vortices

This great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded.

Gulliver's Travels by Swift, Jonathan View in context

Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom.

Middlemarch by Eliot, George View in context

Furious vortices of sulphur and nitre, devouring shoals of fire which caught every object, the terrible thunder of the explosion, this is what the second which followed disclosed in that cavern of horrors.

The Man in the Iron Mask by Dumas, Alexandre View in context

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vortices playV2('en/US/sh/shsssksfsyd3dtd5srgk');playV2('en/UK/sh/shsssksfsyd3dtd5srgk')