"Cocoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glistening on her head and breast giving her the likeness of a fairy queen. The whiteness was almost startling, for the neck and arms were like pearl in tint, the hair flowing in full curls on her shoulders was like shining flax or pale silk just unwound from the cocoon, and the only relief of colour was the deep blue of the eyes, the delicate tint of the lips, and the tender rosy flush that was called up by her presentation to her hosts by stout old Sir Philip, in plum-coloured coat and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is twisting two threads into one for the purpose of weaving. The single thread, as wound off from the cocoon, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... but the transition was finally made from the old to the new order of thought. The essence of the change may be conveyed in a single sentence. The sun was thenceforth regarded, not as a mere heated body, or—still more remotely from the truth—as a cool body unaccountably spun round with a cocoon of fire, but as a vast heat-radiating machine. The terrestrial analogy was abandoned in one more particular besides that of temperature. The solar system of circulation, instead of being adapted, like that of the earth, to the distribution of heat received from without, was ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... died with that issue, and none but envious people have ever tried to rob me of the honour and credit of killing it. The 'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently, the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile has been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... form of Zalu Zako were weaved and spun in the darkness: the lithe walk of him, the haughty carriage of the head. Slowly greened the sky until the banana fronds were etched in sepia against the swollen moon. The dismal croak of the Baroto bird shattered the black cocoon of Bakuma's mind. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the ant lions eat many ants, and they moult and grow, and, finally, they, too, make a little cocoon about themselves. ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... familiar to the coco-nut planters.[1] The larva of one species of large dimensions, Batocera rubus[2], called by the Singhalese "Cooroominya" makes its way into the stems of the younger trees, and after perforating them in all directions, it forms a cocoon of the gnawed wood and sawdust, in which it reposes during its sleep as a pupa, till the arrival of the period when it emerges as a perfect beetle. Notwithstanding the repulsive aspect of the large pulpy larvae of these beetles, they are esteemed a luxury by the Malabar ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... thought perhaps that as a member of the Cabinet I would have an opportunity, say once a month or so, to think upon questions of statecraft and policy, but I find myself locked in a cocoon—no wings and no ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... fifteenth century. Here I remain among my fellow-worms, feeding on these musty mulberry-leaves, out of which we are afterwards to spin our silk. How can you expect anything interesting from such a human cocoon? It is, however, not without its amusement in a mouldy sort of way, this reading of dead letters. It is something to read the real, bona fide signs-manual of such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not at all unusual, Pierre," returned his mother. "And more than that, if anything alarms them after they have begun to spin they will frequently snap the thread of their cocoon and refuse to spin any more; if they do continue the interruption causes a lump, or rough place, in the filament so that it is imperfect and has to be broken and tied. In consequence the silk is poorer and brings a lower price. So you see ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... psychology, chemistry, political economy, to say nothing of the modern languages and special courses in summer in botany, conchology, and physiology. And then, dating from a long anticipated day, or rather night, a metamorphosis startling as the transition of the cocoon; a formal letting loose of the finished maiden on the polished parquet floor of the social arena. Tra-la-la-la-la! Tra-la-la-la-la! Off she whirls to the rythm of a Strauss waltz or a blood-stirring polka, and for the next four years, on an average, she never stops, metaphorically speaking. She may ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... is one of Master Tit's ways—storing away provisions for a time of need. With his stout, conical beak he is able to break the shell of an acorn, peck a corn grain into swallowable bits, and tear open the toughest casing of a cocoon. He will even break the hard pits of the dogwood berry to secure the kernel within, the ground below often being strewn with the shell fragments. No danger of Parus bicolor coming to want ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... around her a nimbus of sound, like that made by the light issuing from the blessed ones, as beheld by Dante, which revealed their presence but hid them in its radiance, as the moth is hid in the silk of its cocoon. Richard felt entirely well. The warmth entered into him, and met the warmth generated in him. All was peace and hope and bliss, quaintest mingling of expectation and fruition. Even Arthur Lestrange beside Barbara could not blast his joy. He saw him occasionally offer some small attention; ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... think on these points of current business?' Majesty serenely issues his thoughts, in the form of orders; which are found correct to pattern. This is the process with his Majesty. A poor Majesty, taking deeply into tobacco; this is the way they have him benetted, as in a dark cocoon of cobwebs, rendering the whole world invisible to him. Which cunning arrangement is more and more perfected every year; so that on all roads he travels, be it to mass, to hunt, to dinner, any-whither in his Palace or out of it, there are faithful creatures keeping eye, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and develop rapidly, and hence their feeding is most ravenous. Following the larva stage comes the third or pupa stage, which is the dormant stage of the insect. In this stage the insect curls itself up under the protection of a silken cocoon like the tussock moth, or of a curled leaf like the brown-tail moth, or it may be entirely unsheltered like the pupa of the elm leaf beetle. After the pupa stage comes the adult insect, which may be a moth or ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... She searched the bushes and low trees behind the garden and all around the edge of the woods on their land, and having little success, at last came to the road. Almost the first thorn bush she examined yielded a Polyphemus cocoon. Elnora lifted her head with the instinct of a hunter on the chase, and began work. She reached the swamp before she knew it, carrying five fine cocoons of different species as her reward. She pushed back her hair and gazed around longingly. A few rods inside she thought she saw ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... travelling-bag that she had begun to pack for herself—for so different a journey!—had to be emptied of its feminine possessions, and David's little belongings stowed in their place. David himself had views about this packing; he kept bringing one thing or another—his rubber boots, a cocoon, a large lump of slag honeycombed with air- holes; would she please put ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... complexion on Miss Blood. I have a theory to reconstruct. I have been philosophizing her as a simple country girl. I must begin on an operatic novice. I liked the other better. It gave value to the black silk; as a singer she'll wear silk as habitually as a cocoon. She will have to take some stage name; translate Blood into Italian. We shall know her hereafter as La Sanguinelli; and when she comes to Boston we shall make our modest brags about going out to Europe with her. I don't know; I think I preferred the idyllic flavor I was beginning to find in ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... from the egg, it becomes a large worm or caterpillar of a yellowish white color, (which is its first state;) this caterpillar feeds on the leaves of the mulberry tree, till, arriving at maturity, it winds itself up in a silken bag or case, called a cocoon, about the size and shape of a pigeon's egg, and becomes a chrysalis; in which state it lies without signs of life; in about ten days it eats its way out of its case, a perfect butterfly, which lays a number of eggs and then dies. In the warmth of the summer weather, these ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... country or in town, well or ill, writing with his own pen or dictating to an amanuensis in the intervals of screaming-fits due to the torture of cramp in the stomach, Scott spun away at his imaginative web almost as evenly as a silkworm spins at its golden cocoon. Nor can I detect the slightest trace of any difference in quality between the stories, such as can be reasonably ascribed to comparative care or haste. There are differences, and even great differences, of course, ascribable to the less or greater suitability of the subject chosen to Scott's ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... glanced for a moment into far space, shook her head. And for a few minutes there was utter silence in the plain little bedroom. Then the baby began to fuss and grope, and to make little sneezing faces in his cocoon of blankets. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... dreams! Ah, stir not to depart! Kiss me again, thy Wife and Virgin too! O Love, that, like a rose, Deckest my breast with beautiful repose, Kiss me again, and clasp me round the heart, Till fill'd with thee am I As the cocoon is with the butterfly! —Yet how 'scape quite Nor pluck pure pleasure with profane delight? How know I that my Love is what he seems! Give me a sign That, in the pitchy night, Comes to my pillow an immortal Spouse, And not a fiend, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning up, as a moist sponge absorbs water. "What can I do with such a creature as this?" he said to himself. "There is only one way to deal with her, treat her as one treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its own cocoon. Give her the books, and she will spin her own ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... her face like moonrise, two radiant wings sprang from her shoulders; and even as a butterfly bursts from its dull cocoon, so the human Psyche blossomed ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... hear several words spoken by Rose Euclid. And then a few more. As the emotion of the scene grew, the proportion of her words audible in the gallery diminished. Until she became, for him, totally inarticulate, raving away there and struggling in a cocoon ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Miss Jeanette Barclay, aged eighteen, and home for the spring vacation from the state university; and seeing her for the first time with her eyes and her hair and her pretty, strong, wide forehead poking through the cocoon of gawky girlhood, created a distinct impression on young ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... peasants and used for the raising of silk worms are, in general, small, close, and miserable. Throughout America the roomy barns which are empty at the cocoon season, will, with little preparation, be much preferable, and enable the raisers to work to very ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... is so active—how was it possible that the inward drama should not get the start of the outward? I have known young ladies, much better educated, and with an outward world diversified by instructive lectures, to say nothing of literature and highly-developed fancy-work, who have spun a cocoon of visionary joys and sorrows for themselves, just as Penny did. Her elder sister Letitia, who had a prouder style of beauty, and a more worldly ambition, was engaged to a wool-factor, who came all the way from Cattelton ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... sickeningly sweet at the same hour that my seer's eyes grow big and black and read mysterious Signs in the air.... Later on a calm fire will be lit down there, behind the pointed mountain—a circle of glistening rose-color in the gray-blue of the night—a sort of luminous cocoon from which will burst the dazzling edge of the moon. She will sail along, cleaving the clouds.... Then, it will be time to go to rest. He'll carry me in on his shoulder and I'll sleep close to his ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... the greatest spinner of all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads round any clear way out. What was that fellow hanging round Irene for? Was it really as Polteed suggested? Or was Jolyon but taking compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it—sentimental ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... do not like any type of men and women, we'll have no more of it. These old bodies, these old animal limitations, all this earthly inheritance of gross inevitabilities falls from the spirit of man like the shrivelled cocoon from an imago. And for my own part, when I hear of these things I feel like that—like a wet, crawling new moth that still fears to spread its wings. Because where do these ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... done our work on earth—of necessity, of labour, of love, or of duty,—like the silkworm that spins its little cocoon and dies, we too depart. But, short though our stay in life may be, it is the appointed sphere in which each has to work out the great aim and end of his being to the best of his power; and when that is done, the accidents of the flesh will affect but little the immortality we shall ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... There are also rolls and biscuits, pate de foie gras or lettuce and tomato sandwiches, the former made usually of split "dinner" rolls with pate between, or thin sandwiches rolled like a leaf in which a moth has built a cocoon. Ices are brought in a little later, when a number of persons have apparently finished their "first course." Ice cream is quite as fashionable as individual "ices." It is merely that caterers are less partial to it because it has ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... very closely resembling the back of the tree upon which they rest when not feeding. Having attained its full growth as a caterpillar, it ties together two or three leaves with strands of silk, thus making a loose cocoon within which it pupates. The pupa is dark brown, covered with a whitish or bluish-white bloom. In about one month the moths emerge. They are large in size, the body being one to one and one-fourth inches long and ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... few for breeding," he said;—"this one is just out of the cocoon. It cannot fly, of course: none of them can fly.... Now look at ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the gradual evolution of species, a most striking instance of the perfection with which the most difficult consensual movements can be transmitted, is afforded by the humming-bird Sphinx-moth (Macroglossa); for this moth, shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... sticking straight out in defiance of patient brushing, wetting, and greasing. Tyler Kamps was as tired as only a boy can be at 9.30 P.M. who has risen at 5.30 A.M. Yet he lay wide awake in his hammock eight feet above the ground, like a giant silk-worm in an incredible cocoon and listened to the sleep-sounds that came from the depths of two hundred similar cocoons suspended at regular intervals down the long dark room. A chorus of deep regular breathing, with an occasional grunt or sigh, denoting complete relaxation. Tyler Kamps ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... back to their old earthly billet. But of course these are all mere surmises, and hardly to be regarded seriously. On Thursday I am to be sent to Rondebosch, Tommy's oft and ever-repeated cry, "Roll on, dear old Blighty" (England), seems vainer than ever as time spins out its endless cocoon. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... made on the singular cases and cocoons woven by the caterpillars of certain moths found at Ega. The first that may be mentioned is one of the most beautiful examples of insect workmanship I ever saw. It is a cocoon, about the size of a sparrow's egg, woven by a caterpillar in broad meshes of either buff or rose-coloured silk, and is frequently seen in the narrow alleys of the forest, suspended from the extreme tip ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... be otherwise; thus the inherited peculiarities in the horns of cattle could appear only in the offspring when nearly mature; peculiarities in the silk-worm are known to appear at the corresponding caterpillar or cocoon stage. But hereditary diseases and some other facts make me believe that the rule has a wider extension, and that, when there is no apparent reason why a peculiarity should appear at any particular age, yet that it does tend to appear in the offspring ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the camera we may trace the life of nature even in forms which no human observation really finds in the outer world. Out there it may take weeks for the orchid to bud and blossom and fade; in the picture the process passes before us in a few seconds. We see how the caterpillar spins its cocoon and how it breaks it and how the butterfly unfolds its wings; and all which needed days and months goes on in a fraction of a minute. New interest for geography and botany and zooelogy has thus been aroused by these developments, undreamed of in ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... season they descend into the ground, and form a weak cocoon of earth, the inside being made smooth by a sort of gum. In this they soon change to pupae, from which are produced a second breed of flies by the end of June and beginning of July. Under the influence of July weather, the whole process of egg depositing, etc., is rapidly repeated, and the second ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... the stem, for epicurean reasons that escape me; thence it spreads throughout the cap. It is the habitual boarder of the boletes, agarics, lactarii and russulie. Apart from certain species and certain groups, everything suits it. This puny grub, which will spin itself an infinitesimal cocoon of white silk under the piece attacked and will later become an insignificant moth, is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... capable of very rapid reproduction at room temperatures in a worm box. They lay eggs encased in a lemon-shaped cocoon about the size of a grain of rice from which baby worms will hatch. The cocoons start out pearly white but as the baby worms develop over a three week period, the eggs change color to yellow, then light brown, ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... G. Krefft has sent me the enclosed from Sydney. A nurseryman saw a caterpillar feeding on a plant and covered the whole up, but, when he searched for the cocoon [pupa], was long before he could find it, so good was its imitation, in colour and form, of the leaf to which ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... statues and tombs—was freed by the tale of his lips. The world was new-born for him. He lifted the empty fig-box, from which the child had set free the butterfly that had hung imprisoned in its grey cocoon throughout the long winter, and placed it carefully on the shelf. The lettering traced along its side was faded and dim; but he saw again the child's eyes lifted to it—the lips half-parted, the eager question and swift demand—that he should tell her of Athens and the Parthenon—and ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... colours of the male" (loc. cit., page 155).) I always distrust myself when I differ from him; but I cannot admit that birds learn to make their nests from having seen them whilst young. I must think it as true an instinct as that which leads a caterpillar to suspend its cocoon in a particular manner. Have you had any experience of birds hatched under a foster-mother making their nests in the proper manner? I cannot thank you enough for all ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... place of safety in time of danger. The larvae are ingeniously sorted as regards age and size, and are never mixed. The larvae period generally extends through a month, although often much longer, and in most species when the larvae pass into pupae they spin a cocoon of white or straw color, looking much like a shining pebble. Other larvae do not spin a cocoon, but spend the pupal state naked. When they mature they are carefully assisted from their shells by the workers, which also assist in unfolding and smoothing out the legs. The whole life of the formicary ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... burlap—burlap "yard goods," to use a shopkeeper's term—and it was burlap identical with that used by Mr. Wiggins and his crew. It was no loose bag of burlap—but a close-fitting wrapping of burlap; a cocoon of burlap that had been drawn tight around the body, as burlap is drawn tight around the carcass of sheep for shipment, like ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... caterpillar Found his furry coat too tight, Then a snug cocoon he made him Spun of silk so soft and light; Rolled himself away within it— Slept there day ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... of physical and mental evolution. From the crude to the perfect is the law; if this perfection of species, or of phases, could be attained without pain, it were well. Pain comes from lack of wisdom to realize that out of the lower the higher inevitably springs, as the butterfly springs from the cocoon; as the flower springs from the seed; "as above so below" is a translation of an old Sinto saying, which also bids us "trust ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... differs from the conditions of separation before death in that there is a complete break between the two bodies, and life is carried on entirely by the lighter of the two, while the heavier, like a cocoon from which the living occupant has escaped, degenerates and disappears, the world burying the cocoon with much solemnity by taking little pains to ascertain what has become of its nobler contents. It is a vain thing to urge that science has not admitted ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... weakly to the window and, lifting the sash, sat in a corner of the embrasure and leaned his elbow upon the sill. The rain had drawn off; and amid the moving vapours from point to point of light the city was spinning about herself a soft cocoon of yellowish haze. Heaven was still and faintly luminous and the air sweet to breathe, as in a thicket drenched with showers; and amid peace and shimmering lights and quiet fragrance he made ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... tall bushes had to come down to the ground. It was forbidden to any insect to remain on a high stalk of grass, lest he might look down on His Highness. Even the Inch-worm had to wind himself up and stop measuring his length, while the line was passing. And in case of grubs or moths in the nest or cocoon, too young to crawl out, the law compelled their parents to cover them over with a leaf. It would be an insult to Lord Long-legs to look down on him. Next followed two lantern-bearers, holding glow-worms for lanterns in their fore-paws. These were wrapped ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... caterpillar before, as the egg, from which its own caterpillar was hatched, was laid inside the body of one of those caterpillars, and the caterpillar upon which it fed had been eaten up and disappeared at least six months before the Ichneumon Fly had even made its way out of its own cocoon; and yet this insect is not only forced, by some mysterious power, to lay its egg in the body of a caterpillar, but there is only one species which will serve its purpose, and it has to hunt up this particular caterpillar from among ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... pros and cons of the question, how and where did silk first make its appearance, Sir G. Birdwood concludes that both the worm and the cocoon were known to the Greeks and Romans, by report and rare specimens, from the time of Alexander's return from his ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... resembles the state of our sound sleep. The soul wakes up from the sleep of death just in the same manner as the insects awake in spring after sleeping the long and rigid winter-sleep, as a chrysalis in the bed of a cocoon spun by itself in autumn. Nature teaches us the great lesson of rebirth and the similarity between sleep and death by the rejuvenation of the chrysalis in the spring. After death the soul wakes up and puts on or manufactures the garment of a new body, just in the same manner as ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... in the winter are prophetic,—from the delicate cocoon of some infinitesimal feathery thing which hangs upon the dry, starry calyx of the aster, to the large brown-paper parcel which hides in peasant garb the costly beauty of some gorgeous moth. But the hints of birds are retrospective. In each tree of this pasture, the very pasture ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... itself with rib-grass or other low plants, till it has grown bigger; then it will get a warning from the All-mother to prepare for the great change. In some low dry place under a log, stone or fence-rail, it will spin a cocoon with its own spikey hairs outside for a protector. In this rough hairy coffin it will roll itself up, for its "little death," as the Indians call it, and Mother Carey will come along with her sleeping wand, and touch it, so it will ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... butterflies lay eggs, from which proceed caterpillars, which generally destroy the plants on which they are hatched. When arrived at maturity, the caterpillar spins a cocoon of silk, more or less fine, in the centre of which it incloses itself. It is then called a chrysalis. In this cocoon the butterfly is formed, either white or black, yellow or green, and there it remains inactive ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... in the sermons in stones than I am in the life under the stones. The significance of the metamorphosis of the grub into the butterfly does not escape me, but I am more occupied with the way the caterpillar weaves her cocoon and hangs herself up for the winter than I am in this lesson. I had rather see a worm cast its skin than see a king crowned. I had rather see Phoebe building her mud nest than the preacher writing his sermon. I had rather see the big moth emerge from ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... certain species of moth mines leaves, and eating away the cellular structures, causes them to twist irregularly, and eventually spins on the spot a cocoon of green silk in which it undergoes metamorphosis. A local caterpillar, too, converts the tough harsh leaves of a fig-tree (FICUS FASCICULATA) into a close and perfect scroll by an elaborate system of haulage, spinning silken strands as required, having primarily rendered the leaf ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... really the whole philosophy of this matter, concerning which so many words are expended. The growth of the germinal idea depends on the nature of an author's talent—he may excel in expansion, or in reduction; he may be economical, and out of an anecdote may spin the whole cocoon of a romance; or he may be extravagant, and give a capable idea away in the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... set." Every load then, by the light of the bush lights held by the women, we arranged. I had to unpack my bottles of fishes so as to equalise the weight of the loads. Every load is then made into a sort of cocoon with bush rope. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... private collections or museums. A lifeless moth fades rapidly under the most favourable conditions. A moth at eight days of age, in the last stages of decline, is from four to six distinct shades lighter in colour than at six hours from the cocoon, when it is dry, and ready for flight. As soon as circulation stops, and the life juices evaporate from the wings and body, the colour grows many shades paler. If exposed to light, moths soon fade ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... proved his good sense by taking no very special interest in the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to place a quietus upon ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... he treated the other corner in the same way, and finally contrived to roll it round his whole person. Thus swathed like a mummy, or (as I used to tell him) self-involved like the silk-worm in its cocoon, he awaited the approach of sleep, which generally came on immediately. For Kant's health was exquisite; not mere negative health, or the absence of pain, but a state of positive pleasurable sensation, and a genial sense of the entire possession of all his activities. Accordingly, when packed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... nursery has no business to be the mother's chrysalis. God never intended her to wind herself up into a cocoon. If He had, He would have made her a caterpillar. She has no right to bury her womanly nature in the tomb of childhood. It will surely be required at her hands. It was given her to sun itself in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... had been standing with the quiet small packet which was the storm centre of preparation lying like a cocoon or a giant seed-pod ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... various chemical works. Certain Oil-beetles, such as the Sitaris, locate in it the urate of ammonia, the refuse of the transformed organism; the Sphex, the Pelopaei, the Scoliae use it to manufacture the shellac wherewith the silk of the cocoon is varnished. Further investigations will only swell the aggregate of the products of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... that I would suggest, and that is, you have to live in the house that you build. Your deeds make the house that Christ is here speaking of. Like the chrysalis that spins out of its own entrails the cocoon in which it lies, so are you spinning, to vary the metaphor, what you lodge in, until you eat your way through it, and pass into the next stage of being. Our deeds seem transient, but although we are building on the sand we are building for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... consideration of the tissues as ultimate facts in the living organism, marking the limit of anatomical analysis; but it was open to another mind to say, have not these structures some common basis from which they have all started, as your sarsnet, gauze, net, satin, and velvet from the raw cocoon? Here would be another light, as of oxy-hydrogen, showing the very grain of things, and revising all former explanations. Of this sequence to Bichat's work, already vibrating along many currents of the European mind, Lydgate was enamoured; he longed to demonstrate the more intimate relations ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is here known only as the oak-web, and a smaller beetle as fern-web. It seems hard to guess why they should be named web (which in Anglo-Saxon means weaver), as they do not, I think, form any cocoon. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... a baby—oh, the sweet little fellow—the dear little fellow—" hummed Oliver wildly as he made a few last additions to the curious network of string and towels with which he had wound Ted into the fire-escape as if he had been making him a cocoon. "Well—well—well—what a night we're having! What a night we're having and what will we have next?" Then he remembered the reason for his journey and removed a bottle of brandy from the brown cup-board, found appropriate glasses and, ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... head emerging from a long oat-sack; an implacable white face, with blazing eyes and jaws that worked ceaselessly at the loop of the string that was drawn round its neck. The effect, under the electrics, was that of a demon caterpillar wrathfully spinning its own cocoon. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... consequence of his union with (particular) attributes and the puissance of attributes.[1615] From the status of humanity, he goes to heaven and from heaven he comes back to humanity, and from humanity he sinks into hell for many long years. As the worm that fabricates the cocoon shuts itself, completely on every side by means of the threads it weaves itself, even so the Soul, though in reality transcending all attributes, invests himself on every side with attributes (and deprives himself of liberty).[1616] ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... nearly faultless, fine and continuous, often measuring from 1000 to 4000 feet long, without a scale, joint, or a blemish, though not of the same diameter or fineness throughout its entire length, as it becomes finer as the interior of the cocoon is approached. Silk differs from all other vegetable or animal fibers by being devoid of ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of sex life there is a certain order of events in a normal history. Before puberty, the ova have lain asleep, as it were, in a cocoon state. Now with puberty they awaken. And with them all those profound mechanisms and inventions that have to do with their nutrition up to ripening. Then revolve the cycles that are translated as menstruation, the propulsion, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... with which it does not habitually co-operate. Dr. Witherspoon, the only clerical Signer, is its contribution in bronze. The Geneva gown supplies the grand lines lacking in the secular costume of the period, and indues the patriot with the silken cocoon of the Calvinist. The good old divine had well-cut features, which take kindly to the chisel. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... for house-cleaning. A tremendous floppy hat crowned her flaxen head; she was tightly incased, like a chrysalis in its cocoon, in a delicate creation of pink; her gloves were long and tight, and her high-heeled boots were longer and tighter. Nevertheless she promptly proceeded with a reckless discard of her finery—a process she had begun on ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... long, was accomplished. He stood forth, so to speak, in a new skin, and looked about him, with perceptions of quite an altered kind, upon what seemed in every way a fresh existence. He lacked even the impulse to turn round and inspect the cocoon from which he had emerged. Let the past bury the past. He had no ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... butterflies of the Bombyx family is no less marvelous. They live for months as caterpillars and sometimes for two years as chrysalids, hibernating in a cocoon in some corner of the earth or in the bark of trees. Finally the butterfly, brilliantly colored, emerges from the cocoon and spreads its wings. It only possesses, however, a rudimentary intestinal canal for the short life which remains, for it does not require ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... for it was never mentioned," said the girl. "The Contessa does not think it worth while. I am at present in the cocoon. If I am pretty enough when I am quite grown up, then she will ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... something incredible to themselves; for they are unwound like a cocoon, and know not which way the ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... toiled and perspired over that distressing problem. Through Summer's sun and Winter's snow, with all unfaltering purpose, we have strung miles of ink upon acres of paper, weaving wisdom into eloquence with the tireless industry of a silkworm fashioning his cocoon. We have refused food, scorned sleep, and endured thirst to see our work grow beneath our cunning hand. The more we wrote the wiser we became; the opinions of one day were rejected the next; the blind surmising of yesterday ripened into the ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... crawling out of her cocoon like a human caterpillar. "We had a lovely time also. And, Jennie, will you please be sure to leave your door open? Michael may be a very sound sleeper, and you know we all have to ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... golden flood, the sight of which was highly disturbing to Frederick. Where was there an adornment for the head, a queen's diadem, which could exercise so powerful, so divine a charm? It seemed to Frederick as if that tremendous vessel, with its hundreds of human ants, were nothing more than the cocoon of this tiny silkworm, this delicately coloured, delicious little butterfly; as if the sixty naked helots down at the ship's bottom shovelling coal into the white heat under the boilers, were toiling and sweating merely to be of service to this childish Venus; as if the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... never had such a splendid time in her life, and the brightness of her cheeks catching the flame from her eyes bore out this statement. Marita, too, seemed to have "shook her cocoon," Jack said, his economy of language scarcely making up for the little difference in "shook" and "shaken." Certainly she managed to climb from one boat to another with remarkable alertness, while Bess, Belle and Cora acted like up-to-date society ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... be in hell. "Pray deliver me," said a sinner to Sang Tsung (So-san).[FN261] "Who ties you up?" was the reply. You tie yourself up day and night with the fine thread of idle thoughts, and build a cocoon of environment from which you have no way of escape. 'There is no rope, yet you imagine yourself bound.' Who could put fetters on your mind but your mind itself? Who could chain your will but your ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... safely stowed away, Limberleg climbed farther up the tree to find a place for Firetop. But he had already found one for himself and was beginning to make his bed. When he was swung from his branches like a big cocoon, Hawk-Eye and Limberleg made themselves as comfortable as they could on the lower limbs of the tree. The western sky was all aflame with yellow and red, as they settled themselves for the night, and the birds sang ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... entomologist, Mr. Leopold Trouvelot, in 1868 or '69. History records the fact that the man of science did not purposely set free the pest. He was endeavoring with live specimens to find a moth that would produce a cocoon of commercial value to America; and a sudden gust of wind blew out of his study, through an open window, his living and breeding specimens of the gypsy moth. The moth itself is not bad to look at, but its larvae is a great, overgrown brute, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... demand. Jim swore volubly and said he had "busted the bottle" by falling against the wagon wheel; and Ford, for a wonder, believed and did not ask for proof. He muddled around camp for a few indecisive minutes, then rolled himself up like a giant cocoon in his blankets, and slept heavily ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... mortar. This inner whitewash, however, is put on without any attempt at art, indeed one might say that it is ladled on in great splashes; and the grub takes care, after finishing its mess of honey, to make itself a cocoon and hang the rude walls of its abode with silk. On the other hand, the Anthophorae and the Halicti, two species of Wild Bees whose grubs weave no cocoon, delicately glaze the inside of their earthen cells and give them the gloss ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... caterpillar will thrive on just one kind of a plant; it may be carrot, it may be milkweed. On that it feeds until it has grown as large as possible. Then it spins itself a nice silken cocoon, or rolls itself up in a soft leaf and takes a long, long nap. And now it is time for us to take a nap, too, for we shall soon reach Bemis, and then there will be still two long lakes to cross and a carry ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... sang the bird, so strangely gay, Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray, A vague, unravelling, final tune, Like a long unwinding silk cocoon; Sang as though for the soul of him Who ironed away in that bower dim:— "I have forgotten Your dragons great, Merry and mad and friendly and bold. Dim is your proud lost palace-gate. I vaguely know There were heroes of old, Troubles more than the heart could hold, There were ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... O'Shaughnessy of the First Narakan Rifles!" Fielding murmured sarcastically. "A year ago he was squatting in a mud cocoon at the bottom of Suzi swamp with the rest of the frogs. Now he's got a good Irish name and he's strutting around like a ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... spirit of curiosity, or unrest, is all owing to lack of self-culture," cry some. Perhaps it is—some of it. No doubt the cocoon stage of rest and self-development is higher, and nearer to the ultimate perfection—the winged creature which soars above where others crawl—but until we are fit to be cocoons, and evolve butterflies, we must be content with ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... movement beneath a small walnut tree caught his attention. He stopped to investigate. There was an unusually large Luna cocoon, and the moth was bursting the upper end in its struggles to reach light and air. Freckles stood ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... she were watching with entire unconcern the amputation of one of her limbs, fell to observing the people about her. The woman in front of her leaned against the pew and brought her broad, well-fed back close under Sylvia's eyes. It was covered with as many layers as a worm in a cocoon. There were beads on lace, the lace incrusted on other lace, chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy satin, cut in points, and, lower down, an invisible foundation of taffeta. Through the interstices there gleamed a revelation of the back itself, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... hand, sick of his past life, mortally afraid of falling once more under the tyranny of his baser nature, seeking on all sides assistance in that terrible struggle of the winged intellect out of the caterpillar cocoon in which it had lain torpid so long, was wrought up, if ever a man was, to the pitch of enjoying, of desiring a mere intellectual passion just in proportion as it was absolutely and ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... with the children. It was exactly the kind of a day that birds like. The ground was soft enough to let the earthworms come up to breathe, so that Robins could catch them easily, and the air was full of all kinds of insects newly out from their long winter sleep in their soft cocoon beds, much to the delight of ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Apples so affected will fall prematurely, and should be picked up and fed to swine. This done every day during their falling, which does not last a great while, will remedy the evil in two seasons. The worm that crawls from the fallen apple gets into crevices in rough bark, and spins his cocoon, in which he ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... well known production of the silk-worm in its natural state, as reeled from the cocoon, is termed "raw silk;" and before this can be used for weaving it requires to be twisted, or, as it is technically termed, "thrown;" that is to say, it is not two threads twisted one over the other, but the single filament itself is twisted so as to render it firmer; this is ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... You may know that this time is reached by their refusal to eat, and you must then make a little paper toilet, about two inches deep, for each worm, and drop it in. You have now nothing to do (except to watch the worms regularly) for some weeks, in which time the cocoon has been finished and the worm has become a chrysalis. When the chrysalis inside the cocoon rattles the time has come to wind the silk, or the moth will shortly emerge and eat it. The outside of the cocoon is ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... any detail the monotonous years of Hugh's professional life, because they seemed to him to have been in one sense lost years; there was at all events no conscious growth in his soul. His spirit seemed to him afterwards to have lain, during those years, like a worm in a cocoon, living a blind life. Externally, indeed, they were the busiest time of his life. He became a hard-worked official in the Civil Service. He lived in rooms in London. He spent his day at the office, he composed innumerable documents, he wrote endless ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... its skin. This process of moulting is repeated two or three times at intervals during the life of the insect. After the last moulting the worm climbs the brambles placed to receive it, and spins among them its cocoon. It passes thus into a chrysalis; the chrysalis becomes a moth, and the moth, when liberated, lays the eggs which form the starting-point of a new cycle. Now Pasteur proved that the plague-corpuscles might be incipient in the egg, and escape detection; they might also be germinal in the worm, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... fulfillment of a primitive human demand. In one of our cases a vision of Heaven and a conscious longing to be there was followed by a stupor. On recovery the patient compared her condition to that of a butterfly just hatched from a cocoon. No clearer simile of mental ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... measuring it, don't you know?" said Bertha, "and it got all into a heap on the floor, and there was so much of it I didn't know what to do. So I began to roll it round and round myself, and the first thing I knew I was the cocoon-thing you see before you. I feel as if I ought to come out a ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... day arrived when he realized that he must develop wings, so he wrapped himself up in a cocoon; and while the metamorphosis was in process of development he had ample time to study Hamlet's soliloquy. It would mean a divorce from everything he held dear; a parting with his very soul. It would mean the most sorrowful widowhood that could be imposed on man. It would be equivalent to leaving ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... lady, who experimented much with asbestos, found that from a crude mass of that substance threads could be elicited which were ten times the length of the mass itself, and were indeed sometimes several metres in length, the fibres seeming to be involved, like silk in a cocoon. Her process of preparation was much like that described by Marco. She succeeded in carding and reeling the material, made gloves and the like, as well as paper, from it, and sent to the Institute a work ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... It was as if she had witnessed the exercise of some secret gift, had seen a cocoon open or an ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... other productions, more marvellous in certain ways, which are formed by particular organs, or are elaborated within the organism, and are not the result of the intelligent effort of the individual. To this category belong the threads which the Spider stretches, and the cocoon with which the Caterpillar surrounds himself to ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... staked out his horse for the night he returned to find the woman rolled snugly in her covering, as in a cocoon. The dying embers flickered into flame and lit her hair redly. She had laid off her felt Stetson, and one loosened braid lay over her hard pillow. Thinking her asleep, Law stood motionless, making no attempt to hide his expression of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... cradles, urged on by her great desire, and the guard make way before her. Listening only to her furious jealousy, she will fling herself on to the first cell she comes across, madly strip off the wax with her teeth and claws, tear away the cocoon that carpets the cell, and divest the sleeping princess of every covering. If her rival should be already recognisable, the queen will turn so that her sting may enter the capsule, and will frantically stab it with her venomous ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... called Limoise, a place that at later time played a great part in my life. It belonged to neighbors and friends, the D——s, whose house in town was directly next to ours. Perhaps I had visited Limoise the preceding summer, but at that time I was very like a cocoon before it has crawled from its silken wrapping. The day that I now refer to is the one in which I was able to reflect for the first time, in which I first knew ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... behind the curtains in his room. His leer went from one to the other, but always returned and rested on Rex. Then, as there was a mountain chill in the morning air, he crawled back into bed, hauling his night cap over his generous ears and rolling himself in a cocoon of featherbeds, until he should emerge about noon, like some ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, while dissecting the muscular tissues of a human subject, found little specks of extraneous matter, which, when taken to the professor of comparative anatomy, Richard Owen, were ascertained, with the aid of the microscope, to be the cocoon of a minute and hitherto unknown insect. Owen named the insect Trichina spiralis. After the discovery was published it transpired that similar specks had been observed by several earlier investigators, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the gentle butterfly Sings many a merry tune Because he's glad he has escaped From out the old cocoon; ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... reaped only an aftermath of universal distrust. He lied his way through thick and thin—as we traders used to say—till that lying habit of his sewed him up in a net of his own weaving like a grub in a cocoon. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... April, however, a cocoon was found in a tree on James Island, of a very different appearance from the others. It was of loose texture, and, instead of being pear-shaped, was hemispherical in form, and attached by its flat surface to the lower side of a leaf. This also contained young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... such a texture, consistency, and lustre, that it cannot be decomposed by any practicable expedient, having been finished, they all of them unite, and ranging themselves in vertical and even files, form in the centre a perfect square. Being thus disposed, each of them makes its cocoon, or pod, of a coarse and short silk, in which it is transformed from the grub into the chrysalis, and from the chrysalis into the papilio, or moth. In proportion as they afterwards quit their confinement, to take wing, they detach wherever it is most convenient to them, their envelope, or web, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... her mouth. The chief, without vouchsafing her the smallest attention, unfastened the pelisse of grey fox skin, stripped it off, and then proceeded to divest the infant of the first of the coats in which it was enveloped, like a silkworm in its cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... illuminated hands of the illuminated tower clock swung to the wide angle of five o'clock, Miss Marjorie Clark and Miss Minnie Bundt, from the fancy-fruit stand opposite, cast off the brown cocoon of their workaday for the trim street finery which the American shopgirl, to the stupefaction of economists and theorists, can somehow evolve out of eight ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... cultivation of Cynthia is that the cocoon cannot be reeled. But it can be carded, and if the Chinese can make excellent silk goods from it, why cannot we? I suspect, too, that Cynthia silk can be worked in with cotton, or, perhaps, woolen goods, adding to their beauty and durability (for it is indestructible in wear), and thus ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... entomology, entomologist, entomologic, chrsalis, pupa, cicada, cocoon, credpitaculum, entomophilous, entornophily, entomtaxy, entomotomy, insecticidal, insectifuge, insectile, larva, lepidopterist, larvarium, stridor, stridulate, stridulation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... greatest—oh! yes, the very greatest, as this very day—But a terrible howl, like the heart-rending cry of the jackal exasperated by the monotony of his desert, suddenly made all the studio windows shake, and frightened the old and startled little chrysalis back into her cocoon. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... possesses a flexible trunk or snout that penetrates the skin. Through this trunk, the ticks derive their nourishment by sucking the blood from the body of the sheep. The tick is also provided with three pairs of legs. The female lays her young in the form of a spun egg (cocoon) which is oblong in shape and brown in color. This egg is cemented to the wool of sheep where young ticks are hatched in about four ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... sides of stones in the water and on water plants. I will soon find a few cocoons; look here, under this bit of brick tile are five or six; they now contain eggs, as I will show you, by slitting open the case with my penknife. These gradually change to young leeches, which find their way out of the cocoon through one or other of the two openings at either end. Then there is the horse leech, and another very similar to it, called Aulastoma, which means having "a mouth as wide as a hall;" it has no English ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... began one evening to tell them of the beauty and the wonder of the world. One night he used a cocoon as illustration and for three evenings they all came with bated breath and watched the strange little insignificant roll, almost doubting Michael's veracity, yet full of curiosity, until one night it ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... a girl already rolled like a cocoon in a pretty blue "wooley" and coiling up on a rug in the farthest corner. "Jane Alien, you're a perfect lamb, and I hope you'll stay with ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft |
