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Membranous   /mˈɛmbrənəs/   Listen
Membranous

adjective
1.
Relating to or made of or similar to a membrane.
2.
Characterized by formation of a membrane (or something resembling a membrane).  Synonym: membrane-forming.



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"Membranous" Quotes from Famous Books



... schirrus is in the membranous parts of the system, as of the rectum intestinum, the urethra, the gula or throat; and of this kind is the verucca or wart, and the clavus pedum, or corns on the toes. A wen sometimes arises on the back of the neck, and sometimes between the shoulders; and by distending ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... to breathe air before hatching. Various Amphibia show how this requirement was met in various ways. In the South American tree-frogs of the genus Nototrema the eggs are developed in a dorsal pouch of the skin of the female, and within this pouch the respiration of the embryo is carried on by a membranous expansion of the second and third external gills on each side. In the Reptilia the bladder is expanded for the same function, and absorbs oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide through the pores of the shell. It is impossible to reconcile the conception of mutation with the ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... does the membranous termination of the upper filament overlap the corresponding portions of the two middle stamens? Because this enables the bee to move the pistil and thereby to set free the pollen more easily than would be the case ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... earth ascends the vegetables in its vicinity, spirally W.S.E. or contrary to the movement of the sun; and absorbs its nourishment by vessels apparently inserted into its supporters. It bears no leaves, except here and there a scale, very small, membranous, and close under the branch. Lin. Spec. Plant. edit. a Reichard. Vol. I. p. 352. The Rev. T. Martyn, in his elegant letters on botany, adds, that, not content with support, where it lays hold, there it draws its nourishment; and at length, in gratitude for ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... cow the urethra is very short, opening in the median line on the floor of the vulva about 4 inches in front of its external orifice. Even in her, however, the passing of a catheter is a matter of no little difficulty, the opening of the urethra being very narrow and encircled by the projecting membranous and rigid margins, and on each side of the opening is a blind pouch (canal of Gaertner) into which the catheter will almost invariably find its way. In both male and female, therefore, the passing of a catheter is an operation which demands ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... Cyclostoma show no trace of pairs of limbs. Their mucous skin is quite naked and smooth and devoid of scales. There is no bony skeleton. A very rudimentary skull is developed at the foremost end of their chorda. At this point a soft membranous (partly turning into cartilage), small skull-capsule is formed, and encloses ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... is a membranous canal extending from the surface of the body to the uterus, or womb. Its posterior wall is about 3-1/2 inches long, and its anterior about 3 inches. A careful study should be made of our illustration, in order that the relation ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... in North America; these amphibious animals are about two feet nine inches in length, with very short fore feet and divided toes, while the hinder are membranous, and adapted for swimming; the body is covered with a soft, glossy, and valuable fur; the tail is oval, scaly, destitute of hair, and about a foot long. These industrious creatures dam up considerable streams, and construct dwellings of many ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... images of giant or dwarf hips, feminine triangles, great V's, mouths of Sodom, glowing cicatrices, humid vents. This landscape of abomination changes. Gilles now sees on the trunks frightful cancers and horrible wens. He observes exostoses and ulcers, membranous sores, tubercular chancres, atrocious caries. It is an arboreal lazaret, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... thinly timbered with true box, which was at that time in blossom. I noticed a small tree (Santalum oblongatum, R. Br.), very remarkable for having its branches sometimes slightly drooping, and at other times erect, with membranous glaucous elliptical leaves, from an inch to an inch and a half long, and three-quarters broad, with very indistinct nerves, and producing a small purple fruit, of very agreeable taste. I had seen this ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... Adhesion between the membranous bract of Narcissus poeticus and the upper surface of the leaf is described by Moquin.[31] The same author mentions having seen a remarkable example of adhesion in the involucels of Caucalis leptophylla, the bracts of which ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... in which the eggs lie inclosed at different distances, though they seem in the empty space to be fallen, thread-like, together. But if you stretch the thread and press the eggs, they change their places, and you can distinctly see that they lie free in the bag, having their own membranous envelopes corresponding to those of other batrachian eggs. Surely this species seeks the water at the time of fecundation, for so do all batrachians, the water being indeed a more fitting medium for fecundation than the air. . .It is certain that the eggs were already fecundated when we found them ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... plant of the vine kind, Piper nigrum, which twines its tendrils round poles or trees, like ivy or hops. The pepper-corns grow in bunches close to each other. They are first green, but afterwards turn black. When dried they are separated from the dust and partly from the outward membranous coat by means of a kind of winnow, and are then laid up in warehouses. The white pepper is the same production as the black. It undergoes a process to change its colour, being laid in lime, which takes off the outer black coat ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... velvet-like texture with which we are all so familiar. There is scarcely any coloring matter in the slender portion of the hair, and the beautiful changeable coppery [Page 210] hues of the fur is owing to this structure. Another reason for the cleanliness of the fur is the strong, though membranous muscle beneath the skin. While the mole is engaged in travelling, particularly in loose earth, the soil for a time clings to the fur; but at tolerably regular intervals the creature gives the skin a sharp and powerful shake, which throws off at once ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... ear represents the three semicircular canals, which occur in the ear of all mammals, and which are called, by reason of their positions, the anterior vertical, the posterior vertical, and the horizontal. Each of these membranous canals possesses at one end, in an enlargement called the ampulla, a group of sense cells. In Figure 7 the ampullae of the three canals are marked respectively, ampulla anterior, ampulla posterior, ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... the caribou—Donald strung the defective toe, and then made a not very successful shift at tightening the center webbing of askimoneiab, or heavy, membranous moose filling. The mending of his clothes was a comparatively simple matter by means of ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... of the trachea, just above the lungs, there is a specialized organ of the bird's throat called the syrinx. It is a cylinder formed of bony rings, provided with a mesh of muscles, and having membranous folds which act as valves upon the two orifices of the bronchi leading to the lungs. Many scientific gentlemen have declared that the syrinx is the voice organ of the birds, the elastic margins of the folds or ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... drawer he produced what seemed to me to be the upper portion of the wing of a large bat. It was at least two feet in length, a curved bone, with a membranous ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... is the superior, or in quadrupeds the anterior, cavity of the trunk of the body: it is divided into two cavities by a membranous partition, termed 'mediastinum;' and separated from the abdomen, or cavity which contains the liver, spleen, pancreas, and other abdominal viscera, by the 'diaphragm,' which is of a musculo-membranous nature. This membrane may be described, as it is divided, into the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... literally carved every rib and vein upon them, in relief; not merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of the leaf, and actually project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous veins which chequer the membranous tissues between them, and which the sculptor has represented conventionally as relieved like the others, in order to give the vine leaf its peculiar tessellated effect upon ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... and eaten by a rat, but if you rise softly next night when you hear the sound of feeding, and shut the windows, you will find a goblin hanging from the ceiling in the morning, hideous beyond the power of words to tell. Its ears, thin, membranous and longer than its head, tremble incessantly. Inside of them is another pair, much smaller than the first, and tuned to their octave, I should guess, while two membranous smelling trumpets of similar pattern rise over the nose. What is the meaning of these repulsive ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... these animals. According to the writer whom I have just cited, in one of them, the Siamang, "the voice is grave and penetrating, resembling the sounds goek, goek, goek, goek, goek ha ha ha ha haaaaa, and may easily be heard at a distance of half a league." While the cry is being uttered, the great membranous bag under the throat which communicates with the organ of voice, the so-called "laryngeal sac," becomes greatly distended, diminishing again when the creature ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... dear old friend, what a dreadful twelve days I have spent! Maurice has been very ill. Continually these terrible sore throats, which in the beginning seem nothing, but which are complicated with abscesses and tend to become membranous. He has not been in danger, but always IN DANGER OF DANGER, and he has had cruel suffering, loss of voice, he could not swallow; every anguish attached to the violent sore throat that you know well, since ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... nothing but steam will touch membranous croup. We saved my baby that way last year. Set here and I'll ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... and as white as wax. this berry is formed of a thin smooth pellicle which envellopes a soft white musilagenous substance in which there are several small brown seed irregularly scattered or intermixed without any sell or perceptable membranous covering.- we had proceeded about four miles through a wavy plain parallel to the valley or river bottom when at the distance of about a mile we saw two women, a man and some dogs on an eminence immediately before us. they appeared to vew us with attention and two of them after a few minutes ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al



Words linked to "Membranous" :   membrane, unhealthy, membranous labyrinth



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