"Proboscis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wrath. Tomlinson's answer softened Nabbem; and by way of conciliation, he held his snuff-box to the nose of his unfortunate prisoner. Shutting his eyes, Tomlinson long and earnestly sniffed up the luxury, and as soon as, with his own kerchief of spotted yellow, the officer had wiped from the proboscis some lingering ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... world!" And Falstaff, cracking a kindred joke on Bardolph's carbuncled nose, avows his opinion that it will serve as a flaming beacon to light lost souls the way to purgatory! Again, seeing a flea on the same flaming proboscis, the doughty knight affirmed it was "a black soul burning in hell fire." In this element of mediaval life, this feature of mediaval literature, a terrible belief lay under the gay raillery. Here is betrayed, on a wide scale, that natural reaction of the faculties from excessive oppression ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and gentlemen," said a strange voice issuing from the darkness, "we shall show you the wonders of the oxy-hydrogen microscope; natural objects magnified five thousand times. Look and behold the proboscis of the common ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... out fishing mit der poys," replied Snyder, laying his finger tenderly against his proboscis; "the sun it pese hot like ash never vas, und I purns my nose. Nice nose, don't it?" And Snyder viewed it with a look of comical sadness in the little mirror back of his bar. It entered at once into the head of the mischievous ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... orchid set themselves to adapt themselves to one another, the orchid using all the devices of colour, scent, sweetness of honey, to attract the insect, and gradually shaping itself so that the insect can better reach the honey, and the insect lengthening its proboscis and otherwise adapting itself so that it can better secure what it wants. And we see how perfectly—how nearly perfectly—the flower is designed for ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... visage of this worthy projected a cocked nose of a very peculiar kind, the nostrils of which appeared to be two round holes passing horizontally, instead of perpendicularly, into his head. Upon this delicious proboscis (which was a sort of mixture between the pug-dog and a Chinese pig), was mounted a pair of silver barnicles, apparently placed there for the purpose of hiding a brace of things more resembling coddled gooseberries than human eyes. That feature ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... on an elephant's back, all depending on the docility of the elephant (his description of Great Britain's Indian Empire). 'And mind me,' he said, 'the masses of India are in character elephant all over, tail to proboscis! servile till they trample you, and not so stupid as they look. But you've done wonders in India, and we can't forget it. Your administration of Justice is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... coin of Menander. An elephant's head with the proboscis elevated: legend, [Transliterated from the Greek, Basileus soteros Menandrou]. On the reverse is a cannon. This is an old ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... is very severe and irritating, and as the flies sometimes occur in great numbers the annoyance that they cause is often very great indeed. It has often been claimed that these flies as well as the stable-fly and others carry the anthrax bacillus on their proboscis from one animal to another, and although this may not have been definitely proven the evidence is strong enough to make a very good case against the accused. It is interesting to note in this connection that anthrax, a very common ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... Pine-tree statesman, bewailing, Stood in the corridor there while Democrats freed from confinement Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him, Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking: "O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?" ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... dainty, from his stall bestow'd, So made the beast his friend; 'Twas joy to see, at this abode, His blythe proboscis bend. ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... said to be a purely vegetable production when found in the combs, for after being collected by the insect by means of its proboscis, it is transmitted into what is called the honey bag, where it is elaborated, and, hurrying homewards with its precious load, the bee regurgitates it into the cell of the honey comb. It takes a great many drops to fill a cell, as the honey bag when full does ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... artificial human products, therefore, with wild races whose intelligence is all native and self-evolved. Moreover, the horse at least has to some slight extent a prehensile organ in his very mobile and sensitive lip, which he uses like an undeveloped or rudimentary proboscis to feel things all over with. So that the dog alone remains as a contradictory instance; and even the dog derives his cleverness indirectly from man, whose hand and thumb in the last resort are really at the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... he was a trifle vain, for he sat before the glass a great deal, and I often saw him cleaning his proboscis, and twiddling his feelers, and I know he was 'prinking,' as we say. The books pleased him, too, and he used to run them over, as if trying to choose which he would read, and never seemed able to decide. He would have nothing to say to the fat French ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... death; neither do they do any harm to man unless provoked. In that case the elephant makes his attack with his trunk, which is a kind of nose, protruded to a great length. He can contract and extend this proboscis at pleasure, and is able to toss a man with it as far as a sling can throw a stone. It is in vain to think of escape by running, let the person be ever so swift, in case the elephant pursues in earnest, as his strides are of prodigious ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... father had much to occupy him. But the little man—who, to do him justice, cared no more (in his own phrase) for imminent danger or death, than he did for the puncture of a flea's proboscis—did not so easily renounce the secret object of his ambition, which was to acquire the notice of the large and lofty Sir Geoffrey Peveril, who, being at least three inches taller than his son, was in so far possessed of that superior excellence, which the poor dwarf, in his secret ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... made an infuriate swing backwards of a bush, fortunately in his hand; but it was against no Indian foe; on the contrary, his own shoulders received the blow, and another to make sure; whereby an individual enemy was pasted to the spot where its proboscis had pierced shirt and skin, and half-a-dozen others saved themselves by flight—being the dreaded ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... man with the proboscis, who struts when he walks, and snivels when he speaks, desires a favour ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... never seen the creature before, he had read about it, and had also seen pictures of it. He knew it, therefore, at a glance. That proboscis-looking snout was not to be mistaken. It could belong to no other creature than the tamanoir, or great ant-eater, by the people of South America called the ant-bear. It was, in fact, that very thing; but to Leon's ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... hair. All these parts have necessarily been injured in transporting them a distance of 7,330 miles, (to the Imperial museum of St. Petersburgh,) but the eyes have been preserved, and the pupil of one can still be distinguished. The mammoth was a male, with a long mane on the neck. The tail and proboscis were not preserved. The skin, of which I possess three-fourths, is of a dark-gray color, covered with a reddish wool and black hairs: but the dampness of the spot where it had lain so long had in some degree destroyed the hair. The entire carcase, of which ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... see live animals Brought on the stage. Grimaldi has his rabbit, Laurent his cat, and Bradbury his pig; Fie on such tricks! Johnson, the machinist, Of former Drury, imitated life Quite to the life! The elephant in Blue Beard, Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis As spruce as he ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... has turned over the pages of a picture-book of mammalia will be likely to forget the odd-looking animal known as the tapir. Its long proboscis-like snout, its stiff-maned neck, and clumsy hog-like body, render the tout ensemble of this creature so peculiar, that there is no mistaking it for ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Spanish fleas, and so brought them to such an astonishing perfection in the administration of slow torture. Breeding, I take it, holds good with fleas as with horses, dogs, etc. Those born of parents with thicker mail, longer springs, harder proboscis, and greater daring in initiative, would doubtless be selected and encouraged, if I may say so, to go farther. It is possible that many famous recantations could be accounted for by this hypothesis. Galileo, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... connecting the submentum with the cardo of maxilla (Comst.): the submentum: small cords upon which the base of the proboscis is seated (Say): the anterior part of the genae at the edge of the mouth: the corneous processes to which the muscles flexing the mouth in certain Diptera are attached, and in that sense the palpifer of the maxilla: in Homoptera, the small sclerite at side of clypeus ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... struck up with a naturalist, Henslow, settled his career for him. Henslow heard of a trip of general exploration the ship Beagle was to take and recommended Darwin as naturalist. The captain at first would not hear of the proposal because of Darwin's nose, a typical pituitary proboscis. But his prejudices were overcome, and ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the appropriate organs of generation. They are much larger and stouter than either the queen or workers; although their bodies are not quite so long as that of the queen. They have no sting with which to defend themselves; no proboscis which is suitable for gathering honey from the flowers, and no baskets on their thighs for holding the bee-bread. They are thus physically disqualified for work, even if they were ever so well disposed to it. Their proper office is to impregnate ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... headlong down stairs, in rather too quick time for her comfort, with a cataract of Irish women tumbling after her. Wheelwright ran to the rescue of his help-meet, and pulling her through the door, endeavored to shut it on the instant, to keep out the foe; in doing which the proboscis of Mistress Pettit, which was truly of the Strasburgh order, was unhappily and literally caught in the door crack, and beyond all question somewhat injured thereby. In the language of the trumpeter's wife in Tristram Shandy, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... tricks he played off with this nose. Once he walked through the streets of —-, with this proboscis attached to his face. "What a nose! Look at the man with the nose!" cried all the boys in the street. A party of Irish emigrants passed at the moment. The men, with the courtesy natural to their nation, forbore to laugh in the gentleman's face; but after they had ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... mournful satisfaction of contemplating the hole—the amateur editor invariably pulls it in after him. But until his first notes fall due he is an iridescent glory. He adores himself with a long-tailed hand-me-down Albert Edward and carries the universe in his arms. He pokes his meddlesome proboscis into everything and gives oodles of advice, unasked. He may not have as much principle as a tomcat in rutting time, but he poses before all men as a "guardian of public morals." When he places the awful seal ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the discovery and study of these earlier forms we have within the last ten years arrived at a knowledge of the steps by which the elephant acquired in the course of long ages (millions of years) his "proboscis" (as the Greeks first called it), and I will later ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... flask-shape, two or three times as long as broad, with conical apex, which is slightly elastic and protrusible; surface obliquely striate, with well-defined lines, 14 to 16 in number; cilia uniform on the body, with a crown of longer ones at the base of the conical proboscis. The body cilia are not thickly placed except around the proboscis. The endoplasm is thickly packed with large granules (food particles) in the anterior half and with finely granular particles in the posterior ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... and are carried about wherever she goes. There are various species of this interesting family; all are inhabitants of fresh water; some incubate or sit upon their eggs, others carry them about in a hollow formed by the contraction of the sides. They have a long tubular proboscis, by means of which they suck out the juices of pond-snails and other water creatures. These snail-leeches move along in the same way as the common horse-leech and the medicinal leech, namely, by fixing the head-part on to the surface of some substance in the water and then drawing the hinder ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... explorers have had the advantage of domestic animals to carry their food and camp equipment; but in large parts of tropical Africa the horse, ox, and mule cannot live. The bite of the little tsetse fly kills them. Its sting is hardly so annoying as that of the mosquito, but near the base of its proboscis is a little bag containing the fatal poison. Camels have been loaded near Zanzibar for the journey to Tanganyika, but they did not live to reach the great lake. The "ship of the desert" can never be utilized in the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... of digging the ground, of pulling down clay partition walls and even of reducing the mason bee's tough cement to powder. The Anthrax, in her final form, has nothing like this. Her mouth is a short, soft proboscis, good at most for soberly licking the sugary exudations of the flowers; her slim legs are so feeble that to move a grain of sand were an excessive task for them, enough to strain every joint; her great, stiff wings, which must ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... all creation Is subject to the Flea-ite nation. I know that parasitic races, The Ticks and Lucies have their places; But the imperial race of Flea Is all surpassing—look at me. My concentrated vigour, grant, Then look at yon huge elephant; Look at my leap, at my proboscis, Then go and learn, 'UT TU TE NOSCIS,' That man was made with skin to bleed, That families of ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... moved on, to give red roses to a bright little tot in a red flannel dressing-gown, who was sitting up in bed, nursing a rubber elephant. He took the roses and said, "Sanks!" very politely, then held them to his pet's gray proboscis. "I's better," he explained, with some condescension. "I don't need 'em, but Nelephant doos. He's a severe case. Doctor said so ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... exostosis[obs3], bleb, blister, blain[obs3]; boil &c. (disease) 655; airbubble[obs3], blob, papule, verruca. [convex body parts on chest] papilla, nipple, teat, tit [vulgar], titty [vulgar], boob [vulgar], knocker[vulgar], pap, breast, dug, mammilla[obs3]. [prominent convexity on the face] proboscis, nose, neb, beak, snout, nozzle, schnoz[coll]. peg, button, stud, ridge, rib, jutty, trunnion, snag. cupola, dome, arch, balcony, eaves; pilaster. relief, relievo[It], cameo; bassorilievo[obs3], mezzorilevo[obs3], altorivievo; low relief, bas ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
