"Cocoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... skin, is covered with a coat of pure mortar. This inner whitewash, however, is put on without any attempt at art, indeed one might say that it is ladled on in great splashes; and the grub takes care, after finishing its mess of honey, to make itself a cocoon and hang the rude walls of its abode with silk. On the other hand, the Anthophorae and the Halicti, two species of Wild Bees whose grubs weave no cocoon, delicately glaze the inside of their earthen cells and give them the gloss ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Tit's ways—storing away provisions for a time of need. With his stout, conical beak he is able to break the shell of an acorn, peck a corn grain into swallowable bits, and tear open the toughest casing of a cocoon. He will even break the hard pits of the dogwood berry to secure the kernel within, the ground below often being strewn with the shell fragments. No danger of Parus bicolor coming to want or ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... up his funny-bone, and he was rabid with me for not having helped him with the Boh and the mosquito-net. I had to explain that I couldn't do anything. If you'd seen 'em both tangled up together on the floor in one kicking cocoon, you'd have laughed for a week. Hicksey swore that the only decent man of his acquaintance was the Boh, and all the way to camp Hicksey was talking to the Boh, and the Boh was complaining about the soreness of his bones. When we got back, and had had a bath, the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... flight. Our young queen hastens towards the large cradles, urged on by her great desire, and the guard make way before her. Listening only to her furious jealousy, she will fling herself on to the first cell she comes across, madly strip off the wax with her teeth and claws, tear away the cocoon that carpets the cell, and divest the sleeping princess of every covering. If her rival should be already recognisable, the queen will turn so that her sting may enter the capsule, and will frantically stab it with her ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the first in "barber, bitten, button, balance, banish;—" and many unaccented ones to be "long;" as the last in sofa, specie, noble, metre, sorrow, daisy, valley, nature, native; or the first in around, before, delay, divide, remove, seclude, obey, cocoon, presume, propose, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Krefft has sent me the enclosed from Sydney. A nurseryman saw a caterpillar feeding on a plant and covered the whole up, but when he searched for the cocoon (pupa), was long before he could find it, so good was its imitation in colour and form to the leaf to which it was attached. I hope that the world goes well with you. Do not trouble yourself by ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... little worms called silkworms. When the worm is fully grown, it spins round itself a small ball of silk, called a cocoon. If this cocoon were left to itself, the worm would change to a moth, and the moth would eat its way out of this little house. But this, of course, would cut the little threads and spoil the silk. As soon, therefore, as the cocoon is made, it is put into hot water to kill the worm. In ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... Eliza laid a large number of eggs in a silken cocoon, in shape a balloon, and secreted, like the web, by her invaluable spinnerets. Indeed, the real reason—I won't say excuse—for the rapacity and Gargantuan appetite of the spider lies, no doubt, in the immense amount of material she has to supply for her daily-renewed webs, her home, and her ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... a small galvanometric helix, r, analogous to Thomson's siphon recorder, which is suspended from a cocoon fiber and capable of moving in an extremely powerful magnetic field, N S. This helix carries, as may be seen in Figs. 1, 3 and 4, a prolongation, v, at its lower end whose form is that of a prism, and which is arranged in front of the partition of the box, K, in such a way that it exactly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... her grow fast, and in five days she is so large as to nearly fill the cell. Then she stops eating, spins a cocoon, and lies in it for about two and a half days more. When she comes out of this, she is called a Pupa. Sixteen days after the laying of the egg, the young Queen is ready to come out of her cell. It takes twenty-one days for a Worker to become fully grown and twenty-five ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... people have ever tried to rob me of the honour and credit of killing it. The 'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently, the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of life or limb, or had to be protected from a homicidal public by the law in uniform. And I was shocked by a negative answer. Referees in Europe have been smuggled off the ground in the center of a cocoon of policemen, have even been known to spend a fortnight in bed, after giving a decision adverse to the home team!... More evidence that the United States is not in the full sense a ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... piece of counsel. You sit too close to your books. You read and read,—you spin yourself into your own views like a cocoon. Travel—hear what others say—above all, go into retreat! No one need know. It would do you ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are either faint from the heat of this thick coat of yours, or that you are going to make a cocoon of yourself, Mr. Fuzz," ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Paget, interne in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, while dissecting the muscular tissues of a human subject, found little specks of extraneous matter, which, when taken to the professor of comparative anatomy, Richard Owen, were ascertained, with the aid of the microscope, to be the cocoon of a minute and hitherto unknown insect. Owen named the insect Trichina spiralis. After the discovery was published it transpired that similar specks had been observed by several earlier investigators, but no one had previously suspected or, at any rate, demonstrated their nature. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... occurring at any one period of life reappear in the offspring at the same period, and can be perpetuated and increased by selection without modifying other parts of the organisation. Thus, variations in the caterpillar or the cocoon of the silkworm, in the eggs of poultry, and in the seeds or young shoots of many culinary vegetables, have been accumulated till those parts have become greatly modified and, for man's purposes, improved. Owing to this fact it is easy for organisms to become so modified as to avoid dangers ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... gray and striped, leathery in appearance, very closely resembling the back of the tree upon which they rest when not feeding. Having attained its full growth as a caterpillar, it ties together two or three leaves with strands of silk, thus making a loose cocoon within which it pupates. The pupa is dark brown, covered with a whitish or bluish-white bloom. In about one month the moths emerge. They are large in size, the body being one to one and one-fourth inches long and the expanded wings two and one-half to three inches across. When at rest they ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... prematurely, and should be picked up and fed to swine. This done every day during their falling, which does not last a great while, will remedy the evil in two seasons. The worm that crawls from the fallen apple gets into crevices in rough bark, and spins his cocoon, in which he remains ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... it becomes a large worm or caterpillar of a yellowish white color, (which is its first state;) this caterpillar feeds on the leaves of the mulberry tree, till, arriving at maturity, it winds itself up in a silken bag or case, called a cocoon, about the size and shape of a pigeon's egg, and becomes a chrysalis; in which state it lies without signs of life; in about ten days it eats its way out of its case, a perfect butterfly, which lays a number of eggs and then dies. In the warmth of the summer ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... country place called Limoise, a place that at later time played a great part in my life. It belonged to neighbors and friends, the D——s, whose house in town was directly next to ours. Perhaps I had visited Limoise the preceding summer, but at that time I was very like a cocoon before it has crawled from its silken wrapping. The day that I now refer to is the one in which I was able to reflect for the first time, in which I first knew the sweetness ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... caterpillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for the support and guidance ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Then two powers strive on his brow which his son, confronted by the shield over his father's eyes, does not see. He wants to ask something but he does not ask. So thick is the cloud that the old man has spun about him like a cocoon that there is no longer any way through it from him out into the world nor any, leading from outside in to him. He behaves as if he knew about everything. If he did not do so, he would show the world his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... most part neglecting other productions, more marvellous in certain ways, which are formed by particular organs, or are elaborated within the organism, and are not the result of the intelligent effort of the individual. To this category belong the threads which the Spider stretches, and the cocoon with which the Caterpillar surrounds himself to shelter ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... incredible to themselves; for they are unwound like a cocoon, and know not which way the thread ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... "They shall not escape! Am I set at naught by a crazed buffoon?" But in fifty fathoms of thin red tape The Lord Swank swaddled his portly shape, Like a large, insane cocoon. Then round and round and round and round. The Swanks, the Swanks, the whirling Swanks, The twirling Swanks they wound— The swathed and swaddled, molly-coddled Swanks ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... corner rings. Beside it hung a huge, grimy oil painting representative of some flowers and fruit, half a water melon, a boar's head, and the pendent form of a dead wild duck. Attached to the ceiling there was a chandelier in a holland covering—the covering so dusty as closely to resemble a huge cocoon enclosing a caterpillar. Lastly, in one corner of the room lay a pile of articles which had evidently been adjudged unworthy of a place on the table. Yet what the pile consisted of it would have been difficult to say, seeing that the dust on the same was so thick that any hand which touched ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... one exception are beneficial," said Zorn. "There are no wild animals, and no harmful insects. All animals, insects and birds have been domesticated and are fed by their keepers. We get fabrics from forms of what you call spiders and other web-builders and cocoon spinners. All forms of birds, beasts and crawling and flying things have been brought under the dominion of man. We will have to seek another way out than by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... First Narakan Rifles!" Fielding murmured sarcastically. "A year ago he was squatting in a mud cocoon at the bottom of Suzi swamp with the rest of the frogs. Now he's got a good Irish name and he's strutting around like ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... contain them, while they change from their larva form to a butterfly; as I have seen in above fifty cabbage-caterpillars. The ichneumon larva then makes its way out of the caterpillar, and spins itself a small cocoon like a silk worm; these cocoons are about the size of a small pin's head, and I have seen about ten of them on each cabbage caterpillar, which soon dies after ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... its nest with spices, and, spontaneously burning, soars from the aromatic fire, rejuvenescent for a thousand years; and he cannot but take the phoenix for a miraculous type of his own soul springing, free and eternal, from the ashes of his corpse. Having watched the silkworm, as it wove its cocoon and lay down in its oblong grave apparently dead, until at length it struggles forth, glittering with rainbow colors, a winged moth, endowed with new faculties and living a new life in a new sphere, he conceives that so the human ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... panted Grace, crawling out of her cocoon like a human caterpillar. "We had a lovely time also. And, Jennie, will you please be sure to leave your door open? Michael may be a very sound sleeper, and you know we all have ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... and used for the raising of silk worms are, in general, small, close, and miserable. Throughout America the roomy barns which are empty at the cocoon season, will, with little preparation, be much preferable, and enable the raisers to work ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... how my brushes might thus have been expeditiously packed with them. Not far from my studio door is a small thicket of wild rose, which should alone be sufficient to account for all those victimized caterpillars. This species is a regular dependent on the rose, dwelling within its cocoon-like canopy of leaves, which are drawn together with a few silken webs, and in which it is commonly concealed by day. A little persuasion upon either end of its leafy case, however, soon brings the little tenant to view as he wriggles out, backward or forward, as the case may be, and ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... few for breeding," he said;—"this one is just out of the cocoon. It cannot fly, of course: none of them can fly.... Now look at ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... tree the ground is yellow with the apples that it has shed and here all through the sunny hours two vanessa butterflies have alternately floated and feasted, one a mourning cloak, the other a Compton tortoise, Vanessa antiopa and Vanessa j-album. These are late arrivals that have come from the cocoon upon a cold world and are doing their best to make good in it. Both are of a species that are hardy beyond belief and both may well winter in the crevice within the gnarled trunk of the old tree into which they creep benumbed when ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... just like his Daddy Chip and the boys, flopped the blanket vigorously this way and that in an effort to get it straightened, flopped himself on his knees and folded the blanket round and round him until he looked like a large, gray cocoon, and cuddled himself under the ledge with his head on the bag of doughnuts and his wide eyes fixed upon the first pale stars and his mind clinging sturdily to his mission and to this first real, man-sized adventure that had come into ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... it—-till—now! [Rises impulsively] Why don't you say something? You have not uttered a single word all this time. You've just let me go on talking. You've been sitting there staring at me only, and your eyes have drawn out of me all these thoughts which were lying in me like silk in a cocoon—thoughts—bad thoughts maybe—let me think. Why did you break your engagement? Why have you never called on us afterward? Why don't you want ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... lines under his feet were smoking, tendrils rising and twisting as the hair of the Foanna rippled and twisted. And the smoke clung, wreathed his body. They moved in a cocoon of smoke, thicker and thicker, until Ross could not even see the Foanna who accompanied him, was only assured of her presence by the hand ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... consistency, and lustre, that it cannot be decomposed by any practicable expedient, having been finished, they all of them unite, and ranging themselves in vertical and even files, form in the centre a perfect square. Being thus disposed, each of them makes its cocoon, or pod, of a coarse and short silk, in which it is transformed from the grub into the chrysalis, and from the chrysalis into the papilio, or moth. In proportion as they afterwards quit their confinement, to take wing, they detach wherever it is most convenient ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... had wriggled itself realistically into a cocoon it went to sleep; and after a moment of dramatic silence, the little one chosen for the butterfly would separate herself from the still cocoon and fly about the circle, sipping ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... from its fountain, radiated from her like odour. It fashioned around her a nimbus of sound, like that made by the light issuing from the blessed ones, as beheld by Dante, which revealed their presence but hid them in its radiance, as the moth is hid in the silk of its cocoon. Richard felt entirely well. The warmth entered into him, and met the warmth generated in him. All was peace and hope and bliss, quaintest mingling of expectation and fruition. Even Arthur Lestrange beside Barbara could not blast his joy. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the elevator, hurried up the last few steps, and swung the hatch open. He took the flashlight from his belt kit and swung it around the interior. Prince Machiavelli blinked at him from a cocoon of tapes and straps. The light hurt the monk's eyes. Rick clicked it off and moved to the little marmoset's side. He stroked the tiny head. Why wasn't the hatch locked? Someone must have forgotten something. He walked over and peered through one of the two thick glass ports, ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... long with its pent-up message of Greece—the glory of her days, the beauty of temples and statues and tombs—was freed by the tale of his lips. The world was new-born for him. He lifted the empty fig-box, from which the child had set free the butterfly that had hung imprisoned in its grey cocoon throughout the long winter, and placed it carefully on the shelf. The lettering traced along its side was faded and dim; but he saw again the child's eyes lifted to it—the lips half-parted, the eager question and swift demand—that he should tell her of Athens ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... vivacious wife at the table's end, and marvelled at her hypocrisy. So Joe Hilliard had probably wondered. Hilliard was very real to him. He seemed to have incased himself in Hilliard's personality. A little later, when Milicent, all exhilaration now that the bursting of the cocoon was instant, came in her bravery for his approval, he kissed her like one who knows no care, and extravagantly admired the roses he forgot that he had sent. The same mechanical self stood beside his wife and stepdaughter at the coming of the guests, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... consequence of his union with (particular) attributes and the puissance of attributes.[1615] From the status of humanity, he goes to heaven and from heaven he comes back to humanity, and from humanity he sinks into hell for many long years. As the worm that fabricates the cocoon shuts itself, completely on every side by means of the threads it weaves itself, even so the Soul, though in reality transcending all attributes, invests himself on every side with attributes (and deprives himself of liberty).[1616] Though transcending (in his real nature) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... flowers in the garden were just pushing their leaves through the ground. The sun was shining, and a little new yellow butterfly, that had only just crept out of its snug cocoon that very day, was dancing ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... fastened in front by a girdle of silver chains. Her neck is loaded with silver chains, amber necklaces, etc., and her head adorned with a coronet of scarlet cloth, studded with seed-pearls, jewels, glass beads, etc. The common dress is a long robe of indi, a cloth of coarse silk, spun from the cocoon of a large caterpillar that is found wild at the foot of the hills, and is also cultivated: it feeds on many different leaves, Sal (Shorea), ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... appearing in old age produce children with d^o.,—early maturity,—longevity,—old men, brothers, of same disease—young children of d^o. I said men do not select for quality of young,—calf with big bullocks. Silk-worms, peculiarities which, appear in caterpillar state or cocoon state, are transmitted to corresponding states. The effect of this would be that if some peculiarity was born in a young animal, but never exercised, it might be inherited in young animal; but if exercised that part of structure would be increased and would be inherited in corresponding ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... contest with the other very powerful instinct of preserving and carrying their cocoons as long as possible; and this they could not help doing although the cocoons were empty. According as the one or other instinct was the stronger in each individual ant, so did it carry the empty cocoon to a greater or less distance. If this little observation should ever prove of any use to you, you are quite at liberty to use it. Again thanking you cordially for the great pleasure which your work has given me, I remain ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... silk cocoons spun by the caterpillars just before finally transforming to pupae. With all butterflies the chrysalids are naked, except with one species which occurs in Central America in which there is a common silk cocoon. With the moths, the larger part spin cocoons, but some of them, like the owlet moths whose larvae are the cutworms, have naked pupre, usually under the surface of the ground. It is not difficult to study the ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Kelly hurled herself into a corner. Her body activated a pressure plant and a pair of mummy-like plastifoam plates slid curvingly out the wall and locked her in a soft cocoon. A dozen similar safety clamps were located throughout the car at every ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... entomologist, Mr. Leopold Trouvelot, in 1868 or '69. History records the fact that the man of science did not purposely set free the pest. He was endeavoring with live specimens to find a moth that would produce a cocoon of commercial value to America; and a sudden gust of wind blew out of his study, through an open window, his living and breeding specimens of the gypsy moth. The moth itself is not bad to look at, but its larvae is a great, overgrown brute, with ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... vouchsafing her the smallest attention, unfastened the pelisse of grey fox skin, stripped it off, and then proceeded to divest the infant of the first of the coats in which it was enveloped, like a silkworm in its cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes from its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... here (as I went all summer at the Hague), studying the old letters and documents of the fifteenth century. Here I remain among my fellow-worms, feeding on these musty mulberry-leaves, out of which we are afterwards to spin our silk. How can you expect anything interesting from such a human cocoon? It is, however, not without its amusement in a mouldy sort of way, this reading of dead letters. It is something to read the real, bona fide signs-manual of such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander Farnese, Philip ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... spider; perhaps Tanner was taught by them how to fast. The Hour, from which we take this item, also has the following: Another spider story is sent from California by the Rev. Dr. McCook, of honey-ant fame. He found a small cocoon of eggs and young spiders, which had no less than five other kinds of insects living in and about it. These intruders consisted of small red ants, a diminutive beetle, and a series formed by a minute chalcid, parasitic on a larger chalcid, which was parasitic on an ichneumon, which was parasitic ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... herself—for so different a journey!—had to be emptied of its feminine possessions, and David's little belongings stowed in their place. David himself had views about this packing; he kept bringing one thing or another—his rubber boots, a cocoon, a large lump of slag honeycombed with air- holes; would she please put ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... funeral was gradually and successfully accomplished. Dress and the repast exceeded all other matters in complexity and difficulty. But on the morning of the funeral Aunt Harriet had the satisfaction of beholding her younger sister the centre of a tremendous cocoon of crape, whose slightest pleat was perfect. Aunt Harriet seemed to welcome her then, like a veteran, formally into the august army of relicts. As they stood side by side surveying the special table which was being laid in the showroom for the repast, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... fork while the plate is held in the other hand! There are also rolls and biscuits, pate de foie gras or lettuce and tomato sandwiches, the former made usually of split "dinner" rolls with pate between, or thin sandwiches rolled like a leaf in which a moth has built a cocoon. Ices are brought in a little later, when a number of persons have apparently finished their "first course." Ice cream is quite as fashionable as individual "ices." It is merely that caterers are less partial to it because it ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the old days; and no one who had not seen him for a year from the time of his fit would have recognized him as the same child. He was not only making up for lost time—he was incomparably outstripping his earlier self; he seemed to have emerged from a mental and physical cocoon—to have cast aside an incrustation of deterrent clumsiness, and to be hastening onward with the airy case and accuracy of perfect self-possession. At the end of a year he was to all intents and purposes ten years ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... out his horse for the night he returned to find the woman rolled snugly in her covering, as in a cocoon. The dying embers flickered into flame and lit her hair redly. She had laid off her felt Stetson, and one loosened braid lay over her hard pillow. Thinking her asleep, Law stood motionless, making no attempt to hide his expression of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Claude answered, stepping into the boat. 'This wreck is but a torn scrap of the chrysalis-cocoon; we may meet ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... penetrates the skin. Through this trunk, the ticks derive their nourishment by sucking the blood from the body of the sheep. The tick is also provided with three pairs of legs. The female lays her young in the form of a spun egg (cocoon) which is oblong in shape and brown in color. This egg is cemented to the wool of sheep where young ticks are hatched in about four to ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... was sitting down, I observed close to us what I took to be a seed-pod of some aerial plant, hanging straight down from a bough, at about six feet from the ground. On going up to it, I found to my surprise that it was a cocoon about the size of a sparrow's egg, woven by a caterpillar in broad meshes of a rose-coloured silky substance. It hung, suspended from the tip of an outstanding leaf, by a strong silken thread about six inches in length. On examining it carefully, I found ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... caught sight of Hale's sleigh in the distance. He hurried forward to meet it, but as it drew nearer he saw that it was driven by the carpenter's youngest boy and that the figure at his side, looking like a large upright cocoon in spectacles, was that of Mrs. Hale. Ethan signed to them to stop, and Mrs. Hale leaned forward, her pink wrinkles twinkling ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... been eaten to a mere shell by the larvæ of the hornet. Under the wing of each insect an egg is attached; the egg soon hatches, and the grub at once proceeds to devour the food its thoughtful parent has provided. As it grows, it weaves itself a sort of shell or cocoon, in which, after a time, it undergoes its metamorphosis, and comes out, I think, a perfect insect ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... when he realized that he must develop wings, so he wrapped himself up in a cocoon; and while the metamorphosis was in process of development he had ample time to study Hamlet's soliloquy. It would mean a divorce from everything he held dear; a parting with his very soul. It would mean the most sorrowful widowhood that could be imposed on man. It would be equivalent ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... ravages are painfully familiar to the coco-nut planters.[1] The larva of one species of large dimensions, Batocera rubus[2], called by the Singhalese "Cooroominya" makes its way into the stems of the younger trees, and after perforating them in all directions, it forms a cocoon of the gnawed wood and sawdust, in which it reposes during its sleep as a pupa, till the arrival of the period when it emerges as a perfect beetle. Notwithstanding the repulsive aspect of the large pulpy larvae of these beetles, they are ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... similar to the sentiments which our vegetarian friends have toward killing animals for food. Confucius wore linen in preference to silk, for sentimental reasons. The silkworm dies at his task of making himself a cocoon, so to evolve in a winged joy, but falls a victim of man's cupidity. Likewise, Confucius would not drink milk from a cow until her calf was weaned, because to do so were taking an unfair advantage of the maternal instincts ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Brazil exhibit numerous beautiful examples of insect workmanship. Among others is the work of a caterpillar—a cocoon about the size of a sparrow's egg, woven in broad meshes of either buff or rose-coloured silk, and seen suspended from the tip of an outstanding leaf by a strong thread, five or six inches in length. It forms a conspicuous object hung thus in mid-air. The glossy threads with ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... sound in the House except down the hall a snore—a glorious, triumphant note. A second time the gong took up its discordant march. Then from the cocoon on the bed a flash of legs and arms sprang out and into the waiting garments. There was a splash in the basin that spattered the water far and near, and Butsey, enveloped in a towel, rushed into his upper garments, flung back his hair with ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... existence, which certainly does not lead us to expect a display of any, even the most limited, intellectual power. When, however, the time comes for the larva of this moth to become a chrysalis, it spins for itself a double cocoon, fortified with bristles that point outwards, so that it can be opened easily from within, though it is sufficiently impenetrable from without. If this contrivance were the result of conscious reflection, we should have to suppose some ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... lengthened out to suit that extra length, and that means a great deal of waste for that rebuilding, but it is something worse than that. You know perfectly well that out of the butterfly egg there comes the caterpillar, and that caterpillar goes into a cocoon, and during the life of the cocoon every organ is changed there and it comes out a butterfly. That is what ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... swore volubly and said he had "busted the bottle" by falling against the wagon wheel; and Ford, for a wonder, believed and did not ask for proof. He muddled around camp for a few indecisive minutes, then rolled himself up like a giant cocoon in his blankets, and ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... late, the next morning he dragged himself from his snug cocoon, and called, in response to a ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... time; but morning or evening, in country or in town, well or ill, writing with his own pen or dictating to an amanuensis in the intervals of screaming-fits due to the torture of cramp in the stomach, Scott spun away at his imaginative web almost as evenly as a silkworm spins at its golden cocoon. Nor can I detect the slightest trace of any difference in quality between the stories, such as can be reasonably ascribed to comparative care or haste. There are differences, and even great differences, of course, ascribable to the less or greater suitability of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... these fellows sometimes- -" The grumbling voice would go on and on; Cherry would pause at the door, carrying out plates, to have him finish a phrase; would nod sympathizingly as she set his dessert before him. But her soul was like some living thing spun into a cocoon, hearing the sounds of life only vaguely, interested in them not ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... do not like any type of men and women, we'll have no more of it. These old bodies, these old animal limitations, all this earthly inheritance of gross inevitabilities falls from the spirit of man like the shrivelled cocoon from an imago. And for my own part, when I hear of these things I feel like that—like a wet, crawling new moth that still fears to spread its wings. Because where do these ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... trace the life of nature even in forms which no human observation really finds in the outer world. Out there it may take weeks for the orchid to bud and blossom and fade; in the picture the process passes before us in a few seconds. We see how the caterpillar spins its cocoon and how it breaks it and how the butterfly unfolds its wings; and all which needed days and months goes on in a fraction of a minute. New interest for geography and botany and zooelogy has thus been aroused by these developments, undreamed of in the early days of the kinematograph, ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... that I would suggest, and that is, you have to live in the house that you build. Your deeds make the house that Christ is here speaking of. Like the chrysalis that spins out of its own entrails the cocoon in which it lies, so are you spinning, to vary the metaphor, what you lodge in, until you eat your way through it, and pass into the next stage of being. Our deeds seem transient, but although we are building on the sand we are building ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... through four stages: (1) the egg; (2) the worm or larvae; (3) the chrysalis, cocoon, or pupa; (4) the full-grown insect or imago. Butterflies, moths and beetles are examples of ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... human demand. In one of our cases a vision of Heaven and a conscious longing to be there was followed by a stupor. On recovery the patient compared her condition to that of a butterfly just hatched from a cocoon. No clearer simile of mental rebirth could ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... her eyes. It was as if she had witnessed the exercise of some secret gift, had seen a cocoon open or an egg ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale |
