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Adaptation   Listen
noun
Adaptation  n.  
1.
The act or process of adapting, or fitting; or the state of being adapted or fitted; fitness. "Adaptation of the means to the end."
2.
The result of adapting; an adapted form.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adaptation" Quotes from Famous Books



... feathers of birds seem to have been the most successful and fitting of all materials for pens, for, though steel and other metals are now used for this purpose to an immense extent, there is a power of adaptation in a quill pen which has never yet been equalled in metal. Quills, however, like other things, have a tendency to "wear out," and the trouble resulting from the necessity of frequently mending quill pens and a desire ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... of it at all; but then, if you must write the wicked thing, I heard a good story for you to-day. Dr. —— found himself in the pulpit of a Dutch Reformed Church the other Sunday. You know he is one who prides himself on his adaptation to places and times. Just at the close of the introductory services, a black gown lying over the arm of the sofa caught his eye. He was rising to deliver his sermon, when it forced itself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... exhibitions. The mimi were people who performed barefooted, clothed in skins of animals, with shaven heads, and faces smeared with soot. The Italians gradually came to relish nothing but a sort of pantomime, and it seems to have occurred to the Roman Church, always enterprising and fond of adaptation, that they might turn this taste of the people to some account. Accordingly, we read of religious mummings in Spain as early as the sixth century, and in 1264 the Brotherhood of the Gonfalone was founded in Italy to represent the sufferings ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... labours of these men without finding abundant cause of reflection on the miseries which our nature can overcome. Let me for a moment quit the cold track of narrative. Let me not fritter away by servile adaptation those reflections and the feelings they gave birth to. Let me transcribe them fresh as they arose, ardent and generous, though hopeless and romantic. I every day see wretches pale with disease and wasted with famine, struggle against the horror's of their situation. How striking is the effect ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... to decay and extinction be inevitable; if this adaptation of European policy to a native state be found unable to arrest the fall of the Borneon government, yet we shall retain a people already habituated to European manners, industrious interior races, and at a future period, if deemed necessary, settlements gradually developed ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... the stirring meetings of the week he never once forgot Hal. His silence was merely an adaptation of the policy he was urging upon his colleagues. If I leave her alone till Friday she will get piqued," was his thought, "and then ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... Decade after decade, West after West, this rebirth of American society has gone on, has left its traces behind it, and has reacted on the East. The history of our political institutions, our democracy, is not a history of imitation, of simple borrowing; it is a history of the evolution and adaptation of organs in response to changed environment, a history of the origin of new political species. In this sense, therefore, the West has been a constructive force of the highest significance in our life. To use the words of that acute and widely informed observer, Mr. Bryce, "The ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... and which was as utterly disgraceful to Spain as that of Cateau Cambresis had been to France. He had spent his life in fighting with the spirit of the age—that invincible power of which he had not the faintest conception—while the utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends often bordered, not on the ludicrous, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... ultimately the nature myth was forgotten, and the fight between the two gods became the type of the everlasting war which good men wage against sin. In Coptic literature we have the well-known legend of the slaughter of the dragon by St. George, and this is nothing but a Christian adaptation of the ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge

... preposterous scaly tails, which dragged helplessly upon the floor, entered the hall, bearing a broad, shallow tank of silver. In the tank flapped and swam four superb sterlets, their ridgy backs rising out of the water like those of alligators. Great applause welcomed this new and classical adaptation of the old custom of showing the LIVING fish, before cooking them, to the guests at the table. The invention was due to Simon Petrovitch, and was (if the truth must be confessed) the result of certain carefully measured supplies of brandy which Prince Boris himself had carried ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... master of the couplet. The reputation which it brought him was very properly increased by the publication the next year of the admirable mock-epic 'The Rape of the Lock,' which Pope soon improved, against Addison's advice, by the delightful 'machinery' of the Rosicrucian sylphs. In its adaptation of means to ends and its attainment of its ends Lowell has boldly called this the most successful poem in English. Pope now formed his lifelong friendship with Swift (who was twice his age), with Bolingbroke, and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... included, have been dropped from the list, not always as less deserving a place, but sometimes as having less adaptation to ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... [But wise-men's folly fall'n] Sir Thomas Hammer reads, folly shewn. [The sense is, But wise men's folly, when it is once fallen into extravagance, overpowers their discretion. Revisal.] I explain it thus. The folly which he shows with proper adaptation to persons and times, is fit, has its propriety, and therefore produces no censure; but the folly of wise men when it falls or happens, taints their wit, destroys the reputation of their ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... twenty heroines. If Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies, Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of selfishness and passion, approaches near to perfection; and in her adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action, may be pronounced altogether perfect. The character, to speak of it critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be comprehended at once, or easily; ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... great resisting power and vigor of the human organism, which we had gravely underestimated. The second, that power of adaptation to new circumstances, including even the attack of infectious diseases, which we call "survival of the fittest." The third, that great, sustaining, conservative power of nature—heredity. More cheering yet, these forces came, not merely fully armed, but bearing new weapons fitted for our hands. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... melody, felicity of expression, the picturing of moods and scenes, and the narration of interesting incidents or important events. When the purpose of a production is clearly apprehended we are prepared to judge of the wisdom of the author in his choice and adaptation of means. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... modifications of form, capacity and ability which constitute evolutionary progress. It was the mothers who first developed cunning in chase, ingenuity in escaping enemies, skill in obtaining food, and adaptability. It was they also who attained unfailing discretion in leadership, adaptation to environment and boldness in attack. When the animal kingdom as a whole is surveyed, these stand out as distinctly feminine traits. They stand out also as the characteristics by which the ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... speaks of fabliaux, intended partly for recitation, and partly for being sung; but does not refer by name to Aucassin and Nicolete. If we may judge by analogy, then, the form of the cante-fable is probably an early artistic adaptation of a popular ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang

... disease problem, conspicuously so with our fruit and nut diseases, there are two main classes of plants to be considered, our native plants and the foreign plants. The pathologist is always looking to the native origin of a plant in studying its adaptation to the environment in which it is attempted to be grown. A foreign plant may not necessarily be unadapted to another locality. The vinifera grape is thoroughly adapted to California and to much of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various

... rounded at that, I should more nearly approach to accuracy. To make the perfect whole which the Creator had in His idea, the two halves must be united. And so I dignify the oldest of human institutions—marriage. I accord to it the very perfection of wisdom, beauty, utility, adaptation. I am aware that in so speaking I hold to an old-fashioned belief, and tread incontinently, not only on a notion afloat among some of the strong-minded of my sex at the present day, that this institution ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the US - have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and clever woman fond of literary society, that the visible burden, honour and pleasure of the long friendship with Johnson fell. Till the breach caused by her second marriage just before he died no one had so much of his society as Mrs. Thrale. She soon became "my mistress" to him, an adaptation of his from the "my master" which was her phrase for her husband. And for him, too, Thrale was "my master." A somewhat masterful servant, no doubt, to them both, but he loved them sincerely and was deeply grateful for their kindness. He lived at their ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... (per se or by proxy) should get well. In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail them- 13:1 selves of God as "a very present help in trouble." Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and 13:3 bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... of a quadrangle. The fourth is occupied by an embattled wall and an elaborate gate-way. The building was erected about the beginning of the sixteenth century; and, with all its faults, it is a fine adaptation of Gothic architecture to civil purposes. It is in the style which a friend of mine chooses to distinguish by the name of Burgundian architecture; and he tells me that he considers it as the parent of our Tudor ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... discussing churches and those who attend them. Later on, my attention was called to the curious fact that his discourse was merely a translation into modern American of portions of the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew; a free adaptation of those ancient words to present day practices and conditions. But I had no idea of this while I listened; I was shocked by what seemed to me a furious tirade, and the guests of the hotel were even more shocked—I think they would have ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... strengthened against both. But the Xenophontic Anabasis[124] betrays her real weakness against any vigorous attack; while it at the same time exemplifies the discipline, the endurance, the power of self-action and adaptation, the susceptibility of influence from speech and discussion, the combination of the reflecting obedience of citizens with the mechanical regularity of soldiers—which confer such immortal distinction on the Hellenic character. The importance of this expedition ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... further. But that learned man overdrew his bow. Not content that the absence of these doctrines was no discredit to the Divine mission of Moses, it must even be a proof to him of the Divinity of the mission. And if he had only sought this proof in the adaptation of such a law to such ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... commensurate with the growth of commerce, until its fitness is questioned in turn, and some improved method of conveyance drives its services from the field. After all, it may be but a step in the proper direction, an improvement upon the wisdom of our ancestors—another adaptation of the limitless resources placed at our disposal for satisfying the growing wants of a race toiling towards a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... translations of French and Spanish romance, shorter and longer, good, bad, and indifferent, are of immense bulk and doubtless excited imitation: but we cannot possibly deal with them here. A bare list would fill a chapter. But some work of more or less (generally less) originality, in at least adaptation, calls for a little individual notice: and some ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... that was the pronunciation used at the time of the giving by the valued friend who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor Menelik to a priceless ancient Samurai sword, coming from Japan in remembrance ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... confidently assumed that labor, out of its own necessities, would adapt itself automatically to the new requirements of the machine, and to the shifts of business interest. When it was discovered that there were limitations to labor's voluntary adaptation under the conditions laid down, intelligent business in America decided that the responsibility for realizing labor's adaptation or "labor's cooeperation" as they call it, must be assumed by the management of industry and that that ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... comment. At their best, it is almost impossible to reproduce in English the peculiar effects of their melodic artifices. But there is another side to the matter. At their worst, these Latin lyrics, moulded on a tune, degenerate into disjointed verbiage, sound and adaptation to song prevailing over sense and satisfaction to the mind. It must, however, be remembered that such lyrics, sometimes now almost unintelligible, have come down to us with a very mutilated text, after suffering the degradations ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... tragic comedy they play at home and which they repeat abroad? The piece abroad is the same as that played in Paris for the past eight years,[51120] an absurd, hasty translation in Flemish, Dutch, German, and Italian, a local adaptation, just as it happens, with variations, elisions and abbreviations, but always with the same ending, a shower of blows with gun and sword on all property-owners, communities, and individuals, compelling the surrender ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... years before induced radio-activity could be brought to practical utilisation. The thing, of course, was discussed very much, more perhaps at the time of its discovery than during the interval of technical adaptation, but with very little realisation of the huge economic revolution that impended. What chiefly impressed the journalists of 1933 was the production of gold from bismuth and the realisation albeit upon unprofitable lines of the alchemist's dreams; there was a considerable ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... The adaptation of flowers for cross-fertilisation is a subject which has interested me for the last thirty-seven years, and I have collected a large mass of observations, but these are now rendered superfluous by the many excellent works which have been lately published. In the ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... and approve of Christianity; I have not yet said my last word about Christ." It is a solemn question, Had he said it when his career was ended? If so, it was far from a satisfactory word. His policy of reserve and adaptation had probably kept him from uttering all that was in his heart; but it was a sorely mistaken policy. Had he temporized less he ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... there were other larger, more absorbing things on which the mind dwelt. There was the grey cold sea outside Dover and Portsmouth and Cork, where the great grey ships of war rocked and swung with the tides, where the sailors sang, in doggerel English, that bitter- sounding adaptation, "Germania rules t'e waves," where the flag of a World-Power floated for the world to see. And in oven-like cities of India there were men who looked out at the white sun-glare, the heat-baked dust, the welter of crowded streets, who listened to the unceasing chorus of harsh-throated crows, the ...
— When William Came • Saki

... an interest of a far different character. We looked proudly upon these magnificent models of naval architecture—upon their size, their number, and their admirable adaptation. We viewed with a changing cheek and kindling eye this noble exhibition of a free people's strength; and as the broad banner of our country swung out upon the breeze of the tropics, we could not help exulting in the glory of that great nation whose ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... example, which was once thought amusing in farce, as spoken by the Frenchman conceived by the Englishman—a complication of humour fictitious enough, one might think, to please anyone; or else a fragment of negro dialect; or the style of telegrams; or the masterly adaptation of the simple savage's English devised by Mrs Plornish in her intercourse with the Italian. But none of these found favour. The choice has always been of the language of children. Let us suppose that the flock of winged Loves worshipping Venus ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... beautiful and legible as that of our very best English writers of to-day. But their aesthetic mastery has come from loving study of the forms that conscious artistry had perfected, and through a constant practice in their harmonious adaptation. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... required that they should pass through his chapel yard on the Raise before leaving the parish, but he had waived his right to this tribute to episcopacy. After offering a suitable blessing, he turned away, not without a withering glance at the weaver, who was muttering rather too audibly an adaptation of the rhyme,— ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... much an enemy of Ireland as England is. The Firm, comprising Great Britain and all its colonies and dependencies throughout the world, is known as John Bull & Co., and the distinctive sign of the house, in all its ramifications, is the Union Jack or some adaptation of the red cross of St. George to local predilections. As in ordinary mercantile transactions, a debt incurred by any branch of the establishment involves the responsibility of the whole, and can be levied for in London or Hokitika. This is the true state of the case, and any ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... With what is merely theoretical, such a system should have little to do. Philosophy, dealing in generalities, resolves speech not only as a whole into its constituent parts and separable elements, as anatomy shows the use and adaptation of the parts and joints of the human body; but also as a composite into its matter and form, as one may contemplate that same body in its entireness, yet as consisting of materials, some solid and some fluid, and these curiously modelled to a particular figure. Grammar, properly so called, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... The peculiar adaptation of his character to this mission of humanity was not only felt by his fellow laborers in the New-York Association, but was acknowledged wherever he was known. Dr. Walter Channing, brother of the late Dr. William Ellery Charming wrote to him ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... Scotch Church service the best, because it is so simple and so capable of adaptation to ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... but is always subjected to the laws of a delicate, but most severe taste. His poems are probably planned with views to their artistic effects, and are then constructed from his exhaustless wealth of poetical material, by a nice adaptation of each part to the perfect whole of his design. If he has less imagination than Mr. Taylor, he has a richer and more glowing fancy; if his figures are less apt and striking, they are more elegant and symmetrical; ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... of order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd the universe, and the a priori ideas of an unconditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the work of an intelligent ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... six voices, two of which should be bass, in order that the fundamental themes should be sustained with dignity and continuity. But what he had principally in view, what in fact he had been called on to initiate, was that novel adaptation of melody and science to verbal phrase and sense, whereby music should be made an art interpretative of religious sentiment, powerful to clothe each shade of meaning in the text with appropriate and beautiful sound, instead of remaining a merely artificial and mechanical ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... of it. But with the adoption of steam for ocean carriage began the decline of American shipping, a decline hastened by the use of iron, and then steel, for hulls. Though we credit ourselves—not without some protest from England—with the invention of the steamboat, the adaptation of the screw to the propulsion of vessels, and the invention of triple-expansion engines, yet it was England that seized upon these inventions and with them won, and long held, the commercial mastery of the seas. To-day (1902) ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... Fig. 150 will discover a simple transposition which it became necessary to make in the clocks, for the effectual adaptation of the pendulum to their regulation. The verge V was set up horizontally and the pendulum B, suspended freely from a flexible cord, received the impulses through the intermediation of the forked arm F, which formed a part of the ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... Rajputana's patriots—the men who loved the old ways, yet admitted there was virtue in an adaptation of the new. And Yasmini, with a gift for reading men's hearts that has been her secret and her source of power first and last, was reviving an ancient royal custom for them, to the end that she might lead them in altogether new ways ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... whose territory there came, after 1884, a sudden swarm of gold-seekers. The Uitlanders, as these strangers are called (the word is not really Dutch, one is told, but an adaptation from the German), who by 1890 had come to equal and soon thereafter exceeded the whole number of the Boers, belonged to many stocks. The natives of England, the Cape, and Natal were the most numerous, but there were also many English-speaking ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... of the same date, 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which dramatises a romantic story of love and friendship. There is every likelihood that it was an adaptation—amounting to a reformation—of a lost 'History of Felix and Philomena,' which had been acted at Court in 1584. The story is the same as that of 'The Shepardess Felismena' in the Spanish pastoral romance of 'Diana' by George ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... masses of terrestrial surface, and the relative extent and distribution of land and water, are determined by geological influences equally remote from our jurisdiction. It would hence seem that the physical adaptation of different portions of the earth to the use and enjoyment of man is a matter so strictly belonging to mightier than human powers, that we can only accept geographical nature as we find her, and be content with such soils and such skies as ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... conclusion that, in an age when people could write, people wrote down the Epic. If they applied their art to literature, then the preservation of the Epic is explained. Written first in a prae-Phoenician script, it continued to be written in the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet. There was not yet, probably, a reading public, but there were ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... from his hideout, Tyler," Bentley explained, "and won't hesitate to send them into danger since it can't touch him. And he watches every move they make, too. He's made some television adaptation of his own. I'll wager, if he so desires, he can see us sitting here right now, even perhaps hear what we say. I can fancy hearing him ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... modern and encouraging than that of Scott's Covenanters? Her mind was anything but prosaic, and had her soberer share of Mab's delight in the romance of Mirah's story and of her abode with them; but the romantic or unusual in real life requires some adaptation. We sit up at night to read about Sakya-Mouni, St. Francis, or Oliver Cromwell; but whether we should be glad for any one at all like them to call on us the next morning, still more, to reveal himself as a new relation, is quite another affair. Besides, Mrs. Meyrick had hoped, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... Alfieri for himself, had been mangled by Mme. d'Albany and those who helped her and Canova in devising his tomb; the companion epitaph, the one in which Alfieri described the Countess as buried next to him, was also mangled in its adaptation to a tomb erected in Santa Croce, entirely separate from Alfieri's. On that monument of Mme. d'Albany, in the chapel where moulder the frescoes of Masolino, there is not a word of that sentence of Alfieri's about the dead woman ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... manifested by least important structures, whereas from the point of view of evolution it is to be expected that these life-serving structures should have been most liable to divergent modification in divergent lines of descent, or in adaptation to different conditions of life, while the trivial or less important characters should have been allowed to remain unmodified. Thus we can now understand why all primitive classifications were wrong in principle when they went upon the assumption that divine ideals were best exhibited by resemblances ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... defenders. In captivity, its sanctity was sufficient to vindicate it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on the threshold of his own temple. The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... stored by the first process; marshalled into force, and placed under guidance, by the second,—it is the result of the third, to place them before the world in the most attractive or commanding form. This may be done by actions no less than words; but the adaptation of means to end, the passage of ideas from the brain of one man into the lives and souls of all, no less in action than in books, requires study. Action has its art as well as literature. Here Norreys had but to deal with the calling of the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... stupid, he would never have disturbed her in the stagnant life of the house behind the cedars. There had come to him from some source, down the stream of time, a rill of the Greek sense of proportion, of fitness, of beauty, which is indeed but proportion embodied, the perfect adaptation of means to ends. He had perceived, more clearly than she could have appreciated it at that time, the undeveloped elements of discord between Rena and her former life. He had imagined her lending grace and charm to his own ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... adaptation of pueblo architecture to the country in which it is found has been commented on. Ordinarily such adaptation would imply two things—origin within the country, and a long period of time for development—but there are several factors that must be taken into consideration. If the architecture did ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... evidently at the back of his mind. The mediaeval epic poets who dealt with antique subjects took over the pagan gods more or less. Sometimes, as in the Romance of Troy, the Christian veneer is so thick that the pagan groundwork is but slightly apparent; in other poems, such as the adaptation of the Aeneid, it is more in evidence. In so far as the gods are not eliminated they seem as a rule to be taken over quite naively from the source without further comment; but occasionally the poet expresses his view of their nature. Thus the ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... opening a Bureau in London, and appointing Officers whose business it will be to acquire every kind of information as to suitable countries, their adaptation to, and the openings they present for different trades and callings, the possibility of obtaining land and employment, the rates of remuneration, and the like. These enquiries will include the cost of passage-money, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... included in an enlightened modern Christian's religious creed is either a direct working out of the principles already contained there, or (if it has come from other sources) it has been transformed in the process of adaptation. Nothing has been discovered in Religion and Morality which tends in any way to diminish the unique reverence which we feel for the person of Christ, the perfect sufficiency of his character to represent and incarnate for us the character of God. It is a completely ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... next generation to some younger candidate having equal or greater skill in appropriating the vague sentiments and old traditionary language of passion spread through books, but having also the advantage of novelty, and of a closer adaptation to the prevailing taste of the day. Even at that early age, I was keenly alive, if not so keenly as at this moment, to the fact, that by far the larger proportion of what is received in every age for poetry, and for a season usurps that consecrated name, is not the spontaneous overflow of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... they were rich they often traveled)—into touch with a class of rich and useless people, whose society gave her a sort of contempt for the rest of mankind, all those who had work to do. With her marvelous power of adaptation, she very quickly caught the color of these sterile and rotten men and women. She could not fight against it. At once she became refractory and irritable, regarding the idea that it was possible—and right—to be happy in her domestic duties and the aurea mediocritus as mere "vulgar manners." ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... however, were not in evidence from the first. They were a matter of growth, of adaptation to needs as those needs were realized. The evolution of the club in that sense is nowhere better illustrated than in the case of White's, which can claim the proud honour of being the oldest among London clubs. It was established ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... rare almost overpowered the senses with the exhalations of their gorgeous exotics. It was a difficult matter to determine from what source came the most assistance, the caterer or the decorater, but all harmonized and all made up one perfect adaptation. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... were spent by the grown-up Jewish soldiers amidst extraordinary hardships. They were beaten and ridiculed because of their inability to express themselves in Russian, their refusal to eat trefa, and their general lack of adaptation to the strange environment and to the military mode of life. And even when this process of adaptation was finally accomplished, the Jewish soldier was never promoted beyond the position of a non-commissioned under-officer, baptism being the inevitable ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaptation of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigidity the Pont du ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... Peace begot Plenty. An adaptation of the wellknown saying which Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie (ed. Arber, p. 217) attributes to Jean de Meung. ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... in 'Felix Randal' and some and handsome is as truly an eye-rhyme as the love and prove which he despised and abjured; and it is more distressing, because the old-fashioned conventional eye-rhymes are accepted as such without speech- adaptation, and to many ears are a pleasant relief from the fixed jingle of the perfect rhyme; whereas his false ear-rhymes ask to have their slight but indispensable differences obliterated in the reading, and thus ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... contention that the Negro should be given an education of a different kind is not absolute. Most disputants on this subject—so far as published statements go—allow that after a long period of adaptation and modified training the American Negro may reach a stage in his mental evolution that he may assimilate the same kind of mental food that is admittedly suited to the Caucasian, Mongolian and others. This view of the matter leaves out of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go back to the very beginning of the human race. Such a characteristic must have become firmly fixed in the human constitution before primitive man became divided into races, or at least before any of the races had left their original home and started on their long journey ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... more charming arrangement for hall, parlor and dining-room. They use the parlor as a common sitting-room, and the hall still more commonly, especially in warm weather. Ted doesn't realize that half the charm of the house lies in its adaptation to the site." ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... Crusca; English travellers; Lord Dillon; story illustrating Florentine life. Fouche: complains of the conduct of the Allies. Frankfort: Venus Vulgivaga; Jews; cathedral; inauguration of Roman Caesars in the Roemer; the Golden Bull; portraits of the Emperors; theatre; adaptation of German language to music; political opinion in; dislike to Austria. French Revolution: worst excesses ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... long held sway, and was a light form of amusement, consisting of Pantomime, music, singing, and dancing, and an adaptation of the Fabulae Atellanae of ancient Italy. The performers wore masks, also high-heeled shoes, fitted with brass or iron heels, which jingled as they danced. This ancient custom to present-day stage dancers will doubtless be of interest. Masks, like on the stages ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... to conjecture what his answer might have been. If he had been for the moment under the influence of the orthodox rationalistic deism of the theologian he would have said, "Existence is justified by its manifest design, its manifest adaptation of means to ends," or, in other words, "Existence is justified by its completeness." If, on the other hand, he had been influenced by his own serious intellectual theories he would have said, "Existence is justified by its air of growth and doubtfulness," or, in other words, "Existence ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... But his adaptation was checked by a look from his mother, and he relapsed into gloom. "It's a horrid, atrocious shame!" he said. "I can't help it, and Hilda needn't speak to me again if she doesn't want to; but I cannot tell a lie, and I am ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... not be possible," asked Septimius, "to have too profound a sense of the marvellous contrivance and adaptation of this material world to require or believe in anything spiritual? How wonderful it is to see it all alive on this spring day, all growing, budding! Do we exhaust it in our little life? Not so; not in a hundred or a thousand lives. The whole race ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Bayne entered from the Pittsburg districts, Pennsylvania. Mr. Errett was a veteran editor in the anti-slavery cause, and Mr. Bayne was recognized as a young man of superior ability, ready in debate and with special adaptation to parliamentary service.—John I. Mitchell, afterwards chosen senator, entered from the Lycoming district, and Edward Overton from the Bradford district.—General Harry White entered from the Armstrong district. He had been confined in Libby Prison for sixteen months during the war and being a ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... of the wedge," he called it—between the doors of the House of Commons was regarded as a very felicitous and brilliant hit. But even then Punch was willing to let the other side of the question be heard; and in an ingenious adaptation of Shylock's soliloquy (p. 247, Vol. XIII., 1847) dedicated to Sir Robert Inglis—beginning "Hath not a Jew brains?" and ending, "If we obey your government, shall we have no hand in it? If we are like you in the rest, we ought ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... dressed in a rather graceful and perhaps rather flamboyant adaptation of the prevailing fashion, was picturesque and radiant to the extreme: slender, dark, vivid, with big, dark eyes in a small pointed face, dark hair "bobbed" and curling sufficiently to turn under about her ears and neck, ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... flowers. Not exotics,—but what are called common flowers. A rose, for instance, is among the most beautiful of the smiles of nature. The "laughing flowers," exclaims the poet! But there is more than gaiety in blooming flowers, though it takes a wise man to see the beauty, the love, and the adaptation, of which ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... in the most appetizing way the object of their meeting. I had two hours' daylight still left, and thus was enabled to see a little of that part of the neighbourhood, which alone was concealed when standing on the Barrack-hill. The more I saw of it, the more convinced was I of the peculiar adaptation of Bytown for a great city; the ground is admirably suited for building, and possesses a water-power which is inexhaustible. My road, as may naturally be supposed in a new country, lay through alternations of forest and cultivation; if it was not ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception of the term "substance" itself. We must not regard it as a quality, but as a sentiment:—it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many things on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus—many things visible and tangible in Venus, which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings—to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... careful study of "Rosalynde" one cannot avoid the conviction that in selecting it as the basis for "As You Like It" Shakespeare displayed a sound judgment. Not only is it a good story of its kind, but it lends itself readily to dramatic adaptation. In adapting it Shakespeare made of it something quite different and incalculably more valuable than the romance. Yet "Rosalynde" is still in its way charming, and an appreciation of its charm may, instead of lessening our reverence for Shakespeare's genius, really increase ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... a mere adaptation of any one Hindu god. Some of his attributes are also those of Brahma. Though in some late texts he is said to have evolved the world from himself, his characteristic function is not to create but, like ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... short, and the Scots broke in a postern door. The Warden's trumpet blew "O wha dare meddle wi' me," and here, as has been said, I think Scott is the author. Here Colonel Elliot enters into learning about "Wha dare meddle wi' me?" a "Liddesdale tune," and in the poem an adaptation, by Scott, of Satchells' "the trumpets sounded 'Come if ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... adhered to the 'Three-Line system,' this, if not impossible, was at least practically inexpedient, for the Regulations took cognizance only of a Division composed of three Brigades of equal strength, were founded on this idea, and did not allow of adaptation to any other distribution of force which might have ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... the last of the classical styles of antiquity, the Roman,—a style which, however, is rather an adaptation or amalgamation of other styles than an original and independent creation or development. The contrast is very great between the "lively Grecian," imaginative and idealistic in the highest degree—who seemed to have an innate genius for art and beauty, and who was always eager to perpetuate ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... the parable of the Cave (Republic), in which the previous argument is recapitulated, and the nature and degrees of knowledge having been previously set forth in the abstract are represented in a picture: (9) the fiction of the earth-born men (Republic; compare Laws), in which by the adaptation of an old tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society: (10) the myth of Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym.: (11) the parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... foreign estimates. I incline to the belief that this is more than offset among us by the quality of our labor, by the energy of our administration, by the efficiency of our overseeing, and, especially, by our greater skill in the adaptation of mechanical appliances. While counselling caution, I also recommend enterprise in developing our resources in this important particular; knowing full well, however, that what I can say in its favor ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... the kingdom on her accession to the throne Rudeness and loyalty of the people Difficulties of the Queen The policy she pursued Her able ministers Lord Burleigh Archbishop Parker Favorites of Elizabeth The establishment of the Church of England Its adaptation to the wants of the nation Religious persecution Development of national resources Pacific policy of the government Administration of justice Hatred of war Glory of Elizabeth allied with the prosperity of England Good government Royal economy Charge of tyranny considered Power of Parliament Mary, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... count a hundred and one. In the midst of this choral dance, at the fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitants of the Universe pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest, fullest, sweetest strain. It is in this decisive moment that all our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptation of Bass and Treble, of Tenor to Contralto, that oftentimes the Loved Ones, though twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once the responsive note of their destined Lover; and, penetrating the paltry obstacles of distance, Love ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... Casterbridge Barracks were cavalry quarters, their adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later. It had been owing to the fact that the —-th Dragoons, in which John Clark had served, happened to be lying there that Selina made his acquaintance. At ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... husband in the world. If she would only leave all to me, by this time to-morrow night, if not a good many hours before, he should be in her arms as safe as in the Bank. It did my heart good to see how happy this artistic adaptation of the truth made her; and I must say that she never had ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... words of Christ are destitute of foundation. But if it be thus undeniable that Christ declared Himself to be the prophet of our passage, it must be considered an indirect attack upon His divinity to say, as Dr Luecke does, that Christ did so by way of "adaptation to the interpretation of that time." It is just this appeal which forms the pith of Christ's discourse; it is the real death-blow inflicted by Him upon His adversaries. If this blow was a mere feint, His honour is ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... changes of the fight or flight syndrome are mobilized for instant action. But my body cannot be held in this state of readiness. The constant stimulation will ultimately turn my overworked adrenal glands into a jelly-like mess of cystic quivering goo. My general adaptation syndrome will no longer adapt. ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone

... student is apt to ask whether in the irony of history the Bible, which strengthened and supported the Church in its early history, and helped it in many generations to moral reformation, is destined to become an instrument for preventing the adaptation of Christianity to the needs of to-day, and to drive the spirit of religion, which is eternal, from organised Christianity to take refuge once more in some newer forms, more receptive of truth, and less ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... The adaptation of plants to the seasonal changes opens another interesting field of study for beginners. If the season is the fall or winter, note how the trees have prepared themselves for the winter's cold by terminating the ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... book are not of even length. In order to preserve the unity of subject matter, it was felt desirable to divide the book according to subjects rather than according to daily lessons. The varying lengths of recitation periods in different schools, and the adaptation of the course to individual instruction as well as to class work, also made a division into lessons impracticable. Each teacher will soon discover about how much matter her class, if she uses the class method, can take each day. Probably the average section will require about 2 days ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... these German hymns, one is struck by their adaptation to the seasons and occurrences of ordinary life. Obviously, too, the writer's religion was not a Sunday matter only, it had its place in week-days as well. In these hymns there is little gloom, a healthy human cheerfulness pervades many of them, and this is surely as it ought to be. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... here. It is true that they were not written for children, but so true and genuine are they, that the child enjoys them thoroughly, while the most mature find them a profitable study. This peculiarity of adaptation to all ages belongs to all the genuine myths of any nation, its best modern master being Hans Christian Andersen. It is the royal sign and seal of authority in stories. Ballad poetry belongs too to the beginning of this stage. Scott comes ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... its stage popularity for more than two decades. A German translation appeared in 1754, and for more than twenty years numerous editions and translations continued to appear. In France, Diderot admired the play and translated it in 1760 (not published until 1819); Saurin's translation and adaptation (1767) proved popular on the French stage (he later provided an alternate happy ending which ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitants of the Universe pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest, fullest, sweetest strain. It is in this decisive moment that all our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptation of Bass to Treble, of Tenor to Contralto, that oftentimes the Loved Ones, though twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once the responsive note of their destined Lover; and, penetrating the paltry obstacles of distance, Love unites the three. The ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... and girls of France. Her tone is pure, her morals are high, her teachings are direct and effective. She has, besides, historical accuracy and dramatic action; and her twenty books for children have found welcome and entrance into the most exclusive of French homes. The publishers of this American adaptation take pleasure in introducing Madame Foa's work to American boys and girls, and in this Napoleonic renaissance are particularly favored in being able to reproduce her excellent story of ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... CLARKE, PATTY OLIVER and CHARLOTTE SAUNDERS, to say nothing of a lady who was not only Queen of Comedy but Empress of Burlesque—"Private Inquiry," a thoroughly well acted and rattling farce in three Acts. It is from the French, but as the task of adaptation has been entrusted to the Author who turned Bebe the Frisky into Betsy the Wholesome, any scruples of conscience that the LORD CHAMBERLAIN may possibly have entertained on reading the original have been successfully removed, and the play, consequently, is not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... the world wisdom.' Laputa was speaking English in a strange, thin, abstracted voice. 'There would have been no king like me since Charlemagne,' and he strayed into Latin which I have been told since was an adaptation of the Epitaph of Charles the Great. 'Sub hoc conditorio,' he crooned, 'situm est corpus Joannis, magni et orthodoxi Imperatoris, qui imperium Africanum nobiliter ampliavit, et multos per annos mundum feliciter rexit.'[1] He must have ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... ceremonial of the Roman Church, on the ground that it was not only overloaded with superfluous ornament, but too fatally disfigured by irrational, superstitious, or impious observances to be susceptible of correction or adaptation to the wants of their infant congregations, the founders of the reformed churches of the continent did not leave the inexperienced ministers to whose care these congregations were confided altogether without a guide in the conduct of divine ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt picture frame inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of a certain portion of St. Paul's epistle ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... incessantly for the seventy years or so allotted to man, is amazed at the precariousness of our existence. It seems indeed uncanny that so delicate a mechanism should function so regularly for so many years. The mysticism connected with this and other phenomena of adaptation would disappear if we would be certain that all cells are really immortal and that the fact which demands an explanation is not the continued activity but the cessation of activity in death. Thus ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... little reason to hope that any reformation will be effected by a periodical havock of our fellow-beings, perhaps it will not be useless to consider what consequences might arise from relaxations of the law, and a more rational and equitable adaptation of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... Voltaire brought the doctrines of the latter to their highest perfection. In opposition to both, Montesquieu strenuously asserted the operation of general laws, emanating doubtless originally from the institutions of the Deity, and the adaptation of the human mind to the circumstances in which man is placed in society, but acting at subsequent periods through the instrumentality of free agents, and of permanent and lasting operation in all ages of the world. Machiavel had frequently got ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... with Shakspere," says the former, in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," "he was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul." And, in the prologue to his adaptation of "The Tempest," he ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... shape, low at the crown and broad at the brim, was worn with an air of devil-me-care defiance; his watch-chain, garnished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low from his white waistcoat; and the adaptation of his nankeen inexpressibles to his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece of art. His whole dress and air was not what could properly be called foppish, it was rather what at that time was called "rakish." Few could so closely approach vulgarity without being vulgar: of that privileged few, Mr. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... think that they may without immodesty put forth for themselves something more than the claim of being re-translators of a translation: the present edition is, so far as they were able to make it so, an adaptation, correction, and extension of the work of the great German scholar to whose loving appreciation of the Anglo-Saxon epic all students of Old English owe a debt of gratitude. While following his usually sure and cautious guidance, and in the main appropriating ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... and blows with all his power into it, till the animal swells excessively and dies; for the air expands greatly between the flesh and the hide." After these fine fancies, where is the improbability of Crevecoeur's modest adaptation of the Jonah-allegory that he applies to the king-bird and his bees? The episode suggests, for that matter, a chapter in Mitchell's My Farm at Edgewood. Mitchell, a later American farmer, describes ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one, becomes rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This process of psychological transference is the explanation of the reference to Elephantine as the source of the d'd', and has no relation to actuality. The naive efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to study the natural ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... walked to the side of the islet nearest to the felucca, and spoke courteously and cheerfully to him whose advice he had just treated with indifference, if not with disdain. This was not hypocrisy, but a prudent adaptation of his means ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Astronomy; Division of Time, Days, Months, and Years; Sabbaths and New Moons; Jewish Festivals; Passover; Pentecost; Feast of Tabernacles; Of Trumpets; Jubilee; Daughters of Zelophedad; Feast of Dedication; Minor Anniversaries; Solemn Character of Hebrew Learning; Its easy Adaptation to Christianity; Superior to the Literature of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... Parkman, "La Salle," p. 430.] His "personality is impressed in some respects more strongly than that of any other upon the history of New France," says another historian, Fiske. [Footnote: "New France and New England," p. 132.] "For force of will and vast conceptions; for various knowledge and quick adaptation of his genius to untried circumstances; for a sublime magnanimity, that resigned itself to the will of Heaven, and yet triumphed over affliction by energy of purpose and unfaltering hope—this daring adventurer ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... Accordingly, he became tutor (Hauslehrer) to the children of Herr von Quaalen. In this position he showed great aptitude and originality in the instruction of children. His method of teaching included conversation, adaptation of play, and use of the woods, fields, plants, birds, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... are free only in the sense that they may go either backward or forward on the path which the conditions of survival mark out for them. They are free to progress or to perish. But social evolution in any case, in the sense of social change either toward higher or toward lower social adaptation, is a necessity that cannot be escaped. Sociology and all social science is, therefore, a study not of what human groups would like to do, but of what they must do in order to survive, that is, how they ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... May-Day Customs Mrs. Ewing showed her ready ability to take up any subject of interest that came under her notice—botany, horticulture, archaeology, folk-lore, or whatever it might be. The same readiness was shown in her adaptation of the various versions of the Mumming Play, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... when he first heard the legend of the two brother prophets delivering the Menehune people, "he was inclined to doubt its genuineness and to consider it as a paraphrase or adaptation of the Biblical account by some semi-civilized or semi-Christianized Hawaiian, after the discovery of the group by Captain Cook. But a larger and better acquaintance with Hawaiian folk-lore has shown that though the details of the ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... the earth, producing great changes in the distribution of land and water, have often obliged the living matter of the coral-builders to shift the locality of its operations; and, by variation and adaptation to these modifications of condition, its forms have as often changed. The work it has done in the past is, for the most part, swept away, but fragments remain, and, if there were no other evidence, suffice to prove the general ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley



Words linked to "Adaptation" :   domestication, specialisation, organic process, writing, physiology, acclimation, specialization, differentiation, alteration, dedifferentiation, dark adaptation, modernization, biological process



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