"Dorsal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... means the fish with the bones; which is very descriptive, from Koje the bones, [Note 28: This was noticed by Governor Grey.] having very singular bones placed vertically in the neck, connecting the dorsal spines to the back, resembling small ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... about a foot square, and plunged in. No mortal blenny could witness this unwarrantable invasion of its hearth and home without being stirred to indignant wrath. With eyes that seemed to flash fire, and dorsal fin bristling up with rage, Little Blenny made five tremendous leaps of full three inches each, and disappeared. Another moment and a miniature storm ruffled the pool: for a few seconds the heavings of the deep were awful; then, out jumped Big Blenny and tried ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... sluggish pools under the lily-pads, and would harmonize admirably with the eel in the pies and other gross preparations which delight the British palate. He hath, moreover, a John Bull-like air in his broad and burly shape, his smooth and unscaly superficies and the noli-me-tangere character of his dorsal fin. Pity he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... chiselled, the image of a fish, or rather the Idea of a fish, made beautifully grotesque for sculptural purposes, like the dolphin of Greek art. It crowns the top of a memorial column; the broad open jaws, showing serrated teeth, rest on the summit of the block bearing the dead man's name; the dorsal fin and elevated tail are elaborated into decorative impossibilities. 'Mokugyo,' says Akira. It is the same Buddhist emblem as that hollow wooden object, lacquered scarlet-and-gold, on which the priests beat with a padded mallet while chanting the Sutra. And, finally, in one ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... consecrated by precedent, they become mighty elements in history, revelling amid the wealthy energy of life, exhausting the forces of the intellect, clipping the tendrils of affection, becoming colossal in the architecture of society and dorsal in its traditions, and tyrannizing with the heedless power of an element, to the horror of the pious soul which called it into existence, over all departments of human activity. Such an art, having passed a period of tameless and extravagant dominance, at length becomes a fossil, and is regarded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... nerve (tenth cranial); function—sensation and motion; originates in the floor of the fourth ventricle (the space which represents the primitive cavity of the hind-brain; it has the pons and oblongata in front, while the cerebellum lies dorsal), and is distributed through the ear, pharynx, larynx, lungs, esophagus, and stomach; possesses the following branches—auricular, pharyngeal, superior and inferior laryngeal, cardiac, pulmonary, ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... avail; his pertinacious enemy still maintained his hold, and was evidently getting the advantage of him. Much alarm seemed to be felt by the many other whales around. These "killers," as they are called, are of a brownish colour on the back, and white on the belly, with a long dorsal fin. Such was the turbulence with which they passed, that a good view could not be had of them to make out more nearly the description. These fish attack a whale in the same way as dogs bait a bull, and worry him to death. They are armed with strong sharp teeth, and generally seize the whale by ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... includes the anterior two-thirds of the organ, is mobile, and the epithelium on its dorsal aspect is modified so as to form several varieties of papillae. A slight median depression is recognisable on the dorsum as far back as the vallate (circumvallate) papillae, which mark the boundary ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... dark-colored member of the gapperi group. Dorsal stripe wide, between Chestnut and Bay (capitalized color terms after Ridgway: Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. Washington, D. C., 1912), with slight mixture of black-tipped hairs; sides and venter heavily washed with Ochraceous-Tawny. Skull flattened; rostrum proportionately ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall
... chill greyish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if even ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... north-west. Our anglers caught several fine fishes and an eel, in the water-holes of the Mackenzie. The former belonged to the Siluridae, and had four fleshy appendages on the lower lip, and two on the upper; dorsal fin 1 spine 6 rays, and an adipose fin, pectoral 1 spine 8 rays; ventral 6 rays; anal 17 rays; caudal 17-18 rays; velvety teeth in the upper and lower jaws, and in the palatal bones. Head flat, belly broad; back of a greenish ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... generations of animal life. Nature yields to its suggestion and leading, and co- works, with all her best and busiest activities, to realise the human ideal; to put muscle there, to straighten that vertebra, to parallel more perfectly those dorsal and ventral lines, to lengthen or shorten those bones; to flesh the leg only to such a joint, and wool or unwool it below; to horn or unhorn the head, to blacken or blanch the face, to put on the whole body a new dress and make ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... besides the ingredients of the Barwan gravel, many of trap and basalt. Very old and dry grass only, could be had for the cattle. In the pond were small fishes of a different form from any we had seen, having a large forked tail, only two or three spikes in the dorsal fin, and a large jet-black eye within a broad silvery ring. Mr. Stephenson found three crabs, apparently identical with those about the inlets near Sydney. Latitude, 23 deg. 37' 51". S. Thermometer, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... arranged like those of most flowers, around one main vertical axis; it was thus radiate in structure, having neither front nor rear, right nor left side. But our little turbellaria, while still without a head, has one end which goes first and can be called the front end. The upper or dorsal surface is usually more colored with pigment cells than the lower or ventral surface, on which is the mouth. It has also a right and left side. It ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... of tiny fish, and the swift-flying terns, the broad shield of the sea, and the purple mountains. Close to the islet what I took to be the tip of a shark's fin appeared. It seemed to be cutting quick circles, rising and dipping as does the dorsal fin when a shark is closely following, or actually bolting its prey. As the boat approached, the insignia of a voracious shark changed to the spent Ulysses, making forlorn and ineffectual efforts to rise. Once again, however, the fearsome presence of man inspired a virile impulse. Ulysses ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... or flues, are enclosed either by lath and plaster, or by smooth boards, quite to the highest part of the roof, whether your rooms are finished to the top or not,—and provided with an abundant outlet at the top. This may also be as simple as the dorsal breathing-holes of a tobacco barn, gorgeously imposing as an Oriental pinnacle, or it may be a part of the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged that an adverse wind shall not prevent ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... in man extends only as far downwards as the last dorsal or first lumbar vertebra; but a thread-like structure (the filum terminale) runs down the axis of the sacral part of the spinal canal, and even along the back of the coccygeal bones. The upper part of this filament, as Prof. Turner informs me, is undoubtedly ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... teeth ending in two short awns, densely ciliated at the apex on one side, conspicuously 6- (rarely) 7-nerved, the two lateral being very strong and running into the apical teeth and the intermediate four nerves being shorter and not running up to the apex, and on the dorsal surface there is a depression, where it is membranous and the nerves on its sides sometimes anastomosing at the upper third of the glume. The second glume is shorter than the first, chartaceous to a certain ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... that Jew-of-Malta tumble down the steps, less damaged by the fall than could have been imagined possible; the fact being that his cat-like nature had stood him in good stead—he had lighted on his feet; and nothing but a mighty dorsal bruise bore witness to the prowess of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of interest as a matter of research, but must one go into such minutiae in order to teach singing? I think the answer must ever be in the negative. You might as well talk to a gold-fish in a bowl-and say: 'If you desire to proceed laterally to the right, kindly oscillate gently your sinister dorsal fin, and you will achieve the desired result.' Oh, Art, what sins are ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... numerous birds hovering round the ship; principally fulmars (procellaria glacialis,) and shearwaters, (procellaria puffinus,) and not unfrequently saw shoals of grampusses sporting about, which the Greenland seamen term finners from their large dorsal fin. Some porpoises occasionally appeared, and whenever they did, the crew were sanguine in their expectation of having a speedy change in the wind, which had been so vexatiously contrary, but they were disappointed in ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... broad enough to bear the blame of all the peccadilloes that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth her waist—or what she is pleased to esteem as such—nearly up to her shoulders, from beneath which that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, who follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh abroad, from getting up and riding. But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. She is, indeed, as the Americans would express it, something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... crest, and the shape of the external ears. On the other hand, American Eutamias agrees with the Asiatic members of the genus in the shape of the rostrum, the well-defined striations of the upper incisors, the presence of the extra peg-like premolar, and in the pattern of the dorsal stripes.'" ...
— Genera and Subgenera of Chipmunks • John A. White
... up all my courage, and being tired of holding on by the spar, resolved to mount upon his back, which I accomplished without difficulty, and I found the seat on his shoulders before the dorsal fin, not only secure but very comfortable. The animal, unaccustomed to carry weight, made several attempts to get rid of me, but not being able to sink I retained my seat. He then increased his velocity, and we went on over a smooth sea, at the rate ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... magistrates of the town would give him a doubloon, he would engage the shark and try to kill him in single combat. The magistrates consented, and two mornings after, before the sea-breeze set in, the dorsal fin of "Port Royal Tom" was discovered. The black fisherman, nothing dismayed, paddled out to the middle of the harbour where the shark was playing about; he plunged into the water armed with a pointed carving knife. The monster immediately made towards ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the dorsal line; nose, upper lip, and forehead, with two inches of the end of the tail black-brown; mere edge of upper lip and whole of lower jaw hoary; a short longitudinal white stripe occasionally on the front of the neck, and some vague spots of the same laterally, the signs, I suspect, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... order, in Portugal as in Spain, the strictest minutiae of demeanour and deportment are laid down. The body should be borne upright, but not stuck up, and when the congregation is addressed the chest is slightly advanced. The dorsal region must never face the Sacrament; this would be turning one's back, as it were, upon the Deity. The elbow may not rest upon the cushion. The head, held erect, but not haughtily, should move upon the atlas gently and suavely, avoiding 'lightness' and undue vivacity. The lips must not smile; but, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... you need not at the same time bend the dorsal vertebr' of your body, unless you wish to be very reverential, as in ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... close to the windlass, my two associates secured a range of some forty or fifty feet along the deck. Now and then a grampus would divert their attention; and every time the fish rose, a bullet was lodged, or attempted to be lodged, in his huge dorsal fin. In this way the greater portion of the time was passed, altered only by rowing about in the gig, and seeking for wild ducks among the crevices of the rocks. But the farther we sailed into the interior of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... matter. When asked, not long before his death, how it was that he had first thought of starting his extensive Car establishment, he answered, "It grew out of my back!" It was the hundred weight of pictures on his dorsal muscles that stimulated his thinking faculties. But the time for starting his great experiment had not ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... facts and circumstances which have a true philosophical value: habits, predominant affections, the direction of instincts, and the compensatory processes where these happen to be thwarted,—on all such topics he is learned and full; whilst, on the science of measurements and proportions, applied to dorsal-fins and tail-feathers, and on the exact arrangement of colours, &c.—that petty upholstery of nature, on which books are so tedious and elaborate,—not uncommonly he is negligent or forgetful. What may have served in later years to quicken ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... interesting and wonderful on this subject than the older ones. Richardson speaks of a woman falling down a few weeks before her delivery. Her pelvis was roomy and the birth was easy; but the infant was found to have extensive wounds on the back, reaching from the 3d dorsal vertebra across the scapula, along the back of the humerus, to within a short distance of the elbow. Part of these wounds were cicatrized and part still granulating, which shows that the process of reparation is as active in utero ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... any hang nails there already she'll make a few—and she shears away enough extra cuticle to cover quite a good-sized little boy. She goes over you with a bristle brush, and warms up your nerve ends until you tingle clear back to your dorsal fin and then she takes one of those orange wood stobbers previously referred to, and goes on an exploring expedition down under the nail, looking for the quick. She always finds it. There is no record ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... position of the original median plane of symmetry. The principal adaptive characters are: both eyes and the pigmentation on the side which is uppermost in the natural position, lower side without eyes and colourless; dorsal and ventral fins continuous and extending nearly the whole length of the dorsal and ventral edges; dorsal fin extending forwards on the head, not along the morphological median line, which is between the eyes, but between the more dorsal eye and the lower side of the body, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... aged 18 years, single, a native of Switzerland, was admitted to the Santa Clara County Hospital with incipient spinal disease. He was of that peculiar temperament which indicates a scrofulous cachexia. The fifth dorsal vertebra was sufficiently prominent to indicate the sight where the attack was being made by the enemy. There was considerable tenderness on pressure; slightly accelerated pulse, and elevated temperature;—in other ...
— Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society • Joseph Bradford Cox
... feeding on the 'Algae' of the submerged banks, for which purpose the upper lip is very large, thick, and as it turns down suddenly at right angles with the head, it much resembles an elephant's trunk shorn off at the mouth. Its length averages from eight to fourteen feet; there is no dorsal fin, and the tail is horizontal; colour blue, and white beneath. Its means of propulsion are two paddles, with which it also crawls along the bottom, and beneath which are situated the udders, with teats exactly like a cow's. Its flesh is far from bad, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... turning handsprings on a sponge lawn, or riding in his water-tight chariot with his feet over the dash-board, beside a slim young mermaid with Paris green hair, and dressed in a tight-fitting, low-neck dorsal fin, say he is a lively ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... were two tremendous reddish-brown fins, with strong supporting spines that seemed to terminate in retractile claws. In the water, these fins would undoubtedly be of tremendous value in swimming and in fighting, but on land they seemed rather useless. Aside from a rudimentary dorsal fin, a series of black, stubby spines, connected by a barely visible webbing, the thing had no other external evidences of its ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... on the second day, lying in a shallow pool with only its dorsal spines showing. Working slowly and carefully and entirely under water, he located the saurian's head, concealed in a clump of floating grass. The reptile was still in something of a torpor from its meal, and ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... inoculating-filament, and two side-pieces, which together constitute a scabbard. The two latter are more substantial, are hollowed out like the sides of a groove and, when uniting, form a complete groove in which the filament is sheathed. This bivalvular scabbard adheres loosely to the dorsal part; but, farther on, at the tip of the abdomen and under the belly, it can no longer be detached, as its valves are welded to the abdominal wall. Here, therefore, we find, between the two joined protecting parts, a ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Germany, the well-known experience which befell the normally built traveller in the land of hunchbacks is constantly being repeated. It will be remembered that he was so shamefully insulted there, owing to his quaint figure and lack of dorsal convexity, that a priest at last had to harangue the people on his behalf as follows: "My brethren, rather pity this poor stranger, and present thank-offerings unto the gods, that ye are ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... upon the monster trout's exposed gill, and with a cry of triumph he started to pull in; but on one occasion the slender hold his hook had taken broke away; and the second time it chanced that Giraffe had managed to fasten his barb somewhere about the dorsal fin of the fish, so that there was an immediate struggle for supremacy, with the usual result in such cases that the anticipated prize fell back, and ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... through which these insects pass are therefore largely connected with the development of the wings. It is noteworthy that in an immature cockroach the entire dorsal cuticle is hard and firm. In the adult, however, while the cuticle of the prothorax remains firm, that of the two hinder thoracic and of all the abdominal segments is somewhat thin and delicate on the dorsal aspect. It needs not now to be resistant, because it is covered by the two ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... good deal resembling the Roach: one of two pounds, measures about a foot in length. Outline ovate lanceolate, head small, mouth with four filaments; eyes very large, fins reddish, first ray of the dorsal large spinous. It affects deep water, particularly at the edges of the streams running into such places. {74b} It takes a fly greedily even in quite still water; but as it has a small mouth, the smaller the flies ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... flanks, and on the tail one of the points of each scale rises into a minute spine curved towards the caudal fin. In the narrowest part of the tail there are not above three or four of these spines in a vertical row, but there are ten or more between the posterior parts of the dorsal and anal. Immediately behind the gill openings there are three roundish scales larger than the others. The scales of the cheeks are studded with points, which are more minute and rounded than the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... marked a number of spawned grilse soon after the conclusion of the spawning period. Taking his "net and coble," he fished the river for the special purpose, and all the spawned grilse of 4 lb. weight were marked by putting a peculiarly twisted piece of wire through the dorsal fin. They were immediately thrown into the river, and of course disappeared, making their way downwards with other spawned fish towards the sea. "In the course of the next summer we again caught ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching thoughts and quivering lips. But his sorrow was not for Izz. That evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home. It was neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... ran in a crowd—a few whimpers would suffice to explain—they would come to a halt at once,—they would gather around him, and assist both with hoofs and teeth to get "shed" of the ugly two-legged thing that clung so tightly to his dorsal vertebrae. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the English beluga, a word of Russian origin, signifying white. The Beluga (Delphinapterus leucas), is a real whale with its most striking characteristic the white, or rather cream-coloured, skin described by some writers as very beautiful. Like the narwhal it has no dorsal fin. Though the smallest member of the whale family it is sometimes more than twenty feet long; but usually ranges from thirteen to sixteen feet. The young are bluish black in colour and may be seen ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... Kangaroo and the Opossum, the Tiger and the Badger, the Tapir and the Rhinoceros, are respectively members of the same orders. These successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another immensely, in such matters as the proportions and structure of their limbs; the number of their dorsal and lumbar vertebrae; the adaptation of their frames to climbing, leaping, or running; the number and form of their teeth; and the characters of their skulls and of the contained brain. But, with all these differences, ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... no-stockings eight feet four inches. This, I may add, will be warranted as authentic, in so far that I made him myself out of at least eighteen or twenty big specimens, with a few slight "divergencies" I may call them, such as putting in eight more dorsal vertebrae than the regulation, and that the right femur is two inches longer than the left. The inferior maxillary, too, was stolen from a "Pithacus Satyrus" in the Cork Museum by an old friend, since transported for Fenianism. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... hand, what Sims or Bateman ever imagined weirder caricature than the grotesque larva of the Oniticella, with its extravagant dorsal hump; or the fantastic and alarming silhouette of the Empusa, with its scaly belly raised crozierwise and mounted on four long stilts, its pointed face, turned-up moustaches, great prominent eyes, and a "stupendous mitre": the most grotesque, the most fantastic freaks that creation can ever have ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... waters, illuminating every large hole even in the profoundest depths, the large fish leave them, and, ascending to the surface, remain under the cool shade of the trees, watching for whatever tit-bit or delicacy the stream may bring with it, while others prefer a quiet saunter, or, with the dorsal fin above the water, lie so still and stationary near some lily or other aquatic plant, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... in New England never scramble. Her father and mother, who are no more than her chief ministers, walk before her out of the saloon, and then she—swims after them. But swimming is not the proper word. Fishes, in making their way through the water, assist, or rather impede, their motion with no dorsal wriggle. No animal taught to move directly by its Creator adopts a gait so useless, and at the same time so graceless. Many women, having received their lessons in walking from a less eligible instructor, do move in this way, and such women this unfortunate little lady has been instructed ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... term for boat or vessel. Also a broad-bodied thoracic fish, with a small head, and distinguished by its large triangular dorsal and anal fins, which exceed the length of the body. It is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... woman should show so much intelligence, and so, raising my dorsal spine, I began to rub up against her legs and to purr lovingly with the deepest chords of ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Rachel," said Jack, penitently, eyeing his aunt, who was rocking to and fro in her chair. "Besides, I hurt myself like thunder," rubbing vigorously the lower part of the dorsal-region. ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... green and rust. Huge, fierce detached eyes, the Thlinget symbol of intelligence glared from some. Mouths with queer, squared lips and large teeth grinned from others. A school of killer-whales with dorsal fins aloft, disported themselves in rectangles of black on the back of another. From the bottom a two-foot fog-colored fringe dangled ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the water and coming toward the swimmer like an arrow at its mark, was a great black dorsal fin which bespoke the presence of the ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... neck covered with small scales: frill arising from the hinder part of the head, just over the front of the ears, and attached to the sides of the neck and extending down to the front part of the chest, supported above by a lunate cartilage arising from the hinder dorsal part of the ear, and in the centre by a bone, which extends about half its length: this bone appears to be an elongation of the side fork of the bone of the tongue, but it could not be determined with certainty without injuring the specimen; each frill has four plaits, which ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... of Captain Poke relieved my mind considerably; and laying aside the bison-skin, I asked him to have the goodness to examine the localities, with some particularity, about the termination of the dorsal bone, in order to ascertain if there were any encouraging signs to be discovered. Captain Poke put on his spectacles, for time had brought the worthy mariner to their use, as he said, "whenever he had occasion to read fine print"; and, after some time, I had the satisfaction ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... loaves and fishes, then would they who followed him believe in him more firmly than other followers who had believed in their leaders. When you see a young woman read a closed book placed on her dorsal vertebrae,—if you do believe that she so reads it, you think that she is endowed with a wonderful faculty! And should you also be made to believe that the same young woman had direct communication with Abraham, by means of some invisible ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... "but, rash man! what are you about?" it added, turning suddenly round. The fact is, Tom was running his fingers down the vertebrae, and counting to see if their number corresponded with that given in his book. "Seven cervical, twelve dorsal!" he cried with ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... graylings to my own rod. Collectively they weigh just a little over thirty pounds. Swimming against the current, they take the fly eagerly; and one cannot hope to land a more gaudy or more gamy fish. Its big dorsal fin is rainbow-tinct, the tail an iridescent blue, and the scales pure mother-of-pearl. Mr. Keele has had "The Complete Angler" for two years with him in the fastnesses, and as he helps us prepare the catch ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron |
