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More "Proboscis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this greatest of men Soon caught hold of a pen, And, after slight delibe-ration, No longer he tosses His flexile proboscis About in so much exci-tation;[121] But scribbling with great ani-mation, He sends off a communi-cation:— 'Dearest Lyndhurst,' says he, 'Can't you find room for me When ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... women looked at the sheepshead aquarium and murmured: "What long bills they have." Her escort smiled in a knowing way and said: "That is not a bill; that is a proboscis, I believe. I wish I had a hook ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... 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
... clumsy brute with only two legs to walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts of foolish things—the brute with only one lens to an eye (though he sometimes puts a glass one over it) and a pitifully aborted proboscis—the brute that has no wings, and can't get ahead more than about once his own length in a second—that this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of the six legs, hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... common butterflies 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... the mizzenmast, and the falling yards 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
... condescending to what may be considered as bordering too much upon buffoonery, for the amusement of the company. Those lines of Milton were admirably applied to him by some one—"The elephant to make them sport wreathed his proboscis lithe." The truth is, that he was out of his place in the House of Commons; he was eminently qualified to shine as a man of genius, as the instructor of mankind, as the brightest luminary of his age: but he had nothing in common with that motley ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the bird catcher, kanaka kia manu, lay between March and May, when the lehua flowers were in bloom in the upland forest, where the birds of bright plumage congregated, especially the honey eaters, with their long-curved bill, shaped like an insect's proboscis. He armed himself with gum, snares of twisted fiber, and tough wooden spears shaped like long fishing poles, which were the kia manu. Having laid his snare and spread it with gum, he tolled the birds to it by ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... and forefeet, lifting his hind ones up in the air. Wonderful were the exertions he made to free himself; and as he crushed the branches within his reach, it seemed as if he would bring the stout tree itself to the ground. He uttered the most terrific screams in his agony, now bending his huge proboscis under him into the ground, now lifting it high in air; now pressing one cheek, now ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... which, thus freed from its envelope, begins at once to expand. By this time this little bud has assumed the form of a Medusoid or Jelly-Fish disk, with its four tubes radiating from the central cavity. The proboscis, so characteristic of all Jelly-Fishes, hangs from the central opening; and the tentacles, coiled within the internal cavity up to this time, now make their appearance, and we have a complete little Medusa growing upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... visited, I found them after a few days fertilised. (4/6. I should 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 ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... forbear, and will let him off this time with rehearsing only three or four among them:—the Allium fragrans, he will join with us, if he has been in Italy, in the wish that all onions there were like it! the Anchusa Italica, through whose long funnel the proboscis of the ever-buzzing Bombylius finds its way to the sweet nectar prepared within; the Scilla Lilio-hyacinthus—a Squill masquerading it as a Hyacinth; the leaves of the Cnicus Syraicus, most beautiful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... 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
... various species of this interesting family; all are inhabitants of fresh water; some incubate or sit upon their eggs, others carry them about in a hollow formed by the contraction of the sides. They have a long tubular proboscis, by means of which they suck out the juices of pond-snails and other water creatures. These snail-leeches move along in the same way as the common horse-leech and the medicinal leech, namely, by fixing the head-part on to the surface of some substance in the ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... 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 ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... 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 ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... keep you from becoming discouraged about your prospects for success. Bear in mind the old, familiar motto, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Stick to your prospecting when you know you are on the right lead. It has been estimated that the busy bee inserts its proboscis into flowers 3,600,000 times to obtain a single pound of honey. But the bee is the only insect, remember, that ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... 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, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... his father had much to occupy him. But the little man—who, to do him justice, cared no more (in his own phrase) for imminent danger or death, than he did for the puncture of a flea's proboscis—did not so easily renounce the secret object of his ambition, which was to acquire the notice of the large and lofty Sir Geoffrey Peveril, who, being at least three inches taller than his son, was in so far possessed of that superior excellence, which the poor dwarf, in his secret soul, valued ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the courage to take up Angraecum (203/2. Angraecum sesquipedale, a Madagascan orchid, with a whiplike nectary, 11 to 12 inches in length, which, according to Darwin ("Fertilisation of Orchids," Edition II., page 163), is adapted to the visits of a moth with a proboscis of corresponding length. He points out that there is no difficulty in believing in the existence of such a moth as F. Muller has described ("Nature," 1873, page 223)—a Brazilian sphinx-moth with a trunk of 10 to 11 inches in length. Moreover, Forbes has given evidence to show that such an ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... At the Koond, Buddleia Neemda, a Prunus, etc. occur. Caelogyne polleniis 4 obovatis, faciebus incumbentibus complanates materie pulverea, mediocri. Dundoons are rather troublesome; they are flies, and nearly as large as an ordinary house fly: their proboscis is large, and leaves spots of extravasated blood where they bite, nearly of the size of an ordinary ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... 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 ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... proboscis of the elephant is frequently called a hand, because it is as useful to him as one. "They breathe, drink, and smell, with what may not be improperly called a hand," says ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 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 ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... raised within his bosom dire alarms; Like 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
... are the candles put out, than forth it comes to seek whom it may devour; for, like the pestilence, it walks in darkness. It can fly, and in a dark room knows where you are and can find you. Having selected a nice tender part, it pierces the skin with its proboscis or rostrum, and sucks vigorously for two or three minutes, and, strange to say, you do not feel the operation, even when lying wide awake. By that time the creature, so attenuated before, has assumed the figure, size, and general appearance of a ripe gooseberry, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... 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 circles under its chin, and occasionally ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 finding himself thrown from his elephant. He rose in a fit of despair, and rushed ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... a perfect New Jerusalem as regards Sheenies, every civilian about the camp appearing to be a German Jew refugee. They have stalls and sell soap, buns, braces, belts, &c., and so forth. Every now and again a big Semitic proboscis appears at our tent door, and the question 'Does anypody vant to puy a ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... 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, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... feeding the poor elephant (who was so barbarously put to death at Exeter 'Change) with potatoes, which he took out of my hand. One of them, a round one, fell on the floor, just out of the reach of his proboscis. He leaned against his wooden bar, put out his trunk, and could just touch the potato, but could not pick it up. After several ineffectual efforts, he at last blew the potato against the opposite wall with sufficient force to make it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... means of support. Now, if you only had one, one incumbrance—and that you'd no business to have"—said the old gent, doggedly, tapping an antique tortoise-shell snuff box, and applying "the pungent grains of titillating dust," as Pope observes, to his proboscis, "if you had only one incumbrance—but you've got ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... 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, closes I know not ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... domestic animals to carry their food and camp equipment; but in large parts of tropical Africa the horse, ox, and mule cannot live. The bite of the little tsetse fly kills them. Its sting is hardly so annoying as that of the mosquito, but near the base of its proboscis is a little bag containing the fatal poison. Camels have been loaded near Zanzibar for the journey to Tanganyika, but they did not live to reach the great lake. The "ship of the desert" can never be utilized in the humid regions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... of smell; wild elephants will wind an enemy at a distance of a thousand yards, or even more, should the breeze be favourable. The nerves of the trunk are peculiarly sensitive, and although the skin is thick, the smallest substance can be discovered, and picked up by the tiny proboscis at the extremity. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... try to raise these 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 the ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... but things appertaining to the craft in which Shebotha is supposed to have skill—demonology. There are the bones and skins of monkeys, with those of snakes, lizards, and other reptiles; teeth of the alligator and jaguar; the proboscis-like snouts of the tapir and tamanoir, or great ant-bear, with a variety of other like oddities, furnished by the indigenous creatures of the Chaco in every department of the zoological world—birds, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... over twenty, lean as his aunt, but small boned and not unshapely. He was not, however, handsome, for he had a pasty, grayish complexion, thin lank hair, almost no beard, and a long nose suggesting a proboscis. His name was Rufius Libo, and he was Nonius Libo's heir. In his favor Nonius made a will a few days before we left Rome, leaving him his entire estate except a jointure to Clatenna, endowments to some municipal institutions in his home towns, legacies to various ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... 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 host ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... day in showing you my Aquarium;—the merry antics of the blithe Minnows; the slow wheeling of the less vivacious Sticklebacks; the beautiful siphon of the Quahaug and the Clam; the starry disk of the Serpula; the snug tent of the Limpet; the lithe proboscis of the busy Buccinum; the erect and rapid march of his little flesh-tinted cousin; the slow Horsefoot, balancing his huge umbrella as he goes; the——But I cannot name ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... length and massive strength, draped in long, stiff hair, and terminated by colossal hands with immense hooked claws for fingers. The whole body was clothed with rusty hair of an amazing coarseness, like matting fiber. The vast head, flat on top and prolonged to a snout that was almost a proboscis, had the look of being deformed by reason of its fantastically exaggerated jowl, or lower jaw. This terrifying monster thrust out a narrow pink tongue, some three or four feet in length, stooped and turned, and gave ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... season. They begin to be troublesome in the middle of May. From the 1st of June to the middle of July, they are in the very height of their impertinence; and, although they have not sufficient strength in their proboscis to penetrate a top-boot, yet they easily pierce through a summer coat and shirt, and a wee bit into the skin beneath. From the middle of July to the middle of August, they become much less venomous; and are then only annoying ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... piki. primrose : primolo. principle : principo. print : presi; gravurajxo. prison : malliberejo. private : privata, konfidencia. privilege : privilegio. prize : premio; sxati. probable : kredebla. problem : problemo. proboscis : rostro. process : proceso. procession : procesio. proclaim : proklami. profession : profesio. professor : profesoro profit : profito, gajno. progress : progreso. pronounce : elparoli. proof : pruvo, provo, presprovajxo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Democrats freed from confinement Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him, Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking: "O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?" ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the lower class, and the woman was meanly dressed in a blue garment, with a hood of the same over her head, her face being concealed by one of those hideous narrow black veils, fastened across under the eyes, which always reminded me of the proboscis of an elephant. Her hands were clasped upon the arms of the man just above the elbow, who held her in the same manner, and several people were endeavouring to part them, as they struggled much in the same manner which prevails in a melodrame, when the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... animals are 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 ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... 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 will later ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... 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 from excessive ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 is ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... and gentlemen," said a strange voice issuing from the darkness, "we shall show you the wonders of the oxy-hydrogen microscope; natural objects magnified five thousand times. Look and behold the proboscis ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... to want 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
... the Anthers converge over the nectaries, which consist of five glandular oval corpuscles, surrounding the germ, and at the same time admit air to the nectaries at the interstice between each anther; but when a fly inserts its proboscis between these anthers to plunder the honey, they converge closer, and with such violence as to detain the fly, which thus ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... 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
... contrived or executed by his orders. At one time he designedly, in his own presence, placed him in a situation where the pride of the chief made him contend, single-handed, with a large tiger, which he killed; and, at another, with a mad elephant, whose proboscis he cut off with his sword; but the Emperor's motives in all these attempts to put him foremost in situations of danger became so manifest that Sher Afgan solicited, and obtained, permission to retire with ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... there who was not caricatured in one way or another. He whose eyes looked not very straight was depicted with a most awful squint. The youth whom nature had endowed with somewhat lengthy nose was drawn by the caricaturists with a prodigious proboscis. Little Bobby Moss, the young Hebrew artist from Wardour Street, was delineated with three hats and an old-clothes bag. Nor were poor J. J.'s round shoulders spared, until Clive indignantly remonstrated at the hideous hunchback ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there thorny brakes of the most impenetrable character had been trodden flat by them, and trees had been overturned. In traversing such places the great bull-elephant always marches in the van, bursting through everything by sheer force and weight, breaking off huge limbs of the larger trees with his proboscis when these obstruct his path, and overturning the smaller ones bodily, while the females and younger members of the family follow in ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... in this highly intelligent race but vestigial—three small, sharp, black protuberances only an inch in length, one surmounting each ear, outlining the lofty forehead. The nose occupied almost the whole middle of the face and was not really a nose—it developed into a small and active proboscis. The chin was receding almost to the point of disappearance, so that the mouth, with its multiple rows of small, sharp, gleaming-white teeth, was almost hidden under the face instead of being a part of it. Such were the hexans, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... bored," replied Glover, tenderly fingering his sore proboscis. "It's been, so to speak, eyelet-holed. I'm glad I hadn't but one. The more noses a feller kerries in battle, the wuss for him. I hope the darned rip'll heal up. I've no 'casion to hev a line rove through it 'n' be towed, that I ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... a parasite on the back of an ox ... having found out by actual measurement the circumference of the ox, and by mathematical calculation, the diameter of the ox, and having ascertained that as he inserted his proboscis into the hide of the animal, say the sixteenth of an inch, it gradually and regularly grew warmer, infer, in like manner (as the geologist) that the center of the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... 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
... film. The next picture was a sort of enlarged and elongated house fly, apparently, of sombre grey color, with a narrow body, thick proboscis and wings that overlapped like the blades of a pair of shears. "This," he went on, "is a picture of the now well known tse-tse fly found over a large area of Africa. It has a bite something like a horse-fly ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... upon epidemic, epithet, epode, ephemeral *Hyper 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 ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... elephant-drivers, each with his elephant, the one remarkably large and strong, and the other comparatively small and weak, were at the well together; the small elephant had been provided by his master with a bucket for the occasion, which he carried at the end of his proboscis; but the larger animal being destitute of this necessary vessel, either spontaneously, or by desire of his keeper, seized the bucket, and easily wrested it away from his less powerful fellow-servant. ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... three or four around at once. When they were coming we could hear and see them for some rods. Their fashion was to circle around the oxen before lighting on them. I frequently slapped them to kill them, sometimes I caught them, in that case they were apt to lose their heads, proboscis and all. These flies were very large, some were black and some of the largest were whitish on the front of the back. I have seen some of them nearly as large as young humming birds. The Germans tell me they have this kind of fly in Germany. But with ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... wild races whose intelligence is all native and self-evolved. Moreover, the horse at least has to some slight extent a prehensile organ in his very mobile and sensitive lip, which he uses like an undeveloped or rudimentary proboscis to feel things all over with. So that the dog alone remains as a contradictory instance; and even the dog derives his cleverness indirectly from man, whose hand and thumb in the last resort are really at the bottom of his ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... here caught alive, 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 ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... adapt themselves to one another, the orchid using all the devices of colour, scent, sweetness of honey, to attract the insect, and gradually shaping itself so that the insect can better reach the honey, and the insect lengthening its proboscis and otherwise adapting itself so that it can better secure what it wants. And we see how perfectly—how nearly perfectly—the flower is designed for ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... the flies sometimes occur in great numbers the annoyance that they cause is often very great indeed. It has often been claimed that these flies as well as the stable-fly and others carry the anthrax bacillus on their proboscis from one animal to another, and although this may not have been definitely proven the evidence is strong enough to make a very good case against the accused. It is interesting to note in this connection that anthrax, a very common disease among the domestic animals and one which ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... frontier in any direction. But the vineyards were among the finest in Europe. The prince was a widower, and among his own people was affectionately styled "der Rotnaesig," which, I believe, designates an illuminated proboscis. When he wasn't fishing for rainbow trout he was sleeping in his cellars. He was often missing at the monthly reviews, but nobody ever worried; they knew where to find him. And besides, he might just as well sleep in his cellars as in his carriage, for he never rode a horse if he could ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... minutes he kept the same position, but they noticed that his tail no longer switched about, and that his attitude was loose and drooping. Now and then he turned his proboscis to the spot where he had received the thrust of the kobaoba's horn. It was evident that the wound was distressing him, and this became more apparent by the loud painful breathing the creature ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... slender tube: specifically applied to the channel formed by the union of the two parts of proboscis ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... even the proboscis of a fly has been left sticking in it. By the way, here it is, all but five pounds which I had to change to- day. Take it, Connie, and stick to it like old boots. No, dear, it was not that; I was thinking of something different—something ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the smallest 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
... eagle face was puckered 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 had been his ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... mark, for the fellow was the possessor of a richly tinted proboscis of carmine hue, that was somewhat of a landmark in the village. The crowd roared in approbation of the home thrust and the man, hastily elbowed his way through the crowd until he was ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... on his hands as to be able to use a quarter of a pound of it daily, will be news to most people. Let any one of our readers try it. Let him be ever so "good at a pinch," he will find that to feed his proboscis from a quarter of a pound of snuff until he has reached the last pinch, would take up, at a moderate computation, no less than eight hours at a stretch, allowing reasonable intervals for sneezing and blowing his nose. Evidently the story is an ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... 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
... swing backwards of a bush, fortunately in his hand; but it was against no Indian foe; on the contrary, his own shoulders received the blow, and another to make sure; whereby an individual enemy was pasted to the spot where its proboscis had pierced shirt and skin, and half-a-dozen others saved themselves by flight—being the dreaded ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... consequence of being closely depressed to the surface. Its legs were short and thick, and its feet of great size. The head was unlike that of any other animal I had ever seen. It was very long, and the upper lip or snout was lengthened into a kind of proboscis, which looked as if it might grow up into the trunk of an elephant. We were to leeward of the animal, but it quickly discovered us, and began to move off, when Faithful and True rushed forward, barking vehemently. Houlston fired, but the ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... their importunity during my investigations in the hot season. If I do not employ a bell-glass or keep an assiduous watch, rarely does the shrewish Dipteron fail to alight upon my patient and explore him with her proboscis. We will let her have her way ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... under-lip is lengthened, Like a trunk or proboscis, Ending by a kind of button, Fringed ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... and horny; the chest strong, with the legs springing freely from it instead of lying close like a wasp's. The belly also is well fortified, and looks like a breastplate, with its broad bands and scales. Its weapons are not in the tail as with wasp and bee, but in its mouth and proboscis; with the latter, in which it is like the elephant, it forages, takes hold of things, and by means of a sucker at its tip attaches itself firmly to them. This proboscis is also supplied with a projecting tooth, with which the fly makes a puncture, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... wilderness, forest or den. Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... most frequently in all the manuscripts, is a figure with a long, proboscis-like, pendent nose and a tongue (or teeth, fangs) hanging out in front and at the sides of the mouth, also with a characteristic head ornament resembling a knotted bow and with a peculiar rim to the eye. Fig. 7 is the hieroglyph ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... 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 ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... Virginia Water—to vanish into its own 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 ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... out and come back again, inquiring into the invisible thing revealed by its fragrance. A diligent watch enables me to see them fussing about, exploring the sandy expanse, tapping it with their feet, sounding it with their proboscis. I leave the visitors undisturbed for a fortnight or three weeks. None ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the long procession accordingly advanced through the streets and ascended to the Capitol, lighted by the great blazing flambeaus which the sagacious and docile beasts were easily taught to bear, each elephant holding one in his proboscis, and waving it above ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... to ramble about), owing to the 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 ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... he was passing over a tract of mushkeeg or bog-land, he saw musquitoes of such enormous size, that he staked his reputation on the fact that a single wing of one of the insects was sufficient for a sail to his canoe, and the proboscis as big as his wife's shovel. But he was favored with a still more extraordinary sight, in a gigantic ant, which passed him, as he was watching a beaver's lodge, dragging the entire carcass of ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... no sooner began to "chew the cud" of the bitter fancy that had beguiled us to these mountain solitudes than a new annoyance assailed us. A cloud of mosquitoes gathered round, and while each sharp proboscis sucked our blood, they teased us with their humming chorus, till we lost all patience, and started again on our feet, pretty firmly resolved never to try the al fresco joys of an American forest again. The sun was now in its meridian splendour, but our homeward path was short ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... 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, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... to be just and thankful, both to offend, (Yet Nature hath 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 ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to feel my way in the science, and soon came to understand that, provided a man had a nose sufficiently conspicuous he might, by merely following it, arrive at a Lionship. But my attention was not confined to theories alone. Every morning I gave my proboscis a couple of pulls and swallowed a half dozen ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... guide. "It's made for sucking. But there's a great difference in the mouths of insects: some are made for biting, some for lapping, some for piercing, and some for sucking. The butterfly, which lives on nectar in the depths of the flowers, has a long, coiled tube which scientists call a proboscis. This it unrolls and buries in the throat of the flower. Mrs. Mosquito has a file and pump, for it is she, and not her husband, who does all the singing and biting. The male mosquito has nothing more than a mouth for sucking nectar. And I told you about the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... the deme of Sphettia asked him whether he thought a gnat buzzed through its proboscis or through ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the size of a small horse, with cheek 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
... seemed to want 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 my terror-stiffened hair. ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... suddenly stopped in the street by what I took for an unheard-of insult: I actually thought my great proboscis was being pulled! If I had been as fiery as Alister, the man would have found his back, and I should have lost my nose. Without the least warning a handful of snow was thrust in my face, and my nose had ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the pasteboard proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, while the sun and the clouds and the wooded hills looked down upon this ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Leicester, and gave an elaborate account of shock experienced by his mother shortly before his birth, when she was knocked down by an elephant at a circus; to this circumstance he attributed his unfortunate condition. He derived his name from a proboscis-like projection of his nose and lips, together with a peculiar deformity of the forehead. He was victimized by showmen during his early life, and for a time was shown in Whitechapel Road, where his exhibition was stopped by the police. He was afterward shown in Belgium, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Another coin of Menander. An elephant's head with the proboscis elevated: legend, [Transliterated from the Greek, Basileus soteros Menandrou]. On the reverse is a cannon. This is an old ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... which Marot is supposed to have commemorated her Platonic graciousness; while her portrait, though drawn in the hard, dry manner of the time, and with the tendency of that time to "make a girl's nose a proboscis," is by no means unsuggestive ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... divine, but his small red eyes—and his ruby nose, whose re-grown enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, the knife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of a Christian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedish turnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside him like a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highland tour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail—and the hair on his ears like ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... wrath. Tomlinson's answer softened Nabbem; and by way of conciliation, he held his snuff-box to the nose of his unfortunate prisoner. Shutting his eyes, Tomlinson long and earnestly sniffed up the luxury, and as soon as, with his own kerchief of spotted yellow, the officer had wiped from the proboscis some lingering grains, Tomlinson ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... publicity license tenacity crescent prejudice scenery condescend effervesce proboscis scintillate oscillate ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... like that of the giraffe, which, by one of those beautiful provisions of nature, thus reaches with the aid of its long neck its leafy food. I may remark, that in Abyssinia the elephant, according to Bruce, when it cannot reach with its proboscis the branches, deeply scores with its tusks the trunk of the tree, up and down and all round, till it is sufficiently weakened ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... beetle is more than twice its size and weight, and is very active, quickly taking wing; so that the only way in which it could be overcome that I can think of is by the bug creeping up when it is sleeping, quietly introducing the point of its sharp proboscis between the rings of its body, and injecting some stupefying poison. In both instances that I witnessed, the bug was on a leaf up a shrub, with the bulky beetle hanging over suspended on its proboscis. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... knees which are 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 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... however, in the course of six hours, to feel decidedly hungry; so he thought he would creep along in search of something to eat. He tried his proboscis upon one curiosity after another, in vain. The magnet, the sucker, pebbles, shells, books, every thing was hard, dry and tasteless; and at length, discouraged and in despair, he clambered up upon Jonas's specimen of maple, poised his ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... (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 ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... sheep or goats; only fowls, pigeons, and Muscovy ducks are seen. Honey is very cheap; a good large pot of about a gallon, with four fowls, was given for two yards of calico. Buffaloes again bitten by tsetse, and by another fly exactly like the house-fly, but having a straight hard proboscis instead of a soft one; other large flies make the blood run. The tsetse does not disturb the buffaloes, but these others and the smaller flies do. The tsetse seem to like the camel best; from these ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... minus, Palaeotherium minimum, Palaeotherium curtum, Palaeotherium crassum; also Anoplotherium commune (Figure 173), Anoplotherium secundarium, Dichobune cervinum, and Chaeropotamus Cuvieri. The Palaeothere above alluded to resembled the living tapir in the form of the head, and in having a short proboscis, but its molar teeth were more like those of the rhinoceros. Palaeotherium magnum was of the size of a horse, three or four feet high. The woodcut, Figure 174, is one of the restorations which Cuvier attempted of the outline of the living animal, derived from the study of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... 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, and instead we have a fleshy tongue like organ (Fig. ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... trifle vain, for he sat before the glass a great deal, and I often saw him cleaning his proboscis, and twiddling his feelers, and I know he was 'prinking,' as we say. The books pleased him, too, and he used to run them over, as if trying to choose which he would read, and never seemed able to decide. He would have nothing to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... been very 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)
... being closely depressed to the surface. Its legs were short and thick, and its feet of great size. The head was unlike that of any other animal I had ever seen. It was very long, and the upper lip or snout was lengthened into a kind of proboscis, which looked as if it might grow up into the trunk of an elephant. We were to leeward of the animal, but it quickly discovered us, and began to move off, when Faithful and True rushed forward, barking vehemently. Houlston fired, but the shot bounded off the tapir's thick ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... visits, especially when dinner was being prepared. One of his favourite proceedings at such times was to put his trunk into the galley, take the lid off the coppers, make a small coil of the end of his proboscis, and therewith at one sweep spoon out a supply of potatoes sufficient for half-a-dozen men! Of course the cook sought to counteract such tendencies, but he had to be very circumspect, for Sambo resented ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... represented most frequently in all the manuscripts, is a figure with a long, proboscis-like, pendent nose and a tongue (or teeth, fangs) hanging out in front and at the sides of the mouth, also with a characteristic head ornament resembling a knotted bow and with a peculiar rim to the eye. Fig. 7 is the hieroglyph of ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... reached the mizzenmast, and the falling yards 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 mournfully ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... that particular men 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 ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... to carry their food and camp equipment; but in large parts of tropical Africa the horse, ox, and mule cannot live. The bite of the little tsetse fly kills them. Its sting is hardly so annoying as that of the mosquito, but near the base of its proboscis is a little bag containing the fatal poison. Camels have been loaded near Zanzibar for the journey to Tanganyika, but they did not live to reach the great lake. The "ship of the desert" can never be utilized in the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... reptiles and insects, it is not the least among the charms of Hawaii, that these glorious entanglements and cool damp depths of a redundant vegetation give shelter to nothing of unseemly shape and venomous proboscis or fang. Here, in cool, dreamy, sunny Onomea, there are no horrid, drumming, stabbing, mosquitoes as at Honolulu, to remind me of what I forget sometimes, that I am not in Eden. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... beg my pardon on his bended knees. In whatsoever terms I please. (Oh! oh!) (No! no!) I, too, propose, To pull his nose: No matter if the law objects or not; And if the printer's nose cannot be got, The small proboscis of the printer's devil Shall serve my turn for language so uncivil! The "Thunderer" I defy, And its vile lie. (As Ajax did the lightning flash of yore.) I likewise move this House requires— No, that's too complimentary—desires, That Mr. Lawson's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... sooner began to "chew the cud" of the bitter fancy that had beguiled us to these mountain solitudes than a new annoyance assailed us. A cloud of mosquitoes gathered round, and while each sharp proboscis sucked our blood, they teased us with their humming chorus, till we lost all patience, and started again on our feet, pretty firmly resolved never to try the al fresco joys of an American forest again. The sun was now in its meridian splendour, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... 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
... replied, that his father had much to occupy him. But the little man—who, to do him justice, cared no more (in his own phrase) for imminent danger or death, than he did for the puncture of a flea's proboscis—did not so easily renounce the secret object of his ambition, which was to acquire the notice of the large and lofty Sir Geoffrey Peveril, who, being at least three inches taller than his son, was in so far possessed of that superior excellence, which the poor dwarf, in his secret ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... while Democrats freed from confinement Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him, Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking: "O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?" ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... discovered (or 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 ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... next picture was a sort of enlarged and elongated house fly, apparently, of sombre grey color, with a narrow body, thick proboscis and wings that overlapped like the blades of a pair of shears. "This," he went on, "is a picture of the now well known tse-tse fly found over a large area of Africa. It has a bite something like a horse-fly and is a perfect blood- sucker. Vast territories of thickly populated, fertile ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... river, has become a 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 ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... dialogue *Epi upon epidemic, epithet, epode, ephemeral *Hyper 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 ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... 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 are plenty of gossips ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... unquestionably, the male bees. Dissection proves that they have the appropriate organs of generation. They are much larger and stouter than either the queen or workers; although their bodies are not quite so long as that of the queen. They have no sting with which to defend themselves; no proboscis which is suitable for gathering honey from the flowers, and no baskets on their thighs for holding the bee-bread. They are thus physically disqualified for work, even if they were ever so well disposed to it. Their proper office is to impregnate the young queens, and they are usually ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... 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
... 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 children's ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... 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 dissimilar ends; but that there shall be ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... Bornean rivers one is constantly seeing pigs, crocodiles and monkeys, but I noticed on this river an abundance of a monkey which one seldom sees on the large Kinabatangan River. I refer to the very curious proboscis or long-nosed monkey (Nasalis larvatus). These animals often sat still overhead and stared down at us in the most contemptuous and indifferent manner, and they looked so human and yet so comical with their enormous red noses that I found myself laughing ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... 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 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... 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
... was good, his hair dark, forehead without a wrinkle, high and massive, eyes bright and sparkling, nose neither fine nor dumpy—a fair enough proboscis as noses go. There was an expression about the upper lip and mouth that I did not like—a constant nervous sort of lifting of the lip as it were; and as the mustache appeared to have been recently shaven off, there was a white blueness on the upper lip, that contrasted unpleasantly with the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... miles, (to the Imperial museum of St. Petersburgh,) but the eyes have been preserved, and the pupil of one can still be distinguished. The mammoth was a male, with a long mane on the neck. The tail and proboscis were not preserved. The skin, of which I possess three-fourths, is of a dark-gray color, covered with a reddish wool and black hairs: but the dampness of the spot where it had lain so long had in some degree destroyed the hair. The entire carcase, of which I collected the bones on the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... from his stall bestow'd, So made the beast his friend; 'Twas joy to see, at this abode, His blythe proboscis bend. ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... at the spur of this orchid, one of the handsomest and most striking of its clan, and the heavy perfume of the flower, would seem to indicate that only a moth with a long proboscis could reach the nectar secreted at the base of the thread-like passage. Butterflies, attracted by the conspicuous color, sometimes hover about the showy spikes of bloom, but it is probable that, to secure a sip, all but possibly ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... by a specific flagellate 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 ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... but still delightful piece in which Marot is supposed to have commemorated her Platonic graciousness; while her portrait, though drawn in the hard, dry manner of the time, and with the tendency of that time to "make a girl's nose a proboscis," is by no means unsuggestive of actual ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... He had a 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 finding ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... were most formidable-looking monsters. They were from twenty-five to thirty feet long, and some eighteen feet in circumference. Their heads are armed with large tusks and formidable teeth, and the male has the power of elongating the upper lip into the form of a proboscis, from which circumstance they are called sea-elephants. They are only found in those regions in the summer, as they migrate into warmer latitudes in the winter. We very quickly dispatched a number of them with blows on the head, and then towed ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 observation, and undoubted veracity, who had been ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sublimity of Virginia Water—to vanish into its own 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 ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Yet he tried every allurement he could think of. He circled round her, 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 sap of ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... 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 Stenopterus, and a large black Psoa. We found very few ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... giraffe, which, by one of those beautiful provisions of nature, thus reaches with the aid of its long neck its leafy food. I may remark, that in Abyssinia the elephant, according to Bruce, when it cannot reach with its proboscis the branches, deeply scores with its tusks the trunk of the tree, up and down and all round, till it is sufficiently weakened to be ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... suitable 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, the child ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... 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 ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... 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, which ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... young lady in black from the office is surprised into admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my uncle, making his first appearance in that Esquimaux costume I have already mentioned, a short figure, compactly immense, hugely goggled, wearing a sort of brown rubber proboscis, and surmounted by a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the frontier in any direction. But the vineyards were among the finest in Europe. The prince was a widower, and among his own people was affectionately styled "der Rotnaesig," which, I believe, designates an illuminated proboscis. When he wasn't fishing for rainbow trout he was sleeping in his cellars. He was often missing at the monthly reviews, but nobody ever worried; they knew where to find him. And besides, he might just as well sleep in his cellars as in his carriage, for he never rode a horse if he could ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... is a perfect New Jerusalem as regards Sheenies, every civilian about the camp appearing to be a German Jew refugee. They have stalls and sell soap, buns, braces, belts, &c., and so forth. Every now and again a big Semitic proboscis appears at our tent door, and the question 'Does anypody vant to puy a ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... fly and gnat's proboscis, Throng not the naked beauty! Frogs and crickets in the mosses, Keep time and do ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... ducks are seen. Honey is very cheap; a good large pot of about a gallon, with four fowls, was given for two yards of calico. Buffaloes again bitten by tsetse, and by another fly exactly like the house-fly, but having a straight hard proboscis instead of a soft one; other large flies make the blood run. The tsetse does not disturb the buffaloes, but these others and the smaller flies do. The tsetse seem to like the camel best; from these ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... 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 ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... 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," ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... really more helpless 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 that fatal fall into the hunter's pit which was the beginning of its captivity. ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... With this proboscis, his good purpose, and the cup, the justice went the following morning to the house between the olive ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... other's way. At lower altitude, a dozen assorted worker-robots were moving about, and 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
... 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 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... forty elephants of the train as torch-bearers; the long procession accordingly advanced through the streets and ascended to the Capitol, lighted by the great blazing flambeaus which the sagacious and docile beasts were easily taught to bear, each elephant holding one in his proboscis, and waving it above the ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... kindly, 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 ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... thought that he might try to feed it, as otherwise it was liable to die before next day (the insect seemed weak and tired); the tube was carefully held first by Lazear and then by Carroll himself, for a considerable length of time, upon his forearm, before the mosquito decided to introduce its proboscis. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... round and round the body with every demonstration of grief, piping sorrowfully, and trying in vain to raise it up with its tiny trunk. When our travelers arrived, it ran up to them, entwining its little proboscis round their legs, and showing its delight at finding somebody. On the trees round the carcass were perched a number of vultures, waiting to make a meal of the remains, as soon as the hunters had cut it up, for their beaks could not penetrate the tough ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... her pillows, she stole noiselessly into the dressing-room and up to the couch of the sleeping Strong. In another instant there was a pungent odor in the room, and something white and moist lay over the musical proboscis of the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... through the net and became entangled there. On 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
... not a parasite on the back of an ox ... having found out by actual measurement the circumference of the ox, and by mathematical calculation, the diameter of the ox, and having ascertained that as he inserted his proboscis into the hide of the animal, say the sixteenth of an inch, it gradually and regularly grew warmer, infer, in like manner (as the geologist) that the center of the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... one day feeding the poor elephant (who was so barbarously put to death at Exeter 'Change) with potatoes, which he took out of my hand. One of them, a round one, fell on the floor, just out of the reach of his proboscis. He leaned against his wooden bar, put out his trunk, and could just touch the potato, but could not pick it up. After several ineffectual efforts, he at last blew the potato against the opposite wall with sufficient force to make it rebound, and he then, without difficulty, secured ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... 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
... approach the Pachyderms. The tapir, or gran-bestia, as it is called, is a characteristic quadruped of South America. It is a clumsy-looking animal, with a tough hide of an iron-gray color, covered with a coat of short coarse hair. Its flesh is dry, but very palatable. It has a less powerful proboscis than the Malay species. M. Roulin distinguishes another species from the mountains, which more nearly resembles the Asiatic. The tapir, like the condor, for an unknown reason, is not found north of 8 deg. N., though it ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... which a man or horse could not accomplish: among the native princes they were, and even still are, used in war: with them the inhabitants are able to hunt and destroy the lion, tiger, and other beasts of prey. With their long trunk, or proboscis, they can perform almost everything which man ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... house bug or bed bug (Cimex 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... without the help of the book of Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding. Nor is it only in the large things that we see the ever present solicitude of some intelligent force. Nothing is too tiny for that fostering care. We see the minute proboscis of the insect carefully adjusted to fit into the calyx of the flower, the most microscopic hair and gland each with its definite purposeful function to perform. What matter whether these came by special creation or by evolution? We know as ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... 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 ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... (203/2. Angraecum sesquipedale, a Madagascan orchid, with a whiplike nectary, 11 to 12 inches in length, which, according to Darwin ("Fertilisation of Orchids," Edition II., page 163), is adapted to the visits of a moth with a proboscis of corresponding length. He points out that there is no difficulty in believing in the existence of such a moth as F. Muller has described ("Nature," 1873, page 223)—a Brazilian sphinx-moth with a trunk of 10 to 11 inches in length. Moreover, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 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
... deme of Sphettia asked him whether he thought a gnat buzzed through its proboscis or ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... there's a great difference in the mouths of insects: some are made for biting, some for lapping, some for piercing, and some for sucking. The butterfly, which lives on nectar in the depths of the flowers, has a long, coiled tube which scientists call a proboscis. This it unrolls and buries in the throat of the flower. Mrs. Mosquito has a file and pump, for it is she, and not her husband, who does all the singing and biting. The male mosquito has nothing more than a mouth for sucking nectar. And I told ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... in Cuba, and in some respects represents a type of the Creole 'pollo,' or man-about-town. He is short of stature, lean and bony. He has a long thin face, with a very sun-burnt complexion, a prominent proboscis, and his hair, eyes and eyebrows are remarkably black and lustrous. The pollo's weakness is over-confidence in himself and in the ways of the world. To him everything appears bright and sunny. Nothing in his ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... would see the noble animal nod his head and drink a pot of porter. The elephant had no sooner taken the shilling, which he did in the mildest manner from the palm of Sir James's hand, than he gave it to the keeper, and eagerly watched his return with the beer. The elephant then, after placing his proboscis to the top of the tankard, drew up nearly the whole of the beverage. The keeper observed, 'You will hardly believe, gentlemen, but the little he has left is quite warm;' upon this we were tempted to taste it, and it really was so. This animal was afterwards ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... young women looked at the sheepshead aquarium and murmured: "What long bills they have." Her escort smiled in a knowing way and said: "That is not a bill; that is a proboscis, I believe. I wish I had a hook ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... business to enlarge the hole 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 ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... unsuspecting intruder the location of his home. After the young birds have to be fed he is most diligent in collecting food, that consists not alone of the sweet juices of flowers, as is popularly supposed, but also of aphides and plant-lice that his proboscis-like tongue licks off the garden foliage literally ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... tide-marks down to the abyssal regions of the sea. Their colour is usually some tone of yellow with dashes of red, brown and green, and they frequently emit a pungent odour. The name has reference to the tongue-shaped muscular proboscis by which the animal works its way through the sand. The proboscis is not the only organ of locomotion, being assisted by the succeeding segment of the body, the buccal segment or collar. By the waves of contraction executed by the proboscis accompanied by inflation of the collar, progression ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... products, therefore, with wild races whose intelligence is all native and self-evolved. Moreover, the horse at least has to some slight extent a prehensile organ in his very mobile and sensitive lip, which he uses like an undeveloped or rudimentary proboscis to feel things all over with. So that the dog alone remains as a contradictory instance; and even the dog derives his cleverness indirectly from man, whose hand and thumb in the last resort are really at the bottom ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... fares your old trunk? does your nose still stand fast? an allusion to the proboscis or trunk of an elephant. To shove a trunk: to introduce one's self unasked into any place or company. Trunk-maker like; more noise ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... caterpillar, 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 almonds. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... that he was permitted to go at large. This 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 a dirty quality, and advancing ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... considerable excitement, seeming to have forgotten his headache for the time. He got upon his feet and went tramping about the room in his slippers, the heels of which had been trodden down. He perched his nose-glasses far down on his pointed proboscis, and glared over them in a way he had when he was endeavoring to appear ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... tubes. The bees are up and at it before sunrise, and it takes a brisk shower to drive them in. But the clover blooms later and blooms everywhere, and is the staple source of supply of the finest quality of honey. The red clover yields up its stores only to the longer proboscis of the bumblebee, else the bee pasturage of our agricultural districts would be unequaled. I do not know from what the famous honey of Chamouni in the Alps is made, but it can hardly surpass our best products. The snow-white honey of Anatolia in Asiatic Turkey, which ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... is receiving the attack of a lion on his arm, covered with a mantle; and then, with a raised sword, cutting at the proboscis of an elephant. I have seen, also, an older specimen, I think, of the same manufacture; the subject being the "Bear and Ragged Staff," on alternate rows, with figures of trumpeters. I know not if this subject is of sufficient interest for ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... days, the weather had been tolerably cool, and we had not been much troubled with musquitoes; instead, however, we were persecuted severely by a very large greyish kind of horsefly, with a huge proboscis for sucking up the blood. These pests were in great numbers, and proved a sad annoyance, lighting upon us in every direction, and inflicting very irritating wounds even ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... 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 a touch of Garn ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... strong, with the legs springing freely from it instead of lying close like a wasp's. The belly also is well fortified, and looks like a breastplate, with its broad bands and scales. Its weapons are not in the tail as with wasp and bee, but in its mouth and proboscis; with the latter, in which it is like the elephant, it forages, takes hold of things, and by means of a sucker at its tip attaches itself firmly to them. This proboscis is also supplied with a projecting tooth, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... amusement in moments of leisure. Bets are made, or a pool is formed, and we stretch out our closed fists together and wait. By-and-by a sandfly settles on the back of some one's hand, and proceeds to browse. Once his proboscis is buried in the skin, the hand is opened, and he is caught, for he cannot withdraw his weapon from the now contracted skin. Then the capturer pockets the stakes, and executes the bloodsucker. Such is one of our ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... if some chap had swatted him with a brick right on the bridge of his proboscis, for it had a strong list to starboard, and one of his eyes was keeping watch at the end of it, while the other eye was on guard to see that no more bricks were coming ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... who was not caricatured in one way or another. He whose eyes looked not very straight was depicted with a most awful squint. The youth whom nature had endowed with somewhat lengthy nose was drawn by the caricaturists with a prodigious proboscis. Little Bobby Moss, the young Hebrew artist from Wardour Street, was delineated with three hats and an old-clothes bag. Nor were poor J. J.'s round shoulders spared, until Clive indignantly remonstrated at the hideous hunchback pictures which the boys ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enormous wave, which sweeps harbors clean of their ships, and runs up, like an earthquake-wave, upon the shore. This vortex, moving often a hundred miles an hour, takes hold of the Bombax ceiba like an enormous proboscis, pulls it from the thin soil of the tropics despite the great lateral clutch of its knotty roots, and swallows it up. Houses, cultivated fields, men and animals, are obliterated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... certain, as by this great generous object of Mr., Pitman's flame, who without optical aid, it well might have seemed, nevertheless entirely grasped her—might in fact, all benevolently, have been groping her over as by some huge mild proboscis. She gave Mrs. Brack pleasure in short; and who could say of what other pleasures the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... necessary to cut into the little 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
... attained. He was shrewd enough 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 ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... find that the elephant was made of felt and not too large to keep Rosemary from wielding it skilfully in an assault upon the hapless Jinko. She had it firmly gripped by the proboscis, and she was shrieking with delight. Jinko was barking in vain-glorious defence. The ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... eyes! What sharp noses!—who had been grinding them? Answer: the Morrell Twins. Not for nothing their long practice in sharpening pins and needles! It had come into play here. Richard had turned the crank and Robin had held down each official proboscis, and the board had winced. Then Richard and Robin had changed places, and the board had groaned. Now Richard and Robin were changing back, and soon the board might scream. "I'll take a hand too," ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... character had been trodden flat by them, and trees had been overturned. In traversing such places the great bull-elephant always marches in the van, bursting through everything by sheer force and weight, breaking off huge limbs of the larger trees with his proboscis when these obstruct his path, and overturning the smaller ones bodily, while the females and younger members of the family follow in ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... kissed the soft, snake-like proboscis, and he patted the animal affectionately and murmured his thanks to him. Badshah seemed to understand him and wrapped his trunk around his friend's shoulders. Then, apparently satisfied, he moved away and began to graze calmly, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
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