"Viscid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... medium being most favorable to the growth of the yeast, the water should just be lukewarm; then a good flour, containing about 8 per cent of gluten is necessary. This gluten is the proteid in flour; when well mixed with water it forms a viscid elastic substance, hence it is necessary to well knead dough to make it more springy, so that when the gas is generated in it, it will expand and take the form of a sponge, and thus prevent the gas from escaping. The bread ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... termed the 'birdcatching plant' by settlers and bushmen . . . It will always be a plant of special interest, as small birds are often found captured by its viscid fruits, to which their feathers become attached as effectively ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... mischief. Every purple flush of its hideous body told me so. The vague, goggling eyes which were turned always upon me were cold and merciless in their viscid hatred. I dipped the nose of my monoplane downwards to escape it. As I did so, as quick as a flash there shot out a long tentacle from this mass of floating blubber, and it fell as light and sinuous ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a viscid fluid, which circulates under the bark: this is called cambium. When it is too abundant it is effused, part of its water evaporates, and it becomes gum. If the vital circle is not interrupted, the fluid traverses the branches, and the peduncle arrives in the ovary, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... around him were ape-things in their death agonies. On the ground beyond them, quivering and broken in the midst of its dying guards, was a viscid mass of loathsome gray jelly. Blake's shot had apparently struck home squarely in the center of that vulnerable blob. Even as he watched, the gelatinous mass shuddered in a last convulsion, then became quite still. At the same ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... all. You remember how, before the silkworm begins to spin, the viscid secretion is stored in the two long ducts at each side of the little creature's body. It is that material which it unites into a single thread in the spinaret, you know. Well, before the worm has a chance to spin, it is put into vinegar and this ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... prepared, especially if a few notes be made as to colour, etc. The more important notes are as to the colour of the stem and pileus, together with any peculiarities of the surface, e.g., whether it be dry, viscid, downy, scaly, etc., and whether the flesh of the pileus be thin or otherwise; as to the stem, whether hollow or solid; as to the gills, whether they are attached to the stem or free; and especially what is their colour and that of the spores. It is not in general ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... exposure to the heat of the noonday sun. These latter are coarse, often dirty, and nearly always have something bristling about them which is entirely absent in the sculptures of the wind. The under side of the roof in the cavity looked very much as a very stiff or viscid treacle would look when spread over a meshy surface, as, for instance, over a closely woven netting of wire. The stems and the branches of the brush took the place of the wire, and in their meshes the snow had been ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... and adhesive. The insect, disturbed by so sharp a blow, or having eaten its fill, flies sooner or later to a female plant, and whilst standing in the same position as before, the pollen-bearing end of the arrow is inserted into the stigmatic cavity, and a mass of pollen is left on its viscid surface. The strange structures of Cypripedium, or the Lady's Slipper, were then analysed, and the mode of fertilisation by small bees was discovered. The whole structure of orchids, as modified to secure ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... of the rachises, main or secondary, glandular streaks are seen as in the rachises of Sporobolus coromandelianus. These glands secrete a viscid juice at ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... American turpentine is a viscid liquid of about the consistence of honey, but varying to a soft solid, known as gum, thus, according to the amount of exposure which it has undergone, it contains about 10 to 25 per cent. of "spirits," to which the name of turpentine is commonly given, the rest being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... imagination—always sufficiently vivid, and spurred to an unnatural effect by the exciting scenes of the previous night—painted each patch of shadow, clinging bat-like to the humid wall, as some globular sea-spider ready to drop upon him with its viscid and clay-cold body, and drain out his chilled blood, enfolding him in rough and hairy arms. Each splash in the water beneath him, each sigh of the multitudinous and melancholy sea, seemed to prelude the laborious advent of some ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... tone of the muscular fibres, when they are relaxed, and also have the power of relaxing them when they are too rigid; that it should coagulate the fluids when in a state of resolution, and again attenuate them when they are too viscid; that it should moderate the nerves when in a state of preturnatural sensibility, and likewise restore them to their proper degree of irritability when they are ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... and the "heavy oil" comes over; towards the end a thick brown or yellow viscid product is got. The receiver is again changed, and the distillation carried ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... mouth of the corolla, and, as she sips the nectar from the horn of plenty, ruptures by the slight pressure a membrane of the pouch where two sticky buttons, to which two pollen masses are attached, lie imbedded. Instantly after contact these adhere to the round bare spots on her face, the viscid cement hardening before her head is fairly withdrawn. Now the diverging pollen masses, that look like antennae, fall from the perpendicular, by remarkable power of contraction, to a horizontal attitude, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Teneriffe.[24] This bird has discovered that the juice exuded by certain flowers (Hibiscus Rosa sinensis and Abutilon frondosum) is attractive to the insects upon which he preys; he therefore punctures the petals of these flowers in order to promote the exudation of this viscid secretion. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... elsewhere, "giving a park-like appearance to the landscape."[217] The third kind is Quercus infectoria, a gall-oak, also deciduous, and very conspicuous from the large number of bright, chestnut-coloured, viscid galls which it bears, and which are now ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... impeach thy sweet tongue by that viscid 'hate'; thou hadst better indulge in less of devil's warfare and leave room for digestion of gentle peace. Thou hast bloomed into a beauteous maid, but thy temper hath blown also. My lord hast seen many beauties that he could have for the asking, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... depression, so slight that it was hard for the boy to realize that it was a depression at all, had, toward its center, a smaller flat, 115 acres in extent. There were no flames, no sulphurous steam, no smoke, no bubbling whirls of viscid matter, nothing exciting whatever. The stretch before him resembled nothing so much as mud-flat with the tide out. The dried-up bed of a large park pond, with a small island or two of green shrubbery, and some very scrawny palms around the edge would exactly represent the famous ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... mankind had sweated real blood. But the text does not say so much. The sweat was only [Greek: hosei thromboi haimatos], as it were, or like drops of blood; that is, the drops of sweat were so large, thick and viscid, that they trickled to the ground like drops of blood. Thus were the words understood by Justin Martyr, Theophylactus and Euthymius. And yet Galen has observed, that it sometimes happens, that the pores are so vastly dilated by a copious ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... lining all the cavities which communicate with the air. The nostrils, the mouth, and the stomach afford examples. The external surface of this membrane, or that which is exposed to the air, is soft, and bears some resemblance to the downy rind of a peach. It is covered by a viscid fluid called mu'cus. This is secreted by small gland-cells, called ep-i-the'li-a, or secretory cells of the mucous membrane. The use of this membrane and its secreted mucus is to protect the inner surface of the cavities ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... are quite similar to those of our American forms, with the following interesting exception: The doorway of the cavity constituting the bird's domicile is plastered up with clay, made viscid by the nuthatch's glutinous saliva, leaving in the center a circular hole just large enough to afford entrance and exit for the little owner. Says the author quoted above: "When the sitting bird is ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... edges of the flow, where the lava had become viscid, these folds and contortions were very remarkable. They were piled fold over fold,—the result of the mighty pressure from behind. It was sad to see so many olive gardens burnt and destroyed; the trees were as black as charcoal. It is singular ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... around assured him that he had left nothing unaccountable or suspicious. The brush was broken where the nighthound had been tearing at the coat; a bear might have done that. There were splashes of the viscid stuff the thing had used for blood, but they wouldn't be there long. Terrestrial rodents liked nighthound blood, and the woods were full of mice. He climbed in under the wheel, backed, ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... sickness at stomach, and a puking of bile, or a discharge of a frothy and viscid phlegm, by hawking, in ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... lowered, and the boat poled cautiously into the bank. She slid over viscid slime that scarcely impeded her and came to rest against the twisted roots of a malodorous tree from which drooped heavy, damp masses of moss, felt, but unseen. Barry gave orders to stretch a sail for an awning, sensing a heavy ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Some incredulity was therefore natural when it was stated by a Carolinian correspondent (Mr. B.F. Grady) that in the long-leaved, yellow-flowered species the lid just above the mouth of the tubular pitcher habitually secretes drops of a sweet and viscid liquid, which attracts flies and apparently intoxicates them, since those that sip it soon become unsteady in gait and mostly fall irretrievably into the well beneath. But upon cultivating plants of this species, obtained for the purpose, the existence ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Lepidoptera, and we shall presently give reason for suspecting that the nectar is purposely so lodged, that it can be sucked only slowly in order to give time for the curious chemical quality of the viscid matter setting hard and dry.'" Many other examples of similar expressions are quoted by the Duke, who maintains that no explanation of these "contrivances" has been or can be given, except on the supposition ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... covering the top of the earth-borer—something that looked like a heap of viscid, whitish jelly. It was sprawled shapelessly over the round upper part of the metal sphere, a half-transparent, loathsome stuff, several feet thick ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... established itself in the branch of a tree. The mode of procedure, say the old botanists, was through the "mistletoe thrush." This bird, it was asserted, by feeding on the berries, surrounded its beak with the viscid mucus they contain, to rid itself of which it rubbed its beak, in the course of flying, against the branches of trees, and thereby inserted the seed which gave birth to the new plant. When the mistletoe was found growing on the oak, its presence was attributed ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... in the south the young shoots are often sold in bundles as a salad. (Some writers give the name of Lady Fern, not to the Bracken, but to the Asplenium filix foemina, because of its delicate and graceful foliage.) The Bracken has branched riblets, and is more viscid, mucilaginous, and diuretic, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of the floral organs, the pistil, stigma, and anthers here being united into a distinct part known as the column. The pollen is, moreover, peculiar, being collected into more or less compact masses, and variously concealed in the flower. Some of these are club-shaped, with a viscid extremity, others of the consistency of a sticking-plaster, and all are hidden from external view in pouches and pockets, from which they never emerge unless withdrawn on the body of an insect. The various devices by which this removal is ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... and stimulation of pernicious teas. In proportion to the state of the fluids, in particular constitutions, they may either prove too relaxing or astringent, too condensing or attenuating, and too acrid or viscid; for India teas, that to some constitutions are very diluting, may produce in others contrary effects: therefore such should be chosen as possess a combination of quality that may render them, as nearly as possible, to a general specific. ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... of Leucopogon villosus, with rather less hair than usual, and another species of the same genus, probably new. Near the highest parts of the plateau I found a new species of eucalyptus with short broad viscid leaves, and ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... laid hold of it, Lanyard dropped the garment in sheer surprise to find it damp and heavy in his grasp, sodden with viscid moisture. And when, in a swift flash of intuition, he examined his fingers, he discovered them discoloured with a ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... English Channel, and so across the North Sea, past an island he calls Thule; his further progress, he asserted, was hindered by a barrier of a peculiar nature,—neither earth, air, nor sky, but a compound of all three, forming a thick viscid substance which it was impossible to penetrate. Now, whether this same Thule was one of the Shetland Islands, and the impassable substance merely a fog,—or Iceland, and the barricade beyond, a wall of ice, it is impossible to say. Probably Pythias did not get beyond the Shetlands.] ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... liquid state. Very opportunely, just ere it cooled, enormous quantities of vegetables, washed out to sea by the extraordinary land floods, were precipitated immediately over it; and, sticking in its viscid surface, or sinking into its substance through cracks formed in it during the cooling, they became attached to it in such considerable masses, as to lead long after to the very mistaken notion that coal itself was of vegetable origin. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller |
