"Tadpole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Though descended from the frog, and originally a creature of the water, the toad has long since adapted itself to live upon the dry ground. It still produces its young in the water as it did when a frog. Whereas the childhood of the frog, that is, its tadpole stage, is very long and it assumes its adult form comparatively late, just the reverse is the case of the toad. The young hasten through their tadpole stage within a few weeks, and assume the shape of the parent toad when about ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... heads, they have gills, and they breathe in the same manner as fishes. Presently the two hind feet begin to bud out and grow, little by little; then the fore feet; finally, the tail wastes away till it disappears; and thus insensibly the tadpole is transformed into a frog. Observe here that the tadpole's gills share the same fate as his fish-tail; they wither and disappear by slow degrees, and gradually as they do so, his lungs are developed. The animal changes his class very quietly, and without ceasing ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... writer has as yet made the attempt to define the change —as profound as that of the tadpole to the frog—between the lover and the husband. An author of ideals would not dare to proclaim that this change is inevitable: some husbands—and some wives are fortunate enough to escape it, but it is not unlikely to happen in our modern civilization. Just when it occurred in Howard Spence it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... teased its froggy mother to let it go and see a red pole, of which it had heard from a traveller. Mrs. Frog would not at first let her son go, but promised that as soon as the tadpole lost his tail, and his flippers had turned into fore legs, and his hind quarters had properly sprouted, so that he could hop out of danger, he might then venture on his travels. She warned him, however, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... contrary to Darwin when he says that function precedes structure? Are not the potentials dependent upon the variation which has determined this function? I am speaking now in the broadest possible terms and not confining myself to the cerebrum. Do we not find it in the tadpole who is prepared for breathing not because he wants to breathe, but because he is going to have a new kind of breathing apparatus and the duck who takes to the water because he has ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... remarkable capacity which they show to adapt themselves to different surroundings. There are frogs, like the tree-frog of Martinique, and others in regions where water is scarce, which never pass through the tadpole stage; or, to be quite accurate, they lose the gills and tail in the egg, as higher land-animals do. On the other hand, there is a modern Amphibian, the axolotl of Mexico, which retains the gills throughout life, and never lives on land. Dr. Gadow has shown that the lake ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... any rate, ought to have agreed. No satirist has ever struck off happier portraits of the ordinary British legislator, or been more alive to the stupefying influences of a parliamentary career. We have gone through a peaceful revolution since Disraeli first sketched Rigby and Taper and Tadpole from the life; but the influences which they embodied are still as powerful, and a parliamentary atmosphere as little propitious to the pure intellect, as ever. Coningsby, if he still survives, must have lost many illusions; he must have herded with the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... swimming. What curious little feet and legs! Now, though the newt has four legs, it lays eggs; and to guard them from injury, wraps them up in the leaves of water plants, with its four paws. When the young newt is hatched, it is very like a tadpole. It is like a fish, for it breathes through gills; but as it increases in size the gills go away and the front legs appear, and then the hind ones. In a frog-tadpole the hind legs appear first, and then the ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... of the brain." Now if man, as they say, once lived the life of the brute, and his superiority now is simply quantitative, why is it that his inferiors of to-day are not passing into real manhood? They are far superior to any creature which is "not far from the tadpole stage of evolution." If we were once there, and evolutionists say we were, why not take all brutes ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... Similar functions are performed in different animals by very different organs, the gills of fishes performing the same office as the lungs of the mammalia; and these different organs sometimes exist, at different periods, according to the degree of development, in the same animal. Thus, the tadpole, so long as it continues to be a fish, breathes by gills, which disappear and give place to lungs when it becomes a frog. Similar transformations of the insect tribe are familiar to all. Imperfect or rudimentary organs are found in certain ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... according to tradition, the philosopher bequeathed to posterity in rhythmical form and sententious brevity, this is notably recorded: "Humble yourselves, my descendants; the father of your race was a 'twat' (tadpole): exalt yourselves, my descendants, for it was the same Divine Thought which created your father that develops itself ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of a pianoforte solo shows this very clearly to the eye, because the impression made by a long note is a deeply-marked indentation succeeded by the merest shallow scratch—not unlike the impression made by a tadpole on mud—with a big head and an attenuated body. Every note marked long in pianoforte music is therefore essentially a sforzando followed by a rapid diminuendo. Anything in such music marked as a long note to be sustained crescendo—the most thrilling effect of orchestral, ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such lines and such sentiments as the above. He says, 'easy was the task' of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume. I recommend ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... splash of the man's body below, and thought, at first, he was killed by the bursting of his rifle; but when his companion, who had leaped down to his assistance, helped him, reeking and muddy, from the dominions of the tadpole, and placed him, uninjured, though stunned, on his legs, we could not resist a burst of merriment at his countenance of unmitigated disgust, as the liquid filth oozed from the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... about a month or so, a tadpole comes out of the egg. There are swarms of them wriggling about the water, with heads and bodies and tails, but no legs. In about six weeks more the legs begin to grow, and gradually the tadpole changes ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... a short while. Gissing (the juvenile and too enthusiastic dog) has to be kept away from the pond by repeated sticks thrown as far as possible in another direction; otherwise he insists on joining the tadpole search, and, poking his snout under water, attempts to bark at the same time, with ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... principle, or spermatozoa, is exactly like a little tadpole, and you no doubt recall that a tadpole has a minute tail, the movement of which enables it to swim around. So has the spermatozoa, and by the incessant movement of this microscopic tail they all move upward as soon ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... teeth a passage eat: We'll rouse him from the deep retreat. But who the shelter's forced to give? 'Tis sacred Virgil, as I live! 20 From leaf to leaf, from song to song, He draws the tadpole form along, He mounts the gilded edge before, He's up, he scuds the cover o'er, He turns, he doubles, there he pass'd, And here we have him, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... mermaid and a tadpole?" asked another in a loud voice, and without a pause continued, "Why, one drops its tail and the other holds onto it. Ha, ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... have settled with Mr Tadpole that you shall stand for the old borough. With the government in our hands, as I had anticipated at the general election, success I think was certain: under the circumstances which we must encounter, the struggle will be more severe, but I think we shall do it: and it will be a happy day for me ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... guards in the saloons, a group of lumberjacks would remember meeting each other in the camps of Paul Bunyan. With painful accuracy they established the exact time and place, "on the Big Onion the winter of the blue snow" or "at Shot Gunderson's camp on the Tadpole the year of the sourdough drive." They elaborated on the old themes and new stories were born in lying contests where the heights ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... dowager, with the indifference of a woman who has never had a child, and cannot conceive why a little sprawling tadpole in long clothes should make such a difference. "Yes, I suppose that's a novelty," she said, "to be mother of a bit of a thing like that naturally turns a girl's head. It is inconceivable the airs they give themselves, as if there was nothing ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... well-known hair worm, Gordius, is an insect parasite. The adult form is about the size of a slender knitting needle, and is seen in moist soil and in pools. It lays, according to Dr. Leidy, "millions of eggs connected together in long cords." The microscopical, tadpole-shaped young penetrate into the bodies of insects frequenting damp localities. Fairly ensconced within the body of their unsuspecting host, they luxuriate on its fatty tissues, and pass through their metamorphoses into the adult form, when they ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... what I thought last night, now, going home. Says I, 'Tis just like the look of a tadpole: if I saw A tadpole silver as a dace that swam Upside-down towards me through black water, I'ld see the plain spit of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... are a trifle more complex. We may readily perceive that they represent tadpoles (Fig. 558, b b), dragonflies (Fig: 558, c c), with also the frog or toad (Fig. 558); all this is of easy interpretation. As the tadpole frequents the pools of spring time he has been adopted as the symbol of spring rains; the dragon-fly hovers over pools in summer, hence typifies the rains of summer; and the frog, maturing in them later, symbolizes the ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... author writes a pose novel—at least I hope so for the sake of my self-respect. Most, after my fashion, burn the thing, or benevolent publishers lose it. It is an ill thing if by some accident the tadpole tale survives the tadpole stage. The authoress does the feminine equivalent, but I should judge either that she did it more abundantly or else that she burned less. Has she never swept past you with a scornful look, disdained you in all the pride of her beauty, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... of respiration that manifest alteration. In its earliest form the young batrachian, living in the water, breathes as a fish does by gills, either free and projecting as in the water-newt, or partially covered by integument as in the tadpole. But the gills disappear as the lungs gradually become developed: the duration of the process being on an average one hundred days from the time the eggs were first deposited. After this important change, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... I may advise. But, as I was going to say, that father of Grey's seemed to me such a tadpole of a man, rooting after tracks of lizards that crept ages ago, while the country is going to mash, and his own children next door to starvation, I thought a little plain talk would try if it was blood or water in his veins. So I went over to spend the day there on purpose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... them up and began to fish. In a moment a tadpole swallowed the hook. Pinkie Whiskers jerked him out of the water and put the ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... he was well and happy, and went on talking. "Did you know that I was once a tadpole just like those little creatures in ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field
... the stranger laughed. It was as though a curious little tadpole which he held under his glass should suddenly lift its tail ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... rudimentary and perfect pistils are essentially alike in nature. An animal may possess various parts in a perfect state, and yet they may in one sense be rudimentary, for they are useless: thus the tadpole of the common salamander or water-newt, as Mr. G.H. Lewes remarks, "has gills, and passes its existence in the water; but the Salamandra atra, which lives high up among the mountains, brings forth its young full-formed. ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... entered the gates out of the hot dust beneath the glitter of the dark-curtained windows. Seaton led me at once through the little garden-gate to show me his tadpole pond, swarming with what, being myself not the least bit of a naturalist, I considered the most horrible creatures—of all shapes, consistencies, and sizes, but with whom Seaton seemed to be on the most intimate of terms. I can see his absorbed face ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... if you are a father and your boy Edward persists in bringing his pet tadpole to the table in a glass jar, you should not punish or scold him; a much more effective and graphic method of correcting this habit would be for you to suddenly pick up the tadpole one day at luncheon ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... individualities in themselves, that appear on the surface absolutely unrelated. So the caterpillar and the butterfly, to the naive child, seem as far apart as worm and bird. In the case of the frog, the tadpole as a first sketch seems completely an impossible and wild absurdity. Yet we know that there is an orderly progression of events, a propagation of cells, a forward going arrangement of chemical reactions, that results in expansion and intricate complication of the organism. Just ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... to weep and wail, For little Tommy Tadpole had lost his little tail; And his mother didn't know him as he wept upon a log, For he wasn't Tommy Tadpole, but Mr. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... of the craniate vertebrates. In accordance with this view there would be also some probability in favour of regarding the collar nerve-tube of the Enteropneusta as the equivalent of the cerebral vesicle only of Amphioxus and the Ascidian tadpole, and also of the primary fore-brain ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... round face became speculative. His resemblance to the full moon increased. He seemed to gaze at remote things. "It may very well be that man is no more capable of living out of that atmosphere of assurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mental existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically self-seeking—incoherent... a stampede.... Human ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... and milk and was gravely washing its face with one of its forepaws, to the great admiration of the two children, who were sitting on the floor beside it. It was an artful-looking kitten, all black, with a very large head and a very small body. It reminded Owen of a tadpole. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... out of the ground by the women, or caught in the marshes, and used in every stage from the tadpole upwards. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... lucky young cub it will be that he takes on," added he, turning to a group of the small boys near. "He'll do your sums and look over your exercises for you like one o'clock. Ugh! though, I suppose every man Jack of you is a Tadpole ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... the surface, has divided into separate cells. They go on multiplying, take up water, and nourish themselves on the granular nutritive matter present from the first in the egg-cell. The little mass elongates, increases in size, and gradually assumes the form of a young tadpole. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... tadpoles and the little water snails; the little wriggling tadpoles in particular, once they had the taste of it, took to it with zest. But scarcely did one of them begin to grow into a conspicuous position in that little tadpole world and try a smaller brother or so as an aid to a vegetarian dietary, when nip! one of the Beetle larva had its curved bloodsucking prongs gripping into his heart, and with that red stream went Herakleophorbia ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... n't go him one better 'n' say as he believed in tadpoles himself. Luther Law was flat agin' tadpoles, but Rufus never let up till he got him to admit that if the Lord could make a man out of a monkey He could make him out of a tadpole, too. 'N' then, when he'd got him so far, what do you think, Mrs. Lathrop,—what do you think!—Mrs. Macy said as Mrs. Kitts said as Mrs. Grummel said if that young man did n't look right square into Luther's face 'n' say as to his order o' thinkin' it wasn't what we'd come from as mattered ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... swallow it. Suddenly he stopped, sat down by his tub, pulled some dead grass out of it, plunged the frog in, and began to scrub it—began to scrub the frog in the oozy contents of that tub, when the poor amphibian had been soaking in spring-water ever since it was a tadpole! ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... him now and then, to arouse him, and then leave him to disincarnate his vertebral outward phase into chlorophyll or lifeless stone. To muse upon his courtship or emotions was impossible. His life had a feeling of sphinx-like duration—Gawain as a tadpole was unthinkable. He seemed ageless, unreal, wonderfully ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... stripling, youngster, youngun, younker[obs3], callant[obs3], whipster[obs3], whippersnapper, whiffet [obs3][U.S.], schoolboy, hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, tadpole, whelp, cub, pullet, fry, callow; codlin ,codling; foetus, calf, colt, pup, foal, kitten; lamb, lambkin[obs3]; aurelia[obs3], caterpillar, cocoon, nymph, nympha[obs3], orphan, pupa, staddle[obs3]. girl; lass, lassie; wench, miss, damsel, demoiselle; maid, maiden; virgin; hoyden. Adj. infantine[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... been seated many moments, and had scarcely pushed off the shore of silence into a new sea of talk, when we were interrupted by the invasion of half a dozen dogs. They were of all sorts down to no sort. Mr. Skymer called one of them Tadpole—I suppose because he had the hugest tail, while his legs were not ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the 1st D.C. Vols., composed as it was of a cloud of independent companies—thirty-five, or thereabout, in all, I think—all made up of men from everywhere, largely in the tadpole stage of Unionism, and all sworn in for service in the District, not to go beyond the District. Early in May they were organized into eight battalions of four or five companies each, commanded by lieutenant-colonels, majors, or the senior captains. Nearly every company occupied ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of my early childhood, is still a sight whereof my old eyes never tire. What animation in that verdant world! On the warm mud of the edges, the frog's little tadpole basks and frisks in its black legions; down in the water, the orange-bellied newt steers his way slowly with the broad rudder of his flat tail; among the reeds are stationed the flotillas of the caddis worms, half protruding from their tubes, which are now a tiny bit of stick and ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Black Friars sitting back to back Fished from the bridge for a pike or a jack. The first caught a tiddler, the second caught a crab, The third caught a winkle, the fourth caught a dab, The fifth caught a tadpole, the sixth caught an eel, And the seventh one caught an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... eyes. The Bishop was most frightful of all. His horse was prancing and swaying wildly, and the Bishop's transformed features were diabolic. His whole profile had altered, seemed black and shapeless as the face of a tadpole. The amazing truth burst upon Bleak. Chuff and his paraders were wearing gas-masks. These were what they had carried in their knapsacks. Indomitable Chuff, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... Gudernatsch as having proved that legs can be induced to grow in tadpoles at any time, even in very young specimens, by feeding them with thyroid gland. Loeb writes: 'The earlier writers explained the growth of the legs in the tadpole as a case of an adaptation to life on land. We know through Gudernatsch that the growth of the legs can be produced at any time by feeding the animal with the thyroid gland.' Obviously he thinks that these two propositions are contradictory to each other, whereas there is no contradiction, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... in the milfoil and crowfoot bed. Do you see a grey film around that sprig? Examine it through the pocket lens. It is a forest of glass bells, on branching stalks. They are Vorticellae; and every one of those bells, by the ciliary current on its rim, is scavenging the water—till a tadpole comes by and scavenges it. How many millions of living creatures are there on that one sprig? Look here!—a brown polype, with long waving arms—a gigantic monster, actually a full half-inch long. He is Hydra fusca, most famous, and earliest described (I think by Trembley). Ere ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Nay—thunders Science—put away such childish superstition, smite such traditionary idols; man was first made after the similitude of a marine ascidian, and once swam as a tadpole in primeval seas. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... possibly do without one whom even his enemies acknowledge to be the only accurate and high-minded sporting writer in the world? Those who care (and I devoutly hope that Mr. J., whose brains equal those of a newly-born tadpole, will not be amongst the number) can see me at any moment on pronouncing the password, "mealy-mouth," in my old place, close to the space devoted to Royalty. Yes, I shall be there. In the meantime, I propose to treat of the horses as only I can treat of them. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... the habits, movements, and structures, including adaptive features of aquatic animals, as crayfish, mussel, tadpole, etc. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... too bad,' said Bill, furiously. 'Here we've had all the worry and trouble of fightin' puddin'-thieves night and day, and, on top of it all, here's this Tooralooral tadpole of a Mayor shovin' his nose into the business and arrestin' our ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... vivid sunshine, about six inches from a tangle of arrow-weed stems, a black tadpole lay basking. Light to him meant not only growth, but life. Whenever, with the slow wheeling of the sun, the shadow of a lily leaf moved over him, he wriggled impatiently aside, and settled down again on the brightest ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... proved, at the same time, that no developmental stage of a higher animal is precisely similar to the adult condition of any lower animal. It is quite correct to say that a frog passes through the condition of a fish, inasmuch as at one period of its life the tadpole has all the characters of a fish, and if it went no further, would have to be grouped among fishes. But it is equally true that a tadpole is very different from any ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a horizontal bough they sometimes saw objects like large tadpoles lodged diametrically across it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at roost; and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which reminded him that others knew what those tadpole shapes ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... utters the "squawk" which he intends for a song. And it is a song, and a very successful one, for a visit to the same pond a week or two later, will show you—not the Cat's-eye or his mate, they have gone a-tunnelling—but a swarm of little black pin-like tadpole Cat's-eyes, born and bred in the glorious sunlight but doomed and ready, if they live, to follow in their parents' tracks far underground. Sure proof that the song did win a mate, and was crowned with the success for which all woodland, ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... starts to think, give him a chance," said Happy Mather. "Who asked your opinion? You're nothing but a tadpole, anyhow." ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... his body was not in the same proportion—for he narrowed as he descended, his hips being very small, and his legs as thin as those of a goat. His real name was Todpoole, but the people invariably called him Tadpole, and he certainly in appearance somewhat reminded you of one. He was a facetious little fellow, and, it was said, very clever ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... incipient stages, tadpole states of men, as caterpillars are social, but the butterfly not. The true and ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry |
