Natural History: A Manual of Zoology for Schools, Colleges, and the General Reader

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C. Scribner, 1869 - Zoology - 540 pages
 

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Page 411 - Lepidoptera, and are generally very beautiful. hind wings lead-color ; the antennae are thread-like, and consist of numerous beaded joints, and two tapering feelers are turned over the head. It lays from sixty to ninety eggs in clusters of about twenty on a single kernel of grain. In four to six days these eggs produce little wormlike caterpillars not thicker than a hair. Each burrows in a single kernel, and devours the mealy substance, and the work of destruction goes on so unseen, that it is only...
Page 9 - They terminate in the capillary vessels (qv'f— a series of extremely minute vessels, which pass over into the veins. The veins are the channels by which the blood passes back from the body into the auricles of the heart.
Page 429 - Harr., is about half an inch long, and light yellowish-red above, with two black spots on the head, and two black stripes on the thorax and on each wing-cover; under parts black, covered with a grayish down. The Margined Cantharis, C. marginata, Olivier, is over half an inch long, wing-covers black, with a narrow gray margin.
Page 508 - when active, it hangs out a pair of most remarkable appendages, the structure and length and contractility of which are equally surprising, and exceed in wonderful adaptation all I have ever known among animal structures. Two apparently simple, irregular, and unequal threads hang out from opposite sides of the sphere. Presently, these appendages may elongate, and equal in length the diameter of the sphere, or surpass it, and increase to two, three, five, ten, and twenty times the diameter of the...
Page 445 - Mantis, M. carolina of authors. fore legs held up together like a pair of arms, prepared to seize any insect which may come within reach. Some of the superstitious inhabitants of Eastern countries believe that the Mantis in this attitude is engaged in devotion. The Genus Mantis contains our only species, Fig. 342. GRYLLIDES, Latr., OR CRICKET FAMILY. — This Family comprises orthoptera Fig.344.
Page 308 - The ancient Egyptians made it the emblem of the protecting divinity of the world, and sculptured it on the sides of a globe upon the gates of their temples. By pressing this snake on the nape, the jugglers of Egypt throw it into a stiff and immovable condition, which they call turning it into a rod. It is probably the Asp of Egypt, and Asp of Cleopatra.
Page 397 - C. militaris, Harr., which expands about two inches, and the fore wings are white bordered with brown, and with an oblique band of the same color from the inner margin to the tip ; hind wings white, without spots. The Genus Crocota contains pale red species. It is like a geometrid moth in form, and may easily be mistaken for one. The Genus Arctia has the body thick, and the larvae have whorls of long hairs and are called Woolly Bears. The Virgin Tiger-Moth, A.
Page 56 - Opossums by two incisors less in each jaw, a non-prehensile tail, and the absence of a thumb on the hind feet. A species about the size of a wolf, but with shorter legs, is found in Australia. An extinct species has been found imbedded in the plaster quarries of Paris, in France. and the thumb of the hind feet rudimentary or wanting. They vary in size from that of a mouse to that of a wolf. PARAMELEID/E comprise burrowing marsupials. PHALANGISTID^E, OR PHALANGER FAMILY.
Page 110 - WHALE FAMILY. — This Family comprises Whales which have no real teeth, but the two sides of their upper jaw, which is keel-shaped, are furnished with rows of vertical horny plates, called whalebone, formed of a sort of fibrous horn, and which are fringed on their inner edges. This arrangement is adapted to the nature of the food of these whales, which consists of small marine zoophytes, mollusks, and crustaceans.
Page 94 - The molars, nearly always six in number on each side of the upper and lower jaws, have their crown marked with two double crescents, the convexity of which is turned inwards in the upper and outwards in the lower teeth.

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