"Proboscis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and 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
... sadden'd, Nearly madden'd For the lack of that which gladden'd His proboscis, was the parson, Hight the Rev'rend ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... over, extremely hypercritical, hyperbola *Hypo under, in smaller hypodermic, hypophosphate measure *Meta after, over metaphysics, metaphor *Para beside paraphrase, paraphernalia *Peri around, about periscope, peristyle *Pro before proboscis, prophet *Syn together, with synthesis, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of the Asclepiads) in having no dust-like pollen. The pollen, or more correctly, the pollen-tetrads, remain fastened together as club-shaped pollinia usually borne on a slender pedicel. At the base of the pedicel is a small viscid disc by which the pollinium is attached to the head or proboscis of one of the insects which visit the flower. Darwin demonstrated that in Orchis and other flowers the pedicel of the pollinium, after its removal from the anther, undergoes a curving movement. If the pollinium was originally vertical, after a time it assumed a horizontal ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... invented) an important engagement with a growing family of clothes-moths in a Connecticut country house. So there remained only the faithful Phil. One swallow does not make a summer; nor does one youth with a vernal proboscis convince a skeptical public that it is enjoying the fearful companionship of a subversive and revolutionary cult. Patronage ebbed out as fast as it had flooded in. Barbran's eyes were as soft and happy as ever in the evenings, when she and Phil sat in a less ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... descended to the drawing-room, and, having welcome Mr. Churchill to her house, ordered the servant to set the table for dinner. Just then the groom entered the house to enquire when the carriage would be required in the evening, and the appearance of his nose set the whole party laughing heartily; his proboscis had assumed a deep red hue, and was swollen to an enormous size, giving him a most comical appearance. O'Grady ordered him to bring the carriage round at ten o'clock, and, dinner just then being announced, they prepared, in true English fashion, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... lectularius). This disgusting insect is of an oval shape, of a rusty red colour, and, in common with the whole tribe to which it belongs, gives off an offensive odour when touched; unlike the others, however, it is wingless. The bug is provided with a proboscis, which when at rest lies along the inferior side of the thorax, and through which it sucks the blood of man, the sole food of this species. It is nocturnal in its habits, remaining concealed by day in crevices of bed furniture, among the hangings, or behind ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... perfect insects, have implements for sapping and demolishing, stout mandibles, capable 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 remain full spread, do not allow her to slip through a narrow ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... protozoan (Trypanosoma brucei) in the blood. It is probably transmitted from animal to animal solely by the bites of the tsetse fly. This insect is something like a large house fly, and when it settles on a diseased animal, sucks the blood and infects its proboscis, it is enabled on biting a second animal to infect the latter by direct inoculation. This disease is found throughout a large portion of central and southern Africa, along the low-lying and swampy valleys. It has never occurred in the United States, nor is it known to be present in the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... think it's got any name. Principal towns—why, what ARE those creatures, making honey down there? They can't be bees—nobody ever saw bees a mile off, you know—' and for some time she stood silent, watching one of them that was bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into them, 'just as if it was ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... interesting," says Mr. Gosse, "to watch the business-like way in which the Periwinkle feeds. At very regular intervals, the proboscis, a tube with thick fleshy walls, is rapidly turned inside out to a certain extent, until a surface is brought into contact with the glass having a silky lustre; this is the tongue; it is moved with a short sweep, and then the tubular proboscis ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... institution, and flourishes only on the banks of navigable waters. When its head is ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a musquito's proboscis, right through the deck, in at the open aperture of the hole, and so into the very vitals and bowels of the ship. When there, it goes to work upon its food with a greed and an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder of any taste or imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical arrangement by ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... chitinous bands 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 ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... sufficiently to let them through. At it he rushed, hitting vigorously at the edge with his mattock. At the very first blow came a splash from the water beneath, but ere he could heave a third, a creature like a tapir, only that the grasping point of its proboscis was hard as the steel of Curdie's hammer, pushed him gently aside, making room for another creature, with a head like a great club, which it began banging upon the floor with terrible force and noise. After about a minute of this battery, the tapir came up again, shoved Clubhead aside, and ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... beast of burden and works for his living. You can see him in Phoenix Park dragging a road-roller, in Siam and India carrying logs, and at Coney Island he bends the knee to little girls from Brooklyn. The royal proboscis, that once uprooted trees, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... called ver-palmiste is found in the heads of cabbage-palms,—especially after the cabbage has been cut out, and the tree has begun to perish. It is the grub of a curious beetle, which has a proboscis of such form as suggested the creole appellation, lfant: the "elephant." These worms are sold in the Place du Fort at two sous each: they are spitted and roasted alive, and are said to taste like ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... subjects. The pleasure of this exercise is in itself sufficient: we need not say to a child, "Look at the wings of this beautiful butterfly, and I will give you a piece of plum-cake; observe how the butterfly curls his proboscis, how he dives into the honeyed flowers, and I will take you in a coach to pay a visit with me, my dear. Remember the pretty story you read this morning, and you shall have a new coat." Without the new coat, or the visit, or the plum-cake, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... teeth like the Mastodon's, but wanting both trunk and tusks. A proboscidian came next with four short tusks, and in the Miocene there followed a Mastodon (Fig. 346) armed with two pairs of long, straight tusks on which rested a flexible proboscis. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... indeed endued with a fine sense of feeling at the extremity of his proboscis, and hence has acquired much more accurate ideas of touch and of sight than most other creatures. The two following instances of the sagacity of these animals may entertain the reader, as they were told me by some gentlemen of distinct ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the luckless seal soon peeped slowly up, a short way astern of the boat, and before his eyes had risen above the water to take a horizontal glance at us, P—— sent a handful, or so, of small shot into his nose. Down popped the little dark proboscis ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to rights. He smoothed down his feelers and wings and the minute hairs on his black body—which were fearfully rumpled; for the girl-bee had laid on good and hard—and concluded the operation by running his proboscis in and out several ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... body was covered with a short brown fur, with lighter hair of a dun colour under the throat; and, what gave it the singular appearance whence its name of "sea-elephant" was probably more derived than from its size, was the pendulous nostrils, which hung down over its mouth, just like the proboscis or long trunk of the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... indeed, my wonder ceases—Aboukar! Oh the sweet creature! with his pretty lobster eyes, and most awful and portentous proboscis, which seems for all the world like a fine ripe tomato displayed on ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... 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 humid regions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... returned with him to the King. The Sultan of China looked at him and considered him carefully and lo and behold! he was an ancient man, past his ninetieth year; swart of face, white of beard, and hoar of eyebrows; lop eared and proboscis-nosed,[FN696] with a vacant, silly and conceited expression of countenance. The King laughed at this figure o' fun and said to him, "O Silent Man, I desire thee to tell me somewhat of thy history." Quoth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... on which the pair of long jointed feelers and the pair of large, sub-globular, compound eyes are the most prominent features. Below the head, however, may be seen, now coiled up like a watch-spring, now stretched out to draw the nectar from some scented blossom, the butterfly's sucking trunk or proboscis, situated between a pair of short hairy limbs or palps (fig. 2). These palps belong to the appendages of the hindmost segment of the head, appendages which in insects are modified to form a hind-lip or labium, bounding the mouth cavity below or behind. The ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... add that this fly apparently did not suck the nectar, but was attracted by the papillae which surround the stigma. Hermann Muller also saw a small bee, an Andrena, which could not reach the nectar, repeatedly inserting its proboscis beneath the stigma, where the papillae are situated; so that these papillae must be in some way attractive to insects. A writer asserts 'Zoologist' volume 3-4 page 1225, that a moth (Plusia) frequently visits the flowers of the pansy. Hive-bees do not ordinarily visit them, but ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... it?' he said. 'The understanding of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... a carpet adventurer—an explorer amongst the nerves of moral sensation, to whom the discovery of an untrodden mental tract is a pure delight, and the more delightful the more ephemeral. She flits from guest to guest, shooting out to each a little proboscis, as it were, and happy if its point touches a speck of honey. She gathers from all, and stores the sweet agglomerate, let us hope, to feed upon it in the winter of her life, when the hive of her busy brain ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... however, two other features about him which specially attract attention, as being very characteristic of the aphides and their allies among all other insects. In the first place, his mouth is provided with a very long snout or proboscis, classically described as a rostrum, with which he pierces the outer skin of the rose-shoot where he lives, and sucks up incessantly its sweet juices. This organ is common to the aphis with all ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... short-sighted, and that it suited him better to poke in the hedges for beetles. He had a splendid collection of insects. Bustard used to say that he poked with his nose, as if he were an insect himself, and it was a proboscis but he said too that his father said it was a pleasure to see Weston make a section of anything, and prepare objects for the microscope. His fingers were as clever as ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... 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 ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... lamentations; but there are others in their clutches still, quite as ignorant as myself, who may be saved before they are stripped entirely. The object is not a bad one; for the rest, trust to me. I mean no harm; a little mischief only; and, at most, a tweak of one proboscis or more. There's risk, of a certainty, as there is in sucking an egg; but you are a man! Not like that d—d milksop, who gives up his friend as soon as he gets poor, and proffers him a sermon by way of telling him—precious information, truly—that he's in a fair way to the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... be transmitted, is afforded by the humming-bird Sphinx-moth (Macroglossa); for this moth, shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult task, which ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... under surface of the parent, 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 ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... way, in rushed a huge sow, knocking me over in a moment; and while I was kicking my heels in the air, over my body came nearly a dozen young pigs, their amiable mother making her way round the room, grunting, snorting, and catching the air through her enormous proboscis. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... the agitation of his web, the enormous spider made an abrupt move from his central cell, then with one bound, rushed upon the fly, which he folded together with his fore antennae, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim's bead. "Poor fly!" said the king's procurator in the ecclesiastical court; and he raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as though roused with a start, withheld his arm with ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... contains about sixty separate flower-tubes, in each of which is a portion of sugar not exceeding the five-hundredth part of a grain. Therefore, before one grain of sugar can be got, the bee must insert its proboscis into 500 clover-tubes. Now there are 7,000 grains in a pound, so that it follows that 3,500,000 clover-tubes must be sucked in order to obtain but one ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... kind to her creatures," said a giraffe to an elephant. "For example, your neck being so very short, she has given you a proboscis wherewith to reach your food; and I having no proboscis, she has bestowed upon me a ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... lives on bushes, and attaches itself to the mammal only to secure a feast of blood, for when gorged it drops off to sleep off its debauch on the soil. The tick produces great irritation by boring into the skin with its armed proboscis. If pulled out, the head and thorax are often left in the skin. They may be covered with oil to shut out the air from their breathing pores, or by touching them with a hot penknife they will be impelled to let ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... given him no knees to bend,) Himself he up-props, on himself relies, And, foe to none, suspects no enemies, Still sleeping stood; vexed not his fantasy Black dreams; like an unbent bow carelessly His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... kept buzzing about the face. To open our mouths was dangerous. In they flew, and mysteriously disappeared, to be rapidly ejected again in a violent fit of coughing; and into the eyes, when unclosed, they soon found their way and, by inserting the proboscis and sucking, speedily made them sore; neither were the nostrils safe from their attacks, which were made simultaneously on all points, and in multitudes. This was a very troublesome annoyance, but I afterwards found it to be a very general one throughout all the unoccupied ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... 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
... magick operated on the string, And from it, what was tied, soon gave a spring; Broke loose at once, just like a mettled steed, That, having slipt its halter, flies with speed; Against the abbess' nose with force it flew, And spectacles from her proboscis threw. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... orchids, I believe—will be discovered one day, for purpose there is, no doubt; to judge by analogy, it may be supposed that the insect upon which Onc. serratum depends for fertilization likes to stand upon this ring while thrusting its proboscis into the nectary. The fourth of these fine species, Onc. superbiens, ranks among the grandest of flowers—knowing its own value, it rarely consents to "oblige;" the dusky green sepals are margined with yellow, petals white, clouded with pale purple, ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... easy when making allowance for their loss by wind, rain, or change of temperature. The insects walk over the whole leaf, and choose their places sheltered as much as possible, although still covered by the rags. After 8-10 days they insert the proboscis into the cactus, and never stir till gathered. At the end of three and a half to four months they become 'grains of cochineal,' not unlike wheat, but smaller, rounder, and thicker. The sign of maturity is the appearance of new insects upon the leaf. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... being little bigger than a hare, whilst the largest must have equalled a good-sized horse in its dimensions. The species of Paloeotherium appear to have agreed with the existing Tapirs in possessing a lengthened and flexible nose, which formed a short proboscis or trunk (fig. 229), suitable as an instrument for stripping off the foliage of trees—the characters of the molar teeth showing them to have been strictly herbivorous in their habits. They differ, however, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... few moments, the ear perceives a sort of death-song: it is the humming of the Bumble-bee, protesting against the reception given her. This is followed by a long silence. Then I remove the bottle and dip a long-jawed forceps into the pit. I withdraw the Bumble-bee, motionless, dead, with hanging proboscis. A terrible tragedy must have happened. The Spider follows, refusing to let go so rich a booty. Game and huntress are brought to the orifice. Sometimes, mistrustful, the Lycosa goes in again; but we have only to leave the Bumble-bee on the threshold of ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... worried almost to death by the countless flies, especially by that species that drives the camels from the country. This peculiar fly is about the size of a wasp, with an orange-coloured body, with black and white rings; the proboscis is terrific; it is double, and appears to be disproportioned, being two-thirds the length of the entire insect. When this fly attacks an animal, or man, it pierces the skin instantaneously, like the prick of a red-hot needle driven deep into the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the figure of the planets called the emblem of the great burying-place, as follows: a spear grasped by the right-hand, an elephant's figure in the left-hand, and in the act of drinking the blood of the elephant by bruising its proboscis. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... 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
... than the tiny ant. The elephant, wiser than all other creatures, renders religious adoration to the Ruler of all: also to good princes, but if a tyrant approach, it will not pay him the homage which is due only to the virtuous. It uses its proboscis, that nose-like hand which Nature has given it in compensation for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master, accepting the presents which will be profitable to him. It always walks cautiously, remembering ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... ordered me off the premises instantly as a vagrant. I went round to the back door and got a penny a-piece from the servants, who were quite delighted. Then I met uncle, and telling him that I had a wonderful box of antiques to exhibit, he gave me sixpence, and with great curiosity poked his proboscis against the glass. It was worth something to see him. I at once put a picture of Stonehenge, and afterwards one of Herculaneum into the box, that I had bought on purpose for his benefit. I went through the history of the Druids, and managed ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... again like other animals. They never shed their large teeth before 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... her rostrum, a delicate augur, she broaches a cask of her inexhaustible store. Crouching, always singing, on the twig of a suitable shrub or bush, she perforates the firm, glossy rind, distended by the sap which the sun has matured. Plunging her proboscis into the bung-hole, she drinks deliciously, motionless, and wrapt in meditation, abandoned to the charms of syrup and ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... laid his net level, stole forward, shining the lantern light full on the darting, hazy-winged creature, which was now poised, hovering over a white blossom and probing the honeyed depths with a long, slim proboscis. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... think so, however powerful, can no more be the true kings of the nation than gadflies are the kings of a horse; they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not guide it. They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one could see clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered trumpeting, in the summer air; the twilight being, perhaps, sometimes fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, if at all, and hate ruling; too many of them make "il gran rifiuto;" and ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... which the flower is fertilised, and to which it is especially adapted; the white colour makes the flower more conspicuous; the lower lip forms the stage on which the Bees may alight; the length of the tube is adapted to that of their proboscis; its narrowness and the fringe of fine hairs exclude small insects which might rob the flower of its honey without performing any service in return; the arched upper lip protects the stamens and pistil, and prevents rain-drops from choking up the tube and washing away the honey; ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... 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 not ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... good example elephants are for school boys. I have only told you a very little about this wonderful animal; yet enough, I hope, to make you want to read some of the many books about him. You have, I think, read of the story of the elephant who was wounded in his proboscis or trunk, and, in his anger, unintentionally killed his keeper, and of ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... along the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and intestines, hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he died. Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same district was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut the flesh from the victim while life remained. In some villages Major Campbell found as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... loosened a plank or two of one of the cages—a noble lion with flowing mane and glaring eyes burst forth and sprung overboard. At the same instant an elephant had freed himself from the rope which fettered his hind legs. Flourishing his long proboscis he rushed into the midst of the fire, but soon driven back by the heat he retreated to a portion of the foredeck which had not yet ignited, and his death-cry echoed loud and ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... as he was climbing up the bank to follow his retreating dam. When laid hold of, he screamed with so much energy that, to escape a visit from the enraged mother, we steamed off, and dragged him through the water by the proboscis. As the men were holding his trunk over the gunwale, Monga, a brave Makololo elephant-hunter, rushed aft, and drew his knife across it in a sort of frenzy peculiar to the chase. The wound was skilfully sewn up, and the young animal soon became quite ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Microtus tunnels with a hatchet in order to set the traps and we were almost frozen before the work was completed. The next morning we had caught twenty specimens of a new white-bellied meadow vole and a remarkable shrew with a long curved proboscis. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Gillespie, ignoring Mr Saunders the second mate, who was now supposed to be in charge of the deck, sang out in his voice of thunder, his nose no doubt shaking terribly the while, albeit I couldn't see it, the evening being too dark and lowering for me even to distinguish plainly that long proboscis of his: ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... He was the great progenitor of the tribe of the Beekmans, one of the most ancient and honorable families of the province; the members of which do gratefully commemorate the origin of their dignity, nor as your noble families in England would do by having a glowing proboscis emblazoned in their escutcheon, but by one and all wearing a right goodly nose stuck in the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... more were emerging from cells at the end of the building. Sweepers, with rotary brooms and rakes, crablike all-purpose handling robots, a couple of vacuum-cleaning robots, each with a flexible funnel-tipped proboscis and a bulging dust-sack. One tiling, a sort of special job designed to get into otherwise inaccessible places, had a twenty-foot, many-jointed, claw-tipped arm in front. It passed by and slightly over the tower, saw Clyde Nichols, and swooped toward him. With a howl, Nichols dived under ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... and as soon as he perceived him overpowered with his numerous wounds and the multitude of darts that were thrown at him, to prevent his falling off, he softly knelt down and began to draw out the darts with his proboscis. When Porus was taken prisoner, and Alexander asked him how he expected to be used, he answered, "As a king." And Alexander, accordingly, not only suffered him to govern his own kingdom as satrap under himself, but gave him also the additional territory of various independent ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... 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
... elephants. By 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 ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... De Partibus Aristotle clearly enunciates the principle of the division of labour, afterwards emphasised by H. Milne-Edwards. In some insects, he says, the proboscis combines the functions of a tongue and a sting, in others the tongue and the sting are quite separate. "Now it is better," he goes on, "that one and the same instrument shall not be made to serve several ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... huge animal used to walk about the streets in the most quiet and orderly manner, and paid many visits through the city to people who were kind to him. Two cobblers took an ill will to this inoffensive creature, and several times pricked him on the proboscis with their awls. The noble animal did not chastise them in the manner he might have done, and seemed to think they were too contemptible to be angry with them. But he took other means to punish them for their cruelty. He filled his trunk with water of ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... occasional development in man of the coccygeal vertebrae into a short and free tail, though it thus becomes in one sense more perfectly developed, may at the same time be considered as an arrest of development, and as a case of reversion. The greater frequency of a monstrous kind of proboscis in the pig than in any other mammal, considering the position of the pig {58} in the mammalian series, has likewise been attributed, perhaps ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... said Bothwell, in the same tone of raillery, "will be, firstly, that I will tweak thy proboscis or nose. Secondly, beloved, that I will administer my fist to thy distorted visual optics; and will conclude, beloved, with a practical application of the flat of my sword to the shoulders of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... intensely blue sky; disclosing the "Harlequin House that Jack built," and Mr. John Bull's huge paste-board thick head, snoring like thunder, in a "property" summer-house—an elephantine blue-bottle on his proboscis, and a sleeping bull-dog, the size of an Alderney steer, at his feet;—here Master Brown, with a grin, calls the house Victoria Villa, and the paste-board mask his papa. Now enters the rat, to eat the good things that lay in the house that John built, represented by a stealthy seedy gentleman, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... provided with a long and pliant proboscis for the purpose of acquiring this grateful food, as a variety of bees, moths, and butterflies: but the Sphinx Convolvuli, or unicorn moth, is furnished with the most remarkable proboscis in this climate. It carries it rolled up in concentric ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... he's in wrath or love When two of them do run a race, Whether they gallop, trot, or pace: 310 How many scores a flea will jump, Of his own length, from head to rump; Which SOCRATES and CHAEREPHON, In vain, assay'd so long agon; Whether his snout a perfect nose is, 315 And not an elephant's proboscis How many diff'rent specieses Of maggots breed in rotten cheese And which are next of kin to those Engender'd in a chandler's nose; 320 Or those not seen, but understood, That live ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... petals, but they resist me and I only succeed in murdering the plant. Fool! Why could I not let these flowers live on the edge of their ditch? There they would have felt the fresh shrivelling of drinking in the sun, a bird would have touched them lightly, the proboscis of the mosquitoes would have sucked up their pollen, and they would have died gently by ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... with perplexity. The sleepy eyes gleamed vengefully from between his half-closed eyelids as he gazed across the sunlit prairie. His aquiline nose, always bearing a resemblance to an eagle's beak, was rendered even more like that aristocratic proboscis by reason of the down-drawn tip, consequent upon the odd pursing of his tightly-compressed lips. For the moment "Lord" Bill was at a loss. And, oddly enough, he began to wonder if, after all, silence ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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
... experimented during the sixteenth century with 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, for instance, probably had a sensitive epidermis which afforded an unlimited ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... inquisitive shyness or bounce'll Make us "too previous" with our Report, which goes first to the QUEEN and the Privy Council. Some bigwig's motto is, "Say and Seal," but as TUPPER remarked a forefinger laying To the dexter side of a fine proboscis, "Our motto at present is, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... some there is a sticky secretion which, getting on to the proboscis of an insect, carries away the pollen, and applies it to the stigma of another flower. This occurs in our common milkwort ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to adorn the idols of their hearts and homes. (Plate 50.) This natural state of things still prevails in Central Africa, where Schweinfuerth describes a king dancing before his 100 wives costumed in the tails of lions and peacocks, and crowned with the proboscis of an elephant. It appears, however, that, unlike Cleopatra, "custom had staled his infinite variety," and the 100 ladies looked on the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the Grand Duke in a tone of the most triumphant exultation, and his mighty proboscis, as it snuffed the air, almost caused a whirlwind round the room. Hockheimer gave a roar, Steinberg a growl, Rudesheimer a wild laugh, Markbrunnen, a loud grunt, Grafenberg a bray, Asmanshausen's long body moved to and fro with wonderful agitation, and little Geisenheim's bright ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... length, and four in height, it is the largest quadruped in South America. In form it is somewhat like the hog; but its snout is lengthened into a flexible proboscis, which resembles the rudiment of the elephant's trunk, and serves for the same purpose—that of twisting round the launches of trees and tearing off the leaves, on which it partly feeds. Like the rhinoceros, it delights in water, is a good swimmer and diver, and enjoys wallowing ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... changing from purple to violet, from violet to velvet black. He soared above her skywards until he was a mere speck in the blue. He showed her the broad ribbon that he also wore. He even uncurled his slender saffron proboscis, and toasted his divinity in the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... as they sport around the dahlias; now watching that rarer moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the bee-bird;[1] that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube of the jessamine, and hovering over the scarlet blossoms of the geranium, whose bright colour seems reflected on its own feathery breast; that insect which seems so thoroughly a creature of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... swarms of flies that irritated the skin; but in spite of the comparative comfort of a stable, the donkeys preferred a life of out-door independence, and fell off in condition if confined to a house. The worst flies were the small grey species, with a long proboscis, similar to those that are often seen in ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den; Sporting the lion romped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His light proboscis." ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... it; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit 440 The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet; Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (this last there's no doubt of) In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of. Now nobody knows when an author is hit, If he have not a public hysterical fit; Let him only keep ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... doomsday she'll burn a week longer than the whole 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 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... small, rude synthesis of the great English social order. Passing out upon the highroad, we came to the common browsing-patch, the "village green" of the tales of our youth. Nothing was wanting; the shaggy, mouse-colored donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman—the old woman, in person, with her red cloak and black bonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled beside her decent, placid cheeks—the towering plowman with his white smock-frock, puckered on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... bee and 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 ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... usually make three or four trips from the hunter's box before it brings back a companion. I suspect the bee does not tell its fellows what it has found, but that they smell out the secret; it doubtless bears some evidence with it upon its feet or proboscis that it has been upon honeycomb and not upon flowers, and its companions take the hint and follow, arriving always many seconds behind. Then the quantity and quality of the booty would also betray it. No doubt, also, there ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a fashion of his own. Sitting in a corner, he amused himself by drawing forth his "puppies," and taking occasional aim at a candle or flowerpot; and sometimes, with some irreverence, at the curved and rather extravagant proboscis of his worthy uncle, which, cocked up in air, was indeed something of a tempting object of sight to a person so satisfied of his skill in shooting as the young rustic. The parties being thus arranged in a fit attitude for listening, Mr. Calvert ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... ineffectually protected by a fold of Russian duck. When you are reading, a mosquito will rarely settle on that portion of your hand which is within range of your eyes, but cunningly stealing by the underside of the book fastens on the wrist or finger, and noiselessly inserts his proboscis there. I have tested the classical expedient recorded by Herodotus, who states that the fishermen inhabiting the fens of Egypt cover their beds with their nets, knowing that the mosquitoes, although they bite through linen robes, will not venture though a net.[2] But, notwithstanding the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... obstinate—surely you are quite mistaken." And the arch-master of impudence looked round with modest suavity, and, in an audible whisper, assured the gentleman that sat next to him, that Captain Headman's argument of the demolished proboscis went for nothing, for that there were other causes equally efficacious as cold and frost, for ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... bear about with them an analogy to particular animals: Chalmers is like a good-tempered lion; Wilberforce is like a bee." Dr. Owen often reminds us of an elephant; the same ponderous movements—the same gentle sagacity—the same vast but unobtrusive powers. With a logical proboscis able to handle the heavy guns of Hugo Grotius, and to untwist withal the tangled threads of Richard Baxter, in his encounters with John Goodwin he resembles his prototype in a leopard-hunt, where sheer strength is on the one side, and brisk ability ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the greater part of the beetles armed with trunks, and several Carabides, were found there. The ten kinds of Heteromerides, with distorted wings, found here, belong to five new classes: the other Heteromerides consist of a Helops and a black Lytta with red thighs. Of beetles furnished with a proboscis, we met with four kinds of Listroderes, two remarkable Cryptorhynchi, and a few others of the shape of a Rhigus. Lastly are to be noticed, a Lucanus of the form of the femoratus, a large ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... into the spirit-cask. A tzetze-fly (Glossina morsitans) was captured in Effuenta House, curiously deserting its usual habit of jungle-life in preference to a home on clear ground: its dagger-like proboscis, in the grooved sheath with a ganglion of muscles at the base, assimilated it to the dreaded and ferocious cattle-scourge which extends from Zanzibar to the Tanganyika Lake and from Kilwa (Quiloa) to the Transvaal. My kind friend and hospitable ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... small field-piece mounted with him on his elephant, which he then discharged at me, and the grape-shot coming in a shower, rattled in the laurels that covered and shaded me all over, and remained pendant like berries on the branches. I then, advancing, took the proboscis of his elephant, and turning it against the rider, struck him repeatedly with the extremity of it on either side of the head, until I at length dismounted him. Nothing could equal the rage of the barbarian ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... have told you that there are two great divisions of the insect family—those which suck liquid food through their proboscis or trunk, such as flies and butterflies, and those—such as the beetles, bees, and locusts—which bite and eat solid food with their jaws. Dearly as I should like to tell you about bees, both "solitary" and "social," "masons" and "carpenters," we must not make this chapter longer, so ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... WEEVIL (Balantinus caryae): In some localities considerable damage has been caused by the pecan weevil. The insect is a small, brownish-black snout beetle, somewhat less than one-half inch in length. The proboscis or snout is slender and as long as the body. With this proboscis the beetle bores a very small hole through the husk and shell of the immature pecan to the kernel, and at the bottom deposits an egg. This egg hatches into a larva, which feeds upon the kernel of the nut. In autumn ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage outfall while he snorted in my ear— Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair, Felt the brute's proboscis fingering ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... fly, Musca domestica, scarcely needs an introduction to any one of our readers, and its countenance is so well known that we need not present a portrait here. But a study of the proboscis of the fly reveals a wonderful adaptability of the mouth-parts of this insect to their uses. We have already noticed the most perfect condition of these parts as seen in the horse fly. In the proboscis of the house fly the hard parts are obsolete, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the arcades at Birmingham. And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her long ago; and at last her name. Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like the honey-seeking proboscis of a bee ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... to realize that he had little chance to get what he wanted in the open matrimonial market, so he determined to attempt a raid and carry off an heiress under her father's nose, and the particular proboscis he had selected was that of his employer's friend, Senator Roberts. The senator and Miss Roberts were frequently at the Ryder House and in course of time the aristocratic secretary and the daughter had become quite intimate. A flighty girl, with no other purpose in life beyond ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... birds. Nevertheless, your fur robe is so royally perfumed, and its colour is so splendiferously tanned, that I am doubtful if I recognise you as belonging to this race, since I have never seen any of them so gloriously attired. However you have swallowed the grain after the antique fashion. Your proboscis is a proboscis of sapience; you have kicked like a learned shrew-mouse; but if you are a true shrew-mouse, you should have in I know not what part of your ear—I know not what special auditorial channel, which I know not, what wonderful door, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac |
