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Axis   /ˈæksəs/   Listen
Axis

noun
(pl. axes)
1.
A straight line through a body or figure that satisfies certain conditions.
2.
The main stem or central part about which plant organs or plant parts such as branches are arranged.
3.
In World War II the alliance of Germany and Italy in 1936 which later included Japan and other nations.
4.
A group of countries in special alliance.  Synonym: bloc.
5.
The 2nd cervical vertebra; serves as a pivot for turning the head.  Synonym: axis vertebra.
6.
The center around which something rotates.  Synonym: axis of rotation.



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"Axis" Quotes from Famous Books



... the greenness of my youth I believed that the human animal is before all things inclined to sexual intercourse. But that was a wanton error, as it is quite clear that human beings are more interested in conserving their own life than in giving life to others. Hunger is the axis of humanity; but after all, as it seems to be useless to discuss the matter any further, I'll say, with your permission, that the life of mortals has two poles—hunger and love. And here it is that ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... velocity becomes more striking. In converting cast into wrought-iron, a mass of metal, of about a hundredweight, is heated almost to white heat, and placed under a heavy hammer moved by water or steam power. This is raised by a projection on a revolving axis; and if the hammer derived its momentum only from the space through which it fell, it would require a considerably greater time to give a blow. But as it is important that the softened mass of red-hot ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... clay-slate, and rocks of similar origin resting upon an axis of granite. Porphyry has been found in one locality. According to the geologists there are indications of gold and other precious metals, and I would not be surprised if a thorough exploration led to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... advantage," said Alice, who felt very glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. "Just think what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis—" ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... conference followed Hero Giles down a short corridor, through a couple of doors and into a chamber where a huge disc of crystal stood on edge fixed upon an axis above a bewildering array ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle to their hushed pursuits as if nothing had happened! Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war! And you sit down, crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no more, and smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one, you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... questions to ask: the Cycas observed was a huge seed in a broad and very shallow pot with cocoa-nut fibre as I suppose. It was named only Cycas. Was it Cycas pectinata? I suppose that I cannot be wrong in believing that what first appears above ground is a true leaf, for I can see no stem or axis. Lastly, you may remember that I said that we could not raise Opuntia nigricans; now I must confess to a piece of stupidity; one did come up, but my gardener and self stared at it, and concluded that it could not be a seedling Opuntia, but now ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... is desirable to replace the colored lines indicating the constructions, the axis, projections, etc., by differently punctuated lines made with India ink. However, if the use of colors be obligatory on the original design, one should trace the red lines with very thick vermilion or sienna, the yellow lines with gamboge, and the blue and green ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor's walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular sweep towards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as though he were saying, 'Can anybody ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... I had a glimpse.... I was in the bedroom, near the windows, all the time, but nevertheless I was nowhere, nowhere in space. I could feel the roll of the earth as it turned lumberingly on its axis—a faint shaking which did not affect me. Still, I was in the bedroom, near the windows. And I had a glimpse.... The heralds of a new vitality swept trumpeting through me, and a calm, intense, ineffable joy followed in their train. I had a glimpse.... And my eyes were not dazzled. I yearned and strained ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... cordial, as well as the calm, confiding air of the Brahmin, contributed to restore me to my self-possession. The reader will recollect, that although our motion, at first, partook of that of the earth's on its axis, and although the positive effect was the same on our course, the relative effect was less and less as we ascended, and consequently, that after a certain height, every part of the terraqueous globe would present itself to our view in succession, as we rapidly receded from it. At 9 ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... in parallel planes. It is directed along a line perpendicular to the plane of vibration at its center, and approaches infinity as the angle theta approaches the limit of Pi divided by two. Therefore, by shifting the axis of rotation or the plane of vibration thus making theta vary between the limits of zero and ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... the position of the earth and sun, and formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed their situation. I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes varied the ecliptick of the sun: but I have found it impossible to make a disposition, by which the world may be advantaged; what one region gains, another loses by an imaginable alteration, even without considering the distant parts of the solar system, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... Possibly these several differences may be connected with the different flow of nutriment towards the central and external flowers. We know, at least, that with irregular flowers those nearest to the axis are most subject to peloria, that is to become abnormally symmetrical. I may add, as an instance of this fact, and as a striking case of correlation, that in many pelargoniums the two upper petals in the central flower of the truss often lose their patches of darker colour; and when ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... Bridges.—The largest movable bridges revolve about a vertical axis. The bridge is carried on a circular base plate with a central pivot and a circular track for a live ring and conical rollers. A circular revolving platform rests on the pivot and rollers. A toothed arc fixed to the revolving platform or to the live ring serves to give ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... verifying the motion of the earth, viz., by observing whether or not bodies that fall from a considerable height descend in a vertical direction; for if the earth were at rest the body would describe exactly a vertical line; whereas if it revolved round its axis, the falling body must deviate from the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... smaller-sized leaves, close by the side of their like. Round the axis compress'd ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... great river with its rapids, with its deep and silent places, a river of uncertain droughts, a river of overwhelming floods, a river no one who would escape drowning may afford to ignore. Moreover, it is the very axis and creator of our world valley, the source of all our power in life, and the irrigator of all things. In the microcosm of each individual, as in the microcosm of the race, this flood is a ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... and Africa, which would otherwise have been visible to me, and the shadow of darkness was steadily creeping across the Atlantic Ocean, as the Earth revolved upon its axis. I could not suppress a shudder at the thought that I must cover that enormous distance ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... this figure, while the hands are pressed as before against the waist, with the elbows thrown well away from the body, the performer sways the pelvis and central axis of the trunk in a circular or elliptical orbit, a movement, which, carried to the extreme, is ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... The Creator being intelligent, it is impossible to conceive them placed fortuitously. There must then be a link between Mars and Jupiter, because the law once established cannot be broken. The same law may be observed in the arrangement of leaves around the axis of a plant. If intelligence arranged them they must be arranged in some order, for intelligence never performs the least act without a purpose. Each leaf or pair of leaves is not a mere duplication of the previous leaf or pair of leaves. The relation which subsists ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter

... The Constellation of Orion (Hubble) 2. The Great Nebula in Orion (Pease) 3. Model by Ellerman of summit of Mount Wilson, showing the observatory buildings among the trees and bushes 4. The 100-inch Hooker telescope 5. Erecting the polar axis of the 100-inch telescope 6. Lowest section of tube of 100-inch telescope, ready to leave Pasadena for Mount Wilson 7. Section of a steel girder for dome covering the 100-inch telescope, on its way up Mount Wilson 8. Erecting the steel building and revolving dome that cover the Hooker ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... turba, laceratis comas miserumque tunsae pectus effuso genas fletu rigatis? levia perpessae sumus, si flenda patimur. Ilium vobis modo, mihi cecidit olim, cum ferus curru incito mea membra raperet et gravi gemeret sono Peliacis axis pondere Hectoreo tremens. tunc obruta atque eversa quodcumque accidit torpens malis rigeusque sine sensu fero. iam erepta Danais coniugem sequerer meum, nisi hic teneret: hic meos animos domat morique prohibet; cogit hic aliquid deos adhuc ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... against a board, and not bearing its own weight. And in laying them on the bench or in lifting them off it, you must first place them so that the middle line of them corresponds with the edge of the bench, or table, and then turn them on that as an axis, quickly, so that they do not bear their own weight longer than necessary (figs. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... in Indiana seems to drift into story-telling inevitably. John Ware once read a paper before the Indianapolis Literary Club to prove that this Hoosier trait was derived from the South. He drew a species of ellipsoid of which the Ohio River was the axis, sketching his line to include the Missouri of Mark Twain, the Illinois of Lincoln, the Indiana of Eggleston and Riley, and the Kentucky that so generously endowed these younger commonwealths. North of the Ohio the anecdotal genius diminished, he declared, as one moved toward ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... wooden houses and roughly cultivated the land. Otherwise we are under the same green mantle of forest which extends everywhere over the mountains; and though we are now piercing straight through the main axis of the Himalaya, we seldom catch even a glimpse of the snowy heights ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... gay doings in its time; for of all the boys who had climbed over it, not one had ever stood on his head upon each of the big balls which ornamented the posts, hung by his heels from the arch, gone round and round like a wheel with the bar for an axis, played a tattoo with his toes while holding on by his chin, walked about the wall on his hands, or closed the entertainment by festooning himself in an airy posture over the side of the lantern frame, and kissing his hand to the audience, as a well-bred Cupid ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... be made in the side of a limb or trunk the same procedure is followed except that it is necessary before making the slot to remove a notch of bark, at right angles to the axis of the trunk, so as to free the upper end of the tongue ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... development of each, that, though both skull and vertebral column are segmented, the one and the other, after an early stage, are fashioned on lines so different as to exclude all possibility of regarding the detailed features of each as mere modifications of a type repeated along the axis of the body. 'The spinal column and the skull start from the same primitive condition, whence they immediately begin to diverge.' 'It may be true to say that there is a primitive identity of structure ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... is self-containing is also contained, and therefore not one but two. This being premised, let us consider whether one is capable either of motion or rest. For motion is either change of substance, or motion on an axis, or from one place to another. But the one is incapable of change of substance, which implies that it ceases to be itself, or of motion on an axis, because there would be parts around the axis; and any other ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... the by, Pratt, Kate has us completely. What fools we two are! Mr. Rumgudgeon, the matter stands thus: the earth, you know, is twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. Now this globe of the earth turns upon its own axis—revolves—spins round—these twenty-four thousand miles of extent, going from west to east, in precisely twenty-four hours. Do you understand ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... soundings indicated that there is a deep subaqueous channel traversing the whole Lake in its greatest dimension, or south and north. Beginning at the southern end, near the Lake House, and advancing along the long axis of the Lake directly north towards the Hot Springs at the northern end—a distance of about eighteen miles—we ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... under a deluge of commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of education, and a weakness of character which can only be expressed by the old word "weathercock." Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most remarkable woman in ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... itself to the bottom of the still, where it burns, and gives a very bad taste to the whiskey. In order to remedy this inconvenience, it has been imagined to stir the flour incessantly, by means of a chain dragged at the bottom of the still, and put in motion by an axis passing through the cap, and turned by a workman until the ebullition takes place. This axis, however well fitted to the aperture, leaves an empty space, and gives an issue to the spirituous vapors, which escaping with rapidity, thereby occasion a ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie

... the high-pressure turbines. The framework of the planes consisted of hollow rods made of an aluminum alloy of high tensile strength, and the canvas stretched over the frames was laced with wire of the same material. To stiffen the planes, a bracket was clamped at the axis, and thin wire stays were strung top and bottom, as the masts of a yacht are supported. The airman was in some degree protected from the wind by a strong talc screen, also wire-laced; by means of this, and a light radiator worked by a number of accumulators, he was enabled to resist the cold, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... by vast tents or awnings. Bishop Chuff, with his customary perspicacity, made it plain that one of the chief causes of temptation was hot weather, which causes immoderate thirst. In order to lessen the amount of thirst in the population he suggested that it might be feasible to shift the axis of the earth, so that the climate of the United States would become perceptibly cooler and the torrid zone would be transferred to the area of the North Pole. This would have the supreme advantage of melting all the northern ice-cap and providing ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... or three breaks. The dark floor appears to be devoid of detail. Schmidt, however, draws two large irregular mounds E. of the centre, and shows four narrow light streaks crossing the interior nearly parallel to the longer axis of ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... and Buddhism occupy the opposite poles of the same axis of thought,—if the system of Confucius stands opposed, on another axis, to that of Zoroaster,—we find a third development of like polar antagonisms in the systems of ancient Egypt and Greece. Egypt stands for Nature; Greece for ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... Ahaz, ten degrees backward." Here it is manifest that to human vision the sun, and with it the shadow, went backward ten degrees. How this was accomplished we need not attempt to determine. We are not shut up to the supposition that the earth was turned back on her axis ten degrees, nor that the rays of the sun were miraculously deflected ten degrees (which would change his apparent position in the heavens ten degrees), nor to any other particular hypothesis. If God chose that the sun should to human vision go backward ten degrees, he could ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... of 2000 lbs. were hung to the lowest end of a vertical beam, so that the line of action of the weight and axis of the beam formed one and the same straight line—the tension on the beam would be 2000 lbs. But, if the beam were inclined, and the force acted in a vertical direction, then the strain would be increased in the ratio of the increase of the diagonal of inclination over the vertical;—suppose ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower

... clutch of thoughts he had never before harbored in his sunny nature. Grim, ugly thoughts they were, and not nice to remember afterward. They swung persistently around a central subject, as the earth revolves around the sun; and, like the earth, they turned and turned on the axis of ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... took the letters and waved them philosophically at the valet. 'Leave me to my thoughts,' he said thickly, but with considerable dignity. 'I am not interested in the squeaky jarring of the world revolving on its rusty axis.' ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can put wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill. Still the case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did not make the principle that gives the wheels those powers. This principle is as unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... present time, we are ignorant, as I have already remarked, of any internal necessity—any mechanical law of nature—which (like the beautiful law which connects the square of the periods of revolution with the cube of the major axis) represents the above-named elements—the absolute magnitude of the planets, their density, flattening at the poles, velocity of rotation, and presence or absence of moons—of the order of succession of the individual planetary bodies of each group, in their dependence upon the distances. Although ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... sympathy. In the same way, his sway over the literary mind is destined to be one of no secondary degree. "Deeds are the offspring of words," says Heine; "Goethe's pretty words are childless." Not so with Hawthorne's. Hawthorne's repose is the acme of motion; and though turning on an axis of conservatism, the radicalism of his mind is irresistible; he is one of the most powerful because most unsuspected revolutionists of the world. Therefore, not only is he an incalculable factor in private character, but in addition his unnoticed ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... the insect for a moment with the end of her spinnerets; then, with her front tarsi, she sets her victim spinning. The Squirrel, in the moving cylinder of his cage, does not display a more graceful or nimbler dexterity. A cross-bar of the sticky spiral serves as an axis for the tiny machine, which turns, turns swiftly, like a spit. It is a treat to the eyes ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... on the list, present the most mark'd indications. Comprehending artists in a mass, musicians, painters, actors, and so on, and considering each and all of them as radiations or flanges of that furious whirling wheel, poetry, the centre and axis of the whole, where else indeed may we so well investigate the causes, growths, tally-marks of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... have specimens of my productions. They would give any price for them. The peeries were turned with perfect accuracy, and the steel shod, or spinning pivot, was centred so as to correspond exactly with the axis of the top. They could spin twice as long as the bought peeries. When at full speed they would "sleep," that is, revolve without the slightest waving. This was considered high art as ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds, but the second is the determining power of mechanical measurement, though it is derived mainly by the movement of the earth around the sun and the turning of the earth on its axis. Mechanically we have derived the second as the unit. It is easy for us to think in hours or days or weeks, though it may be the seconds tick off unnoticed {59} and the years glide by unnoticed; but it is difficult to think in centuries—more difficult ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... waited, until he seemed to be in position. This time he threw the bottle away from it. It added spin to his vertical axis, but the rope came ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey

... bones; it has forged as many thumbscrews; it has built as many dungeons; it has ostracised as many scholars and philosophers; it has set itself against light and pushed as hard to make the earth revolve the other way on its axis, as any other force of mischief of whatever ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... strong cylinders furnished a means of breathing, and there were tiny electric lights operated by a storage battery. There was also a chamber to be filled with the lifting gas. The cylinder was so arranged that it would float on it's long axis if thrown into the water. A trap door hermetically sealed gave access to the interior. A small propeller, worked by ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... long country walks, during which he incessantly asked for information. For the science of astronomy he evinced an early taste. When a very little boy, I began to teach him the names and positions of the principal constellations, the revolutions of the earth on its axis, and the fixity of the polar star. I believe we were the first to notice a comet in 1845, which was only a short time visible here, having a south declination, and which we afterwards knew to have been a fine ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... conduct during the next three weeks forms the most brilliant military effort of the whole war. The islands of St. Kitt's and Nevis (Plates XVIII. and XIX.) being separated only by a narrow channel, impracticable for ships-of-the-line, are in effect one, and their common axis lying northwest and southeast, it is necessary for sailing-ships, with the trade wind, to round the southern extremity of Nevis, from which position the wind is fair to reach all anchorages on the lee side of the islands. Basse Terre is about twelve ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... be determined, and the apparent solar time obtained. The clock consisted of a spy-glass, having a nichol or double-image prism for an eye-piece, and a thin plate of selenite for an object-glass. When the tube was directed to the North Pole—that is, parallel to the earth's axis—and the prism of the eye-piece turned until no colour was seen, the angle of turning, as shown by an index moving with the prism over a graduated limb, gave the hour of day. The device is of little service ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... I am more like the Arab look to the stars for something sublime and unchanging among all the bright lights that hang and move in the firmament. The North Star Appears to be the most important. The Axis on which our Earth daily turns. The point from which all Mariners calculate their course in mid ocean, and safely guides Them from continent to continent. Without the North Star there would be no Magnetic ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... transmitted and intensified by selective breeding had been so well established and was so widely known long before Mr. Darwin was born, that he can no more be said to have proved it than Newton can be said to have proved the revolution of the earth on its own axis. Every breeder throughout the world had known it for centuries. I believe even Virgil ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... labour as before. The canal being a quarter of a mile broad, and three hundred yards in depth, I thought it sufficient, and immediately let in the waters of the sea. I did imagine, that from the rotatory motion of the earth on its axis from west to east the sea would be higher on the eastern than the western coast, and that on the uniting of the two seas there would be a strong current from the east, and it happened just as I expected. The sea came in with tremendous magnificence, and enlarged the bounds of the canal, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... to think for a moment. We have left the earth, and are many thousands of miles away from it. You know that which causes night and day on the earth is the rotation of it on its axis. Half the time the part we are living on is turned away from the sun, and the other half of the time turned toward the sun. Now, the sun is fixed in space. We are also in space, and we are so comparatively small that there will never be any shadows to cause night. We are like a small point ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... the panther and leopard, the cheetah, and various other large Jelidae, roam through its jungly coverts; the wild elephant, the rhinoceros, and gyal, are found in its forests; and the sambur and axis browse on its grassy glades. Venomous snakes, hideous lizards, and bats, with the most beautiful of birds and butterflies, all find a home in ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... through the countryside. The orderly fields stretched away toward gentle slopes on which cows were grazing. Here and there a village abruptly spread out its roofs, which rotated on the axis of a spire. All the windows gave back the light of late afternoon; and far off, against a hollow between two hills, like wine in a cup, there was a ruddy flash of water. It was the Sound; and beyond ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... in Fig. 13, so as to have a gradual shearing action commencing at the center and traveling round to the circumference. Its form may be explained by imagining the upper cutter of a shearing machine being rolled upon itself so as to form a cylinder of which its long edge is the axis. The die being quite flat, it follows that the shearing action proceeds from the center to the circumference, just as in a shearing machine it travels from the deeper to the shallower end of the upper cutter. The latter is not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... mind—that the means which have been adduced to explain the origin of the species by 'natural selection,' or a process of variation from external influences, are inadequate to account for the phenomena. The law of phyllotaxis, which governs the evolution of leaves around the axis of a plant, is as nearly constant in its manifestation as any of the physical laws connected with the material world. Each instance, however different from another, can be shown to be a term of some series of continued fractions. When this is coupled with the geometrical ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... for vertical and horizontal observations. Another apparatus provides for the detection and measurement of the flexure of the tube. Much trouble was experienced in securing a good casting for the steel axis of the instrument. Three were found imperfect under the lathe, and the fourth was chosen; but even then the pivots were made in separate pieces, which were set in very deeply and welded. Dr. Gould said he had been requested by the gentlemen ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... Connel. His voice was strangely quiet. "Junior spins on its axis in two hours, just as Earth spins in twenty-four hours. I thought we had the explosions timed so at the proper moment we'd push Junior out of his orbit around Tara, and the greater orbit around Alpha Centauri, by utilizing both speeds, plus the initial thrust. ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... of dressing with the onset of Tono-Bungay and rarely abandoned it. He preferred silk hats with ample rich brims, often a trifle large for him by modern ideas, and he wore them at various angles to his axis; his taste in trouserings was towards fairly emphatic stripes and his trouser cut was neat; he liked his frock-coat long and full, although that seemed to shorten him. He displayed a number of valuable rings, and I remember one upon his left little finger with a large red stone bearing ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... calcareous cliffs that occur here and between Maamloo and Moosmai, a group of several magnificent specimens, of which on the succeeding day we brought home three. We saw none above 30 feet, although the specimen in the British Museum from these hills measures 45. Their axis is of small diameter, and is nearly cylindrical, the vascular fascicles being disposed in covered bundles, often assuming the form of a UU near the circumference of the very dense cellular tissue of which the axis is chiefly composed. Towards the base it is enveloped ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... the office of Ward and Barclay, the partners retired into their respective worlds and went sailing through space, each world upon its own axis. The general in a desultory way began writing letters to reformers urging them to prepare for the coming struggle; but John was head over heels in the business of the Golden Belt Wheat Company, and in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... stone and earth and chalk are thrown together in confusion, as so many materials for creating a new world. Those who traverse these Saharan desolations, cannot but receive the impression, that old mother earth, slung on her balance, and revolving on her axis, has performed eternal cycles of decay and reproduction. Time was, when these heaps of desolation were fruitful fields of waving corn and smiling meadows, and fair branching woods, meandered about with running rills of silvery streams, where cattle pastured ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... contracts between the extremes of temperature from 14 to 16 inches; the vertical rise and fall in the centre of the main span ranges between 2 ft. 3 in. and 2 ft. 9 in.; and before the suspenders were attached to the cable it actually revolved on its own axis through an arc of thirty degrees, when exposed to the sun shining upon it on one side. You do not perceive this motion, and you would know nothing about it unless you watched the gauges which ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... not at the central part as usual, but too much to the left, perhaps a pupil or assistant had bored the hole at the junction. There were besides, some tinkerings by modern regulators endeavouring to counteract the uneven strain over the instrument. The right spot, or it may be called the axis of the instrument, having been found, the peghole was neatly and permanently plugged, and a fresh one bored, which allowed the strain to be better distributed. The result was satisfactory and delightful; the tone of much power and purity had free play in manifesting itself, and the violin was enabled ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... brilliant space-worlds would shine down on you. But the heavens have not altered, and the shaft of the pyramid is not guilty, so to speak, of unorthodoxy. A new view of the heavens has quietly come, for the earth's axis has changed its place. Similarly, it is the work of the spirit of the ascended Jesus to advance the axis of the Church of God from glory to glory. Conceptions of the Universal Soul once prominent before the telescope of human faith and aspiration grow, enlarge, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... to the Direction of the Break.—Transverse fractures are those in which the bone gives way more or less exactly at right angles to its long axis. These usually result from direct violence or from end-to-end pressure. Longitudinal fractures extending the greater part of the length of a long bone are exceedingly rare. Oblique fractures are common, and result usually from indirect violence, bending, or torsion (Fig. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... system, running parallel to the Atlantic coast, and ending in northern Alabama, forms the geological axis of the southern states. Bordering the mountains proper is a broad belt of hills known as the Piedmont or Metamorphic region, marked by granite and other crystalline rocks, and having an elevation decreasing ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey

... purpose ... [the difficulties] arose, not from any defect in my process, but were owing to the small quantity of the metal operated upon and the imperfect arrangement of the purifying vessel, which ought to be so constituted that it may be turned upon an axis, the blast taken off, the alloy added and the steel poured out through a spout ... Such a purifying vessel Mr. Bessemer has delineated in one of ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop

... some in winds blow with impetuous force, And carry ruin where they bend their course, While some conspire to form a gentle breeze, To fan the air, and play among the trees; How some, enrag'd, grow turbulent and loud, Pent in the bowels of a frowning cloud, That cracks, as if the axis of the world Was broke, and heav'n's bright tow'rs were downwards hurl'd. He sung how earth's wide ball, at Jove's command, Did in the midst on airy columns stand; And how the soul of plants, in prison held, And bound with sluggish fetters, lies ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... is familiar to every school-child throughout the civilized world, and yet that man never knew a happy day. He was reviled, persecuted, martyred, tried, condemned, and died sorrowful and broken-hearted. And what was his offense? He declared that this earth turned upon its axis and that it moved around the sun. There were no newspapers in that day, but every pulpit thundered its denunciation against the great Galileo. When he was condemned to die he was compelled to renounce this belief, but ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... of the mountain, an' turns to the four corners of the heavens, to thry if he can see it; an' when he finds that he cannot, he goes back to Beal Derg. who, afther the other touches him, starts up and axis him, 'Is the time come?' He replies, 'No; the man is, but the hour is not!' an' that instant they're both asleep again. Now, you see, while the soger is on the mountain top, the mouth of the cave is ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... appears to us that night and darkness are caused by the going down of the sun, but the real truth is that the sun always shines and that night and darkness are caused by the earth's diurnal revolution on its axis. It will therefore be seen that if the Sacred Scriptures are the Word of God and in accordance with His works, they must contain both apparent and ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... guided by the workmen by means of iron handles clamped to it at a distance from the heated part, as seen in the engraving in the adjoining column. The hammer is lifted by means of the cam below it, as seen in the engraving below. This cam is a projection from an axis revolving beneath the floor, and which, as it revolves, carries the cams successively against a projection upon the under side of the hammer, which is partly concealed in the engraving by the figure of the man. When the point of the cam has passed beyond the projection it allows ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... Compared with Goethe we feel that he lacks that serene impartiality of mind which results from breadth of culture; nay, he seems narrow, insular, almost provincial. He reminds us of those saints of Dante who gather brightness by revolving on their own axis. But through this very limitation of range he gains perhaps in intensity and the impressiveness which results from eagerness of personal conviction. If we read Wordsworth through, as I have just done, we find ourselves changing our mind about him at every other page, so uneven is he. If we read ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... Throwing an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, Wherein you burn... You of unknown voltage Whirling on your axis... Scrawling vermillion signatures Over the night's velvet hoarding... Insolent, towering spherical ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... universe from me. I beheld the globe hanging in space, a vast independent world and yet a mere speck among countless myriads of other worlds. Its rotations were so vivid in my mind that I seemed to hear it hum as it spun round and round its axis. The phenomena producing day and night and the four seasons were as real to me as the things that took place in my restaurant. The earth was being disclosed to my mental vision as a whole and in detail. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities. We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land. It is so, now in the case of an artist, a person seeking for instruction and change; now in the case of a business man who desires to escape the consequences of some scandalous ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... dimensions, but instead of being black it was entirely sheathed with plates of brass, walls, ceiling, and floor,—tarnished now, and turning green, but still brilliant under the lantern light. In the middle stood an oblong altar of porphyry, its longer dimensions on the axis of the suite of rooms, and at one end, opposite the range of doors, a pedestal of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... is a view of a flying-machine. In the midst of a frame of light wood sits the operator, steadying himself with one hand, and with the other fuming a cremaillere, which appears to give a very quick rotatory movement to two glass globes revolving upon a vertical axis. The friction of the globes is supposed to develop electricity to which his power of ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... him. For his part, sitting at the turning of the world, he was rejoiced to see behind him the tragic splendor of the night, and, in front of him, the smile of young hope, the uncertain beauty of the fresh, fevered dawn. And he was at the stationary point of the axis of the pendulum while the clock was beginning to go again. Without following its onward march, he listened joyfully to the beating of the rhythm of life. He joined in the hope of those who denied his past agonies. What would be, would be, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... or highest level of it is in the southwest; longest diameter is from northwest to southeast. From Crossen, whither Friedrich is now driving, to the Jablunka Pass, which issues upon Hungary, is above 250 miles; the AXIS, therefore, or longest diameter, of our Ellipse we may call 230 English miles;—its shortest or conjugate diameter, from Friedland in Bohemia (Wallenstein's old Friedland), by Breslau across the Oder to the Polish Frontier, is about 100. The total ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... awhirl, Like the rolling of a pearl; Yet these but illustrate, To fools, the final state. The earth's great axis spinning on, The never-resting pole of sky — Let us resolve their Whence and Why, And blend with all things into One; Beyond the bounds of thought and dream, Circling the vasty void as spheres Whose orbits round a thousand years: Behold the ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng

... half an inch in diameter, if discharged at great pressure equivalent to a column of water of 500 metres, cannot be cut even with an axe, it resists as though it were made of the hardest steel; a thin cord, hanging from a vertical axis, and being revolved very quickly, becomes rigid, and if struck with a hammer it resists and resounds like a rod of wood; a thin chain and even a loop of string, if revolved at great speed over a vertical pulley, becomes rigid ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... May 15, 1915. On the same day, with all his available strength, he swung furiously with Opatow as an axis from both north and south, catching in bayonet charge the Twenty-fifth Division on the road between Lagow and Opatow. Simultaneously another portion of his command swept up on the Fourth Division coming from Ivaniska to Opatow. "In the meantime a strong ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... were incoherent—a queer jumble of mental impulses which seemed to lead her always back to the harrowing realization that she had lost her father. That was the gigantic axis around which her whole mental structure revolved. It was staggering, stupefying, and her ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my inexpressibles. This buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat rusty, turned with great difficulty on their axis. I brought them, however, after some trouble, at right angles to the body of the buckle, and was glad to find them remain firm in that position. Holding the instrument thus obtained within my teeth, I now proceeded to untie the knot of my cravat. I had to rest several times ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... to the ladle crane of a large sized converter. The sweep of the crane is such as to allow the converter to be brought close up to the tap hole of the blast furnace or cupola, so that the use of open gutters for the fluid metal may be avoided as much as possible. The converter is turned on its axis by a screw and worm wheel, which is manipulated by a workman standing on a platform at the opposite arm of the crane. The blast is brought in from above by a pipe down the central pillar of the crane, which is connected with the blast-main by a flexible tube and packed joint. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... on the bronzed faces of either the native Indian, or the almost as wild Backwoodsman, compose an extraordinary scene: the silence of the night is undisturbed, save by the gurgling noise of the paddles, as guided by the point of the spear; the canoe whirls on its axis with an almost dizzing velocity, or the sudden dash of the spear, followed by the struggles of the transfixed fish, or perhaps the characteristic "Eh," from the Indian steersman. In this manner, sometimes fifty or sixty fish of three or four ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... artists but of different epochs, and that all investigations concerning the place of their origin, their age, their individual merit must be undertaken together. Winckelmann, with his unerring perception, soon found that this was the axis on which the entire knowledge of art revolves. He confined himself at first to the most sublime works, which he intended to present in a treatise, Concerning the Style of Sculpture in the Age of Phidias, but he soon rose above these details to the idea of a history of art, and discovered a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... perhaps, the most important invention for facilitating manufactures, is what is called the 'Turpin Wheel,' taking its name from the inventor. How simple may be the birth of a great idea! We all observe that a log under a waterfall, coming down perpendicularly upon it, spins round, as on an axis, till it escapes. This led to the invention in question. The water falls upon the spokes of a horizontal wheel, which it sends round with great velocity; and by this contrivance the force of the water is more than doubled. I must not omit to mention the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various

... publication in folio by Firmin-Didot, Paris a travers les Ages, gives the following description of the amphitheatre of Lutetia. "But few constructions are visible around the arena, elliptic in shape and measuring fifty-four metres on its long axis and forty-seven on the short one. This was the space reserved for the combats of animals, for the hunts and other spectacles. A podium, or enclosing wall, surrounded this arena in its entire circuit, and the thickness of this wall was such that it resisted ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... earth does," replied his chum; "or, rather, to be more exact, it rotates exactly as the earth does, on its axis; but, in doing this it occupies precisely the same time that it takes to make a revolution about our planet. So that, in the long run, to quote from my astronomy, it keeps the same side always toward the earth; and today, or, to be more correct, each night that the moon is visible, we ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood

... encouragement. They spoke to each other in whispers, of the devils of Woodstock, who might be all the while decoying them forward to a room said to exist in the Palace, where the floor, revolving on an axis, precipitated those who entered into a bottomless abyss. Humgudgeon hinted, that he had consulted the Scripture that morning by way of lot, and his fortune had been to alight on the passage, "Eutychus fell down ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... basis, get into. They would cut the world loose from its assigned order of dependence on Divine Law, and "set it a-going on its own hook." But the trouble is, they have no support for this turtle; they have an earth without axis. The Public School savans would have a self-supporting, a self-adjusting, and a self-created State, balanced on nothing, resting on nothing, responsible to nothing, and believing in nothing but in its own perfection and immortality. ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... been the responsibilities of the Secretary of State and the Viceroy for the government of India "as by law established," they were on this occasion vastly greater. For two men of widely different temperaments had to work out together a scheme for shifting the very axis of government. They rose to the occasion. The Montagu-Chelmsford Report will rank with the great State papers which are landmarks of constitutional progress in the history of the British Empire. It falls naturally ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... of action is the result of the deepest calm of heart; just as the motion of this solid, and, as we feel it to be, immovable world, is far more rapid through the abysses of space, and on its own axis, than any of the motions of the things on its surface. So the quiet heart, 'which moveth altogether if it move at all,' rests whilst it moves, and moves the more swiftly because of its unbroken repose. That peace of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... endless repetitions of the act of passing through. When two individuals are in the same cage, they frequently dance together, sometimes moving in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. Often, as one spins rapidly about a vertical axis, the other runs around the first in small circles; or again, both may run in a small circle in the same direction, so that their bodies form a living ring, which, because of the rapidity of their movements, ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... an hour's waiting one of the Roman candles went off with vast eclat, and after it two crackers simultaneously gave chase to the operator half-way round the lawn. One of the Catherine-wheels was also prevailed upon to give a few languid rotations on its axis, and some of the squibs, which had unfortunately got damp, condescended, after being inserted bodily into the lantern, to go off. Presently, however, the wind got into the lantern, and the matches being by this time exhausted, and the starlights refusing to depart from their usual abhorrence ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... Constantinople found their principal recreation in the chariot-races held in the Hippodrome, now the At Meidan, to the west of the mosque of Sultan Ahmed. So much did the race-course (begun by Severus but completed by Constantine) enter into the life of the people that it has been styled "the axis of the Byzantine world." It was not only the scene of amusement, but on account of its ample accommodation it was also the arena of much of the political life of the city. The factions, which usually contended there in sport, often gathered there in party strife. There emperors were acclaimed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... broad northern end of Mexico, immediately east of the center of the continental mass. The mountains of Coahuila, which are part of the Rocky Mountain-Sierra Madre Oriental Axis, extend in a north-south direction and divide the lower lands into two areas, a larger one, a part of the Central Plateau, to the westward and a smaller one, a part of the Gulf Coastal Plain, to the northeastward. Most of the mountains ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban

... her two daughters. Astronomers were treading for the first time in the right track after two thousand years, since the days of Pythagoras, as may be seen by the hypothesis of Domenico Maria, about the variability of the axis of the globe, and by the labours of Mueller, better known by the Latin name derived from his native town of Koenigsberg, Regiomontanus, who almost anticipated Copernicus in discovering the true system of the universe. Few before ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... events the excitement died away, the earth seemed to turn on its axis as usual, women were given in marriage, children were born, fires burned as brightly as ever at the domestic altars, and family life, to all appearances, was ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... its longer axis at about twice the speed of an Earth-watch's second hand. Now the dome was sliding under, out of their sight, the craggy rock belly coming up to take its place. Nine hundred miles away was Earth—rather, less ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... erected his telescope in the Quirinal garden, belonging to Cardinal Bandini; and in April 1611 he shewed them to his friends in many of their most interesting variations. From their change of position on the sun's disc, Galileo at first inferred, either that the sun revolved about an axis, or that other planets, like Venus and Mercury, revolved so near the sun as to appear like black spots when they were opposite to his disc. Upon continuing his observations, however, he saw reason to abandon ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... going very slowly and moved toward the northern part of the moon, where I pointed out the position of the lunar north pole, and explained that, owing to the very slight inclination of the lunar axis, there can be but very little variation of seasons in any one particular part of the moon. Thus, if at one place it were spring, it would practically always be spring there, but with very cold nights all through the lunar year. Where it was summer it would practically ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... are planets in the air, which are called the planetary system. Every one knows our globe goes upon its axis, and has two poles, but what is the axis, and what the poles are made of—whether of wood, or any other material—are matters which, as far as the mass are concerned, are involved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various

... accretion, i.e. by the external addition of molecules of the same material as their interior. A crystal of quartz grows by the addition of successive molecules of SiO2, arranged in a symmetrical manner around its axis. The growth of crystals can be seen by suspending a string in a saturated solution of CuSO4, or of sugar. In plants and animals the growth is very much more complex, but is from the interior, and is produced by the multiplication of cells. To produce this cell-growth and multiplication, ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... bent into any shape desired. To make a boat with but one hide, a number of straight willows are cut about an inch in diameter, the ends sharpened and driven into the ground, forming a frame-work in the shape of a half egg-shell cut through the longitudinal axis. Where these rods cross they are firmly secured with strings. A stout rod is then heated and bent around the frame in such a position that the edges of the hide, when laid over it and drawn tight, will just reach it. This rod forms the gunwale, which ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... surrounded with a quay a foot in width adjoining [but below the level of] the platform and has a little island in the middle. Around the platform and the quay are contrived docks for ducks. On the island is a little column arranged to turn on its axis and carrying a wheel-shaped table with hollow drum-like dishes fashioned at the ends of the spokes two and a half feet wide and a palm in depth. This is turned by a boy whose business that is, so that meat and drink is ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... handed, are cut upon the cut-off valve stem itself, which must be so connected with the eccentric rod as to admit of being turned; and in most cases the valve stem extends through both ends of the steam chest, so that it must both slide endwise and turn upon its axis in two stuffing boxes, necessarily of comparatively ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... 2 we show a new and simple form of Mr. Ranque's lighter, in which an electro-magnet concealed in the base brings the spiral and the wick into juxtaposition. The extinguisher, which is balanced by a counterpoise, oscillates about a horizontal axis, and its support carries two small pins, against which act successively two notches in a piece of oval form, fixed on the side of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... differences of viewpoint between liberal constructionists and strict constructionists among its members, the Court on the whole has steered a fairly straight course. What has really altered is the environment in which the Court moves. The earth has been turning on its axis. The frame of mind of the people who compose ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... known. The very basis of all astronomical calculations, the standard of time, is now no longer relied upon as invariable. It is suspected of a change resulting from a gradual retardation in the rate of the earth's rotation on its axis, produced by tidal friction. When the binary stars were discovered, the discovery was hailed as a proof of the universal prevalence of the law of gravitation. Later observations have thrown doubt upon that conclusion, as many pairs are known to exist, which, though they have what ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... pause). "By the bye, Pratt, Kate has us completely. What fools we two are! Mr. Rumgudgeon, the matter stands thus: the earth, you know, is twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. Now this globe turns upon its own axis—revolves—spins around—these twenty-four thousand miles of extent, going from west to east, in precisely twenty-four hours. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... or fresh. Some limestones consist almost exclusively of corals, and in many cases it is evident that the present position of each fossil zoophyte has been determined by the manner in which it grew originally. The axis of the coral, for example, if its natural growth is erect, still remains at right angles to the plane of stratification. If the stratum be now horizontal, the round spherical heads of certain species continue uppermost, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... floor, said good-bye to them all, and dived. I got half-way round, and was supporting myself upside down by one toe and the slippery end of the poker, when it suddenly occurred to me that the earth was revolving at an incredible speed on its own axis, and that, in addition, we were hurtling at thousands of miles a minute round the sun. It seemed impossible in these circumstances that I should keep my balance any longer; and as soon as I realised this the poker began to slip. I was ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... while the viscid line is slowly drawn out by the hind leg, have hitherto prevented my determining its exact source and manner of formation. If it comes from the anterior pair only, then one and the same organ has the power of evolving a central axis and covering it with viscid gum; and it seems less improbable that the axis is white and formed by the posterior pair, the yellow gum being spread upon it by the anterior pair, which also would then have the power to evolve ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... ecliptic of thy life; Revolve upon another axis, man; Let love, the sun of life, beam meltingly Upon thy heart and thaw it ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... at Bray Head, Wicklow, Ireland, some very remarkable fossils, which are well known under the name of Oldhamia, but the true nature of which is very doubtful. The commonest form of Oldhamia (fig. 29) consists of a thread-like stem or axis, from which spring at regular intervals bundles of short filamentous branches in a fan-like manner. In the locality where it occurs, the fronds of Oldhamia are very abundant, and are spread over the surfaces of the strata in tangled layers. That ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... may be numerous, projecting from all parts of the organisms or from one or both ends, the movement being produced by rapid lashing of these hairs. A bacterium grows until it attains the size of the species, when it divides by simple cleavage at right angles to the long axis forming two individuals. In some of the spherical forms division takes place alternately in two planes, and not infrequently the single individuals adhere, forming figures of long threads or chains or double forms. The rate of growth varies with the species and with the environment, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... worked by the electrolytic deposition and resolution of a deposit of metal upon a disc. It is the invention of Nikola Tesla. A metallic disc is mounted on a transverse axis, so as to readily rotate. It is immersed in a vessel of copper sulphate. A current is passed through the bath, the terminals or electrodes being near to and facing the opposite edges of the disc, so that the line connecting the electrodes lies in the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... untruthful, if, when the night has made the world dark, you see not in the highest part of heaven stars but lately {thus} honored to my affliction; there, where the last and most limited circle surrounds the extreme part of the axis {of the world}. Is there, then, {any ground} why one should hesitate to affront Juno, and dread my being offended, who only benefit them by my resentment? See what a great thing I have done! How vast is my power! I forbade her to be of human shape; she ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... of his disk between the poles of the large horseshoe magnet of the Royal Society, and connecting the axis and the edge of the disk, each by a wire with a galvanometer, he obtained, when the disk was turned round, a constant flow of electricity. The direction of the current was determined by the direction of the motion, the current being reversed when the rotation was reversed. He now states ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... were already shot, And earth in flames, but that a fire so vast, He fear'd might reach Olympus, and consume The heavenly axis. Also call'd to mind What fate had doom'd, that all in future times By fire should perish, earth, and sea, and heaven; And all th' unwieldy fabric of the world Should waste to nought. The Cyclops' labor'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... several years (except in Larix), scattered along the twigs, spirally arranged or tufted, linear, needle-shaped, or scale-like; sterile and fertile flowers separate upon the same plant; stamens (subtended by scales) spirally arranged upon a central axis, each bearing two pollen-sacs surmounted by a broad-toothed connective; fertile flowers composed of spirally arranged bracts or cover-scales, each bract subtending an ovuliferous scale; cover-scale and ovuliferous scale attached at their bases; cover-scale usually remaining small, ovuliferous ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... blood running cold with unspeakable terror. The fireball, half of it white, half azure blue, and the size of a ten-inch shell, moved slowly about the raft, but revolving on its own axis with astonishing velocity, as if whipped round by the force of the whirlwind. Here it comes, there it glides, now it is up the ragged stump of the mast, thence it lightly leaps on the provision bag, descends with a light bound, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... believer shall look towards Mecca, and the Mussulmans have made their mihrab—their shrine—a little to the right of what was once the altar, in the true direction of the sacred city. The long lines of matting spread on the floor all lie evenly at an angle with the axis of the nave, and when the mosque is full the whole congregation, amounting to thousands of men, are drawn up like regiments of soldiers in even ranks to face the mihrab, but not at right angles with the ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... hoist out some of the sand. This caused the tubbing to descend about eight inches more, when it came to a standstill. It was now loaded with 17,000 pounds of pig iron, but in vain, for it refused to budge. Mr. Chavatte therefore had recourse to a dredge with vertical axis, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... kind is so very remarkable that I cannot forbear mentioning it. It was objected to the system of Copernicus when first brought forward, that if the earth turned on its axis, as he represented, a stone dropped from the summit of a tower would not fall at the foot of it, but at a great distance to the west; in the same manner as a stone dropped from the mast-head of a ship in full ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... lost among the myriads of worlds shining in the dark sky. A falling star shot across the constellation of Cassiopeia, like a flaming arrow. And the luminous universe above turned slowly on its axis, in solemn splendor, while from the dark earth around them arose only a faint breath, like the soft, warm breath ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... Brymore House, hard by, John Pym was born. The church has some unusual features, for a single roof covers nave, aisles, and chancel; and there is no chancel arch. The whole building is very lofty, and it has good E. and W. windows. The tower, which will be seen to be out of line with the axis of the nave, is richly ornamented with niches. Note externally the turret above the rood staircase, and the series of consecration crosses (12) on the E. and S. wall of the chancel; and in the interior observe (1) the carved oak cornice, (2) the screen (the upper part restored), ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... ordered that all his laws should remain in force for a hundred years, and he wrote them upon triangular wooden tablets, which revolved upon an axis in oblong recesses, some small remains of which have been preserved in the prytaneum down to the present day. These, we are told by Aristotle, were called Kurbeis. The comic poet Kratinus ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth,—running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... to-morrow, escorted, to add gravity to the embassy, by George Selwyn. The stocks don't mind this journey of a rush, but draw in their horns every day. We can learn nothing of the Havannah, though the axis of which the whole treaty turns. We believe, for we have never seen them, that the last letters thence brought accounts of great loss, especially by the sickness. Colonel Burgoyne(243) has given a little fillip to the Spaniards, and shown them, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... as the plane circled. The sweat stood out on his face. Unerringly, the axis of the built-in ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... of light shining on a convex surface. If one of the balls be examined, it will be seen that the lower part is of a brown tint and is indistinctly separated by a curved oblique line from the upper part, which is yellower and more leaden; this curved oblique line runs at right angles to the longer axis of the white patch of light, and indeed of all the shading; but this difference in colour, which cannot of course be shewn in the woodcut, does not in the least interfere with the perfect shading of the ball. It should be particularly observed that each ocellus stands in obvious connection ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... the hairs of the middle region of the back about a third of the distance between the ears and the rump, one uncovers a prominent gland, elliptical in outline, with long axis longitudinal and about 9 millimeters in length. The gland presents a roughened and granular appearance, and fewer hairs grow upon it than elsewhere on the back. The hairs in the vicinity are frequently matted, as if with a secretion. In worn stage of pelage the ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... objection, viz., that of not being astronomically true. I. K. carries his notion of the "inseparable connexion" of the sun "with all planetary motion" too far, when he supposes that a stoppage of the sun's motion round its own axis would have any effect on our planet. The note he quotes from Kitto's Pictorial Bible is anything but satisfactory; and that from Mant is childishly common-place. Good old Scott adverts with propriety to the Creator's power to keep all things in their places, when the earth's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... at a Viceroy. He is a being so heterogeneous from us! He is the centre of a world with which he has no affinity. He is a veiled prophet. [He wears many veils indeed.] He who is the axis of India, the centre round which the Empire rotates, is absolutely and necessarily withdrawn from all knowledge of India. He lisps no syllable of any Indian tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian life is known ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... correctly, that their velocity increased. It is also said that he observed that bodies always fell a little to the eastward of the plumb line, and thence concluded that the earth revolved on its axis. He made careful experiments with billiard balls, discovering that the {614} momentum of the impact always was preserved entire in the motion of the balls struck. He measured forces by the weight ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Central America, Mexico and the Panama Canal Zone disclosed an espionage network directed by the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis and operating against the peace and security of the United States. A scrutiny of the Nazi Fifth Column[1] in a few European countries, especially in Czechoslovakia just before that Republic was turned over to Germany's mercy by the Munich "peace" and ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak

... with perfect equality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the 45 degree line and the index would be zero; if income were distributed with perfect inequality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the horizontal axis and the right vertical axis and ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... France and England ought to be inseparable friends or relentless enemies; friends, they are the poles of the world, balancing its movements with perfect equilibrium; enemies, one must destroy the other and become the world's sole axis." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... much sleep that night, and before dawn there was no doubt left in our mind about the outside cattle coming in. It seemed as though every beast on the run must have come in to the Stirling that night for a drink. Every water-hole out-bush is as the axis of a great circle, cattle pads narrowing into it like the spokes of a wheel, from every point of the compass, and along these pads around the Stirling mob after mob of cattle came in in single file, treading carelessly, until each old bull leader, scenting the camp, gave ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... of the Forest repose in a basin-like form, the greatest depression being near the centre; the longer axis extending from N. to S. about eleven miles, and the transverse axis, in the widest part, ranging from E. to W. about seven miles. The general observer, if he takes his stand on the edge of hills by which ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... and squarely to the front, chin drawn in so that the axis of the head and neck is vertical; eyes straight ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... that it would not. Because, very suddenly and very abruptly, there was something the matter with the Plumie ship. The life went out of it. It ceased to accelerate or decelerate. It ceased to steer. It began to turn slowly on an axis somewhere amidships. Its nose swung to one side, with no change in the direction of its motion. It floated onward. It was broadside to its line of travel. It continued to turn. It hurtled stern-first toward the Niccola. It did not swerve. It did not dance. It was a lifeless ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster



Words linked to "Axis" :   axial, stele, alinement, alliance, line, sterling area, mechanism, stalk, bloc, minor axis, coordinate axis, rachis, z-axis, pin, neck bone, scheduled territories, sterling bloc, odontoid process, spadix, alignment, principal axis, stem, rotor head, cervical vertebra, pivot, rotor shaft, coalition



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