"Retina" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... uncertain clambering motion was now increasing, and likewise the defect of sight. He ran against almost every person and every thing. The cornea was transparent, the iris contracted, there was no opacity of the lens, or pink tint of the retina, but a peculiar glassy appearance, as unconscious of everything around it. An emetic was given, and, after that, an ounce ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... matter were infinitely divisible in this sense, its particles must be imponderable, and a million of such molecules could not weigh more than an infinitely small one. But the particles of that imponderable matter, which, striking upon the retina, give us the sensation of light, are not in a mathematical sense ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... the eye in a dark room, it appears not as an illuminated spark, but as a line of fire; a so-called shooting star, or a flash of lightning produces the same effect. This result is purely physiological, and is due to the fact that the retina of the eye may be considered as practically a sensitized plate of relatively slow speed, and an image impressed upon it remains, before being effaced, for a period of from one-tenth to one-seventh of a second, varying according to the idiosyncrasies ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... its spherical aberration, which is due to the fact that the circumferential and central rays have not the same focus. The human eye labours under a similar defect, and from this, and other causes, it arises that when the naked light from fifty cells is looked at the blur of light upon the retina is sufficient to destroy the definition of the retinal image of the carbons. A long list of indictments might indeed be brought against the eye—its opacity, its want of symmetry, its lack of achromatism, its partial blindness. All these ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... motion of the eye as it moved up and down the spectrum, but refusing to pass out of the blue into the other colours. It was plain that the spot belonged both to the eye and to the blue part of the spectrum. The result to which I have come is, that the appearance is due to the yellow spot on the retina, commonly called the Foramen Centrale of Soemmering. The most convenient method of observing the spot is by presenting to the eye in not too rapid succession, blue and yellow glasses, or, still better, allowing ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls could not roll in their sockets—but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting themselves at my ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for. So that as Trim uttered the words, "a rood and a half of ground, to do what they would with," this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself upon the retina of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... cone-shaped bit of tissue hidden away at the base of the brain in a tiny cave behind and above its larger colleague, the pituitary. Microscopic scrutiny reveals that it is made up in part of nerve cells containing a pigment similar to that present in the cells of the retina, thus clinching the argument for its ancient function as an eye. But the outstanding and specifically glandular cells are large secreting affairs, which too reach back to the tidewater days of our vertebrate ancestors, when Eurypterus and other Crustaceans ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... interrupted the diver; "pierce into you like a gimblet, goin' slap agin the retina, turnin' short down the jugular, right into the heart, where they create an agreeable sort o' fermentation. Oh! Don't I ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... the eye is the organ of vision; by it we perceive light. Stimulate the retina in any way, and we are conscious of the sensation of light; injure or destroy the eye, and vision becomes imperfect or impossible. If eyes did not exist we should probably know nothing about light, and we might be tempted to say ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... At night, or whenever the light is scarce, the eye often requires to grasp all it can. The pupil then expands; more and more light is admitted according as the pupil grows larger. The illumination of the image on the retina is thus effectively controlled in accordance with ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... thoughts, which end in a 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 cord, 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. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... eyes, and open them very cautiously in a minute or so's time. One still sees. The sense of vision is a question of length of vibration, and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of shock to the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time, if the eyes ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... a dense fog enfolds us, and by favor of the great curtain that the sky throws over the earth one might risk it. We are sure at least of not being seen. The fog hermetically closes the perfected retina of the Sausage that must be somewhere up there, enshrouded in the white wadding that raises its vast wall of partition between our lines and those observation posts of Lens and Angres, whence the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... remember the figures of our dreams as optical images, though they have been purely mental conceptions, translated into the terms of actual sight. The impression of a dream-figure, indeed, appears to us to be as much the impression of an image received upon the retina of the eye, as our impressions of images actually so received. The whole thing is strange, of course, but not stranger than wireless telegraphy. It may be that the conditions of telepathy may some day be scientifically defined; and in that case it will probably ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hurtling waves beyond, and just touched the side of the outgoing vessel. Mr. Heatherbloom looked toward the vessel and his pupils dilated. The light leaped into the air with the motion of the naphtha, and, in an instant was gone, but the impress of a single detail remained on his retina—of a side ladder, lowered, no doubt, for the woman, and not yet hoisted into ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... of no fleeting impulse, but of steadfast desire; therefore they were persistent. The likeness of the great bass horn remained upon the retina of his mind's eye, losing nothing of its brazen enormity with the passing of hours, nor abating, in his mind's ear, one whit of its fascinating blatancy. Penrod might have forgotten almost anything else more readily; for such a horn has this double compulsion: ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... eye (Figure 8) has a tough, dense, outer coat, the sclerotic (sc.), within which is a highly vascular and internally pigmented layer, the choroid, upon which the percipient nervous layer, the retina (r.) rests. The chief chamber of the eye is filled with a transparent jelly, the vitreous humour (v.h.). In front of the eye, the white sclerotic passes into the transparent cornea (c.). The epidermis is continued over the outer face of this as a thin, transparent epithelium. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... her they had not done so, and she sat down in a comfortable chair. Her arrival caused a flutter among the other occupants of the terrace, and even the Englishman glanced up. This group had at last made some impression it would seem upon the retina of his eye, for he looked deliberately at them and realized that the two women were quite worthy of ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... shelf, when something went whizzing past his head, and, embedding itself in a stunted oak behind him, shook and quivered with the shock,—a Tonto arrow. Only an instant did he see it, photographed as by electricity upon the retina, when with a sharp stinging pang and whirring "whist" and thud a second arrow, better aimed, tore through the flesh and muscles just at the outer corner of his left eye, and glanced away down the hill. With one spring he gained the edge of the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... termed a "privilege." The red tunic of the soldier, like the red rays of the spectrum which cannot be brought into focus with the other colours, fails to make a sharp impression upon the British retina, but projects an ill-defined image seen through a medium of doubt ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... result of the conversion of one form of motion into another—a conservation, as it were, of energy. Thus, waves of light coming from a luminous body are arrested by the pigment-cells of the retina in our eyes and are transmuted into another form of motion, which is called nerve energy (in this instance, sight). It would seem that as far as sight (vision is not included) is concerned, eyes of ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... photographed on my retina as I sprang forward; but I drew the revolver which had occasioned Winston's mirth when Molly gave it to me at Brig, and in an instant the picture had dissolved. The man in brown dropped the ruecksack, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... proper, to attend him. I rather chose to continue my studies, for, as it happened, he had given me an employment of that kind. As he was passing out of the house he received dispatches: the marines at Retina, terrified at the imminent peril (for the place lay beneath the mountain, and there was no retreat but by ships), entreated his aid in this extremity. He accordingly changed his first design, and what he began with a philosophical he pursued with ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... my readers may remember that in a former paper I suggested the possibility of the existence of an idiotic area in the human mind, corresponding to the blind spot in the human retina. I trust that I shall not be thought to have let my wits go wandering in that region of my own intellectual domain, when I relate a singular coincidence which very lately occurred in my experience, and add a few ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... coat, which constitutes the second investing membrane of the eye, is of a dark brown color upon its outer surface, and of a deep black within. The internal surface of this membrane secretes a dark substance resembling black paint, upon which the retina is spread out, and which is of great importance in the function of vision, as it seems to absorb the rays of light immediately after they have struck upon the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... have been distorted, and too many analogical inferences left altogether out of sight. I mean to say that the intention of the Deity as regards sexual differences—an intention which can be distinctly comprehended only by throwing the exterior (more sensitive) portions of the mental retina casually over the wide field of universal analogy—I mean to say that this intention has not been sufficiently considered. Miss Fuller has erred, too, through her own excessive objectiveness. She judges woman ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... usually present from birth. Hence, the only possible way of correcting it is by the addition to the imperfect eye of carefully fitted lenses or spectacles which will neutralize this mechanical defect. To put it very roughly, if the eye is too flat to bring the light-rays to a focus upon the retina, which is far the commonest condition (the well-known "long sight," or hyperopia), we put a plus or bulging glass before the eye and thus correct its shape. But if the eye is too round and bulging, producing the familiar "short sight," or myopia, we put a minus or concave lens before ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... eye has its limit of vision in the stars of the sixth magnitude. The light of fainter stars than these does not affect the retina enough for them to be seen. A very small telescope penetrates to smaller, and, in general, without doubt, to more distant stars. A more powerful one penetrates deeper into space, and as its power is ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... such dream was floating before his imagination, and its details were painted vivid as life upon the retina of the mind, a quiet voice, but one not without some authority, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... was tried on many other occasions by the young lady, and always with similar success, although never without a certain degree of trepidation, even after she had learned that the spectral appearance in the heavens was nothing more than the picture retained on the retina of the eye. She never saw the phantom without a head, which accounts for her being alive to this day; or even wanting a limb, although she has not been without her share of the trials of the world. It can easily be conceived, however, that certain conditions of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... But always he saw her seated in that room, alone, deserted, playing the piano, reading, with no prospect of company, of change. Mrs. Chepstow had acted her part well. She had stamped a lonely image upon the retina ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... eye-trouble produced by his observations on after-images in the retina (also a classic piece of investigation) produced in Fechner, then about thirty-eight years old, a terrific attack of nervous prostration with painful hyperaesthesia of all the functions, from which he suffered ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... not; but a conception of this nature will bring you near a comprehension of what it is. A luminous body imparts vibration to the luminiferous ether. The vibrations generate similar ones within the retina; these again communicate similar ones to the optic nerve. The nerve conveys similar ones to the brain; the brain, also, similar ones to the unparticled matter which permeates it. The motion of this latter is thought, of which perception is the first undulation. This is the mode by ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... than the ground surge beneath the countless waves of sound. For the voice of the jungle is the voice of love, of hatred, of hope, of despair—and in the night-time, when the dominance of sense-activity shifts from eye to ear, from retina to nostril, it cries aloud its confidences to all the world. But the human mind is not equal to a true understanding of these; for in a tropical jungle the birds and the frogs, the beasts and the insects are sending out their messages so swiftly one upon the other, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... pretense of looking at the frescoed walls, to examine which had been their ostensible purpose in entering. Sylvia was indeed aware of great pictured spaces, crowded dimly with thronging figures, men, horses, women—they reached no more than the outer retina of her eye. She remembered fleetingly that they had something to do with the story of Ste. Genevieve. She wanted intensely to escape from this phantom whom she herself had called up from the void to stalk at her side. But she felt she ought not to let ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... found by supposing all the nerves of involuntary motion which supply that tract with vitality, suddenly to be gifted with the exquisite sensitiveness to their own processes which is produced by its correlative object in some organ of special sense—the whole organism assimilating itself to a retina or a finger-tip. Sleep now disappeared. This initiated an entire month during which the patient had not one moment ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... moving from object to object scarcely a suggestion of this blurred appearance can be detected. The phenomenon is striking, since, if the eye moves in the same direction as the train, it is certain that the images on the retina succeed one another even more rapidly than when the eye is at rest. A supposition which occurs to one at once as a possible explanation is that perchance during eye-movement the retinal stimulations ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... heavy train over a high trestle; and immediately the air ahead of us was filled with ducks towering. They mounted, and wheeled, and circled back or darted away. The sky became fairly obscured with them in the sense that it seemed inconceivable that hither space could contain another bird. Before the retina of the eye they swarmed exactly as a nearer cloud of ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... advanced the following theory of these instinctive reactions. Animals of the type of those mentioned are automatically orientated by the light in such a way that symmetrical elements of their retina (or skin) are struck by the rays of light at the same angle. In this case the intensity of light is the same for both retinae or symmetrical ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... libraries and museums, grand churches and chapels, and extensive buildings and botanical gardens, were rushed through and passed by, as if the charm and beauty of Oxford's scenes consisted rather in making the images of them flit in quick succession across the retina of the eye, than in examining, studying ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... that I am well off in a world which, I am told, knows neither cold nor sound, but is made in terms of size, shape, and inherent qualities; for at least every object appears to my fingers standing solidly right side up, and is not an inverted image on the retina which, I understand, your brain is at infinite though unconscious labour to set back on its feet. A tangible object passes complete into my brain with the warmth of life upon it, and occupies the same place that it does in space; for, without egotism, the mind is as large as the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... but there wasn't a map or copy of 'rules and regulations' hanging on the yellowish white walls that I can't see now, whenever I shut my eyes. I guess they were all photographed on my 'mental retina,' as the writing folks say. The three officers were in full uniform, to do honour to the case, and of course there wasn't a man present dressed in 'cits.' All were army chaps, even to the headquarters clerk who took notes of the proceedings, the orderly who kept the door, and the witnesses. There ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that which photographs, as it were, upon the brain the visual impressions that objects have made upon the retina, in such a manner that the thought can reconstruct them ideally. This, in particular, is the form of memory required by designers of all kinds, and, like the other forms of visual memory, is susceptible of education. The child is first ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... model eye in which selenium in circuit with a battery and galvanometer takes the place of the retina of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... thirteenth magnitude, and possibly variable to a slight degree. If you can not see them at first, turn your eye toward one side of the field of view, and thus, by bringing their images upon a more sensitive part of the retina, you may glimpse them. The sight is not much, yet it will repay you, as every glance into the depths of the ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... close to the back of the optic chiasma these growths affect the fibres passing to the nasal half of each retina, and so give rise to bilateral temporal hemianopsia, and although there is no choked disc, the optic nerves undergo primary atrophy from pressure, and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... up. At first I was as incapable as a swathed infant—stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak and very hungry. I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table and press ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... to be sensitive to rays unknown to the ordinary retina, this extraordinary sight could not be the sense that warns the butterfly at a distance and brings it hastening to the bride. Distance and the objects interposed ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... older man's look dilate with the strained horror of one who gazed back through the dimming years to see a ghost. He would have seen sorrow, and grief, and a great remorse rising to James Thorold's eyes. He might even have seen the shadow of another bier cast upon the retina of his father's sight. He might have seen through his father's watching the memory of another man who had once lain on the very spot where Isador Framberg was lying, a man who had died for his country ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... know not what celestial flame, the like of which all the rest of nature does not afford. These eyes are a sort of looking-glasses, wherein all the objects of the whole world are painted by turns and without confusion in the bottom of the retina that the thinking part of man may see them in those looking-glasses. But though we perceive all objects by a double organ, yet we never see the objects double, because the two nerves that are subservient to sight in our eyes are but two branches that unite in one pipe, as the two glasses of a ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... attention consequently necessary causes both the eyes and the brain to tire. Most persons quickly find this out themselves, and the tendency is rather to hold the book too near, for the nearer the object to the eye, the larger its picture upon the retina, or back eye wall. But here we encounter another danger. The nearer the object the eyes are concentrated upon, the greater the muscular effort necessary; so that by holding the book too near, the labor of reading ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary brothers. When my eyes dwell on any object, or whenever they are closed, there appear on a bluish film a number of mathematical squares, which are the reflection of the fine network of the retina, succeeded by blotches which subside into printed characters, apparently forming distinct words, arranged in straight lines as in a printed book; the monosyllables are often legible. This is the process ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that, in the nature of things, many minds must change their key now and then, on penalty of getting out of tune or losing their voices. You know, I suppose,—he said,—what is meant by complementary colors? You know the effect, too, which the prolonged impression of any one color has on the retina. If you close your eyes after looking steadily at a RED object, you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... discourses of an idiot. Fatalities of flesh and blood, unending strife,—I saw all pass before my eyes, until night caused me to lose my taste for day, and now I cannot distinguish flowers from thistles. Everything is confused in my wearied retina. ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... circulatory process which, in its spasms of activity, gives rise to spots, produces in its regular course the singular "marbled" appearance, for the recording of which we are no longer at the mercy of the fugitive or delusive impressions of the human retina. And precisely this circulatory process it is which gives to our great luminary its permance as a sun, or warming ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... travels in straight lines and, striking objects before us, is reflected in all directions. Some of these rays passing through a point situated behind the lenses of the eye, strike the retina. The multiplication of these rays on the retina produces a picture of whatever is before the eye, such as can be seen on the ground glass at the back of a photographer's camera, or on the table of a camera obscura, both ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... nevertheless, as a matter of fact the eye-lids are not wholly opaque. Sight may be obtained through them, as you may prove by closing your eyes and moving your fingers before them. The lids transmit light to the retina and it is quite likely that you are frequently awakened by a beam of light falling upon your closed eye-lids. For this reason, one who is inclined to be wakeful should shut out from the bed-room all avenues whereby light may enter ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... Mossop, of Edinburgh, conducted a series of experiments on each other, examining the eye by means of the ophthalmoscope while the system was under the influence of various drugs. They found that the nerves controlling the delicate blood-vessels of the retina were paralyzed by a dose of about ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... of writing-paper, which he proceeded to stitch carefully beneath the lining of his waistcoat; after which he blew out his slim candle, and with a heavy sigh got into bed. For some moments after he had blown out the candle did the image of it remain on his aching and excited retina; and just so long did the thoughts of ten thousand a-year dwell on his fancy, fading, however, quickly away amid the thickening gloom of doubts, and fears, and miseries, which oppressed him. There he lies, stretched on his bed, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... cosiest room in town,' said Colonel Delville, whereupon Mrs. Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company on scientific principles why the room was comfortable, expatiating upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately discovered by a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... conductor, who, unemployed during her number, sat on a chair under his desk. Before recommencing she gazed boldly at the house, and certain placards—'Smoking permitted,' 'Emergency exit,' 'Ices,' and 'Fancy Dress Balls'—were fixed for ever on the retina of her eye. At the end of the second movement there was more applause, and the conductor tapped appreciation with his stick against the pillar of his desk; the leader of the listless orchestra also tapped with his fiddle-bow and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... lenses that can be moved forward and back until they form a sharp focus on the screen. Even the lens in your eye has muscles that make it flatter and rounder, so that it can make a clear image on the sensitive retina in the back of your eye. The lens in the eyes of elderly people often becomes too hard to be regulated in this way, and so they have to wear one kind of glasses to see things near them clearly and another kind to see things ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... for this are based on natural laws and are explained in a very simple manner in a learned article by Dr. W. K. Carr which originally appeared in Shop Notes Quarterly. Impressions continue upon the retina of the eye, says Dr. Carr, about one-sixth of a second after the object has been moved. For this reason a point of light or flame whirled swiftly around appears as a continuous ring. Or take a piece or red ribbon, place it on white paper, look ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... sward; the moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by like vague wailings of the wind—all this might be taken for an artful appropriation of Victor Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant page, read in early youth, still lingered on the retina of M. Rostand's memory. If such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity of the conception or the playwright's presentment ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... delight; a luscious fruit dropped, with all its royal gloss, into the river beside her, and she could not put out a hand to catch it. She saw now all that passed, but no longer with any afterthoughts of reference to herself; so sights might slip across the retina of a dead man's eye; her identity seemed fading from her, as from some substance on the point of dissolution into the wide universe. She felt like one who, under an aesthetic influence, seems to himself careering through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... former on my balcony, and the united efforts of Stenson, Antoinette, and myself have not yet succeeded in making them bloom; but I love the unassuming velvety leaves. Carlotta is a flaring orchid and produces on my retina a sensation of disquiet. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... magic, the sudden blotting out of the slim human figure, the substitution of the draped form as she moved from the light into the shadow. But on Kingozi's retina remained the vision of her as she was. He shifted, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... reconnaissance of the imagery of Uranus, the legend of whose incognito related to a poniard wound in the abdomen received while cutting a swath in the interests of telegraphy and posthumous photography. Meantime an unctuous orthoepist applied a homeopathic restorative to the retina of an objurgatory spaniel (named Daniel) and tried to perfect the construction of a behemoth which had got mired in pygmean slough, while listening to the elegiac soughing of ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... colouring that a summer's mid-morning throws over imperial Rome. Above, that canopy of translucent blue, iridescent and scintillating with a thousand colours, flicks of emerald and crimson, of rose and of mauve that merge and dance together, divide and reunite before the retina, until the gaze loses consciousness of all colour save one all-pervading ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of impressions on the retina proves that the effect of external influences on nerve-vesicles is not necessarily transitory. In this there is a correspondence to the duration, the emergence, the extinction, of impressions on photographic ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... several children—are too apt to try to quiet a restless child by placing it near a bright flame; much evil to the future use of those eyes is the outgrowth of such a pernicious habit. Light throws into action certain cells of that wonderful structure of the eye, the retina, and an over stimulus perverts the action of those cells. The result is that by this over-stimulation the seeds of future trouble are sown. Let the adult gaze upon the arc of an electric light or into the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... blue eyes may make up what Baron Hubner would euphemistically describe as the "beau type d'un gentleman anglais," but when worn with a funny-shaped hat, a short coat, tight trousers, and a Penang lawyer, the picture produced on the retina of a Chinese mind is unmistakably that ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... and the eyes there; and "light" means the effect of the one on the other;—and perhaps, also—(Plato saw farther into that mystery than any one has since, that I know of),—on something a little way within the eyes; but we may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... mountains in the coals of his grate; another by gentleness only sunshine and grasses on Monadnock. You will not say that he chooses, but that he is chosen so to see. Light opens the eye without our intention, and we are at no trouble to paint on the retina what must there appear. Success is fidelity to that which must appear. Weak men discuss forever the laws of Art, and contrive how to paint, questioning whether this or that element should have emphasis or be shown. If there is any question, there will be no Art. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... and thought which he bestowed upon its elaboration. Ralph Nickleby, Squeers, Smike, little Nell, Quilp, Barnaby Rudge, Steerforth, Paul Dombey, Lady Dedlock, Joe, each and all show how carefully they were elaborated; how distinctly they presented themselves to the retina of the mind of their distinguished creator. When this is borne in mind, it will be at once understood why the Mrs. Pipchin of Hablot Browne was not the Mrs. Pipchin with whose outward appearance and mental peculiarities the author himself was ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... sensation itself, in all the simple ideas of one sense, are two ideas; and two ideas so different and distant one from another, that no two can be more so. And therefore, should Des Cartes's globules strike never so long on the retina of a man who was blind by a gutta serena, he would thereby never have any idea of light, or anything approaching it, though he understood never so well what little globules were, and what striking on another body was. And therefore the Cartesians very well distinguish between that light ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... has been so kind as to give me the following remarks on certain inherited imperfections. First, hypermetropia, or morbidly long sight: in this affection, the organ, instead of being spherical, is too flat from front to back, and is often altogether too small, so that the retina is brought too forward for the focus of the humours; consequently a convex glass is required for clear vision of near objects, and frequently even of distant ones. This state occurs congenitally, or at a very early age, often in several children of the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... the advice is well thought-out. The conclusion that the public will have an accurate view is not warranted, for the state of its eyes must be examined, to ascertain whether it is near or far-sighted, or if the retina naturally, or through habit, is sensitive to certain colors. In the same way the French of the eighteenth century must be considered, the structure of their inward vision, that is to say, the fixed form of their intelligence ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... five minutes of a walk down a city street a man has hundreds of visual images flashed upon the retina of the eye. His eye sees every little line in the faces of the passers-by, every detail of their clothing, the decorations on the buildings, the street signs overhead, the articles in the shop-windows, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... which more precisely coincide with Julius Faber's explanations.) "If, for example, we look steadfastly at the sun for a second or two, and then immediately close our eyes, the image, or spectrum, of the sun remains for a long time present to the mind, as if the light were still acting on the retina. It then gradually fades and disappears; but if we continue to keep the eyes shut, the same impression will, after a certain time, recur, and again vanish: and this phenomenon will be repeated at intervals, the sensation becoming fainter at each renewal. It is probable that these reappearances ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suddenly illuminated by a vivid flash of sheet lightning that for an infinitesimal fraction of a second seemed to set the entire visible firmament ablaze, and caused every detail of the brig's hull and equipment to imprint a clear and perfectly distinct picture of itself upon the retina. They all listened for thunder, but none came. Suddenly, however, a few heavy drops of rain pattered upon the deck, and an instant later down came a perfect deluge with the sound of millions of small shot roaring and rattling ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... time the lad was so dazed and bewildered that he scarcely comprehended his good fortune. His eyes had been totally unaccustomed to light for so long a time that the retina was overpowered by the sudden flood of it and required time to accommodate itself to the new order of things. A few minutes were sufficient. And then, when he looked about and saw that he was indeed outside of the cave which had been such ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... furnishes an example. Its eyes also have become small and are deeply hidden in the muscles, although they are by no means as much degenerated as in the Proteus anguineus, and are still possessed of a lens and a retina. Their nerve of vision, however, has become very imperfect, and its connection with the brain is interrupted, so that the animal for this reason can have no perception of light. Notwithstanding the above, however, it is doubtful whether the degeneration and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... evening, than in the stronger light of the day; like owls, and bats, and many quadrupeds, and flying insects. When the eye is inflamed, great light becomes eminently painful, owing to the increased irritative motions of the retina, and the consequent increased sensation. Thus when the eye is dazzled with sudden light, the pain is not owing to the motion of the iris; for it is the contraction of the iris, which relieves the pain from sudden light; but to the too violent contractions of the moving fibres, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... drugs available in this kind of landscape culture; how sent through the crystalline structures of the eye with clearing effect; how to polish the retina and the surfaces to a sparkle? What drugs for such culture? And yet the materia medica needs a hoist to place it on the shelf. These external changes that become clearly apparent to even dull eyes are the changes that also go on in the very ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... such as glass, stone, and water, shine crimson in the light of a setting sun; but there is also the fact, which is not well known, that the eye may show its own hidden red—the crimson colour which is at the back of the retina and which is commonly supposed to be seen only with the ophthalmoscope. Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends and acquaintances that there are instances of persons in which the iris when directly in front of the observer with the light behind him, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... pressure results from prolonged sitting or lying in one position, and as a result pain compels a muscular action that shifts the damaging pressure—this is the pain of anemia; when the rays of the blazing sun shine directly upon the retina, pain immediately causes a protective muscular action—the lid is closed, the head turns away—this is light pain; when standing too close to a blazing fire the excessive heat causes a pain which results in the protective muscular ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... of things vary as we move, and this means that the quantity of sensation, when I observe the apple from a nearer point, is greater. The man of science tells me that the image which the object looked at projects upon the retina of the eye grows larger as we approach objects. The thing, then, may remain unchanged; our sensations will vary according to the impression which is ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... itself, even then, but slowly and imperfectly. But the beauty of form and color, the grace of motion, the harmony of tone, are seen and felt and appreciated at once. The image of substantial and material loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes. It does not rise before us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful varieties of thought and feeling and action, the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... qualms at the pit of the stomach, while maleficent goblins kept puncturing their aguish, trembling legs with needles. Another of the physical effects of their fear was that in the congested condition of the blood vessels of the retina they beheld thousands upon thousands of small black specks flitting past them, as if it had been possible to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... needs be flattened to get it on one retina. The picture of a solid thing, although it is flattened and simplified, is not necessarily a lie. Surely, surely, in the end, by degrees, and steps, something of this sort, some such understanding, as this Utopia must come. First here, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the case with smaller changes? There are persons who can see distinctly only in a dull light, and this condition depends, I believe, on the abnormal sensitiveness of the retina, and is known to be inherited. Now, if a bird, for instance, received some great advantage from seeing well in the twilight, all the individuals with the most sensitive retina would succeed best and be the most likely to survive; and why should not all those which happened to have the eye ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... described depicts things on the retina the unaccustomed way up. By using a concave glass instead of a convex, and placing it so as to prevent any image being formed, except on the retina direct, this inconvenience ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... faculty, but our imaginative one, is King over us, I might say Priest and Prophet, to lead us heavenward, or magician and wizard to lead us hellward. The understanding is indeed thy window—too clear thou canst not make it; but phantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving retina, healthy or diseased.' It would be easy to multiply instances of this, the most obvious and interesting trait of Mr. Carlyle's writing; but I must bring my remarks upon it to a close by reminding you of his two favourite quotations, which have both ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Which makes it shine dimly Under the electric lamps. Chairs are ranged in rows Like sepia seeds Waiting fulfilment. The chalk-white spot of a cook's cap Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall— Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow Through the wavering uncertainty of steam. Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections, Ice-green carboys, shifting—greener, bluer—with the jar of moving water. Jagged green-white bowls of ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... and but for her presence I could have explained the incident: called it, say, subjection of the mental powers to the domination of physical reflex action, and the man's presence could have been termed a false impression on the retina. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... that wherever the painter is painting, his retina must still hold some sensation of the place he has left; therefore there is in every scene not only the scene itself, but remembrance of the scene that preceded it. This is not quite clear, is it? No. But I think ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... spouting. The cheers expired instantly. ... The balloon was gone. It was spirited away as if by some furious and mighty power that had grown impatient in waiting for it. There remained for a few seconds on the collective retina of the spectators a vision of the inclined car swinging near the roof like the tail of a kite. And then nothing! Blankness! Blackness! Already the balloon was lost to sight in the vast stormy ocean of the night, a plaything of the winds. The spectators became once more ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of birth. The muscles act irregularly; indeed, the lack of muscular adjustment is such that movements of the eye likely to alarm the parents are regularly observed in very young infants. Furthermore they cannot focus images which fall upon their eyes. The retina, which receives visual impressions, has reached such development at birth, however, that sensations of light can be perceived. For example, if a lamp is suddenly flashed before the face of a newly born baby it cries. From this and similar evidence, indicating that strong ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... screen merely by turning a strong light sideways into my eye. And the explanation of it was quite simple. The retinal vessels stand out slightly in relief, and thus a perfect shadow of the system is cast on the retina. It was this shadow I saw, and the white screen was merely a convenient background for it. I don't know if I ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... called the cornea. At the same time, the little sensitive spot at the bottom of the eye-pit spread out into the shape of the bottom of a cup, called the retina; and then the hollow of that cup between the retina and the cornea filled up with a clear, soft, animal jelly called the vitreous humor, and we have the eye as it ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... saw it not. At least it made no sensible impression on him. His mental retina was capable of receiving only two pictures: the concentrated accumulation of past sin—the terrible anticipation of future retribution. Between these two, present danger ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes, to see those pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily considered ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... L. T. Troland of Harvard tells us, "are built up on the same principle as the ordinary 'half-tone' engravings; that is, they are made up of minute dottings or stripplings far too small to be detected by the eye. . . . The sensitiveness of the retina is so great that a visual sensation can be produced by relatively few Quanta of the right kind of light." Through a master's divine knowledge of light phenomena, he can instantly project into perceptible manifestation the ubiquitous light atoms. The actual form of the projection-whether ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... "leucoma," and "operation." He also heard Herophilus declare that an injury of the cornea by the flame of the torch was the cause of the blindness. In the work which led him to the discovery of the retina in the eye he had devoted himself sedulously to the organs of sight. This case seemed as if it had been created for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... only to be a lord, it was more than that. It was to be famous, a national character, whose picture was printed on the retina of the million. Never had Jones felt more inclined to stick to his position than now, with the hounds on his traces, a tramp for his companion, and darkness ahead. He felt that if he could once get to London, once lay his hands on that eight thousand pounds lying ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... therefore, not only the power of conveying impressions, but of preserving their continuity through any impediment. The formal impressions of a chair or table, which are conveyed by ordinary vision in right lines to the retina, if these lines be distorted by any intervening want of uniformity in the matter, are proportionally distorted. Let striae of glass of different density intervene in an optical lens, and the objects are distorted; increase the number of striae, the object is more imperfect; and carry the molecular ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... leather pieces strapped across the insides of their hands as a protection against splinters. These, like all other especial accoutrements, seemed to Bob somehow romantic, to be desired, infinitely picturesque. He passed on with the clear, yellow-white of the pine boards lingering back of his retina. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... of any optical apparatus; and the same with every other part of the body. There is nothing but one bare, smooth, white skin. And this sightless creature, deprived of any special nervous points served by ocular power, is extremely sensitive to the light. Its whole skin is a sort of retina, incapable of seeing, of course, but able, at any rate, to distinguish between light and darkness. Under the direct rays of a searching sun, the grub's distress could be easily explained. We ourselves; ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... colour of the Locust is not sufficiently conspicuous to attract attention by itself. Then let us try red, the brightest colour to our retina and probably also to the Spiders'. None of the game hunted by the Epeirae being clad in scarlet, I make a small bundle out of red wool, a bait of the size of a Locust. I ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... point to open his eye-lids the smallest possible bit, so that any one looking at him would have failed to observe any motion in them. The little slit however, admitted the whole scene to the retina, and he perceived that ten of the most cut-throat-looking men conceivable were seated in a semicircle in the act of receiving portions from the big pot into tin plates. Most of them were clothed in hunters' ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sound died a murmur in his throat. His eyes were on the advancing figure; it seemed as if that object were to be forever branded on the retina. Still as he gazed, he was aware of another form, one sitting on the quay, unseen in shadow like himself, and seeing what he saw, and motionless as he. Would Mrs. Laudersdale dip her hands in murder? It all passed in a second of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... hard but clean pillows, for wondering about that look of Monica's, and its meaning; and whenever I shut my eyes, hordes of red and yellow figures poured out of white houses upon white roads, forming irritating, kaleidoscopic patterns on my tired retina. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... shortsightedness, a condition in which the axis of the eye gradually grows longer. This lengthening is accompanied by stretching of the eyeball, and such children always run the risk of the inner and most important part of the wall of the eye, the retina or nerve layer, being torn away, and blindness resulting. When nearsightedness is discovered early, and glasses are given that make distant vision normal, and all needless near work forbidden, the ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... field and view the surrounding landscape, vibrations in the ether carry to us a picture of everything within the range of our vision. It is as sad as it is true however, that "we have eyes and see not," as the Savior said. These vibrations impinge upon the retina of our eyes, even to the very smallest details, but they usually do not penetrate to our consciousness, and therefore are not remembered. Even the most powerful impressions fade in course of time so that we cannot call them back at will when they ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... picture on Van Buren's retina—that gaunt, savage being, hairy, wild of eye, instinct with hatred and malice, posing awkwardly, and the sun-lit barrel of polished steel, just before its yawning muzzle belched lead and a ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... as when I suffered my eye only to glance in its vicinity alone. I was not, of course, at that time aware that this apparent paradox was occasioned by the center of the visual area being less susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the exterior portions of the retina. This knowledge, and some of another kind, came afterwards in the course of an eventful five years, during which I have dropped the prejudices of my former humble situation in life, and forgotten the bellows-mender in far ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the corpse for some time, impressing a picture of it in every detail on his mental retina. Struck by an idea, he bent over and touched the patch of blood in the dead man's breast, then looked at his finger. There was no stain. The blood was quite congealed. Then he tried to unclench the judge's right ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the X-ray, observed that if X-rays are allowed to enter the eye of an observer who is in complete darkness, the retina receives a stimulus, and light is perceived, due to the fluorescent action of the X-rays upon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... 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 ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... what people thought! and it was true. They were "clean run to seed." He went to get his cart. (He did not speak to Kitty.) His home came before his eyes like a photograph: fences down, gates gone, houses ruinous, fields barren. It came to him as if stamped on the retina by a lightning-flash. He had worked—worked hard. But it was no use. It was true: they were "clean run to seed." He helped his mother and Kitty into the cart silently—doggedly. Kitty smiled at him. It hurt him like a blow. He saw every worn place, every ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... was busy on the case and had wired the authorities of the adjoining States to be on the look out for the guilty parties. There followed a description of the guilty parties photographed accurately from Mr. Bat Brydges's retina. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of Vision,' which was published by the Physiological Society of London, in November 1900. It may be mentioned here, by the way, that, in course of his investigations on the Response of the Living and Non-Living substances, Dr. Bose constructed an "artificial retina" to study the characteristics of the excitatory change produced by a stimulus on the retina and these characteristics gave him a clue to the unexpected discovery of the "binocular alteration of vision" in man—"each eye supplements its fellow by turns, instead of acting as a continuously ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... man are placed in circular cavities of the skull, beneath the anterior lobes of the cerebrum. Three membranes form the lining of this inner sphere of the eye, called respectively the Sclerotic, Choroid, and Retina. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... breeze, after lunch, which took us gently up past Wargrave and Shiplake. Mellowed in the drowsy sunlight of a summer's afternoon, Wargrave, nestling where the river bends, makes a sweet old picture as you pass it, and one that lingers long upon the retina of memory. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... his retina had reacted like a photographic plate, a picture developed itself, which, in the end, by a series of recurrences, became quite singularly circumstantial. The dog-cart and its occupants, with the stretch of brown road, and the hedge-rows and meadows at either side, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... circumscribed spot on the cheeks, over the parotidean plexus of nerves, and then increased into a circle; between this blushing circle and the blush on the neck there was an evident line of demarcation, although both arose simultaneously. The retina, which is naturally red in the albino, invariably increased at the same time in redness. Every one must have noticed how easily after one blush fresh blushes chase each other over the face. Blushing is preceded by a peculiar sensation ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... orange tints on the mountains, I mean to say—how are they going to be held fast by the optic apparatus? The lens, you understand. I want to be able to shove them into a sketch-book, like you fellows. Well, how? That's what I want to know. How to turn my retina ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas |
