"Optic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the invitation he had received. She was so struck with the news, and betrayed such visible marks of confusion and uneasiness, that they could not have escaped Booth's observation had suspicion given him the least hint to remark; but this, indeed, is the great optic-glass helping us to discern plainly almost all that passes in the minds of others, without some use of which nothing is more purblind than ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... "phosphenes," such are the names that they have given to the phenomenon. They explain it either by the slight modifications which occur ceaselessly in the retinal circulation, or by the pressure that the closed lid exerts upon the eyeball, causing a mechanical excitation of the optic nerve. But the explanation of the phenomenon and the name that is given to it matters little. It occurs universally and it constitutes—I may say at once—the principal material of which we shape our dreams, "such stuff ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... The optic nerve has power so keen, That ev'ry object by it seen Is stamped upon the brain; But they of sluggish mental mold No vivid photograph will hold, And scarce ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the "office," the only one on the river. I had heard so much about it from others, as well as from F., that I really did expect something extra. When I entered this imposing place the shock to my optic nerves was so great that I sank helplessly upon one of the benches, which ran, divan-like, the whole length (ten feet!) of the building, and laughed till I cried. There was, of course, no floor. A rude nondescript, in one corner, on which was ranged the medical library, consisting ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... their patients, they would thwart the treatment by sitting in the parlor with the thermometer at seventy-two degrees, embroidering all kinds of fancy patterns,—some on muslin, some on satin, and some with colored worsteds on canvas,—inhaling the poisonous dyes, straining the optic nerves, counting threads and stitches, hour after hour, until utterly exhausted. I spoke to one poor victim of the fallacy of Christmas presents, and of her injuring her health in such useless employment. "What can I do?" she replied, "I must make presents and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... in the spectrum are called the Visible Spectrum. There are, however, rays of light beyond both ends of the spectrum which do not affect the optic nerves of the eye, and therefore are invisible to sight. The rays in the spectrum which lie beyond the red are termed ultra-red rays, while those beyond the violet are called ultra-violet rays. It can be proved the former are rich in heating power, while the latter possess ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... strolling from the little dining-room for coffee in the winter garden. Cally smiled. She had observed that most of her best friend's time had gone, not to chatting to Hugo, but to lavishing her delicious ignorance and working her telling optic system on J. Forsythe Avery, who was so evidently now to be released for ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Child. This needless use of the adjective for the noun is probably supposed to be humorous, like "canine" for dog, "optic" for eye, "anatomy" for body, and the like. Happily the offense is not ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... suggested no more than such an arrangement of glasses as might put the eyes, when in use, under better optic conditions. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... these things. All parts and organs of living bodies have, or have had, a purpose. Nature is blind, but she knows what she wants and she gets it. She is blind, I say, because she is all eyes, and sees through the buds of her trees and the rootlets of her plants as well as by the optic nerves in her animals. And, though I believe that the accumulation of variations is the key to new species, yet this accumulation is not based upon outward utility but upon an innate tendency to development—the push of life, or creative evolution, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... great measure, maintains the form of the eyeball and protects the more delicate structures within it. Its interior portion, which is covered by the ocular conjunctiva, is commonly known as the "white of the eye." In form it is bell-shaped, and the optic nerve pierces it behind like a handle, the perforation being a little to its inner side. In front, the rim of the bell becomes continuous with the cornea. The outer surface of the membrane receives the insertion of the muscles of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear—to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... turned slightly to the left and began to get the rest—the great levelled creature upon the darkened floor. Skag kept his imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the picture. The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not crouched. Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him. She lay ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... compulsion, a contemplative rather than a creative temperament, a fumbler and seeker, nevertheless Paul Cezanne has formed a school, has left a considerable body of work. His optic nerve was abnormal, he saw his planes leap or sink on his canvas; he often complained, but his patience and sincerity were undoubted. Like his friend Zola his genius—if genius there is in either man—was largely a matter of protracted ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the pitiful condition of the Armenians under Moslem rule, but has nothing to say anent her own awful record in India. It were well for John Bull to get the beam out of his own eye before making frantic swipes at the mote in the optic of the Moslem. The oppression of the children of Israel by the Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian king and Roman emperors were as nothing compared to that suffered by the patient Bengalese at the hands of Great Britain. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the wise doctors, after they had first consulted their books: "it is only the electrifying of the optic nerve." ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... it because the only nerve-ends tuned to vibrate in harmony with the ether-waves set in action by the sun are nerve-ends that are connected with the brain center devoted to sight. "If," says Professor James, "we could splice the outer extremities of our optic nerves to our ears, and those of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony and hear ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... the will of God, His human affections as fused in the fire of divine feeling, His body as a phantom. They could not admit that He lived the real life of a real man. They could not see the value of such a life. Neo-Platonism had paralysed their optic nerve. Thinkers such as the Christologians of Alexandria, imbued with the spirit of Neo-Platonism, had no motive for preserving the distinct subsistence of Christ's human nature. It was their boast that their Ideal had faced and overcome and trampled on the lower elements of His being. He was a proof ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... volition and an act—the loosing of the greyhound from the leash. These several thoughts are the concomitants of a process which goes on in the nervous system of the man. Unless the nerve-elements of the retina, of the optic nerve, of the brain, of the spinal chord, and of the nerves of the arms went through certain physical changes in due order and correlation, the various states of consciousness which have been enumerated would not make their appearance. So that in this, as ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... an open page of a textbook, but not studying; not even reading; not even thinking. Nor was he lost in a reverie: his mind's eye was shut, as his physical eye might well have been, for the optic nerve, flaccid with ennui, conveyed nothing whatever of the printed page upon which the orb of vision was partially focused. Penrod was doing something very unusual and rare, something almost never accomplished except by coloured people or by a boy in school on a spring ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... him to treat with great learning of the funeral rites of all nations. To this he afterwards added The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincunxial Lozenge, in which, in the language of Coleridge, he finds quincunxes "in heaven above, in the earth below, in the mind of man, in tones, optic nerves, in the roots of trees, in leaves, in everything." ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... well known that at the base of the brain are collected certain masses of nervous matter, that constitute nervous centres or cerebral ganglia, that are in very intimate connection, on the one hand, with nerves of special sense, as the optic[42] and olfactory,[43] on the other with nerves of general sensation and motion.[44] To this intricate part of the brain, these centres, converge the nerve-fibres collected in the spinal cord and medulla oblongata, and from them radiate other ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... BRAIN, which has just received, through the optic nerve, a conception of the lovely vision in brass buttons. The heart is ordered to pump more blood to the head of the young girl, to supply mental activity ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... orange, the greatest and the most harmonious contrast to blue; red and blue form violet or purple, so much admired in contrast with yellow in the pansy; yellow and blue form green, the contrast to red, and the color needed to restore the tone of the optic nerve when strained or fatigued by undue attention to red. This is the most common and admirable contrast in the vegetable kingdom; the brilliant red blossom or fruit, with green leaves, as instance the fiery tulip, the crimson rose, the scarlet verbena, the burning dahlia, the cherry and apple ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... morbid in her misfortune. She carried it high aloft, with loud sounds and free gestures, made it flutter in the breeze as if it had been the flag of her country. It consisted mainly of a big red face, indescribably out of drawing, from which she glared at you through gold-rimmed aids to vision, optic circles of such diameter and so frequently displaced that some one had vividly spoken of her as flattening her nose against the glass of her spectacles. She was extraordinarily near-sighted, and whatever they did to other objects they magnified immensely the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... of the eye to dilate, whereas, if the person in question had only thought of the dilatation of the pupil, the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish to look at remote or very near objects. Lastly, he maintained that, although every motion of the aforesaid ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... not in all cases quite clear and definite. The tela aranea is said to take its origin from the retina, the retina from the optic nerve, and the latter from the rethi (rete, network) involving the substance of the brain. The cornea arises from the sclerotic tunic, the uvea and secundina take their origin from the pia mater, and the conjunctiva from a thin pellicle or membrane which covers ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... 650,000 telephones; 177 telephones/1,000 persons; progress on installation of fiber optic cable and construction of facilities for mobile cellular phone service remains in the negotiation phase for joint venture agreement local: NA intercity: NA international: international connections to other former republics of the USSR are by landline or microwave and to other ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... my first essay of using high powers with the Newtonian telescope, I began to doubt whether an opinion which has been entertained by several eminent authors, 'that vision will grow indistinct when the optic pencils are less than the fiftieth part of an inch,' would hold good in all cases. I perceived that according to this criterion I was not entitled to see distinctly with a power of much more than about 320 in a seven-foot telescope of an aperture ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... alacrity. In the hobo's one uninjured optic shone a momentary gleam of intelligence, as he continued to stare at Gully, like a dog at its master. The gleam was reflected in a pair of shadowy, deep-set eyes, unblinking ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... generally a matter of good luck. So far as submarines are concerned the fact must not be over looked that movements in the sea are carried out under blind conditions: the navigator is unable to see where he is going; the optic faculty is rendered nugatory. Contrast the disability of the submarine with the privileges of its consort in the air. The latter is able to profit from vision. The aerial navigator is able to see every inch of his way, at least during daylight. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... he counts it o'er! That sum to-day hath swelled his store.' 80 'Were I that man,' the peasant cried, 'What blessing could I ask beside?' 'Hold,' says the god; 'first learn to know True happiness from outward show. This optic glass of intuition—— Here, take it, view his true condition.' He looked, and saw the miser's breast, A troubled ocean, ne'er at rest; Want ever stares him in the face, And fear anticipates disgrace: 90 With conscious guilt he saw him start; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... are alive to-day who have not read some of the writings of this famous author, whose books are scattered broadcast and eagerly sought for. Oliver Optic has the faculty of writing books full of dash and energy, such as healthy ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... That Science to her sons has lent; Who takes his toll, and lifts the bar That shuts the road to sun and star. If Venus only comes to time, (And prophets say she must and shall,) To-day will hear the tinkling chime Of many a ringing silver dime, For him whose optic glass supplies The crowd with astronomic eyes,— The ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to come short, perspiration was streaming, and an unlucky blow on the nose set another stream flowing, while, all at once, a dab in the eye made the optic flinch, close its lid from intense pain, and refuse to open again, so that one-eyed like a regular old Cyclops, and panting like the same gentleman from the exertions of using his hammer— two in this case, and natural—Marcus fought on, grinding his teeth, rapidly weakening, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... directions. The optical apparatus of the eye gathers some of these together, and gives them such a course that they impinge upon the surface of the retina, which is a singularly delicate apparatus, connected with the termination of the fibres of the optic nerve. The impulses of the attenuated matter, or ether, affect this apparatus and the fibres of the optic nerve in a certain way; and the change in the fibres of the optic nerve produces yet other changes in the brain; and these, in some ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... especial dangers to be contended with are that the ethmoid cells may be mistaken for the sphenoids; that we may go too low and enter the pons and medulla; that, laterally, we may enter the cavernous sinus, and above, that we may injure the optic nerve. ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... to our sensibility, which needs to be just touched on here, is known by the name of the specific energy of the nerves. One and the same nerve-fibre always reacts in a precisely similar way, whatever the nature of the stimulus. Thus, when the optic nerve is stimulated in any manner, whether by light, mechanical pressure, or an electric current, the same effect, a sensation of light, follows.[27] In a usual way, a given class of nerve-fibre is only stimulated by one kind of stimulus. Thus, the retina, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... consists of a fibrous part as well as of the nervous medulla, like other white muscles; and hence, as it resembles the muscular parts of the body in its structure, we may conclude, that it must resemble them in possessing a power of being excited into animal motion.—The subsequent experiments on the optic nerve, and on the colours remaining in the eye, are copied from a paper on ocular spectra published in the seventy-sixth volume of the Philos. Trans. by Dr. R. Darwin of Shrewsbury; which, as I shall ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sad ado—how far my mother's suspicions wronged my father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain but in the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true vision—I never knew. Later, long after the curtain of green earth had been rolled down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with Doctor Hal, who must have seen something ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... by it. When the flame was removed, Dick saw the doctor's face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words. Dick caught allusions to "scar," "frontal bone," "optic nerve," "extreme caution," and the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... it: of the segments of which it is composed—the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the succeeding divisions—no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them; and the so-called optic lobes are, frequently, the largest masses of all. In Reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cerebral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts; while in Birds this predominance is still more marked. The brain of the ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... there is no hotel (but a very fine large theatre) one finds that Miss Grace George is to be the next attraction. On the train to Saratoga one rides on the same train with the Million Dollar Doll, and those who have seen her "paper" on the billboards in Newburgh or Poughkeepsie keep an attentive optic open for the lady herself to see how nearly she lives up to her lithographs. And if the passerby should see a lighted window in the hotel glimmering at two in the morning, he will probably aver that there are some of those light-hearted "show people" ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... of course, the story of her fate had got across to England, and was being read and retold by each man or woman after his or her own fashion. The papers mentioned it, as seen through the optic lens of the society journalist, with what strange refraction. Most of them descried in poor Herminia's tragedy nothing but material for a smile, a sneer, or an innuendo. The Dean himself wrote to her, a piteous, paternal note, which bowed her down more than ever in her abyss of sorrow. He wrote ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... the door open, and she saw the maid instantly, and was astonished, and laughed." In the Colophonian oracle, they were the spectators, not the prophetess, who had need thus to be put under the influence of the mesmeric glamour. Can it be that, in certain diseased states of the optic nerve, it really is subject to the illusion of seeing objects rise in air, as well as go round in horizontal motion? They who saw these sights in the adyta of temples, in caves and sacred groves, in initiations and oracular ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... production of the sensations of disease there can be change at any place along the line, in the sense organs, in the conducting paths or in the central organ. Thus there may be false visual impressions which may be due to changes in the retina or in the optic nerve or in the brain matter to which the nerve is distributed. It is perfectly possible that substances of an unusual character or an excess or deficiency of usual substances in the fluids around brain cells may so change them that such unusual reactions appear. There ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... force stored up therein. It must not be understood that the visions are in the crystal itself. They are in the soul of the seer. But the odylic substance is acted upon by the nervo-vital emanations of the body of the seer, and reacts upon the brain centres by means of the optic nerves. That is why it is necessary to keep the crystal as free as possible from disturbing elements. For the same reason, when in use, the crystal should be overshadowed by the seer, and so placed that no direct rays of light ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... eh?" snorted the country Sherlock, getting on his knees and peering into the depths, but just then Bunch handed him a handful of hard mud which located temporarily over Harmony's left eye and put his optic on the blink. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... girls—tall, well-formed, with the promise of a well-proportioned maturity, she had an oval face and a high forehead, well-clustered with curly auburn hair. There was a peculiarity about her eyes—black they were or a very dark brown—they had something of that cast of optic vision which was remarkable in Cosimo, "Il Padre della Patria" and in Lorenzo, "Il Magnifico," as well as in other members ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... The optic or visual, the palpebral or pupil, and the eyebrow agent. Each of these has its peculiar sense, and we shall show ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... is following each movement with a rifle. Neither is there any chance of hitting back in such cases; for it is my opinion, from watching a stricken deer, that at short ranges the blow comes almost simultaneously as the optic nerve records the flash and before the ear has caught the explosion. All this I considered as I flattened myself against the wall—for I was by no means braver than my fellows—and presently, yard by yard, wormed myself along it until I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... a nervous illness is well illustrated by two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt Ames.[39] A young woman, the drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the purpose of getting away from the monotony of her unappreciated life at home. She naturally resented the charge but finally accepted it and "turned ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... be bounded less perfectly and less distinctly, than the group; for it is like a fragment cut out of the optic scene of the world. However the painter, by the setting of his foreground, by throwing the whole of his light into the centre, and by other means of fixing the point of view, will learn that he must neither wander beyond ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... from your point of view," said Mr. Queed, "is a moral—not an optic one. These acts which confer benefits on others," he continued, "so peculiarly commended by your religion, are conceived by it to work moral good to the doer. The eyes (which you use synecdochically to represent the character) of the person ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... phenomenon of a body falling a distance of a few feet on the earth with all similar phenomena, through the law of gravitation discovered the unity of the universe. Though Newton carried on important investigations in astronomy, studied the refraction of light through optic glasses, was president of the Royal Society, his chief contribution to the sciences was the tying together of the sun, the planets, and the moons of the solar system by the attraction of gravitation. Newton was able to carry along with his scientific ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... haughty Plenty Copious Pitch Bituminous Priest Sacerdotal Rival Emulous Root Radical Ring Annular Reason Rational Revenge Vindictive Rule Regular Speech Loquacious, garrulous, eloquent Smell Olfactory Sight Visual, optic, perspicuous, conspicuous Side Lateral, collateral Skin Cutaneous Spittle Salivial Shoulder Humeral Shepherd Pastoral Sea Marine, maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday Dominical Spring Vernal Summer Estival Seed Seminal Ship Naval, nautical Shell Testaceous Sleep ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... a thing or appearance which is perceived by the eye alone, independently of the form of the thing; subjectively, a sensation peculiar to the organ of vision, and arising from the optic nerve. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... hopes and joys we have lost; and autumn will speak to one of decay and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve; but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open mind looks upon the world in the mood in which a fair woman ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... prostrate man burst forth. "I said a little, Jarvis! You drown my optic nerves in ink and, without a moment's warning, flood them with the glaring brilliancy of the noonday sun!" Jarvis half-drew the curtain. "Ah, that's better. Never more than an inch at a time, Jarvis. How many times have I told you that? Never give me a shock like that ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... in the Lancet), in a speech at University College, pointed out the close connection of the optic and auditory nerves with regard ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... and, at the same time, one of the greatest obstacles to the view that it is essentially primitive and not merely a degenerate creature, is the entire absence of the paired organs of special sense, olfactory, optic and auditory, which are so characteristic of the higher vertebrates. Although it is true that there is a certain amount of gradation in the degree of development to which these organs have attained in the various orders, yet it is hardly sufficient to enable the imagination to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sorry to tell you that it is a hopeless case," said the physician to the Proprietor, who was standing with the Stranger in front of the cage watching the examination. "Both optic nerves are atrophied, and the animal must have received some serious injury, possibly a heavy blow on the forehead." The Proprietor, who has the reputation of being a "good loser," thanked him and gave some directions to the trainer about ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... modern system domestic: extensive microwave radio relay, coaxial cable, and fiber-optic cable systems international: Sudan; coaxial cable to Kuwait and Jordan; submarine cable to Djibouti, Egypt and Bahrain; satellite earth stations - 5 Intelsat (3 Atlantic Ocean and 2 Indian Ocean), 1 Arabsat, and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... say I too. This that you suffer from is an acute form of inflammation of the optic nerve. It may of course end badly; in permanent loss of sight. But I hope—I believe, that in your case it will not be so. You are young, and you are immensely strong; not merely muscularly, but in constitution. I can see that you have been an athlete, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... a Swiss peasant, who for three years had nearly lost the faculty of sight. His eyes betrayed but little appearance of disorder, and the gradual decay of vision which he had experienced, was attributed to a paralysis of the optic nerve, resulting from a scrofulous tendency in the constitution of the patient. The boy, whom I shall call by his Christian name of Johann, was intelligent, mild-tempered, extremely sincere, and extremely unimaginative. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... awhile before it, as beleaguers say. Graham's hand is like himself, Lucy, and so is his seal—all clear, firm, and rounded—no slovenly splash of wax—a full, solid, steady drop—a distinct impress; no pointed turns harshly pricking the optic nerve, but a clean, mellow, pleasant manuscript, that soothes you as you read. It is like his face—just like the chiselling of his features: do you know ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... them with something less than pleasure. It was clear that the face did not like being illuminated. It was very bright, much too bright. It seemed to be searing its way through the face's closed eyelids, right past the optic nerves into the brain-pan itself. The face twisted in a sudden spasm, as if its brain were shriveling with heat. Its owner thoughtfully turned over, and the face sought the seclusion and comparative ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "makes use of" light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of seeing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the apparatus of locomotion. The retina of vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which, again, is continued by cerebral centres connected with motor mechanisms. Our eye makes use of light in that it enables us to utilize, by movements of reaction, the objects that we see to be advantageous, and to avoid those which we see to be injurious. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... while waiting for the event (which did not occur in their day, however,) they indulged in all the pastimes modern Rome afforded. They shivered through endless galleries, getting 'cricks' in their necks staring at frescoes, and injuring their optic nerves poring over pictures so old that often nothing was visible but a mahogany-coloured leg, an oily face, or the dim outline of a green saint in a whirlwind of ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... with all the true modesty of the humble flower from which his name is derived, that he spoke only the opinion of a party, which party, whether small, considerable, or large, his audience could judge for themselves with the unclothed optic, as the party in question was, not to put too fine ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... dear to our young people. Such favorites as Pansy, Louisa M. Alcott, Oliver Optic, Eugene Field, etc. The game is played by ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 5, February 3, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... need an optic glass, Which were your choice? A lens to drape In ruby, emerald, chrysopras, Each object—or reveal its shape Clear outlined, past ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... serious. A charge of buckshot had been fired at close range, from a clump of bushes by the wayside, and the charge had taken effect in the side of the face. The sight of one eye was destroyed beyond a peradventure, and that of the other endangered by a possible injury to the optic nerve. A sedative was administered, as many as possible of the shot extracted, and the wounds dressed. Meantime a messenger was despatched to Sycamore for Fetters, senior, who came before morning post-haste. To his anxious inquiries the doctor ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... hockey sticks, and shin guards, the old storekeeper always carried a well-chosen stock of juvenile fiction in cloth; and those fellows who were fond of spending their spare hours in reading the works of old favorites like Optic and Alger, as well as numerous more recent additions to the ranks of authors, were to be found poring over the contents of numerous book shelves and racks, deciding which volume they would squander their latest ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... entangling machinery of sixteen engines, cuddies, ports, spars, levers, hatches, stancheons, floating trunks, bibulous boxes heavy with drink, and the awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness, but the absence of any ray to touch the sensitive optic nerve. The sense of touch the only reliance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... figures may seem, however formless the shadows, to him the outline is as clear and distinct as that of a geometrical diagram. For this reason Mr. Poe has no sympathy with Mysticism. The Mystic dwells in the mystery, is enveloped with it; it colors all his thoughts; it affects his optic nerve especially, and the commonest things get a rainbow edging from it. Mr. Poe, on the other hand, is a spectator ab extra. He analyzes, he ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the nerves of the palate. It is thus also that the sensation of sound is produced by the concussion of the air striking against the auditory nerve; and sight is the effect of the light falling upon the optic nerve. These various senses, therefore, are affected only by the actual contact of particles of matter, in the same ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... appreciate. It was a comfortable spot, with a few trees about it, a decent-sized garden—large enough to raise a tomato or two for a Sunday-night salad—and a lawn which was a cure for sore eyes, its soft, sheeny surface affording a most restful object upon which to feast the tired optic. I believe it was that lawn that first attracted me as I drove by the place with a patient I had in tow. It was just after a heavy shower, and the sun breaking through the clouds and lighting up the rain-soaked grass gave to it a glistening ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... highth. He scarce had ceas't when the superiour Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, 290 Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe. His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast Of some great Ammiral, were ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... in every part and organ of the body. Every organ and part of the body is represented in the iris of the eye in a well-defined area. The iris of the eye contains an immense number of minute nerve filaments, which through the optic nerves, the optic brain centers and the spinal cord are connected with and receive impressions from every nerve in the body. The nerve filaments, muscle fibers and minute blood vessels in the different ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... sad enough; but it was antecedently probable. No doubt a boy of thirteen who for disobedience was cast out of home in such a place as London had a hard lot, and went supperless to his open bed. His optic nerves were young and sensitive, and the protracted light so paralysed them that the morning found them closed "in endless night." This was a purely natural result: to admitting it, reason opposes no demur. But we must object, for truth's ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... 'Hog-eye.' The majority of sailors of my acquaintance called it 'Hog's-eye.' Did decency permit I could show conclusively how Whall and Bullen are right and the mere collector wrong. It must suffice, however, for me to say that the term 'Hog's-eye' or 'Hog-eye' had nothing whatever to do with the optic of the 'man' who was sung about. I could multiply instances, but this one is typical ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... involving, therefore, angular momentum in the aether. Modern theory accepts the deduction, but ascribes the momentum to the revolving ions in the molecules of matter traversed by the light; for the magneto-optic effect is present only in material media. Long previously Lord Kelvin himself came nearer this view, in offering the opinion that magnetism consisted, in some way, in the angular momentum of the material ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... possesses the flavour of the cherry guava, but has a most evil reputation. Some assert that this fruit is subject to a certain disease (a kind of vegetable smallpox), and that if eaten when so affected is liable to induce paralysis of the optic nerves and cause blindness and even death. Blacks, however, partake of the fruit unrestrictedly and declare it good, on the authority of tradition as well as by present appreciation. They do not pay the slightest respect to the injurious repute current ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... occasionally exchange mutual glances of well-assumed repugnance with the rascal, caught Smilk's eye as it followed the retiring bailiff. The faintest shadow of a wink flickered for a second across that smileless, apparently troubled optic. Mr. Yollop, who had been leaning forward in his chair for the better part of the afternoon with one hand cupped behind his ear and the other manipulating the disc in a vain but determined effort to ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... over from Tucson; 'I gives it out cold, meanin' tharby no offence to our Tucson friend—I gives it out cold that Hoppin' Harry used to be a t'rant'ler. First,' continyoos the Colonel, stackin' Harry up mighty scientific with his optic jest showin' over his glass, 'first I allows he's a toad. Not a horned toad, which is a valyooed beast an' has a mission; but one of these yere ornery forms of toads which infests the East. This last reptile is vulgar-sluggish, a anamile ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of defective eyesight, so called, are in reality defective brain. The mechanism of the eye may be perfect, the retina and the optic nerve may faithfully perform their duties, but if the brain behind the eye be defective, the comprehension of the object or some of its properties is lost to the intelligence of the individual. Some people are "color blind." Their eyes are good enough, but they don't see colors; ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... Flapp, before Sam could do a thing to stop him. Blow after blow was taken and given by each of the cadets, and Tom was hit in the chest, on the shoulder, and in the left cheek. In return Flapp got one in the right eye that almost closed up that optic and then came a blow on the nose that made the ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... no anatomical defect—Dr. Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too deep ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... village was a silent one. She was occupied with thoughts of another world, and Eric was wrestling with more thoughts than had ever been crowded into his head before. He rode with his eyes riveted on that slight figure before him, as though he wished to absorb it through the optic nerves and hold it in his brain forever. He understood the situation perfectly. His brain worked slowly, but he had a keen sense of the values of things. This girl represented an entirely new species of humanity to him, but he knew where to place her. The prophets of old, when an angel ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... has not much to commend it as a place of residence. It is neither clean nor well built, while sights and smells the reverse of agreeable are constantly distressing the optic and olfactory nerves. And yet there are perhaps few places where an artist could find more charming subjects for his pencil—curious bits of architecture mingling with Nature in its most beautiful and grandest aspects, fine touches of brilliant color, and quaint winding streets and bazaars,—everywhere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... speech, nor even his powers of motion were in the least affected. I can hardly tell you how thankful I was, dear Laetitia, when, after that dreary and almost despairing interval of utter darkness, some gleam of daylight became visible to him once more. I had feared that paralysis had seized the optic nerve. A sort of mist remained for a long time, and indeed his vision is not yet perfectly clear, but he can read, write, and walk about, and he preaches twice every Sunday, the curate only reading the prayers. You can well understand how earnestly I pray that sight may be spared him to the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... purple, which changes under the influence of light, somewhat in the same way that the film on a photographic plate does, thus forming pictures, which are translated by the rods and cones and telegraphed along the fibres of the optic nerve to the brain. Naturally, all parts of the retina are not equally sensitive to light; its centre, which is directly opposite the pupil of the eye, is far the most so, while those around the rim of the cup are dull. This is why, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... out his ten—often slowly crossing and re-crossing the paths of Donovan and Baxter, in their still more arduous and long-drawn task. At last the eagle-eye of the squatter counted Bob's ten, accompanied by his spare horse, as he tailed the lot toward his camp; and the same aquiline optic tallied-off an aggregate of thirty-six to Baxter and Donovan— who, to my own private knowledge, had entered the paddock with thirty-four. This disposed of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... do not see things; they just look at them. The power of keen observation is indicative of a superior mentality; for it is the mind, not the optic nerve, that really sees. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... hard at, look intently; strain one's eyes; fix the eyes upon, rivet the eyes upon; stare, gaze; pore over, gloat on; leer, ogle, glare; goggle; cock the eye, squint, gloat, look askance. Adj. seeing &c v.; visual, ocular; optic, optical; ophthalmic. clear-eyesighted &c n.; eagle-eyed, hawk-eyed, lynx-eyed, keen- eyed, Argus-eyed. visible &c 446. Adv. visibly &c 446; in sight of, with one's eyes open at sight, at first sight, at ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... percipient centres have grown up in the brain, so that the coloured picture flashed by an external scene upon the eye is telegraphed from the sensitive mirror of the retina, through the many-stranded cable of the optic nerve, straight up to the appropriate headquarters in the thinking brain. Stage by stage the continuous process has gone on unceasingly, from the jelly-fish with its tiny black specks of eyes, through infinite ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... necessity lead to a crude understanding of anatomy in general. The first Greek anatomist, however, who is recognized as such, is said to have been Alcmaeon. He is said to have made extensive dissections of the lower animals, and to have described many hitherto unknown structures, such as the optic nerve and the Eustachian canal—the small tube leading into the throat from the ear. He is credited with many unique explanations of natural phenomena, such as, for example, the explanation that "hearing is produced by the hollow bone behind the ear; for all hollow things ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Islands we beheld in plenty, but they were of "such stuff as dreams are made on," and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; light-houses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he alleged, to investigate the cause. It appeared to him "that the strong vivid light evolved from the numerous gas-lamps on the stage so powerfully stimulated the brain through the medium of the optic nerves, as to occasion a preternatural determination of blood to the head, capable of producing headache or giddiness: and if the subject should at the time laugh heartily, the additional influx of blood which takes place, may rupture a vessel, the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... There's a place in the brain stem called the isthmus, no cell masses, just bundles of fibers running up and down. Almost all the nerves come off below that point; and the few that don't can be spliced together, except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Ever notice I can't smell, Willie? And they transplanted my eyes with the brain—biggest trick of ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... endowed with a hypocampus major or minor? Are you prepared to stand forward and declare that the convolutions of your brain are of the regulation standard—that the medullary part is not disproportioned to the cineritious—that your falx is not thicker or thinner than it ought—and that your optic thalami are not too prominent? And if you are not ready to do this, what avails all your assumption of superiority? In these—they are not many—lie the alleged differences between you and your caged cousins yonder." ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... as Galileo made may now be bought at a toy-shop for I suppose half a crown, and yet what a potentiality lay in that "glazed optic tube," as Milton called it. Away he went with it to Venice and showed it to the Signoria, to their great astonishment. "Many noblemen and senators," says Galileo, "though of advanced age, mounted to the top of one of the highest towers ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... - a fiber-optic submarine cable link encircling the continent of Africa. Arabsat - Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). Autodin - Automatic Digital Network (US Department of Defense). CB - citizen's band mobile radio communications. cellular telephone system - the telephones ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... in the ordnance survey and as a railway engineer. He was next teacher of mathematics and surveying at Queenwood Coll., Hampshire, after which he went to Marburg to study science, and while there became joint author of a memoir On the Magneto-optic Properties of Crystals (1850). After being at Berlin he returned in 1851 to Queenwood, and in 1853 was appointed Prof. of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution, which in 1867 he succeeded ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... got his optic on you for something," said Miss Leaks, the stenographer. "Maybe he wants you to pussy-foot around in Shields' shoes and do his dirty ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... thing, but not so fine as the idea cited above; which has been between the two eyes of humanity ever since women were sought in marriage. With yonder old gentleman it may have been a ghostly hair or a disease of the optic nerves; but for us it is a real growth, and humanity might profitably imitate him in his patient speculation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the difficulties are extreme. The painter's eye must be admirably subtle. Light becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of the object upon which it plays is secondary. Painting thus conceived becomes a purely optic art, a search for harmonies, a sort of natural poem, quite distinct from expression, style and design, which were the principal aims of former painting. It is almost necessary to invent another name for this special art which, clearly ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... remotenesses and 'minutiae' of vegetable terms,—the same entireness of subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v. beginning with the words ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... man laughed heartily at the success of his stratagem, and polished and fondled the great eye until that optic seemed to grow sore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... comparison with others, the image and idea of the object are still the same, and are equally extended in the retina, and in the brain or organ of perception. The eyes refract the rays of light, and the optic nerves convey the images to the brain in the very same manner, whether a great or small object has preceded; nor does even the imagination alter the dimensions of its object on account of a comparison with others. The ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... sitting on the branches, I hear them sing, and they fly and mate and build their nests in the branches; I see a dun-coloured aboriginal she-female, mongolianee, petite, squat-faced, And she has a cast in her sinister optic and a snub nose but her heart is true; And I gaze into her heart (which is true), and I find that she is musing (as indeed I often muse) on ME, Me Prononce, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... (inaccessible thenceforth, poor lazy creature), one most readily believes; but there, or pretty much there, one's belief has to stop. The stories, in WALPOLE, on the King of Prussia, have a grain of fact in them, twisted into huge irrecognizable caricature in the Williams optic-machinery. Much else one can discern to be, in essence, false altogether. Friedrich, who could not stand that intriguing, spying, shrewish, unfriendly kind of fellow at his Court, applied to England in not many months hence, and got Williams sent away: ["22d January, 1751" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Wednesday long before daybreak he led a picked force towards Webster's Farm, to steal a march on the napping enemy. The napping enemy, however, was alive to the propriety of utilising but one eye in the lap of "Nature's soft nurse." He could not see much with the open optic, but he could hear with the one ear he had taken the precaution of keeping open also. Of the good sense of this precaution Mr. Peakman was somewhat abruptly apprised by the crack and blaze of a hundred Mausers. Nothing daunted he returned the salute ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... be called an eye consists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but without any lens or other refractive body. We may, however, according to M. Jourdain, descend even a step lower and find aggregates of pigment-cells, apparently serving as ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the optic nerve, or nerve of sight, are branches of nerve cells in the eye, and extend into the brain stem. Light striking the eye starts nerve currents, which run along these axons into the brain stem. Similarly, the axons of the nerve of ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... independent. But the rooms were airy and attractive. Having now their own furnishings, they paid only $8 a month for all this added space and comfort, so that they could continue to live in these accommodations, but only with severe effort and industry on Elena's part. For Gerda's optic nerve was now so affected by strain, and she suffered so from indigestion, faintness, and illness, that she was unable to go to the factory. She kept the house, doing ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... useful. The two most available faculties in children to work upon are the heart and the imagination. Get a hold on their affections by encouraging words and manifesting a readiness to help them, and you command their devotion and confidence. Give them interesting books (Optic and Alger, if needs be), and you fix their attention. Above all, let the book be interesting; for the attention is never fixed by, nor does the memory ever retain, what is laborious to read. But, once assured of their devotion, with their confidence secured and their attention ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... in an age of the optic nerve in literature. For how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the optic nerve transmits to our mentality a vision of external objects! Tell me how thought conceives and where it resides, and of what nature is cerebral activity! Tell me...! But no! I could question you for ten years, without the greatest among you being ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... owned and undergoing modernization and expansion domestic: the majority of subscribers and the most modern equipment are in Yerevan (this includes paging and mobile cellular service) international: Yerevan is connected to the Trans-Asia-Europe fiber-optic cable through Iran; additional international service is available by microwave radio relay and landline connections to the other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and through the Moscow international switch and by satellite ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... Optic, was published every Thursday by John W. Scott, from January to December, 1808, at three dollars a year. It was filled with ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... is a tumour composed of neuroglia. It is met with exclusively in the central nervous system, retina, and optic nerve. It is a slowly growing, soft, ill-defined tumour, which displaces the adjacent nerve centres and nerve tracts, and is liable to become the seat of haemorrhage and thus to give rise to pressure symptoms resembling apoplexy. The glioma of the retina ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... much as if the optic ganglia developed fully in themselves, without any closer connection with the rest of the brain than existed at their first appearance. They would form a little complex nervous system almost but not quite apart from the brain system; and it would be difficult ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... system is the best developed, most modern, and has the highest capacity in Africa; it consists of carrier-equipped open-wire lines, coaxial cables, radio relay links, fiber optic cable, and radiocommunication stations; key centers are Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, and Pretoria; 4,500,000 telephones; stations—14 AM, 286 FM, 67 TV; 1 submarine cable; earth stations—1 Indian Ocean INTELSAT and ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in the animal economy for the production and loss of heat are themselves probably regulated by the central nervous system, there being a thermogenic centre—situated above the spinal cord, and according to some observers in the optic thalamus. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... more calorific, and finally the calorific effect is the only evidence of their existence; as towards the extreme red end of the spectrum they cease to be visible, owing to their inability to impart their vibrations to the optic nerve. This may also influence the law of gravitation. In this we have also an explanation of the dispersion of light. The rays proceeding from atoms of small mass having less material momentum, are the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... eyelids wink at a flash of light, or a threatened blow, a reflex action takes place, in which the afferent nerves are the optic, the efferent, the facial. When a bad smell causes a grimace, there is a reflex action through the same motor nerve, while the olfactory nerves constitute the afferent channels. In these cases, therefore, reflex action must be effected through the brain, all the nerves involved being cerebral. 'When ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... your eye. Yes, sir, your optic betrayed you. Sit down. Mag, give Mr. What's-his-name a chair. I'll sit down myself." And he sank heavily down on a low bench, threw one leg over the other, and clasped his hands ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... Adams, American author, better known and loved by boys and girls through his pseudonym "Oliver Optic," was born July 30, 1822, in the town of Medway, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, about twenty-five miles from Boston. For twenty years he was a teacher in the Public Schools of Boston, where he came in close contact with boy life. These twenty years taught him how to reach the boy's heart and interest ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... to each man, like the highest longing and the dearest wish of his own heart, who was to them one knew not whether the more of Master or of chosen Friend,—Him, alas, I saw not. To me He was denied. No spiritual optic nerve in me announced His presence. I was ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... and put his hand up to the injured optic, which began to grow black rapidly. Then he struck out wildly half a dozen times. He was growing excited, while Dick was as calm as ever. Watching his opportunity, Dick struck out with all his force, and Baxter received a crack on the nose which caused him to fall back into the arms of Mumps. ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... object need not understand anything of the working of the muscles, nor of the electrical and chemical changes set up by the movement in muscles and nerves, nor need he elaborately calculate the distance of the object by measuring the angle made by the optic axes; he wills to take hold of the thing he wants, and the apparatus of his body obeys his will though he does not even know of its existence. So is it with the man who prays, unknowing of the creative force of his thought, of the living creature he has sent ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... of Anderson, Indiana, is all American, with the exception of a glass eye. The substitute optic is alien. Gary tried to enlist in the U. S. Marine Corps at their recruiting station in Louisville, Ky., but was rejected when his infirmity was discovered by Sergeant G. ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... prowess as an optician should be invoked by Herr Leibnitz gave him a gratification which his fame as a philosopher could never evoke. The only alloy was that he could not understand what Leibnitz wanted. "That rays from points outside the optic axis may be united exactly in the same way as those in the optic axis, so that the apertures of glasses may be made of any size desired without impairing distinctness of vision!" He wrinkled his brow and fell to making geometrical diagrams on the envelope, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... pigment-cells (chromatophores) and the skin. But what makes the pigment-cells change? The fact that a blind flat-fish does not change its colour gives us the first part of the answer. The colour and the pattern of the surroundings must affect the eye. The message travels by the optic nerve to the brain; from the brain, instead of passing down the spinal cord, the message travels down the chain of sympathetic ganglia. From these it passes along the nerves which comes out of the spinal cord and control the skin. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... ordinary type here than in his colouring. His deep sharp lines are caught from life, but under the control of a no less definite bias of eye and brain. Sheer nervous and muscular energy had its part here also. As he loved the intense colours which most vigorously stimulate the optic nerve, so he delighted in the angular, indented, intertwining, labyrinthine varieties of line and surface which call for the most delicate, and at the same time the most agile, adjustments of the muscles of the eye. He caught at the edges of things—the white line of foam against ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist classes ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... and it was this bone that afforded protection. It was evident that when the eye was completely turned in the swordfish could not see at all. Probably this was for close battle. The muscles were very heavy and strong, one attached at the rim of the eye and the other farther back. The optic nerve was as large as the median nerve of a man's arm—that is to say, half the size of a lead-pencil. There were three coverings over the fluid that held the pupil. And these were as thick and tough as isinglass. Most remarkable of all was the ciliary muscle which ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... bare announcement of a new series of books by Oliver Optic will delight boys all over the country. When they further learn that their favorite author proposes to 'personally conduct' his army of readers on a grand tour of the world, there will be a terrible scramble for ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... cylinders, and inserted them within their lips. The external ends suddenly ignited as though by spontaneous combustion; but in reality that result was effected by the simple process of deflecting the optic ray. Clouds of roseate vapour, ascending to the dome of the canopy, partially obscured the sumptuous contours of these celestial invaders; while a soft crooning sound, indicative of utter contentment, or as Professor Nestle of the Milky Ray has more prosaically ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... devising the best means of obviating the present danger, while the persons whom he beheld glimmered before him, less like distinct and individual forms, than like the phantoms of a fever, or the phantasmagoria with which a disease of the optic nerves has been known to people a sick man's chamber. At length they assembled in the centre of the apartment where they had first appeared, and seemed to arrange themselves into form and order. A great number of black torches were successively lighted, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... study pent the whole year through, Man views the world, as through an optic glass, On a chance holiday, and scarcely then, How by persuasion ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... darkness in causing degeneration of the eyes. He refers to experiments by Uhlenhuth, who transplanted eyes of young Salamanders into different parts of their bodies where they were no longer connected with the optic nerves. These eyes underwent a degeneration which was followed by a complete regeneration. He showed that this regeneration took place in complete darkness, and that the transplanted eyes remained normal when the Salamanders were kept ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... hope. Look at the pupils yourself, count; there is not the least susceptibility to the light; there is a paralysis of the optic nerve. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a coded ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... beneath the grey shaggy brow, at one moment in a strange fiery way, while the next, as its owner made some slight movement, it literally flashed as if sending forth scintillations of light, giving to his countenance a weird, strange aspect, emphasised by the peculiar fixed stare of his left optic, which suggested that it was doing the fixed, quiet, patient work of its master, while the other searched and flashed and sought for fresh subjects upon which its fellow might gaze. Whatever value such a pair of eyes ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn |
