A movement downward

Usage examples of descent.

I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite, My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate.

On my view of characters being of real importance for classification, only in so far as they reveal descent, we can clearly understand why analogical or adaptive character, although of the utmost importance to the welfare of the being, are almost valueless to the systematist.

Honorius ambitiously derived their descent from the heroes who had repulsed the arms of Hannibal, and subdued the nations of the earth.

The descent was accomplished with a minimum of noise, and even Amity managed to creep through the shrubbery without attracting the keen ears of the watchdogs.

According to some documents given to me by Count Antal Sigray, a representative of the opposition party, Bela Imredy is of Jewish descent, and he asked me to publish those.

Tombstone kept his descent constant at five hundred feet per minute and relied on the advice of the LSO, a veteran aviator with a much better perspective on the approach than Magruder had himself, to keep him on track.

Susan Bates immediately squared her shoulders, banished all expression from her face, and began the descent of the steps with her eyes fixed upon the gaps in the broken building line over the way.

It flailed and bawled and could not rise from its burden, and it remained a sobering example of a misstep until they could make the long descent and deal with it.

Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them and Boston the headquarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.

Looking to geographical distribution, if we admit that there has been during the long course of ages much migration from one part of the world to another, owing to former climatal and geographical changes and to the many occasional and unknown means of dispersal, then we can understand, on the theory of descent with modification, most of the great leading facts in Distribution.

After a long ascent through a region of light, peaty soil, wooded with pine, cryptomeria, and scrub oak, a long descent and a fine avenue terminate in Shinjo, a wretched town of over 5000 people, situated in a plain of ricefields.

The descent to Innai under an avenue of cryptomeria, and the village itself, shut in with the rushing Omono, are very beautiful.

Darwin denied design, so neither can it be doubted that Paley denied descent with modification.

To the corresponding cupboard, on the other side of the fire, which had lost a corner by the descent of the roof, Mr Cupples now dragged his slippers, feeling in his waistcoat pocket, as he went, for the key.

I thought him a very fine actor indeed, but now I realize that he was of the line that descended from Irving, in which descent all the beauty and diablerie of that great player had been lost, and only the mannerisms -- grunting, eye-flashing, and gnawing the nether lip -- remained.