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A level tract lying at little depth below the surface of water, or alternately covered and left bare by the tide; a shoal; a shallow; a strand. Half my power, this night Passing these flats, are taken by the tide. Shak.

Having alternate curvatures in opposite directions; bent in a zigzag manner.

the fore part (of a horse, etc.); a martingale. -- Fore hammer, a sledge hammer, working alternately, or in time, with the hand hammer. -- Fore leg, one of the front legs of a quadruped, or multiped, or of a chair, settee, etc. -- Fore peak (Naut.), the angle within a ship's bows; the portion of the hold which is fa…

players, with two on each side and each side playing but one ball, the partners striking alternately. It is called a mixed foursome when each side consists of a man and a woman.

ressure. Fulling mill, a mill for fulling cloth as by means of pesties or stampers, which alternately fall into and rise from troughs where the cloth is placed with hot water and fuller's earth, or other cleansing materials.

A mode of running by a quadruped, particularly by a horse, by lifting alternately the fore feet and the hind feet, in successive leaps or bounds. Hand gallop, a slow or gentle gallop.

In the alternation of generations in plants, that generation or phase which bears sex organs. In the lower plants, as the algæ, the gametophyte is the conspicuous part of the plant body; in mosses it is the so-called moss plant; in ferns it is reduced to a small, early perishing body; and in seed plants it is usually m…

Alternate generation. See under Generation.

sisting of horizontal upper and lower bars connected by a series of diagonal bars sloping alternately in opposite directions so as to divide the space between the bars into a series of triangles. Knight. -- Sandwich girder, a girder consisting of two parallel wooden beams, between which is an iron plate, the whole cla…

suture or stitch, a kind of stitch used in sewing up wounds, in which the thread is drawn alternately through each side from within outward.

Alternating transparent and opaque white rings which are seen outside the blastoderm, on the surface of the developing egg of the hen and other birds.

ed with such a ball, as by players striking it to and fro between them with the hands, or alternately against a wall, until one side or the other fails to return the ball.

the heddles, with their means of support and motion, by which the threads of the warp are alternately raised and depressed for the passage of the shuttle. To die in harness, to die with armor on; hence, colloquially, to die while actively engaged in work or duty.

To rise and fall with alternate motions, as the lungs in heavy breathing, as waves in a heavy sea, as ships on the billows, as the earth when broken up by frost, etc.; to swell; to dilate; to expand; to distend; hence, to labor; to struggle. Frequent for breath his panting bosom heaves. Prior. The heaving plain of ocea…

pecially, characterized by an arrangement of work in rows of parallel lines, which in the alternate rows slope in different directions. Herringbone stitch, a kind of cross-stitch in needlework, chiefly used in flannel. Simmonds.

Having the spines of the dorsal fin unsymmetrical, or thickened alternately on the right and left sides.

Passing through the different stages in its life history on an alternation of hosts, as the common wheat-rust fungus (Puccinia graminis), and certain other parasitic fungi; -- contrasted with autocious. -- Het`er*o"cism (#), n.

That form of alternate generation in which two kinds of sexual generation, or a sexual and a parthenogenetic generation, alternate; -- in distinction from metagenesis, where sexual and asexual generations alternate. Claus & Sedgwick.

A choice without an alternative; the thing offered or nothing.

ing of the valve a by its own weight allows another rush through the main pipe, and so on alternately. -- Hydraulic valve. (Mach.) (a) A valve for regulating the distribution of water in the cylinders of hydraulic elevators, cranes, etc. (b) (Gas Works) An inverted cup with a partition dipping into water, for opening…