United States or Belarus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the sun-dried and sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury, as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world. Under the testudo the Roman legions swarmed into the walled cities of the orbis terrarum.
Tenthredinidae, proportions of the sexes in; fighting habits of male; difference of the sexes in. Tephrodornis, young of. Terai, in India. Termites, habits of. Terns, white; and black. Terns, seasonal change of plumage in. Terror, common action of, upon the lower animals and man. Testudo elegans. Testudo nigra. Tetrao cupido, battles of; sexual difference in the vocal organs of.
Sarakoff stood in the centre of the room, his hands deep in his pockets, his pipe sending up clouds of smoke, his tall muscular frame tilted back. His eyes were fixed on an extraordinary object that crawled slowly over the polished floor. It was a gigantic tortoise a specimen of Testudo elephantopus a huge cumbersome brute.
As the testudo moved down the Palace Road and towards the wooden barrier of the north gate, it was to be observed that the front-rank men and the file-closers carried their shields in the ordinary fashion, in order to ward off horizontally flying missiles.
A sharp-eyed youth who was lying next to Constans touched him on the arm, directing his attention to a squad of the defenders who were working to dislodge one of the massive coping-stones of the gateway arch. Already it was oscillating under the heave of the levers; if it fell, a score of men might be crushed beneath its weight, and the destruction of the testudo would be a certainty.
Many romantic incidents have been related of these long months of siege: the stories of the Countess's use of a dust-cloth to repair the damage done by the English siege-machines to the battlements, and of her prophecy, made when the Earl of Salisbury brought a "sow" or shed fitted to protect soldiers in the manner of the Roman testudo, "Beware, Montagow, For farrow shall thy sow",
Invisible animals took it up, particle by particle, to build a testudo, a traveling house, for themselves. The ephemeral life departing, there was a rain of dead shells to make limestone masses at the bottom of the sea. It will not always remain rock. Air and water disintegrate it once more. Little rootlets seize upon it and it goes coursing in the veins of plants.
Now, Roger makes no mention whatever of "testudo," while Roland says: "Nota quod quamvis Rogerius non designat inter glandulum et testudinem, scias igitur quod testudo fit ex majori parte flegmatica, minori melancholie, glandula vero a contrario," a statement which might readily suggest the suspicion that Gilbert had before his eyes the text of Roland, or that, at least, he had not acquired his knowledge of testudo from Roger, his usual surgical authority.
Baguian is famed throughout those seas as a rookery for the giant tortoise testudo elephantopus.
A signal being given at break of day, their entire multitude is marshalled in the forum; thence, after raising the shout and forming a testudo, they advance to the attack.
Word Of The Day