flaunt, wigwag. Weariness, languor, lassitude, enervation, exhaustion. Wearisome, tiresome, irksome, tedious, humdrum. Wet (adjective), humid, moist, damp, dank, sodden, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
