"Proboscis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a rusty red colour, and, in common with the whole tribe to which it belongs, gives off an offensive odour when touched; unlike the others, however, it is wingless. The bug is provided with a proboscis, which when at rest lies along the inferior side of the thorax, and through which it sucks the blood of man, the sole food of this species. It is nocturnal in its habits, remaining concealed by day in crevices of bed furniture, among the hangings, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... subject to the Flea-ite nation. I know that parasitic races, The Ticks and Lucies have their places; But the imperial race of Flea Is all surpassing—look at me. My concentrated vigour, grant, Then look at yon huge elephant; Look at my leap, at my proboscis, Then go and learn, 'UT TU TE NOSCIS,' That man was made with skin to bleed, That families ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... demeans himself by 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 ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... 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 ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... example elephants are for school boys. I have only told you a very little about this wonderful animal; yet enough, I hope, to make you want to read some of the many books about him. You have, I think, read of the story of the elephant who was wounded in his proboscis or trunk, and, in his anger, unintentionally killed his keeper, and of what ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... mit der poys," replied Snyder, laying his finger tenderly against his proboscis; "the sun it pese hot like ash never vas, und I purns my nose. Nice nose, don't it?" And Snyder viewed it with a look of comical sadness in the little mirror back of his bar. It entered at once into the head of the mischievous fellow in front ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... elephant was 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 ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... 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')
... demolishing, stout mandibles, capable of digging the ground, of pulling down clay partition walls and even of reducing the mason bee's tough cement to powder. The Anthrax, in her final form, has nothing like this. Her mouth is a short, soft proboscis, good at most for soberly licking the sugary exudations of the flowers; her slim legs are so feeble that to move a grain of sand were an excessive task for them, enough to strain every joint; her great, stiff wings, which must remain ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... hit the 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
... 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 this deity. In Codex Tro.-Cortesianus it usually ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... 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
... other small animals exist in numbers, and the mermaid, of the genus Halicore, connects the inhabitants of the land and water. This Duyong, described as a creature seven or eight feet long, with a head like that of an elephant deprived of its proboscis, and the body and tail of a fish, frequents the Sumatran and Malayan shores, and its flesh is held in great estimation at the tables of sultans and rajahs. Besides these (and the list is long enough) there are many ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... 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, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... 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
... 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 for ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... 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
... 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 ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... plain as the nose on my face," said one intelligent skipper, who had a huge red bulbous proboscis you could have almost seen in the dark. "We've got to play up to you, Captain Mackenzie, just as the small fry plays up to a great hactor ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... With pimply face aflame; The kitten-playful virgin— Vergin' on to fifty years; The solemn-looking sturgeon Of a firm of auctioneers; The widower flirtatious; The widow all too gracious; The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath. One assassin picks the banjo, and another ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... 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
... myself were walking by the port, and as we looked on the sea I was telling them old gossip tales of mermaids and sea-serpents,—when a red-faced bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and placing his spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, 'Sacre, mille tonnerres! This is the damned ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wise, But 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 did ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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, and so drinks blood. It ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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 ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... 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 lives ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... 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 ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... he sat eagerly attentive in his corner of the sofa, heard of the trumpet of the common gnat[2], and of its proboscis, which serves at once for an awl, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 of thistles, glistening here in abundance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... this extraordinary arrangement—unique among orchids, I believe—will be discovered one day, for purpose there is, no doubt; to judge by analogy, it may be supposed that the insect upon which Onc. serratum depends for fertilization likes to stand upon this ring while thrusting its proboscis into the nectary. The fourth of these fine species, Onc. superbiens, ranks among the grandest of flowers—knowing its own value, it rarely consents to "oblige;" the dusky green sepals are margined with yellow, petals white, clouded with pale purple, lip very small, of course, purple, ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... 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, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of us. Luckily. I play rather well myself. As I said just now, I have been nosing among the people—nosing is a good word in my case, isn't it?"—he pointed to his much-extended proboscis—"I have been nosing about to learn the Count's ruling passions and so forth. When you have anybody to hoodwink, or obtain access to without creating suspicion, find out what are his likings and preoccupations: be sure ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 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 the very largest ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a sticky secretion which, getting on to the proboscis of an insect, carries away the pollen, and applies it to the stigma of another flower. This occurs in our common ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... ran 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 travellers 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 ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... corridor there while Democrats freed from confinement Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him, Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking: "O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?" ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... throat; and, what gave it the singular appearance whence its name of "sea-elephant" was probably more derived than from its size, was the pendulous nostrils, which hung down over its mouth, just like the proboscis or long trunk of the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... 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
... the figure of the planets called the emblem of the great burying-place, as follows: a spear grasped by the right-hand, an elephant's figure in the left-hand, and in the act of drinking the blood of the elephant by bruising its proboscis. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... 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 ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Spanish fleas, and so brought them to such an astonishing perfection in the administration of slow torture. Breeding, I take it, holds good with fleas as with horses, dogs, etc. Those born of parents with thicker mail, longer springs, harder proboscis, and greater daring in initiative, would doubtless be selected and encouraged, if I may say so, to go farther. It is possible that many famous recantations could be accounted for by this hypothesis. Galileo, for instance, probably had a sensitive epidermis which ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Udayana to whom we must be truly grateful as our only guide: he and his son Naravahanadatta fill up the rest and end with lib. xviii. Thus the want of the clew or plot compels a division into books, which begin for instance with "We worship the elephantine proboscis of Ganesha" (lib. x. i.) a reverend and awful object to a Hindu but to Englishmen mainly suggesting the "Zoo." The "Bismillah" of The Nights is much ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... great English social order. Passing out upon the highroad, we came to the common browsing-patch, the "village green" of the tales of our youth. Nothing was wanting; the shaggy, mouse-colored donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman—the old woman, in person, with her red cloak and black bonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled beside her decent, placid cheeks—the towering plowman with his white smock-frock, puckered on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... 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 ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... hold of anything, as the elephant does with his proboscis. The tapir is one of the gentler animals, and may be easily tamed; though it will fight and bite hard when attacked, or harried by dogs. They take to the water readily, though the American swims, while the Asiatic only walk on the bottom. One book I consulted calls the tapir a kind of tiger, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... 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 Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... have told you that there are two great divisions of the insect family—those which suck liquid food through their proboscis or trunk, such as flies and butterflies, and those—such as the beetles, bees, and locusts—which bite and eat solid food with their jaws. Dearly as I should like to tell you about bees, both "solitary" and "social," "masons" and "carpenters," ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... into a state of 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 very ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... movements. She differs but little in color from a worker, and has the same number of legs and wings. She is much larger than any of the bees. Her abdomen is very large and perfectly round, and is shaped more like the sugar-loaf, which makes her known to the observer the moment she is seen. Her wings and proboscis are short. Her movements are stately and majestic. She is much less in size after the season for breeding is over. She is easily selected from among a swarm, at any season of the year, by any one who has often ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... green tree-snake; two crocodiles, both lost in the river, and an iguana, which found its way 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 Dr. (now Sir) John ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... of Sphettia asked him whether he thought a gnat buzzed through its proboscis or through ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... paid it. It had never been so paid, she was presently 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
... shelf during my sleep, and whose ancient descent was clearly defined in the side view I immediately obtained of the contour and size of his nose. I had got one of my arms out from under the covering, and found I had "cut left" directly upon the prominent proboscis of my friend—a passage of arms that materially accelerated his breathing, and awoke him to the fact that though he had a nose sufficiently large to have entitled him to Napoleon's consideration for a generalship had he lived in the days of that potentate, yet there was something ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... matter to drink when jolting on wheels, on horseback, or on foot. I adopted the plan of carrying a piece of small india-rubber tubing 6 or 8 inches long, and when I wished to drink, I removed the stopper and inserted the tube, just as an insect might let down its proboscis, and sucked the contents. Sir S. Baker says of the people of Unyoro, "During a journey, a pretty, bottle-shaped, long-necked gourd is carried with a store of plantain-cider; the mouth of the bottle ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... daytime they penetrated my trousers, piercing to my body in many places, so that I repeatedly took off as many as twelve at one time. It is indeed marvellous how so large an insect can painlessly insert a stout barbed proboscis, which requires great force to extract it, and causes severe smarting in the operation. What the ticks feed upon in these humid forests is a perfect mystery to me, for from 6000 to 9000 feet they literally swarmed, where there was neither ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... pronounced one day at my house a most lofty panegyric upon Jones the Orientalist, who seemed little pleased with the praise, for what cause I know not. He was not at all offended when, comparing all our acquaintance to some animal or other, we pitched upon the elephant for his resemblance, adding that the proboscis of that creature was like his mind most exactly, strong to buffet even the tiger, and pliable to pick up even the pin. The truth is, Mr. Johnson was often good humouredly willing to join in childish amusements, and hated to be left out of ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... or 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. I ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... 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 |
