This apparent fin in reality consists of the two fore-limbs, which, packed in a special sheath, are bent backwards, stretched out against one another in a straight line.
The two bows, the toothed nervures, engage obliquely one with the other, and their mutual friction causes the sonorous vibration of the two stretched membranes.
The rest of the wing-cover shows a few more nervures of less importance, which hold the membrane stretched tight, but do not form part of the friction apparatus.
While one of the murderous talons holds the quarry gripped by the middle of the body, the other presses the head downwards, so that the articulation between the back and the neck is stretched and opens slightly.
Daughter and granddaughter of soldiers, her father was on MacMahon's staff, and the image of that tall old man stretched out before her evoked in her mind another image no less terrible.
With sudden, wild abandon she stretched her arms toward it appealing, beseeching, entreating, and lo!
The woman felt hysterical and scolded at the nurse, but the stranger had stretched out his arms and with a glad cry the child nestled in them.
The stranger rose slowly and stretched forth his hands as if to bless the viands.
The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men.
He stretched his arms out like a cross, looking upward.
She looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch.
But Montcalm's fortified posts, behind which lay his army, stretched along the shore for six miles, all the way from the Montmorency to the St. Charles.
While it yielded Hudson Bay to Britain, it settled nothing as to frontiers in the wilderness which stretched beyond the Great Lakes into the Far West and which had vast wealth in furs.
Immediately after the birds have been bled to death, they are carefully skinned, so that the feathers may not be injured, and the skin is then stretched upon a tree, or on a horse, and salt rubbed well into it.
Cedar, yellow pine, and cretonnes or tapestries stretched on frames or light panels, take the place of the good solid oak and mahogany framing of the years gone by.
This open sail locker or pen stretched right across from side to side, and was about 2 feet deep.
Over the duralumin framework is stretched a sheathing of rubberized fabric.
The shutters were operated by strings stretched across the course and as these were successively snapped by the horse the pictures were progressively exposed.
Once it happened that her golden ball, instead of falling back into the little hand that she stretched out for it, dropped on the ground, and immediately rolled away into the water.
Rose-red went and pushed the bolt back, and thought it was a poor man, but a bear stretched his thick black head into the door.
They stretched out their hands, and cried, "Have mercy!
So hestretched his wings, delighted that he might now have a chance of approaching his fair Zelia.
Snowdrop longed for the pretty apple; and when she saw the peasant-woman eating it, she could resist no longer, but stretched out her hand and took the poisoned half.
I am a man, with all the weaknesses and passions of a man, which rise over him and threaten to drown him like a raging sea, if the dear, the beloved hand is notstretched out to save him.
Suddenly he stretched out his hands and said, in a hollow, spectre-like tone of voice, "Listen!
The chord had been stretched too far, it had broke; it now uttered not a sound of joy or of grief.
They were Oldenburg and Melitta; and he stretched out his arms towards them and said: "You dear and good ones!
He walked upon the wharf that stretched far into the sea, and along which vessel lay by vessel, out to the uttermost point.
I was led to wonder whether or not I should have undertaken the work if I could have seen the trail stretched out, as I saw it like a panorama from the car window.
Illustration: On this page and the following are shown the main trails that stretched across the continent, west of the Missouri, in the years before the building of railroads.
One day Helen's mother was called downstairs and with fear and trembling asked Uncle Harry, who was stretched out on a sofa, if he would keep his eye on Helen.
When it became necessary to move on, the General gave the order, but the tired men remained stretched upon the ground.
The jerk had the effect of making poor little Robby lose his hold, and back he fell with his legs in the air, and his hands stretched out, while Norman scampered on, turning his head round to laugh at him maliciously.
Ours is delightfully warmed by the charcoal brazier and, stretched comfortably on the beds, we write our daily records or read Dickens for half an hour.
At our camp on the Nam-ting River we could usually put up a few birds on the edge of the deserted rice fields which stretched up into the jungle, but they were never far away from the edge of the forest.
With his hind quarters on the upper terrace he dropped down, stretched his long neck across the trap, seized the dog which had been wired to a tree and pulled it away.
Shortly after leaving the ferry we emerged from the vast stretches of rank grass on to the open rice paddys which stretched away in a gently undulating plain from the river to the mountains.
Strangely enough they did not lie down on their sides, as do many hoofed animals, but doubled their forelegs under them, stretched their necks and hind legs straight out, and rested on their bellies.
The trees stretched upward full one hundred and fifty feet, their tops spread out in a leafy roof.
On the fourth, garden and pasture and arable land stretched out in all directions, as far as the eye could reach.
At last one of them stretched out his arm and took up the paper, slowly, almost mechanically; the two others gave no heed.
One of these had one leg crossed over the other; his companion had both legs stretched out at full length before him.
The room had been originally papered; but Riccabocca had stretched canvass over the walls, and painted thereon sundry satirical devices, each separated from the other by scroll-works of fantastic arabesques.
His was the face in the photograph to which Camilla Van Arsdale had turned when death stretched out a hand toward her.
She stretched upward an idle hand and fondled a spray of freesia that drooped against her cheek.
Tossing up his head, he stretched out in the long, easy lope of the desert-bred, his rider sitting him loosely and with slack bridle.
She stretched a hand to him, closing her eyes again.
Hitching her pony and unfastening her hat, the girl stretched herself luxuriously in the folds.
She stretched a long and, as it seemed, blatantly naked arm into a group near by and drew forth the roundish man whom Cressey had pointed out at Marrineal's dinner party.
He stretched out his arm toward the near window through which could be seen the white splendor of Mount Carstairs, dim in the wreathing murk.
Haring, the victim personifying the offending organ, was stretched upon the rack and put to the question.
Gray in the nascent dawn stretched the tossing sea about them; and lonely they rode upon its billows.
Gianapolis rose to his feet, unsteadily, and stretched out his arms in supplication.
He did not yet wish to reveal himself, but as the tsar and his train passed by and gave him alms, he stretched out his hand to receive it and the wedding-ring upon his finger caught the princess's eye.
When he was quite close, Marko alighted from Sharatz, stretched out his arms and the two embraced, each inquiring after the state of the other's health.
No sooner had the man stretched forth his right arm, than Marko by a swift stroke cut it off from the shoulder.
The bride, thinking in her innocence that he was Prince Maximus, removed her veil and stretched out her hands to the pretended bridegroom.
The man went and stretched himself out upon it as if in obedience to some unspoken command.
Before he had time to defend himself, they were upon him, and a moment later he was lying stretched out upon his back in the middle of the street, a dead man.
Even before he had quite concluded I drew my cloak round my face and stretched myself out.
In five days it was finished; then, after lighting a fire, I stretched myself out in my dry bed of moss and leaves with a feeling that was almost triumphant.
When it vanished I turned a last look on the girl, and her face was deathly pale, and her hair looked blacker than night; and as she looked she stretched out her arms towards me and uttered a low, wailing cry.
He rested for a couple of hours, sheltered from the sun by the foliage of the oak beneath which he hadstretched himself.
It was the chart by which he meant to steer in the unknown career which stretched before him.
On looking about him, he discovered sly Reynard stretched upon the log, apparently lifeless.
He drew his dirk, but unwilling to strike, lest he might take the life of a companion in seclusion, he stooped down, and discovered a goat with her kid stretched on the ground.
They even stretched themselves at full length on the ground, and continued motionless as if dead.
He bound it up with his garter, and offered her a share of the bread beside him; but she stretched out her tongue, as if to apprise him that her mouth was parched with thirst.
Presently the older man looked up from his dreary abstraction: Steven, stretched on the sofa in all the abandonment of young fatigue, was sleeping like a child.
Then off went his battered hat again and out was stretched a sinewy leg in dusty blue stocking, to accompany a bow such as twenty years ago might have roused the envy of your finest Versailles marquis.
The fiddler stretchedout his hand and culled the posy from the other's grasp.
He caught her by the lobe of her pretty ear, stretched out the other hand and drew his spouse forward by the waist.
And, as she stretched across him to do so, the violets at her breast fell upon his hand.
And then, so secure in his hold, stretched herself like a weary child, and slid a little further from him so that her head rested on his knee.
The fiddler stretched out his hand and helped the other to rise, with a vigorous grasp.
Burgrave's eye shot flames and he stretchedout an eager hand.
This last in a low, confidential tone as she stretched the wrinkles of her face into a ghastly grin.
At this moment Tim Cates rode into the edge of the crowd, his mouth stretched in a broad grin, and his goatee working like a white peg in his chin.
Now he stretched out his cord and pushed the peg into the earth as though it crossed a fox path, and made a motion of a fox walking along and touching his leg against the cord.
Before them stretched a wilderness of upstanding mountain peaks into which there wound the narrow end of a new valley, widening but slightly so far as their eyes could trace it.
It was nearly twenty feet long and not more than two feet wide, covered entirely with tightly stretched skin.
A moment later Rob spied the otter lying stretched out motionless on the water as though asleep, as indeed likely was the case, since that is the method of sleep practised by this species.
Heap hunt here," he said, pointing to the meat and the hides stretched on the ground.
It's time now we got the bear hides stretched so that they can begin to dry.
Beyond stretched the moorland, brilliant with patches of yellow gorse, and the hills, blue and melting in the morning sunlight.
A woman turned her head as they entered and stretchedout her hand, which the prince raised to his lips.
The prince stretched out his hand, but he was too late.
She stretched out an arm, took a volume from the swinging table by her side, and threw it across to him.
She suddenly released her hold upon her partner and stretched out her arms to him.
John stretchedhimself out, a splendid figure of healthy manhood.
She stretched out her graceful body in front of the fire and raised her veil.
