"Amoeba" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more than once. Lloyd's discovery of the "death bacillus" of the sea toad, and his experiments on it with potassium cyanide, sent his name and that of his university ringing round the world; nor was Paul a whit behind when he succeeded in producing laboratory colloids exhibiting amoeba-like activities, and when he cast new light upon the processes of fertilization through his startling experiments with simple sodium chlorides and magnesium solutions on low ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... insatiable craving. It is more wisdom the whole creation groaneth and travaileth to get. "Give me more understanding or I die!"—the visible eternally cries out to the Invisible. Desire is the ceaseless life-urge of all things, from amoeba to archangel. Desire is "Immanuer'—God with us—God in us ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... pieces against the shell-chariot of the lovely sea-nymph Galatea and dissolves himself with the shining animalculae of the sea. There he is now—coming up to the full estate of manhood by the various stages of protozoon, amoeba, mollusc, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, Man. It will take time, but he has ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... across the universe, the one-celled amoeba, these crystals too were sensitive to light, to heat, to cold—to food. Ill-defined, but distinct already from the non-sentient crystals about them, these life forms grew through absorbing from the rich and soupy atmosphere ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... round, heavily framed ports it could be seen, the lower part of its large, shapeless body half-floating in the lashing water that covered their rocky shelf to a depth of several feet, the upper part spectral and gray. It was a giant amoeba, fully six feet in diameter in its present spheroid form, but capable of assuming any shape that would be useful. It had an envelope of tough, transparent matter, and was filled with a fluid that was now cloudy ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an amoeba or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's microscope. He was large, undifferentiated, inert—since I could remember him he had done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... example of a lower organism we may take the amoeba. If one watches an amoeba under the microscope he may see it move about the field, creeping along the surface of the glass plate; throwing out a pseudopodium here; invaginating a mouth or stomach there; taking in and digesting minute plant organisms; transporting itself across the field of the microscope ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... not tell us. Perhaps the hunters will station themselves round a table with a drop of preserved water on its centre, made large and luminous by means of a ray of magnifying light. When that time comes the amoeba—that "wandering Jew," as an irreverent Quarterly Reviewer has called it—will lose its immortality, and the spry rotifer will fall a victim to the infinitesimal fine bright arrows of the chase. A strange quarry for men ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... The Commodore Business Machines logo, which strongly resembles a poultry part. Rendered in ASCII as 'C'. With the arguable exception of the Amiga (see {amoeba}), Commodore's machines are notoriously crocky little {bitty box}es (see also {PETSCII}). Thus, this usage may owe something to Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (the basis for the movie "Blade Runner"; the novel is now sold under that title), in which a 'chickenhead' ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... as though those who had insisted on the derivation of all forms of the steam- engine from the common kettle, and who saw that this stands in much the same relations to the engines, we will say, of the Great Eastern steamship as the amoeba to man, were to declare that the Great Eastern engines were not designed at all, on the ground that no one in the early kettle days had foreseen so great a future development, and were unable to understand ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... and original characters and yet passable pedigrees (the experiment is tried, now and again); while the old saints have been exploited and are now inefficient—worn out, like old toys. Madonna, on the other hand, can subdivide with the ease of an amoeba, and yet never lose her identity or credibility; moreover, thanks to her divine character, anything can be accredited to her—anything good, however wonderful; lastly, the traditions concerning her are so conveniently vague ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... distinct bacillus was described as producing it. It has finally been shown, however, to be caused by a microscopic organism belonging to the group of unicellular animals, and somewhat closely related to the well-known amoeba. This organism is shown in Fig. 34. The whole history of the malarial organism is not yet known. The following statements comprise the most important facts known in regard to it, and its relation to the ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... AMOEBA, a minute animalcule of the simplest structure, being a mere mass of protoplasm; absorbs its food at every point all over its body by means of processes protruded therefrom at will, with the effect that it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... equilibrium had been upset, we should have had no fixed organs nor settled proclivities, but should have been daily and hourly undergoing Protean transformations, and have still been throwing out pseudopodia like the amoeba. True, we might have come to like this fashion of living as well as our more steady-going system if we had taken to it many millions of ages ago when we were yet young; but we have contracted other habits which have become so confirmed that we cannot break with them. We therefore now hate ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... suffered a few failures, Simanovsky still obstinately continued to act upon the mind and imagination of Liubka. He tried to explain to her the theory of the origin of species, beginning with an amoeba and ending with Napoleon. Liubka listened to him attentively, and during this there was an imploring expression in her eyes: "When will you stop at last?" She yawned into a handkerchief and then guiltily ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... seen while her visible hands are rigorously controlled by her two neighbors? Is it the hand of a monstrous long arm which liberates itself from the medium's body, then dissolves, to afterward "materialize" afresh? Is it something analogous to the pteropod of an amoeba, which projects itself from the body, then retreats into it only to reappear in another place? Mystery!' But this is not the most grewsome sight; one of the professors, stealing a glance behind the medium, saw remnants of legs and arms lying ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... an amoeba on Mars as it did on Earth and the slow process of evolution followed similar lines. At one time forms like yours were the ruling and guiding intelligences of Mars. They were, however, a highly specialized form. As conditions changed, the form changed. The head and chest grew ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... to define socialism in terms that will make a discussion practicable. The socialist movement is one thing, the socialist political program is another. But though the idea of socialism has as many different forms as an amoeba, there is always a nucleus that remains constant,—the desire for what is conceived to be a more equitable distribution of wealth. The laborer should get the value which his labor produces, it is held, subject only to subtraction ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... render clearer His inaccessibility to our intelligence. We stand a little way up in a scale of existences that may, indeed, point towards Him, but can never bring Him to our scope. As the fulness of the conscious mental existence of a man stands to the subconscious activities of an amoeba or of a visceral ganglion cell, so our reason forces us to admit other possible mental existences may stand to us. But such an existence, inconceivably great as it would be to us, would be scarcely nearer that transcendental God in whom ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... consoled her to see an occasional mention of Professor Linyard's remarkable monograph on the Ethical Reactions of the Infusoria, or an allusion to his investigations into the Unconscious Cerebration of the Amoeba. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... and General Considerations 2. The Alimentary Canal of the Rabbit 3. The Circulation 4. The Amoeba, Cells and Tissue 5. The Skeleton 6. Muscle and Nerve 7. The Nervous System 8. Renal and Reproductive Organs 9. Classificatory ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... life-cycle has been run; where intelligent life has ceased: where world-disintegration has set in. For this is in accordance with the universal law of Growth and Decay—a law that exempts neither the one-celled amoeba, nor the complex Solar system whirling yonder ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... that it certainly was not the case. All had the same start, many had similar environments. Yet witness the motly products of evolution: Man, ape, elephant, skunk, scorpion, lizard, lark, toad, lobster, louse, flea, amoeba, hookworm, and countless microscopic animals; also, the palm, lily, melon, maize, mushroom, thistle, cactus, microscopic bacilli, etc. All developed from one germ, all in some way related. Mark well the difference in size between the elephant, louse, and microscopic hookworm, and the difference ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... in the process of that continual remanufacture of the Life Stuff by which the human race is perpetuated. The Life Force either will not or cannot achieve immortality except in very low organisms: indeed it is by no means ascertained that even the amoeba is immortal. Human beings visibly wear out, though they last longer than their friends the dogs. Turtles, parrots, and elephants are believed to be capable of outliving the memory of the oldest human inhabitant. But the fact ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... horizontal axis units of time are measured; along a vertical axis units of energy. Then the life-history of the amoeba, for example, appears as a line such as A in Fig. 1. During the earlier stages of its growth the rate of absorption of energy is small; so that in the unit interval of time, t, the small quantity of energy, e1, is absorbed. As life advances, the activity of ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... between and around them there scuttled formless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vessel by means of a tractor ray. Held immovable by the beam it lay upon the floor, a strangely extensile, amoeba-like metal-studded mass of leathery substance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs it apparently had none, yet it radiated an intensely hostile aura; a mental effluvium concentrated ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... cells divide and redivide, as do the reproductive cells of plants and animals generally. Nevertheless, in its plasmodial phase, the slime-mould is hardly to be distinguished from any other protoplasmic mass, may be compared to a giant amoeba, and justifies in so far the views of those systematists who would remove the slime-moulds from the domain of the botanist altogether, and call them animals. The plasmodium is often quite large. It may frequently be found covering with manifold ramifications and net-like sheets the ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... his own property, saying, "But this sensation is a state of my consciousness, it is mine, it is myself," the physicist has the right to answer: "I beg your pardon! this sensation is the external object that I am studying; it is my column of mercury, my spring, my precipitate, my amoeba; I comprehend these objects directly, and I want no other." Psychology finds itself, therefore, exactly on the same footing as the other sciences in the degree in which it studies sensations that it considers as its own property. I have already said that the sensations proper to psychology ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... body, the nucleus, of relatively stable shape, and the cytoplasm, itself divided into an outer, clearer ectoplasm ("ectosarc'') and an inner, more granular endoplasm ("endosarc''), passing into one another. The movements of amoebae are of several kinds. (1) The amoeba may grow out irregularly into blunt lobes, the pseudopodia, some being emitted while others are retracted, and so may advance in any direction by the emission of pseudopodia thitherward, and the enlargement of these ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hair-like extension of its substance. This type, however, which is known as the Flagellate, may be derived from the next, which we will take as the primitive and fundamental animal type. It is best seen in the common and familiar Amoeba, a minute sac of liquid or viscid plasm, often not more than a hundredth of an inch in diameter. As its "skin" is merely a finer kind of the viscous plasm, not an impenetrable membrane, it takes in food at any part of its surface, makes little "stomachs," or temporary ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... one kind, whereas in true multicellular animals there are different kinds of cells, showing division of labour. There are some other Protozoa in which the nucleus or kernel divides into many nuclei within the cell. This is seen in the Giant Amoeba (Pelomyxa), sometimes found in duck-ponds, or the beautiful Opalina, which always lives in the hind part of the frog's food-canal. If a portion of the living matter of these Protozoa should gather round each ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... very small, about the size of a dysentery amoeba. The individual life span was short as compared to ours but the accelerated pace of their lives balanced it out. In the beginning, something like four of our days was a lifetime. So they lived, grew, developed, evolved. ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart |
