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Larva   /lˈɑrvə/   Listen
Larva

noun
(pl. L. larvae, E. larvas)
1.
The immature free-living form of most invertebrates and amphibians and fish which at hatching from the egg is fundamentally unlike its parent and must metamorphose.



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"Larva" Quotes from Famous Books



... utter a word; and Robert, although somewhat indignant at the treatment he was receiving, felt as yet no impulse to interfere, for success was doubtful. But, indeed, he was not very easily roused to action of any kind; for he was as yet mostly in the larva-condition of character, when everything is transacted inside. But the fun grew more furious, and spot after spot of ink gloomed upon Shargar's white face. Still Robert took no notice, for they did not seem to be hurting him much. But when he ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... moth, whose larva is the little apple worm, causes an immense loss in our fruit orchards. The cotton-boll weevil, which destroys so much of the cotton, is, like the codling moth, an insect imported from another country. The San Jose scale reached California from China ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... part on gradation is summarised at pages 427, 428. Walsh shows that a complete gradation exists between species which are absolutely unaffected by change of food and cases where "difference of food is accompanied by marked and constant differences, either colorational, or structural, or both, in the larva, pupa and imago states."), most of which was new to me. I have since received your paper on willow-galls; this has been very opportune, as I wanted to learn a little about galls. There was much ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... a very extraordinary view of the subject. Is it not possible that it may be the larva of some large unknown animal inhabiting these limestone cavities? Its feet are not in harmony with the rest of its organisation; and were they removed, it would have all the ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... forgive its existence. As a rule he digs himself in with his dream and with the arts, until the time comes when he has got used to his incarnation, and the grub has achieved its agonizing passage from larva to winged insect. What a need he has for peace and meditation during these April days so full of the trouble of maturing life! But they come after him to the bottom of his burrow, look him up, drag him ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland

... to the bluebottle, and lives in huts and dwellings. But his ways are different, for he bites a hole into one's skin, usually the back or arms, and lays an egg therein. In about ten days this egg develops into a fully grown larva, in other words a white maggot with a black head. It looks for all the world like a boil until one squeezes it and pushes the squirming head outside. But woe to him who having squeezed lets go to get the necessary forceps; for the larva leaps back within, promptly dies and forms an abscess. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... the soft muddy bottom. You see numberless bits of stick. Watch awhile, and those sticks are alive, crawling and tumbling over each other. The weed, too, is full of smaller ones. Those live sticks are the larva-cases of the Caperers—Phryganeae—of which one family nearly two hundred species have been already found in Great Britain. Fish up one, and you find, amid sticks and pebbles, a comfortable silk case, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable either of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh for the larder: in the same way Francoise had adopted, to minister to her permanent and unfaltering resolution to render the house uninhabitable ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... this memorable trans-migration of one faith into another, of an imperfect into a perfect religion, viz., that the early stage had but a slight resemblance to the latter, nor could have prefigured it to a human sagacity more than a larva could prefigure a chrysalis; and, secondly, that whereas the product, viz., Christianity, never has been nor will be in any danger of ruin, the germ, viz., the Judaic idea of God, the great radiation through which the Deity kept open ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... All day long the Larva of the Dragon-Fly was crawling up and down the Water-Lily's stalk. "Dear me, how stupid it must be to be a Water-Lily!" it said, and peeped up at ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... different in outward appearance from an eel, which turns afterwards into a young eel or 'elver'; and Professor Grassi, who had a big share in elucidating the whole matter, tells us the curious fact that he found the Sicilian fishermen well acquainted with the little transparent larva (the Leptocephalus of modern naturalists), that they knew well what it was, and that they had a name for it—Casentula. Now Aristotle, in a passage which I think has been much misunderstood (and which we must admit to be in part erroneous), tells us ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... curdled—his hair stood on end. That awful solitude, what mysterious and preternatural being could penetrate! 'Who's there?' he cried, in new alarm; 'what spectre—what dread larva, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... sprinkled with the tints and moulds of decay had of a sudden raised themselves erect upon six legs, and begun incontinently to perambulate the Malayan woodlands like vegetable Frankensteins in all their glory. The larva of one such deceptive insect, observed in Nicaragua by sharp-eyed Mr. Belt, appeared at first sight like a mere fragment of the moss on which it rested, its body being all prolonged into little thread-like green filaments, precisely imitating ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... frugilegus, is a bird of considerable intelligence, and is, besides, extremely useful in destroying large quantities of worms and larvA| of destructive insects. It will, it is true, if not watched, pick out, after they are dibbled, both pease and beans from the holes with a precision truly astonishing: a very moderate degree of care is, however, sufficient to prevent this evil, which is greatly overbalanced by the positive good ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... Amphioxus and the Ascidians; but the notion of a genetic connection between the two, and especially the identification of the notochord of the Vertebrate with the axis of the caudal appendage of the larva of the Ascidian, is a novelty which, at first, takes one's breath away. I must confess, however, that the more I have pondered over it, the more grounds appear in its favour, though I am not convinced that there is any real parallelism between the mode of development ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... influence of bacteria. It is further known that parasites can produce tumor-like growths in plants. The large, rough excrescences on the oaks are produced by a fly which lays its eggs in or beneath the bark, and the larva which develops from the egg secretes a substance which causes the cells about it to multiply, and a huge mass is formed which serves the developing insect for both food and protection. Large tumor-like masses are formed on the roots and stalk of cabbages as the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... a page or two in the early history of this brilliant creature. We will go back to the time when it was a tiny egg, laid by the mother Red-admiral shortly before her own death; this egg soon develops into the "larva," or caterpillar—the word, which means a mask, expressing that the butterfly that is to be, is thus disguised ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... Larva also means a skeleton, and Trimalchio, following the Egyptian custom, has one brought in and placed on the table during his famous feast. It is, as one would expect, of silver, and the millionaire freedman points the usual moral—"Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley



Words linked to "Larva" :   wiggler, animal, leptocephalus, hellgrammiate, beast, bladder worm, pollywog, wireworm, caterpillar, strawworm, ant lion, grub, animate being, bot, dobson, ascidian tadpole, doodlebug, antlion, polliwog, caseworm, aphid lion, creature, tadpole, nymph, larval, cercaria, jointworm, aphis lion, brute, fauna, wriggler, mealworm



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