"Circumference" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... separated by only a few yards, scores of hawks concentrated and roosted, content with their snail diet, and wholly ignoring their neighbors. On the other side of the gardens, in aristocratic isolation, was a colony of stately American egrets, dainty and graceful. Their circumference of radiation was almost or quite a circle, for they preferred the ricefields for their daily hunting. Here the great birds, snowy white, with flowing aigrettes, and long, curving necks, settled with dignity, and here they slept and sat on ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a right line. Now all were moving in a circle, or rather in three circles concentric to one another; the sailor, with his charge, revolving round the centre, Snowball in mid radius, while the shark, flanked by his satellites, went gliding along the outer circumference, his lurid eyes glaring continually inward, as if watching for an opportunity to break the line so carefully ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... probably, may be described without fear of contradiction as the largest chestnut tree in the world. It rises from one solid stem to a remarkable height before it branches. At an elevation of two feet from the earth its circumference was found by Brydone to be seventy-six feet. These trees are reputed to have flourished for much more than a thousand years. Their luxuriant growth is attributed in part to the humid atmosphere of the Bosco, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... singularly constructed. I must observe first that there was a protruding mass of rock rising about fifteen feet above the surrounding ground, and of considerable circumference. In the middle of this there was a circular excavation ten feet in diameter and ten feet deep. At the bottom I discovered a spring of tepid mineral water, which flowed away through a small section cut perpendicularly out of the wall of the great bath; judging ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... spoken of as an old tree in the time of King Stephen; while the tree that is said to be the oldest and the largest in Europe is the Spanish Chestnut tree on Mount Etna, the famous Castagni du Centu Cavalli, which measures near the root 160 feet in circumference. It is one of our handsomest trees, and very useful for timber, and at one time it was supposed that many of our oldest buildings were roofed with Chestnut. This was the current report of the grand roof at Westminster Hall, but it is now discovered to be of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... it. Besides all this, none of us could have the least idea of how the ship now bore from us, our only comfort being that, by observation of the Cross, we were not making a direct course, but travelling on the circumference of an immense circle. Whatever damage we had done to him so far was evidently quite superficial, for, accustomed as we were to tremendous displays of vigour on the part of these creatures, this specimen fairly ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... imagine these surface-undulations speeding outwards from the epicentre in ever-widening circles until they have passed over a quarter-circumference of the earth, when they should begin to converge towards the antipodes. Here they should cross each other, and again spread out as circular waves, once more in their course passing the same observatories where they were first recorded, ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... Island and Sand Island are natural islands, which have been expanded by coral dredging; North Island (Akau) and East Island (Hikina) are manmade islands formed from coral dredging; the egg-shaped reef is 34 km in circumference; closed to the public; a former US nuclear weapons test site; site of now-closed Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS); most facilities dismantled and cleanup complete ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... statues of Buddha which have been erected in different parts of the country. The largest and best known is the Dai Butsu, at Kamakura, a few miles from Yokohama. The height of this great statue is nearly 50 feet, in circumference it is 97 feet. The length of the face is 8 feet 5 inches, the width of mouth 3 feet 2 inches, and it has been asserted—though I do not guarantee the accuracy of the calculation—that there are 830 curls upon the head, each curl 9 inches ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... greeted with the plaudits of nearly every theatre. It may be arrogant to impugn a judicial decision of such antiquity and acknowledged authority; but, as a member in full standing of the worshipful P. B., I have the right to be slightly arrogant; for I am well aware that this is a tribunal the circumference of whose jurisdiction is infinite, or rather is a circle whose centre is a little village on the Hudson river, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... metric system is the Metre (m.) or unit of length, representing one-fourth-millionth part of the circumference of the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... he said, 'The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom.' BOSWELL. 'The only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one another.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... fourteen feet thick near the ground, and from six to nine thick at the top, where one can walk along a considerable part with little difficulty. This wall is built of the same small, well-trimmed blocks of granite, nicely fitted together, and for more than half the circumference is in excellent preservation, although shrubs and climbing vines have here and there rooted themselves in it. The rest of it is more or less broken, and in one place quite overthrown. There are two gates, at the west and the north. The wall is quite plain, except for about one-third ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the emperor could exert, without control, the whole force of the state, it was terminated by an absolute submission of the barbarians. [17] The new province of Dacia, which formed a second exception to the precept of Augustus, was about thirteen hundred miles in circumference. Its natural boundaries were the Niester, the Teyss or Tibiscus, the Lower Danube, and the Euxine Sea. The vestiges of a military road may still be traced from the banks of the Danube to the neighborhood of Bender, a place famous in modern history, and the actual frontier of the Turkish ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... trees close to each other, but one single tree, the famous zamang del Guayre, known throughout the province for the enormous extent of its branches, which form a hemispheric head five hundred and seventy-six feet in circumference. The zamang is a fine species of mimosa, and its tortuous branches are divided by bifurcation. Its delicate and tender foliage was agreeably relieved on the azure of the sky. We stopped a long time under this vegetable roof. The trunk of the zamang del Guayre,* (* The mimos of La ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... bastions, they were just as little good on the Oise as they had been on the Loire; everything passed by them. The Burgundians were unable to invest Compiegne because its circumference was too great.[2109] They were short of money; and their men-at-arms, for lack of food and of pay, deserted with that perfect assurance which in those days characterised alike mercenaries of the red cross ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... translation is here given) which quite harmonizes with the account of Tacitus:—"About the parts which are known by the name of Samland an island emerged, or rather a group of islands, ... which gradually increased in circumference, and, favored by a mild sea climate, was overspread with vegetation and forest. This forest was the means of amber being produced. Certain trees in it exuded gums in such quantities that the sunken forest ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... and this troubled me. But no sooner would I close my eyes than his image would appear standing at a distance of three or four feet from the head of the bed, in the form of a column five feet high or so and about four feet in circumference. The colour was blue, but varied in depth and intensity; on some nights it was sky-blue, but usually of a deeper shade, a pure, soft, beautiful blue like that of ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... heights on either side the nek. Coming through I noticed—and the kilted Highlanders noticed, too, they were staying out all night—that the sky over Ladysmith was very black. The great inky stain of cloud spread and ran up the heavens, then down to the whole circumference. In five minutes it was night and rain-storm. It stung like a whip-lash; to meet it was like riding into a wall. Ladysmith streets were ankle deep in half an hour; the camps were morass and pond. And listening ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... made, of about sixty feet in circumference, by sticking saplings in the ground, and bending their tops down, fastening them together. In the centre of this ring a pole is placed. The pole is about fifteen feet in height and painted red. From this swings a piece of birch bark, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... gigantic blossoms like crimson trumpets, or delicately-tinted shells of ocean, comprise but a tithe of Nature's wonders, crowned by the mighty "Rafflesia," the largest flower in the world, with each vast red chalice often measuring a circumference of six feet. A hundred native gardeners are employed in this park-like domain, and seventy men work in the adjacent culture-garden of forty acres, where experiments in grafting and acclimatizing are carried on, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... secured 125 pounds; balance carried off by others. This year, 1915, is almost a failure; just a light sprinkling of nuts; was full of blooms but owing to heavy cold rain, failed to pollenize. The tree is located in a cultivated field, circumference of tree is 5 feet, height about 60 feet, spread ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... loose gown and easy cap—such as elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic privacy—walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his grey beard, in the antiquated fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... defended rock, stood the last stronghold occupied by the Macleods in Gairloch - to this day known as the "Dun" or Fort. The foundation is still easily traced. It must have been a place of consider-able importance, for it is over 200 feet in circumference. Various localities are still pointed out in Gairloch where desperate skirmishes were fought between the Macleods and the Mackenzies. Several of these spots, where the slain were buried, look quite green to this day. The "Fraoch ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... the baker's. It followed us more and more vaguely into the business quarter where we took our omnibus, and where we noted that business London, like business New York, was always of the same complexion and temperament in its shops and saloons, from centre to circumference. Amid the commonplaceness of Islington where we changed omnibuses, the fog abandoned us in despair, and rising aloof, dissolved into the bitterness ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... The voyage was being accomplished under the most favourable auspices. It was then the bad season in Australia, the July of that zone corresponding to our January in Europe, but the sea was beautiful and easily scanned round a vast circumference. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... spider-like swiftness and sagacity his building spirit leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward, as it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread, and darts from centre to circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living thought, woven from the inexhaustible stores of his perception, and kindled from the inexhaustible fire of his imagination. He never thinks but at ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... protuberant parts; but worms soon fill up with their castings all the hollow spaces on the lower side; for, as Hensen remarks, they like the shelter of stones. As soon as the hollows are filled up, the worms eject the earth which they have swallowed beyond the circumference of the stones; and thus the surface of the ground is raised all round the stone. As the burrows excavated directly beneath the stone after a time collapse, the stone sinks a little. {49} Hence it is, ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... this opening the grain is admitted and kept turning round between the stones, and is always tending and travelling outwards, until it escapes as flour from the circumference. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... mention large peaches again; but the Louisville Journal speaks of a lot which measured nearly twelve inches each, in circumference. ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... we would know the blessedness and the sweetness of victory over these miserable, selfish hearts of ours, and to walk in the liberty of love, we can only get it by keeping close to Jesus Christ. In any circle, the nearer the points of the circumference are to the centre, the closer they will necessarily be to one another. As we draw nearer, each for himself, to our Centre, we shall feel that we have approximated to all those who stand round the same ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... that were distinguished by inflected interstices. The color of the back was brown with yellow spots that became close and small toward the head, so as to be like marble spots. The length of the shark was 8.90 m. from the mouth to the pinna caudalis extremity, the greatest circumference 6.50 m., and 2.50 m. the main diameter (the outline of the two projections is made for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... whose diameter let be an inch. Diuide the Circumference into foure equall partes. From the Center, by those 4. sections, extend 4. right lines: eche of 4. inches and a halfe long: or of as many as you liste, aboue 4. without the circumference of the circle: So that they shall be of ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... believe in a God, but not that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good, is as mere a contradiction in terms as to say, I believe in a circle, but not that all the rays from its centre to its circumference are equal. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... drying them through her belt. Then she came back to the fire and, sitting down beside it, opened the package and began her operations. On the long, slender sticks she strung a piece of tenderloin beef, about three inches in circumference and one fourth of an inch in thickness, then half a slice of bacon, and then a slice of onion. This she repeated until her skewer would bear no more weight. Then she laid it across the rocks walling her fire, occasionally turning it while she filled ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... hearts of women, as well as those of men, though he had passed little of his time in their society—he saw Miss Milner's heart at the first view of her person; and beholding in that little circumference a weight of folly that he wished to eradicate, he began to toil in the vineyard, eagerly courting her detestation of him, in the hope he could also make her abominate herself. In the mortifications of slight he was expert; and being a man ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... the tempestuous gales which have been experienced surpass the conception of those who have never witnessed the boisterous and tumultuous agitation of nature. Hailstones, exceeding six inches in circumference, have frequently fallen with such violence as to destroy the windows of those habitations which had neglected the adoption of measures of security, to kill the poultry, and lay level with the earth the shrubs and the corn. In fact, storms of this ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... long-past times were formed by a famous Rajpoot prince named Purmal, by damming up the narrow gorges of the hills. "Never had I seen, in the plains of India, a prospect more enchanting! Conceive a beautiful sheet of calm, clear, silvery water, of several miles in circumference, occasionally agitated by the splashing leaps of large fishes, or the gradual alighting of noble swan-like aquatic birds: its margin broken as if by the most skilful artist; now running into the centre, and ending in most romantic low rocky ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... and that strange, irresistible attraction which had drawn him on, till he felt he must die if he could not marry the girl with the fair hair, looped so neatly back, the fair arms emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair form decorously shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cast shame upon the human monsters assembled to behold a solitary, unarmed man torn limb from limb! When he had in this way looked upon that cloud of faces, he then turned and moved round the arena through its whole circumference, still looking upwards upon those who filled the seats—not till he had come again to the point from which he started, so much as noticing him who stood, his victim, in the midst. Then—as if apparently for the first time becoming conscious ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... insurmountable difficulty, that he had no clothes for the occasion. Thereupon the earl, drawing from his pocket his bunch of keys, directed him to go and take what he liked from his wardrobe. Now the earl was a man of large circumference, and the fool as lank ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... hemp-plant in rich soil throws out a great number of shoots from the same root, which require nourishment and serve for replanting. If space were not left for their development, the main stem would flower before it had reached its full height and circumference, whereas sugar-cane is purposely choked in virgin soil to check its running too high and dispersing the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... there is another part of this part, which differeth as much from that whereof we have spoken as sapere and sibi sapere, the one moving as it were to the circumference, the other to the centre. For there is a wisdom of counsel, and again there is a wisdom of pressing a man's own fortune; and they do sometimes meet, and often sever. For many are wise in their own ways that are weak for government or counsel; like ants, which is a wise creature ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... virtue of history, but of prophecy, not upon the retrospect and the analogies of any possible experience, but by the necessity of an aboriginal doom], a city that was to be the centre of an empire whose circumference is everywhere, did not depend for any part of its majesty upon the meanness of its enemies; on the contrary, in the very grandeur of those enemies lay, by a rebound of the feelings inevitable to a Roman mind, the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... a few weeks life again became monotonous. Everybody bored me. It seemed to me that both men and women talked, as they thought, in a circle of very small circumference. I found only an occasional person who could interest me for even a short time; I felt that I must have some mental excitement of a legitimate kind or I would go crazy. What should ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... human hand; it was a little basin of barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every leaf within Vanheimert's vision bore its little load of sand, and the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... possession which weighed eight pounds and a quarter. This hair-ball had been taken from a cow that fed on the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. It was of a flat circular shape, and measured two feet eleven inches and a half in circumference; two feet eight inches round the flat part; nine inches diameter also in the flat part; eleven inches diameter in the cross part; and, on immersing it in water, it displaced upwards of eight quarts, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... with the capture of Jericho. The Bible says that Jehovah overcame it. Seven priests went blowing rams' horns round the city for seven days. On the seventh day they went round it seven times. It must have been tiresome work, for Jericho was a large city several miles in circumference. But priests are always good "Walkers." After the last blowing of horns all the Jews shouted "Down Jericho, down Jericho!" This is Talmage's inspired account. The Bible states nothing of the kind. Just as the ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... to whom the king had addressed himself was a man of huge stature and vast circumference. He held himself erect and motionless as any block of marble. "Well!" added the king, stamping his ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... horses ran was scarcely half a mile in diameter, and they appeared to be approaching nearer to the centre. In fact, they were not following the circumference of a circle, but a spiral curve that contracted ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Metemmah, the Mahdi, who had originally intended to reduce Khartoum to surrender through starvation, decided to attempt its capture by assault. The receding Nile had left one portion of the town's circumference undefended; as the river withdrew, the rampart had crumbled; a broad expanse of mud was left between the wall and the water, and the soldiers, overcome by hunger and the lassitude of hopelessness, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... called, one by one, they go in and occupy such seats as they may choose. The unlucky member whose name last turns up has little room for choice, and must be content to spend his Congressional days far from the Speaker, on the remote circumference, or to the right ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... receiving calls to labor from other States, and finally decided to go to Illinois. Kansas wired the following message to the Central Committee of California: "Kansas is all ablaze with the C.M. from its center to its circumference, and its fires have leaped the borders into Nebraska, ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... century had opened. The town had now reached the limits which have contained it ever since—an irregular oval with a circumference of between four and five miles, surrounded by double ditches, and a strong wall pierced by nine fortified gateways; and as the town had grown, the privileges and liberties of the townsmen had grown likewise. Sturdy, independent, and resolved to keep the management of ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... simple, arose, and pushed back all benches, stools, and chairs, so as to enlarge the circumference of the ring, and the six girls who were to run stepped out upon the green. The youngest son of the house of Jaquelin checked them off in a ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... they were driven to fight out the supremacy of the world (the world as it then existed) between them. With the Roman Empire, the circle extended so as to take in the Atlantic coasts, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, which then, however, lay not at the centre but on the circumference of civilisation. During the Middle Ages, when navigation began to embrace the great open sea as well as the Mediterranean, a double centre sprang up: the Italian Republics, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, were still the chief carriers; ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the king's encampment deserves a particular chapter. He was a complete surveyor and a master in fortification, not to be outdone by anybody. He had posted his army in the suburbs of the town, and drawn lines round the whole circumference, so that he begirt the whole city with his army. His works were large, the ditch deep, flanked with innumerable bastions, ravelins, horn-works, forts, redoubts, batteries, and palisadoes, the incessant work of 8000 ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... part mechanically dragging down the aerial. The branch meanwhile continues to grow outwards, and being supplied by its new support, thickens beyond it, whence the props always slant outwards from the ground towards the circumference of the tree. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... spot on which I was riding extended a beautiful semicircular bay, of about nine or ten miles in circumference, bounded by high cliffs of white, red, and brown-coloured earths. Beyond this lay a range of hills, whose tops are often buried in cloudy mists, but which then appeared clear and distinct. This chain of hills, meeting with another from ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... silken garter with its silver clasp about your famished throat? Am I indiscreet when I inquire if its owner is your owner? Is she some aged dame living in memory of youthful vanities, fond, doting on you, decorating you with her intimate personal attire? The circumference of the garter would suggest this, for your neck is thin, and the garter fits you. But then again I notice—I notice most things—that the garter is capable of being much enlarged. These small silver-rimmed eyelets, of which ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... research. But they have a further interest. They are an illuminating revelation of the inherent character and personal bias of the individual soul who is philosophizing. I suppose to a great many minds what we call "the universe" presents itself as a colossal circle, without any circumference, filled with an innumerable number of material objects floating in some thin attenuated ether. I suppose the centre of this circle with no circumference is generally assumed to be the "self" or "soul" of the person projecting this ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... thump on the back with a harlequin's sword, or a rattling blow with a bladder half full of dried pease or corn, answers a very good purpose. There was a good deal of absurdity one day in a figure in a crinoline petticoat, riding on an ass and almost filling the Corso with the circumference of crinoline from side to side. Some figures are dressed in old-fashioned garbs, perhaps of the last century, or, even more ridiculous, of thirty years ago, or in the stately Elizabethan (as we should call ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... is a general and permanent feeling amongst democratic nations. It may be remarked, that at the present day the lower orders in England are striving with all their might to destroy local independence, and to transfer the administration from all points of the circumference to the centre; whereas the higher classes are endeavoring to retain this administration within its ancient boundaries. I venture to predict that a time will come when the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... happen to fly beyond certain bounds, the song of the male parent warns them of their distance, and causes them to turn and draw near the place from which it seems to issue. Thus the song of the male bird, always uttered within a certain circumference, of which the nest is the centre, becomes a kind of sentinel voice, to keep the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... circumference of forty miles then he set his traps, for the beaver, the mink, the fox, the fisher, the muskrat, and the other fur-bearing animals of the north. At regular intervals he visited these traps one after the other, crunching swiftly along on his snow-shoes. Jim always ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... to work a revolution in the realm of sonority is the Clumbungo Drum, on which Mr. Wackford Bumpus will shortly give a recital at the Albert Hall. The drum, which is made of teak and rhinoceros hide, is three hundred feet in circumference, but only twenty feet high, and the drumsticks are of proportionate length. As Dr. Blamphin, the eminent aurist, remarks, "The merit of the notes of this momentous instrument is their profound sincerity. They cannot be disregarded even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... Hence I gave instructions to the men to fall back. The report reached us unfortunately too late—our exit was already cut off. The enemy had occupied positions all around us, and there we were, right in the centre of a circle whose circumference consisted of an unbroken line of enemies. My secretary, who had never before been in such a circle, asked me: "Now, General, what now? What is our next move?" "We must charge that column in front of us," I replied, and, suiting the action to ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... abrupt and precipitous above their heads. It was larger in its circumference and with much larger space on its summit than those other volcanic rocks in and close to the town; but then at the same time it was higher from the ground, and quite as inaccessible, except by the single path which led ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... Cibu is pacified, and the Indians pay tribute, and there are a number of Christians. The entire island formerly rendered homage to your Majesty. It extends east and west, being somewhat inclined to the northeast and southwest. It is more than three hundred leguas in circumference. The southern part lies in six degrees of north latitude. It has many gold mines, as those say who have seen them, although they are but little worked, and many cinnamon trees ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... of the jaguar; "For," says he, "I have seen, in the forests of Guiana, the prints left by the claws of the jaguar on the smooth bark of a tree from forty to fifty feet in height, measuring about a foot and a half in circumference, and clothed with branches near its summit alone. It was easy to follow with the eye the efforts which the animal had made to reach the branches; although his talons had been thrust deeply into the body of the tree, he had ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the hour, without bringing up or shortening sail for years at a time. Now, all this being admitted, what would be her course? Why, sir, any child could tell you, she would keep turning in a circle of some fifty or a hundred thousand miles in circumference; and such, it appears to me, it is much more rational to suppose is the natur' of the 'arth's traversing, than all this steering small ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... more than a mile in circumference, with low, rocky shores. It lies about three miles from the town of Halifax, but not in sight. It is connected with the main by a bridge that is thrown across a narrow passage of something like a ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the little island, Bela presumably following him. The circumference of the beach was about half a mile. He ran as hard as he could, and presently discovered her ahead of him. He ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the facts, we find them, as far as can be judged, in harmony with this view. Considering the enormous circumference of Uranus's orbit, and his comparatively small mass, we may conclude that the ring from which he resulted was a comparatively slender, and therefore a hoop-shaped one: especially as the nebulous mass must have been at that time less oblate than afterwards. Hence, a plane of rotation ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... came the "Tenebrae," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while the choir recommenced the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... within the lungs is estimated at ninety-eight square yards, which is due to the extensive infoldings of the surface [Fig 6], just as a large surface of thin cloth can, by folding, be compressed into a small space. The intestinal canal from the mouth to the anus is thirty feet long, the circumference varies greatly, but an average circumference of three inches may safely be assumed, which would give between seven and eight square feet of surface, this being many times multiplied by adding the surfaces of the glands which are connected with ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... diminution in the size of the brain case. A Swiss skull of the stone age, found in the lake dwelling of Meilen, corresponded exactly to that of a Swiss youth of the present day. The celebrated Neanderthal skull had a larger circumference than the average, and its capacity, indicating actual mass of brain, is estimated to have been not less than 75 cubic inches, or nearly the average of existing Australian crania. The Engis skull, perhaps the oldest known, and which, according ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... satisfactory record. So far as distance is concerned, this wave affords most surprising evidence of the stupendous nature of the disturbance to which the waters of the Pacific Ocean had been subjected. The whole circumference of the earth is but twenty-five thousand miles, so that this wave had travelled over a distance considerably greater than two-fifths of the earth's circumference. A distance which the swiftest of our ships could not traverse in less than six or seven weeks had been swept over by this enormous ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... which pervades his words? For one traces something of him, often enough, in the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his footstep beside the quiet waters of Magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, the circumference of the Sheldonian. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... similar to the instrument of Konstantinoff, which was constructed by L.F.C. Breguet and has been sometimes attributed to him (Comptes rendus, 1845). This chronograph consisted of a cylinder 1 metre in circumference and 0.36 metre long, driven by clockwork, the rotation being regulated by a governor provided with wings. A small carriage geared to the wheelwork traversed its length, carrying electromagnetic signals. The electric chronograph signal usually consists of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... favoured by wind and tide, sailed swiftly forward in a direction almost due north. The aspect of the river now frequently changed: its breadth varied from one to two and three miles. We often came into large reaches many miles in circumference, and surrounded by magnificent scenery. We sailed past pretty hilly islands adorned with lofty spreading trees, and every where found a sufficient depth of water to admit the largest ships. The steep banks ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... tendrils deep into the aforetime softened mould. A foot or more of a mass of decayed leaves and other vegetable matter encases the mound. The brushy surface of the mound has been cleared by the owner, and the thicket formerly upon it removed. The circumference of one fine poplar was found to be 4 feet 10 inches; of another tree, 5 feet 6 inches, but the largest had lately fallen. Around the stump the last measured seven feet. The mound is eliptical at the base. The longest diameter, that is from east to west, the same direction as the ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... depart, when a horrible-looking fellow, dressed in a buff jerkin, leather breeches, and jackboots, which came halfway up his thighs, and having on his head a white hat, the rims of which were at least a yard and a half in circumference, pushed through the crowd, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... deep clear water—some a few yards across, others long zigzag channels like water-filled cracks in the earth, and others forming lanes and ponds and lakes that were of sizes varying from a quarter of a mile to two or three in circumference. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... said Sol, expanding the circumference of his face in satisfaction. 'Well, come along—never mind so long ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... for the trees were really immense. I walked through a hollow log through which a lady had ridden on horseback some time before. Later, I stood on top of this log and it seemed as if I were standing on top of a house. The largest tree we measured was 103 feet in circumference at its base. The name of this monster was General Washington. People had climbed far up its sides and carved their names. In order to get a good idea of the height of these great trees, one has to lie on the ground near the base and ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... accurate knowledge even of the old world as do those of the great geographer Ptolemy, who lived a thousand years before. Ptolemy (200 A.D.), in company with the majority of learned men since Aristotle, had declared the earth to be round and had even estimated its circumference with substantial accuracy, though he had misled later students by picturing the Indian Ocean as completely surrounded by Africa, which he conceived to extend indefinitely southward and join Asia on the southeast, leaving no ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... brain compares favorably with what is known of other intellectual giants, as the following measurements will demonstrate. The actual circumference of the head around the base of the brain was twenty-four inches. The measurement from ear to ear over the top of the head fifteen and a half inches, while the forehead measures from ear to ear over the perceptives twelve and a half inches, and from the same points over the region of sympathy fourteen ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... with Macbeth's stare of pitiful horror at his unused daggers and with the grand manner, up to the height of the argument, of Mrs. Kean's coldly portentous snatch of them. What I especially owe that lady is my sense of what she had in common, as a queer hooped and hook-nosed figure, of large circumference and archaic attire, strange tasteless toggery, with those performers of the past who are preserved for us on the small canvases of Hogarth and Zoffany; she helped one back at that time of her life to a vision of the Mrs. Cibbers and the Mrs. Pritchards—so ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... produced what might have been the forerunner of the bicycle, 'a huge hollow wheel made very light, withinside of which, in a barrel of six feet diameter, a man should walk. Whilst he stepped thirty inches, the circumference of the large wheel, or rather wheels, would revolve five feet on the ground; and as the machine was to roll on planks, and on a plane somewhat inclined, when once the vis inertia of the machine should be overcome, it would carry on the man within it as fast ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... was attracted by a tree of larger circumference than any he had seen nearer, which showed the ravages of time. The bark was partly worn away, and, approaching nearer, Ben saw that it had begun to decay from within. There was an aperture about a foot above the ground through which he could ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... see by the Journal of this morning, that they are robbing us of another of our inventions to give it to the English. The writer, indeed, only admits them to have revived what he thinks was known to the Greeks, that is, the making the circumference of a wheel of one single piece. The farmers in New Jersey were the first who practised it, and they practised it commonly. Dr. Franklin, in one of his trips to London, mentioned this practice to the man ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... characteristic effects incident to the interception-bands; in Fig. 7 (Plate V.), let A'C' represent at a given moment M, the total circumference of a color-disc, A'B' represent a green sector of 90 deg., and B'C' a red complementary sector of 270 deg.. If the disc is supposed to rotate from left to right, it is clear that a moment previous to M the two sectors and their intersection B will have occupied a position slightly ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... means were ample for his rank and discreet amusements, and went further and did more for him than prolific Sir Matthew's; for Melusine gave him no sons. His circle of being, in and through which trailed with charming languor his wife, was of more dappled sheen and of ampler circumference than that of Bryanston Square. Having its centre in Kensington Gore, it reached to Ranelagh on one side, to Maidenhead on the other. There was a riverside villa down there, where Mrs. Scales gave parties ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... hand her to the door; with great difficulty, for her hoop was of the very newest enormity of circumference; I effected this object. "Well, Count," said she, "I am glad to see you have brought so much learning from school; make the best use of it while it lasts, for your memory will not furnish you with a single simile out of the mythology by the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... horses, as many lackeys as masters—where was this crowd to be housed? Where were to be lodged all the gentry of the neighborhood, who would gather in two or three hours after the news had enlarged the circle of its report, like the increasing circumference produced by a stone ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 1876, the great camp was scattered for three miles or more along the level river bottom, back of the thin line of cottonwoods—five circular rows of teepees, ranging from half a mile to a mile and a half in circumference. Here and there stood out a large, white, solitary teepee; these were the lodges or "clubs" of the young men. Crazy Horse was a member of the "Strong Hearts" and the "Tokala" or Fox lodge. He was watching a game of ring-toss when the warning came from ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... places the first egg, leaving beside it a provision of honey necessary to nourish the larva during its evolution; she then closes it with a partition. This partition is made with fragments of the powder of wood glued together with saliva. A first horizontal ring is applied round the circumference of the tube; then in the interior of this first ring a second is formed, and so on continuously, until the central opening, more and more reduced, is at last entirely closed up. This ceiling forms the floor for the next chamber, in which the female deposits a new egg, provided, like the other, with ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... reduced the carriages behind the engine to a heap of ruins. But here it had no other effect than that of delaying us for three or four hours. The tire of one of the heavy driving wheels flew off, and in the shock the body of the wheel itself was broken, one spoke and a portion of the circumference of the wheel was carried away, and the steam-chamber was ripped open. Nevertheless the train was pulled up, neither the engine nor any of the carriages got off the line, and the men in charge of the train seemed ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... starting line, one beside each competitor. This receptacle should be a pail, basket, box, or can. The official dimensions of the A. A. U. call for its being not over two feet in height, with an opening not over thirty-six inches in circumference. In handicap events the starting mark is paid from the rear of the can. The potatoes are replaced on the marks before the beginning of each heat, the game in this form consisting solely of gathering them up, not in placing them. There is no rule against tossing a potato into the receptacle, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... nature. The social order which restrains it, feeds it. It exists in every country in Europe; and among all orders of men in every country, who look up to France as to a common head. The centre is there. The circumference is the world of Europe wherever the race of Europe may be settled. Everywhere else the faction is militant; in France it is triumphant. In France it is the bank of deposit, and the bank of circulation, of all the pernicious principles ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... Reptile, and lived principally on the foliage of the Cretaceous forests amongst which it dwelt. Its size has been variously estimated at from thirty to fifty feet, the thigh-bone in large examples measuring nearly five feet in length, with a circumference of twenty-two inches in its smallest part. With the strong and massive hind-limbs are associated comparatively weak and small fore-limbs; and there seems little reason to doubt that the Iguanodon must have walked temporarily or permanently upon its hind-limbs, after the manner of ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... anything about the quantity in the whole tree, but my son stepped the ground, and, as nearly as we could judge, the diameter of the extent of the branches was upwards of ninety feet, which would make a circumference of about three hundred feet. The tree is in full growth at this moment. There is a little hole in one of the limbs; but with that exception, there appears not ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... law of gravitation before he was twenty-one, but one slight error in a measurement of the earth's circumference interfered with a demonstration of the correctness of his theory. Twenty years later he corrected the error, and showed that the planets roll in their orbits as a result of the same law which brings an apple to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... However real and deep the change which passes over us when 'Christ is formed in us,' it is only by degrees that the transformation spreads through our being. The renewing process follows upon the bestowment of the new life, and works from its deep inward centre outwards and upwards to the circumference and surface of our being, on condition of our own constant ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... but their children were taught to speak the paternal language, as has been the case in more recent times with the descendants of the Spaniards in America. The wealth of some of these Greek colonial towns is said to have been incredible. Crotona was more than twelve miles in circumference; and Sybaris, another of the Italiot cities, was so luxurious and dissipated as even to give rise to a proverb. The prosperity of these places was due to two causes: they were not only the centres of great agricultural districts, but carried on also an active commerce in all ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... "enormous gooseberry" of the provincial newspaper "local" has made its appearance. It is smaller than usual, being only three inches in circumference; but that is a great advantage to persons desirous ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... onwards from Rossbach; French also turning as if exclusively upon perfidious Albion: and the thing became, in Teutschland, as elsewhere, a duel of life and death between these natural enemies,—Teutschland the centre of it,—Teutschland and the accessible French Sea-Towns,—but the circumference of it going round from Manilla and Madras to Havana and Quebec again. Wide-spread furious duel; prize, America and life. By land and sea; handsomely done by Pitt on both elements. Land part, we say, was always mainly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... herself, because she could not then be his helper. It is only since I have met the varied responsibilities of life, that I have comprehended woman's sphere; and I have come to regard it as lying within the whole circumference of humanity. If, as is claimed by the most ultra opponents of the wife's legal individuality, the interests of the parties are identical, then I claim as a legitimate conclusion that their spheres are also identical. For interests determine duties, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... or harbor front is lined with lofty European warehouses, and some good residences,—half devoted to business, however, the locality being mostly given up to the requirements of commerce. It will be remembered that Hong Kong is an island, nearly forty miles in circumference, consisting of a cluster of hills rising almost to the dignity of mountains. The gray granite, of which the island is mostly composed, affords an excellent material for building purposes, and is largely employed for that ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... was comparatively small on the moon, for her diameter is only a little over two thousand miles and the circumference only about six thousand six hundred miles, the Annihilator could not be speeded up. If it went too fast, it would soon be off the moon and into ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... steam supply-pipe emitting the jet has been placed outside of the circle of the wheel; but the future form seems likely to be one in which the axis of the wheel is itself the pipe which contains the steam, but which permits it to escape outwards to the circumference of the wheel. The latter is, in this form of turbine, made in the shape of a paddle-wheel of very small circumference but considerable length, the paddles being set at such an inclination as to obtain the greatest possible rotative ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... conducted by one Pedro Garcia. Pedro Garcia was the mountain Shylock. He loaned money at enormous rates of interest, and he rented out horses at prohibitive rates per day. Also, being what he was, Pedro had gained his pounds of flesh—was alarmingly fat, with short legs of giant circumference. Usually these legs were clothed in tight-fitting overalls, and his small feet incased in boots of high-grade leather wonderfully roweled. Yet many years had passed since Pedro had been seen in a saddle. Evidently he held to the rowels in fond memory of his ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... the weakest sound that can possibly be articulated, is increased by that time it has gone half round, into a sound, audible and strong. Your lordship, with your flock of geese about you, would probably be frolic and gamesome. You may easily contrive to scatter them through the whole circumference of this apartment. Of a sudden, you will please to turn your face to the wall, and utter in a solemn tone the royal opinion. Every body will be at a loss from whence the mandate proceeds. Some of your companions, more goose-like than the rest, will probably imagine it a voice from ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... monsters whose enormous shades fell at dawn or evening time upon the hamlets and villages of the Moor, now carried on their lofty crowns the flames of rejoicing. Bonfires of varying size, according to the energy and importance of the communities responsible for them, dotted the circumference of the lonely region in a vast, irregular figure, but thinned and ceased towards the unpeopled heart of the waste. On Wattern, at Cranmere, upon Fur Tor, and under the hoary, haunted woods of Wistman, no glad beacons blazed ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... our cucumbers. To-day I measured one I brought in; it was close on a foot in circumference. I have never seen such fine ones at home, and I think these are ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... the topic. Thus perhaps there was no great harm in Dr. Johnson's being utterly ignorant of maritime language, but it was temerariously vain in that sturdy lexicographer to assert that belay is a sea-phrase for splicing a rope; main sheet, for the largest sail in a ship; and bight, for the circumference of a coil of rope; and we long had him on the hip respecting the purser, a personage whom he—misled by Burser—at once pronounced to be the paymaster of a ship; as the then purser was, in fact, more familiar with slops, tobacco, pork, dips, biscuit, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... tree it became evident that the task of climbing it was not likely to prove so easy as the skipper had imagined; for the bole was fully fifteen feet in circumference, with not a branch or protuberance of any description for the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... with our sense-experiences. They coerce us; we must treat them consistently, whether or not we like the results. The rules of addition apply to our debts as rigorously as to our assets. The hundredth decimal of pi, the ratio of the circumference to its diameter, is predetermined ideally now, tho no one may have computed it. If we should ever need the figure in our dealings with an actual circle we should need to have it given rightly, calculated by the usual rules; for it is the same kind ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... H.H. Garland, of Nelson County, Virginia, had found a jelly-like substance of about the circumference of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... would not shine without its help. And then would he reckon over the coins in the bag, toss up the bar and catch it as it came down, sift the gold dust through his fingers, look at the funny image of his own face as reflected in the burnished circumference of the cup, and whisper to himself, "O Midas, rich King Midas, what a happy man art thou!" But it was laughable to see how the image of his face kept grinning at him out of the polished surface of the cup. It seemed to be aware of his foolish behavior, and to have a naughty inclination ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... capes of Chili, Peru, Nicaragua, Nueua Espanna, Nueua Galicia, Culiacan, California, Noua Albion, and more Northerly as farre as 43. degrees: Together with the two renowmed, and prosperous voyages of Sir Francis Drake and M. Thomas Candish round about the circumference of the whole earth, and diuers other voyages intended and set forth for that course. Collected by Richard Hakluyt Preacher, and sometimes student of Christ-Church in Oxford. Imprinted in London by George Bishop, Ralfe Newberie, and ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... a most truthful representation of a broken-down merchant, conceived in the spirit of that humane humor which blends the ludicrous and the pathetic in one. Joe Sedley, the East Indian, slightly suggests Major Bagstock. He has the major's physical circumference, apoplectic turn and swell of manner, with the addition of Cockney vulgarity and cowardice. His retreat from Brussels, just before the battle of Waterloo, is described with the art ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... built purposely in such a way, that the bishop, or dean, or dignitary, who should preach there, might not be obliged to strain his voice too much. I was now conducted to that part which is called the whispering gallery, which is a circumference of prodigious extent, just below the cupola. Here I was directed to place myself in a part of it directly opposite to my conductor, on the other side of the gallery, so that we had the whole breadth of the church between ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... the thing on, I went out the air lock. If the leak had been bad enough, I would have been able to see the air spurting out through the hole, a miniature geyser. But I found no more than what I expected. I crawled around the entire circumference of the hull and found only a thin silvery haze. The air as it leaked out formed a thin atmosphere around the hull, held there by the faint gravity of the ship's mass. Dust motes in the air, reflecting sunlight, were enough to hide any microscopic geyser spout. Before I ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... most fallacious. As for the Educational experts, he has all the cold and calculated hate for them that is the mark of experience. I admired especially his treatment of the "craze for practical teaching," the theory which holds, for example, that, instead of postulating a fixed relation between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, a teacher should supply his boys with several ordinary tin canisters, a piece of string and a ruler, and leave the form to work out their own result. Decidedly, Mr. HAY has seen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... constructed of a size proportioned to your crops, preferably round and with the centre slightly raised so that if it rains the water may not stand on it but drain off as quickly as possible, and there is no shorter distance from the centre to the circumference of a circle than a radius:[98] it should be paved with well packed earth, best of all of clay, so that it may not crack in the sun and open honeycombs in which the grain can hide itself, and water collect and give vent to the burrows of mice and ants. It is the practice ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... stooped and drew a circle of red on the floor, around the spot where he stood; wrote in the four quarters mystical signs, and numbers which were all powers of seven or nine; examined the whole ring carefully, to see that no smallest break had occurred in the circumference; and then rose from his bending posture. As he rose, the church clock struck seven; and, just as she had appeared the first time, reluctant, slow, and stately, glided in the lady. Cosmo trembled; and when, turning, she revealed a countenance ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... these requirements that the present maps have been constructed. Each exhibits the aspect of the whole sky at a given day and hour. The circumference of the map represents the natural horizon, the middle of the map representing the part of the sky which lies immediately overhead. If the learner hold one of these maps over his head, so as to look vertically upwards at it, ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor
... palace courtyard in the middle of which yawned a well twenty-four feet in circumference and fifty deep. The fanatics thus found a grave ready-digged as it were to their hand, and to save ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... itself. He stepped back, ran his eye quickly over the whole immense mass of wheels, handles, bolts, bars and levers, paused for an instant, as if making up his mind, then said decidedly, "There it is," and, stepping quickly forward, selected a small wheel amid a dozen others, all furnished at the circumference with handles like those of a pilot's wheel, and, giving it a quick wrench, turned it ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... sure that you yawned in sympathy. When a man so far forgets himself as to yawn in the presence of a woman, she never fails to respond with one of more ample circumference. When a woman so far remembers herself as to yawn in the presence of a man, he tries to ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... orthodox geological doctrine. Since Lord Kelvin's estimate was made, his claim that the final crust of the earth could not have formed until the mass was solid throughout, or at least until a honeycomb of solid matter had been bridged up from centre to circumference, has gained pretty general acceptance. It still remains an open question, however, as to what proportion the lacunas of molten matter bear at the present day to the solidified portions, and therefore to what extent the earth will be subject to further ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... traffic in the plains. The axle-trees and linch-pins are made of wood, and indeed no iron at all is used in their construction. The plain of Duvno is one of the largest in the province: its extreme length is about fifteen miles, and villages are placed at the foot of the hills, round its entire circumference. The most important of these is the seat of a Mudir, to whom I proceeded at once on my arrival. Although afflicted with a hump-back, he was a person of most refined manners. His brother-in-law, Mahmoud Effendi, who is a member of the Medjlis, was with ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... brought them to Siwah, a much more extensive oasis, the rocky border of which is estimated by Horneman to be fifty miles in circumference. It yields, with little culture, various descriptions of grain and vegetables; but its wealth consists chiefly in large gardens of dates, baskets of which fruit form here the standard of value. The government is vested in a very turbulent aristocracy, of about thirty chiefs, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... that an idle, floating spirit can ever look up with clear eye to God; spreading its miserable anarchy before the symmetry of the creative Mind; in the midst of a disorderly being, that has neither centre nor circumference, kneeling beneath the glorious sky, that everywhere has both; and for a life that is all failure, turning to the Lord of the silent stars, of whose punctual thought it is, that "not one faileth." The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... yourselves the terror of that judgment how you will, which shall bereave blushing iniquity of the fig-leaves of hypocrisy, yet will the eye of immortality discern of your painted pollutions, as the ever-living food of perdition. The humours of my eyes are the habitations of fountains, and the circumference of my heart the enclosure of fearful contrition, when I think how many souls at that moment shall carry the name of Martin on their foreheads to the vale of confusion, in whose innocent blood thou swimming to hell, shalt have ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... not half so swift as the gazelles in fair open chase, economise their strength by directing their animals' heads towards the leading gazelle, and thus inducing the herd, as they continue heading on, to describe double the circumference of ground their ponies have to traverse. In process of time, the gazelles, by their extra exertions, begin to flag and drop, and the hunters rush in upon them, and cut ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke |
