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Membrane   /mˈɛmbrˌeɪn/   Listen
Membrane

noun
1.
A thin pliable sheet of material.
2.
A pliable sheet of tissue that covers or lines or connects the organs or cells of animals or plants.  Synonym: tissue layer.



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"Membrane" Quotes from Famous Books



... has this sucking fish got to do with it?" And I pointed to the red membrane already drying up ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... distributions of substance, we find differences of tissue corresponding to differences of relative position. In all the higher Protozoa, as also in the Protophyta, we meet with a fundamental differentiation into cell-membrane and cell-contents, answering to that fundamental contrast of conditions implied by the words outside and inside. And on passing from what are roughly classed as unicellular organisms to the lowest of those which consist of aggregated cells, we equally observe the connexion ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... greenish-yellow colour, the tip of the bill being black, arcuated, and truncated. Nostrils large, round, open, and situated in the middle of the bill. Wings ample, third quill longest. Legs long, light dull-red, and naked to a little above the knee. Feet black, webbed, the membrane being deeply notched, great toe articulated to the metatarsus. Plumage slate-grey, with black spots upon the wings and back. Wing-feathers dusky black, and edged at the tip with pale grey. Irides ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... size of a mignionette seed; the ear consists of two conjugate spikes, the grain being arranged on the outer edge of either spike, and alternated; they are attached by a peduncle to the husk. The epicarp, or outer membrane, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... menstruation. This was the theory of Born and Fraenkel. [Footnote: See Biedl, Internal Secretory Organs (Eng. trans.), 1912, p. 404.] Biedl's conclusion is that the periodic development and disintegration of the uterine mucous membrane in the menstrual cycle is due to the hormone of the interstitial cells of the ovary. Leopold and Ravana found that ovulation as a rule coincides with menstruation, but may take place at any time. Here, again, the problem must be considered from the point ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... numb and rather all in. Another few minutes would have done for me, I am sure, but the warmth of the interior helped to revive me, aided and abetted by some brandy which Bradley poured down my throat, from which it nearly removed the membrane. That brandy would ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... interior of the mouth of certain species of the shark family, given specially to a diet of oysters, is thickly set with a series of uniformly diffused minute teeth, and another fish of these seas has a gizzard composed of an intensely tough material, lined with membrane resembling shark's skin. This fish swallows cockles and such like molluscs whole, and grinds them ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... resulted from this observation with great promptness. In the instrument first made, sound vibrated a membrane diaphragm supporting a bit of iron near an electromagnet; a line joined this simple device of three elements to another like it; a battery in the line magnetized both electromagnet cores; the vibration ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... a purely diagrammatic section of the ear, showing the various parts distorted and out of proportion. Beginning at the left, we have the outer ear, the lobe, to gather in the sound-waves on to the membrane of the tympanum, or drum, to which is attached the first of a series of ossicles, or small bones. The last of these presses against an opening in the inner ear, a cavity surrounded by the bones of the head. Inside the inner ear is a ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... delicate in all the world. I never dash myself, like blundering bird, against a wire. If you would know the secret, look at the trembling bristles on my muzzle, look at the earlets within my ears, look at the sensitive wing-membrane between my fingers. No quiver in the air escapes me. I have the sixth sense of the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... my information, however, is received through the fingers. They are properly the organs of touch. Although this sense is distributed over the whole body, even to the mucous membrane that lines the mouth and covers the tongue. When the finger's ends have been hardened by labor, or from any cause, the lips and tongue are the most sensitive, and are often used in threading needles, stringing beads, etc, very innocent uses surely to put the tongue to. This sense ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... the humerus articulate with the glenoid cavities of the radius and a portion of the ulna. Two strong collateral ligaments pass from the distal end of the humerus to the head of the radius. The capsular ligament is a large, loose membrane which encloses the articular portion of the humerus with the radius and ulna and also the radioulnar articulation. It is attached anteriorly to the tendon of the biceps brachii (flexor brachii). The capsule extends downward beneath the origin of these digital flexors. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... be placed; differing, however, in having incumbent cotyledons, and in the mucous covering of its seeds. The mucus proceeds from short tubes covering the whole surface of the testa, each containing a spiral fibre, which seems to be distinct from the membrane of the tube. A structure essentially similar is known to occur generally in several families: to what extent or in what genera of Cruciferae it may exist, I have not ascertained; it is not found, however, in those species of Matthiola which ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... length, through which the tenants crawl into their home. There is always a small window in the front of the igloo. The window space is not glazed, of course, but is covered with the thin, intestinal membrane of seals, skilfully seamed together. To a traveler across the dark and snowy winter waste, the yellow light from the interior lamp is visible, sometimes, a ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... of alcohol be taken into the stomach, it will be absorbed there, but, previous to absorption, it will have to undergo a proper degree of dilution with water, for there is this peculiarity respecting alcohol when it is separated by an animal membrane from a watery fluid like the blood, that it will not pass through the membrane until it has become charged, to a given point of dilution, with water. It is itself, in fact, so greedy for water, it will pick it up from watery textures, and deprive them of it until, by its saturation, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... will now be to guard the woman against exerting too great a force during the last few pains. About this time, or before it in many instances, the "waters will break." This means simply that the bag or membrane in the contents of which the child floated burst because of the pressure of a pain. This is a perfectly natural procedure and should not cause any worry: simply ignore it as if it had no bearing on the labor in any way. As soon as ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.

... azooespermic discharge, made up mainly from the secretion of the seminal vesicles, the accessory glands of the urethra, the prostate, and Cowper's glands, as well as the discharge from the secretory glands distributed along the course of the urethral mucous membrane. Some of the cases of this form of impotence have exhibited wonderful copulating desire and power of endurance, and, even if unfecundating, they must be said to be better off than the victims of that other ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... straightening the noses and the ears, nor did it enlighten mothers as to methods of teaching babies to walk immediately after birth. No. It proclaimed first of all that Nature itself will determine the shape of heads, noses, and ears; that man will speak without having the membrane of the tongue cut; and further, that legs will grow straight and that the function of walking will come ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... it is over. The Fly does not go back to the bird, a proof that her ovaries are exhausted. The next day she is dead. The eggs are dabbed in a continuous layer, at the entrance to the throat, at the root of the tongue, on the membrane of the palate. Their number appears considerable; the whole inside of the gullet is white with them. I fix a little wooden prop between the two mandibles of the beak, to keep them open and enable me ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... new era dawned when the passages by which the breath of life unceasingly comes and goes were transferred to the region of the mouth also. The nerves of smell quickly spread themselves over the lining membrane of those passages and became warders of the gate, challenging every waft of air that entered the body and examining what it carried. Thenceforth this region comprising the mouth, nostrils and surrounding ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... "while soluble crystalloids are always highly sapid, soluble colloids are singularly insipid," as might be expected; for, as the sentient extremities of the nerves of the palate "are probably protected by a colloidal membrane," impermeable to other colloids, a colloid, when tasted, probably never reaches those nerves. Again, "it has been observed that vegetable gum is not digested in the stomach; the coats of that organ dialyse the soluble food, absorbing crystalloids, and rejecting all colloids." ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... and muscles of the back there sprang a second pair of arms arching up above their heads. Between these and the lower arms, and continued from them down the side to the ankles, there appeared to be a flexible membrane covered with a light feathery down, pure white on the inside, but on the back a brilliant golden yellow, deepening to bronze towards the edges, round which ran a deep ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... account of this very identity of composition. Hence the opinion is not unworthy of a closer investigation, that gelatine, when taken in the dissolved state, is again converted, in the body, into cellular tissue, membrane and cartilage; that it may serve for the reproduction of such parts of these tissues as have been wasted, ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... is, in fact, a little spheroidal bag (Fig. 12), formed of a delicate transparent membrane called the 'vitelline membrane', and about 1/130 to 1/120th of an inch in diameter. It contains a mass of viscid nutritive matter—the 'yelk'—within which is inclosed a second much more delicate spheroidal bag, called the 'germinal vesicle' (a). In ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... themselves to the softer portions of the bark, often encircling the root several times, but later bore with the grain of the wood and by the end of the season so destroy the roots as to leave only the thin membrane of the outer bark intact. This pest is difficult to deal with. The borers cannot be removed by "worming" as in the peach, and neither can the roots be protected by sprays or washes. No one variety of the grape seems more immune than another. Thorough cultivation in the months of June and ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... any one stay by a sinking ship, or volunteer for a forlorn hope? Why do you sit up all night with a case of confluent smallpox, or suck away the poisonous membrane from a diphtheric throat, as I hear you did only last week? I don't know. Just because, if we are made on certain lines, we have to, I suppose. One would be a trifle too much ashamed to be seen in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... passage 5 or 6 times the length of the body, lined throughout with mucous membrane, extends from the mouth to the anus, and includes mouth, fauces, pharynx, oesophagus, stomach, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... forgotten. Even the Count du Moncel, who was ever ready to welcome a promising invention, evidently regarded it as a fantastic notion. It is very doubtful if Reis had ever heard of it. He was led to conceive a similar apparatus by a study of the mechanism of the human ear, which he knew to contain a membrane, or 'drum,' vibrating under the waves of sound, and communicating its vibrations through the hammer-bone behind it to the auditory nerve. It therefore occurred to him, that if he made a diaphragm in imitation of the drum, and caused it by vibrating to make and break ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... in trying, Of course you hear me, as easy as lying; No pain at all, like a surgical trick, To make you squall, and struggle, and kick, Like Juno, or Rose, Whose ear undergoes Such horrid tugs at membrane and gristle, For being as deaf as yourself to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... and Hazel blessed the rain that drove them to this sociability. He had prepared the bladder of a young seal which had drifted ashore dead. This membrane, dried in the sun, formed a piece of excellent parchment, and he desired to draw upon it a map of the island. To accomplish this, the first thing was to obtain a good red ink from the cochineal, which is crimson. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... horses' feet, he flung himself off his saddle and cried out, "A late hawk's nest, I declare!" And so it proved, for a little searching in a sheltered and tolerably dry spot revealed a couple of eggs, precisely like hens' eggs, until broken, when their delicate pale green inner membrane betrayed their dangerous origin. It is chiefly owing to this practice of laying in swamps that the various kinds of hawk increase and thrive as they do, for if it were possible to get at them, the shepherds would ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... orbits was exactly double. Of Hamburghs I have examined four skulls (male and female) of the pencilled sub-breed, and one (male) of the spangled sub-breed; the nasal bones stand remarkably wide apart, but in a variable degree; consequently narrow membrane-covered spaces are left between the tips of the two ascending branches of the pre-maxillary bones, which are rather short, and between these branches and the nasal bones. The surface of the frontal bone, on which the branches of the premaxillary rest, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... query, "whether the vampire of India and that of South America be of one species," Mr. Waterton replies, "I beg to say that I consider them distinct species. I have never yet seen a bat from India with a membrane rising perpendicularly from the end of its nose; nor have I ever been able to learn that bats in India suck animals, though I have questioned many people on this subject. I could only find two species ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... would be obliged to him if he would let him know his opinion of his patient's case above-stairs."—"Sir," says the doctor, "his case is that of a dead man—the contusion on his head has perforated the internal membrane of the occiput, and divelicated that radical small minute invisible nerve which coheres to the pericranium; and this was attended with a fever at first symptomatic, then pneumatic; and he is at length grown deliriuus, or delirious, as ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... bone-feeder; the strong membrane which incloses the bone, and through which it is made. In this case it is absolutely destroyed, removed, torn to shreds—gone. So there are several reasons why he cannot ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... in which the young threads have the characters of Tyndaridea, but, after a time, little swellings occur on their sides, in which a distinct endochrome is formed, extending backwards into the parent endochrome, separated from it by a well defined membrane, and producing, either by repeated pullulation, a compound mass like that of Calothrix, or simply giving rise to a forked thread. In the latter case, however, there is no external swelling, but a lateral endochrome is formed, which, as it grows, makes its way through an aperture, whose sides ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... slightly exaggerate the loops at the edge, and draw curved lines from them to the opposite point, Fig. 4; and I have a reptilian or dragon's wing, which would, with some ramification of the supporting ribs, become a bat's or moth's; that is to say, an extension of membrane between the ribs (as in an umbrella), which will catch the wind, and flutter upon it, like a leaf; but cannot strike it to any purpose. The flying squirrel drifts like a falling leaf; the bat flits like a black rag torn at the edge. To give power, we must ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... day nearly 200 of the men were affected with partial or total blindness. Some had merely a sensation like fatigue of the visual organs, with heaviness, watering, and inflammation of the conjunctive membrane. But with others the pain was acute, the eye much inflamed, and the cornea covered with minute ulcerations. Those who were more slightly affected, marched like persons enveloped in a cloud of smoke, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... pleasing: a thin, tenuous membrane. It had the right anatomical quality. Tight blown, quivering in the blast of noisy life. It was time for him to descend from the serene empyrean of words into the actual vortex. He went down slowly. "My soul is a ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... of the description of twins joined by a membrane, and supposing that one of them determines to sit down, the other will act wisely in bending his knees at once, and doing the same: he cannot but be extremely uncomfortable left standing. Besides, there was the Ottoman cleverly poised again; the Muscovite was battered; fresh ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... generally made in physics between sound and noise. Noise affects our tympanic membrane as an irregular succession of shocks and we are conscious of a jarring of the auditory apparatus; whereas a musical sound is smooth and pleasant because the tympanic membrane is thrown into successive periodic vibrations to which the auditory receptor (sense organ of hearing) has been attuned. ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... at times shielding the little ones from the hot rays of the sun with their half-extended wings, and now and then driving away intruders. The common passerine birds also attend carefully to the sanitation of the nest and remove the feces, which is inclosed in a membrane and is thus easily carried in the bill. This is usually dropped several yards away. If allowed to accumulate on the ground beneath the nest it might attract the attention of some prowling enemy and lead to a ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... anvil the air around is violently disturbed. This disturbance spreads through the molecules of the air in much the same way as ripples spread from the splash of a stone thrown into a pond. When the sound waves reach the ear they agitate the tympanum, or drum membrane, and we "hear a noise." The hammer is here the transmitter, the air the conductor, the ear ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... bread, potatoes, etc. The animal fats are more nutritive than the vegetable, butter and cream heading the list. Cooking fats at a very high temperature, such as frying, causes a reaction or decomposition, which irritates the mucous membrane and ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless

... passed directly over Alan. Its body, with a membrane sac of eggs, was now as large as his head; its wide-spread transparent wings were beating ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... stood up and advanced to inspect it. It was of a dirty brown colour, some five or six inches long, and appeared to consist of a kind of membrane. Harley, his elbow on the table, was staring down at ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... The autopsy which he himself ordered on his death-bed as his last contribution to medical knowledge, showed it to be a slow ossification of the membrane of the heart, involving the liver and all the vital organs. He was "tapped" for dropsy more than ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... shielded from the direct rays of the sun, felt almost cool by contrast. Lea opened her eyes when he put her down, peering up at him through a haze of pain. She wanted to apologize to him for her weakness, but no words came from the dried membrane of her throat. His body above her seemed to swim back and forth in the heat waves, swaying like a tree in ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... bird, which thus gives so marvellous an example of its pluck and endurance. At last time is called, and the cock-fighter, who is in charge of the blinded bird, after examining it carefully, asks for a needle and thread, and the swollen lower lid of the still uninjured eye-ball is sewn to the piece of membrane on the bird's cheek, and its sight is thus once more partially restored. Again time is called, and the birds resume their contest, the cock with the injured eye repaying its adversary so handsomely for the punishment ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. This would have been the right ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... cross-bow (Arcubalista) is of unknown antiquity. I have remarked in my book of the Sword (p. 19) that the bow is the first crucial evidence of the distinction between the human weapon and the bestial arm, and like the hymen or membrane of virginity proves a difference of degree if not of kind between man and the so-called lower animals. I note from Yule's Marco Polo (ii., 143) " that the cross-bow was re-introduced into European warfare during the twelfth century"; but the arbalesta ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... greatly lighten the specific gravity of its body by the inflation of its "swim-bladder," which, when perfectly extended, occupies nearly the entire cavity of its abdomen. In addition to this, there is a membrane in the mouth which can be inflated through the gills. These two reservoirs are capable of containing a considerable volume of air; and as the fish has the power of filling or emptying them at will, they no doubt play an important part in the mechanism ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... don't understand, and possibly Galen did not, as he quotes your heroine's own language. Foam of nitre is, I think, something like soapsuds. Reed bark is an odd expression. It might mean the outside membrane of a reed: I do not know what it ought to be called. In the burnt mice receipt I take that you first mixed the solid powders with honey, and then added the grease. I expect Cleopatra preferred it because ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... behold the heavens, and then sheered off into more sombre aisles; they swept by as if moved by one mind, continually gliding past each other, and yet preserving the form of their battalion unchanged, as if they were still embraced by the transparent membrane which held the spawn; a young band of brethren and sisters trying their new fins; now they wheeled, now shot ahead, and when we drove them to the shore and cut them off, they dexterously tacked and passed underneath the boat. Over the old wooden bridges ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... eyes were filmed with a gray membrane. His head thrust forward, the feathered ruff beneath it bristled. Darl braced himself to withstand the swooping pounce that seemed imminent, the slash of the sharp beak. A burring rattle broke the momentary hush. The Martian relaxed, turned to the Mercurian ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat

... confirmation came the awful faint whistling of a shell, advancing almost suddenly into a piercing, tearing shriek that would tear through the membrane of life. He heard it in his ears, but he heard it also in his soul, in tension. There was relief when the thing had swung by and struck, away beyond. He heard the hoarseness of its explosion, and the voice of the soldier calling to the ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... of tobacco preserves the teeth, is supported neither by physiology nor observation. Constantly applied to the interior of the mouth, whether in the form of cud or of smoke, this narcotic must tend to enfeeble the gums, and the membrane covering the necks and roots of the teeth, and, in this way, must rather accelerate than retard their decay. We accordingly find, that tobacco consumers are not favored with better teeth than others; and, on the average, they exhibit these organs in a less perfect state of preservation. ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey

... negative electricity. The bitter and sweet tastes and all the odors depend upon the chemical constitution of the compound, but the laws of the relation have not yet been worked out. Since these sense organs, the taste and smell buds, are sunk in the moist mucous membrane they can only be touched by substances soluble in water, and to reach the sense of smell they must also be volatile so as to be diffused in the air inhaled by the nose. The "taste" of food is mostly due to the volatile odors of it that creep up the back-stairs ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... if it be then plucked off slowly, it gives pain; but if plucked off suddenly, it gives no pain at all; because the vis inertiae of the part of the skin, to which it adheres, is not overcome; and it is not in consequence separated from the cellular membrane under it. Some of the hairs may return, which are thus plucked off, or others may be induced to grow near them; but in a little time they may be thus safely destroyed; which is much to be preferred to the methods said to be used in Turkey ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... much this pump costs me if it spreads blessings through the community? What difference does it make to a man of honor like me if chalk is six cents a pound so long as I know that without it there wouldn't be a membrane in this community? Now, look at the thing in the right light, and you'll believe me that before another century rolls around a grateful universe will worship the memory of the first milkman who ever had a pump and who doctored ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... an organ as the human eye. They have had no difficulty in showing that in this extremely complicated apparatus all the elements are marvelously co-ordinated. In order that vision shall operate, says the author of a well-known book on Final Causes, "the sclerotic membrane must become transparent in one point of its surface, so as to enable luminous rays to pierce it;... the cornea must correspond exactly with the opening of the socket;... behind this transparent opening there must be refracting media;... there must be a retina[24] ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... company Aloof—the spirit, I suppose, that guards This sacred spot; perchance some water-nymph Who laving in the crystal flood her limbs Has taken cold, and so, with raucous voice Afflicts the sensitive membrane of mine ear The while she sings my sentiments. (Enter Pitts-Stevens.) Hello! ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... cell, sometimes referred to as the "protoplasm." Since the protoplasm forms all parts of the cell, this substance is more properly called the cytoplasm, or cell plasm. Surrounding and inclosing the cytoplasm, in many cells, is a thin outer layer, or membrane, which affords more or less protection to the contents of the cell. This is usually referred to as the cell-wall. A fourth part of the cell is also described, being called the attraction sphere. This is a small body ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... a criterion of morphological truth, and a sure test of all homologies. Our lobster has not always been what we see it; it was once an egg, a semifluid mass of yolk, not so big as a pin's head, contained in a transparent membrane, and exhibiting not the least trace of any one of those organs, whose multiplicity and complexity, in the adult, are so surprising. After a time a delicate patch of cellular membrane appeared upon one face of this yolk, and that patch was the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... are a peculiar kind of medicines, administered by injecting them into the rectum or outlet of the body. The intention is either to empty the bowels, kill worms, protect the lining membrane of the intestines from injury, restrain copious discharges, allay spasms in the bowels, or to nourish the body. These clysters, or glysters, are administered by means of bladders and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... terciopelo, or velvet-leaf, together with the Mexican cochineal, the coccus cacti hemipter, [Footnote: The male insect is winged for flight. The female never stirs from the spot where she begins to feed: she lays her eggs, which are innumerable and microscopic, and she leaves them in the membrane or hardened envelope which she has secreted.] so called from the old Greek KOKKOS, a berry, or the neo-Greek KOKKIVOS, red, scarlet. It is certain that Don Santiago de la Cruz brought both plant and 'bug' from Guatemala or Honduras in 1835; and that ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... Answered. Let it suffice thee that thou knowest Us happy, and without love no happiness. Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest, (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy In eminence; and obstacle find none Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars; Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace, Total they mix, union of pure with pure Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need, As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... springing from between the plates; the under parts, which are without armour, have rather more hairs. In a living state, the whole armour is capable of yielding considerably to the motions of the body; the pieces or plates being connected by a membrane, like the joints in a tail of a lobster. The under parts present a light grainy skin. The legs are thick and strong, but only long enough to raise the body from the ground; the nails are very powerful, and calculated for digging; and, according to Buffon, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... to flow in the greatest abundance by that foramen from the vena cava into the pulmonary vein, and left auricle, and from thence into the left ventricle. Further, in this foramen ovale, from that part which regards the pulmonary vein, there is a thin tough membrane, larger than the opening, extended like an operculum or cover; this membrane in the adult blocking up the foramen, and adhering on all sides, finally closes it up, and almost obliterates every trace of it. In the foetus, however, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... its belly pressed against her own six legs. I see her recklessly, very recklessly, rooting with her mandibles in the articulation of the neck, sometimes also in the larger articulation of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs, an articulation of whose delicate membrane she is perfectly well aware, even though, when using her sting, she did not take advantage of this point, which is the most readily accessible of all. I see her rough-handling the Bee's belly, squeezing it against ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... live-forever, not so well by the variable flower - for it is a niggardly bloomer - as by the thick leaf that they delight to hold in the mouth until, having loosened the membrane, they are able to inflate it like a paper bag. Sometimes dull, sometimes bright, the flower clusters never fail to attract many insects to their feast, which is accessible even to those of short tongues. Each ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... never been of the kind called callidae, were now widened by time, was all that parted our small bedroom from that of the horses. Through these, and also through large rat-holes, there came up copious ammoniacal smells, which our mucous membrane resented from the first; and well it had fared with us had this been all. We had never been so near horses at night, and had no idea they made such an incessant noise. One horse stabled and littered for the night were bad enough, but we had a whole stableful; and just as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving. Here this idea, whose memory lingers still over the kisses of man, is realised ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... publient des feuilletons de tems en tems. On les trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus comme des enfans nouveau-nes, faute de membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. Si on aime la botanique, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles; si on fait des etudes zooelogiques, on trouve un grand tas de q[square root]-1, ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... rat, and designated as Belideus ariel. Its colour and fur greatly resemble the chinchilla, and I have little doubt that the skin is valuable and might be made an article of trade. This animal has a membrane between the fore and hind paws, which aids it to some extent when leaping from bough to bough. It is a great enemy to the wild bee, devouring them and their nests; the bees the natives discover by tapping the tree and listening for a buzzing from within. Those we ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... the name Brattahlid had been bestowed upon it, Brattahlid signifying 'steep side of a rock.' Its style was the extreme of simplicity, for a square opening in the roof took the place of a chimney, and it had few windows, and those were small and filled with a bladder-like membrane instead of glass; yet it was not without a certain impressiveness. The hall was so large that nearly two hundred men could find seats on the two benches that ran through it from end to end. Its walls were of a symmetry and massiveness ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... membrane by which the interior of the nostrils is covered, renders them easily susceptible of irritation, even by the invisible and impalpable corpuscles that emanate from odorous bodies: by these means sensations are excited, the brain has perceptions, and generates ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... action, as evidenced by improved volume and slower pulse rate, the augmentation of the temperature, increased activity of the skin, fuller and slower respiration, gradually increased respiratory capacity, and diminished irritability of the mucous membrane in tubercular, bronchitic, or asthmatic patients. There is also lessened discharge in those patients suffering from catarrhal conditions of the nasal passages. In diseases of the respiratory system, a soothing effect upon the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... with a thick membrane, presenting numerous prominent and hard papillae. The inner surface of the second cavity is very artificially divided into angular cells, giving it somewhat the appearance of honeycomb, whence its name "honeycomb-bag." The lining membrane of the third cavity forms numerous deep folds, lying upon ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey

... the nature of a cytolysis of the cortical layer. Anything that causes this alteration without endangering the rest of the egg may induce its development." When the spermatozoon enters the ovum it causes some alteration in the surface membrane of the latter which, amongst other things, prevents the entrance of further spermatozoa. Loeb thinks that in causing this alteration it sets up the segmentation of the ovum. That there is a close connection between the two events seems undoubted; that they are ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... ideas, and men of genius contemplate their object, it may be said that it is only the eye which is any real evidence of genius. For the contemplative gaze has something steady and vivid about it; and with the eye of genius it is often the case, as with Goethe, that the white membrane over the pupil is visible. With violent, passionate men the same thing may also happen, but it arises from a different cause, and may be easily distinguished by the fact that the eyes roll. Men of no genius at all ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Smell, by means of the opening or means of communication situated in the back part of the mouth. Besides which the nose usually detects the odor of substances before they enter the mouth. The sense of Smell operates by reason of the tiny particles or the object being carried to the mucous membrane of the interior of the nose, by means of the air. The membrane, being moist, seizes and holds these particles for a moment, and the fine nervous organism reports differences and qualities and the Mind is thus informed of the nature of ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... primitive and fundamental animal type. It is best seen in the common and familiar Amoeba, a minute sac of liquid or viscid plasm, often not more than a hundredth of an inch in diameter. As its "skin" is merely a finer kind of the viscous plasm, not an impenetrable membrane, it takes in food at any part of its surface, makes little "stomachs," or temporary cavities, round the food at any part of its interior, ejects the useless matter at any point, and thrusts out any part of its body as temporary "arms" ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... show that he was acting upon equal terms with Smithers in the exposure. For the moment her action simply directed his attention to the object towards which she had been leaning, a thing of shrivelled membrane, a pneumatic glove, lying on the table. This was evidently part of the mediumistic apparatus. He ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... sickness the baby had died, and I felt some uneasiness when the throat was pointed to as the seat of disease. When, presently, I was informed that two others were sick, and of the same complaint, my uneasiness became alarm. I went at once to see them, and the angry swollen throats patched with white membrane which I discovered left no room for doubt that we were in the presence of another outbreak of diphtheria. That disease had scourged the Yukon in the two preceding years. Twenty-three children died at Fort Yukon in the summer of 1904, half a dozen at Circle ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... was the ear-drum, and yet how effectively it could send thrills and vibrations through heavy bones. "If this tiny disc can vibrate a bone," he thought, "then an iron disc might vibrate an iron rod, or at least, an iron wire." In a flash the conception of a membrane telephone was pictured in his mind. He saw in imagination two iron discs, or ear-drums, far apart and connected by an electrified wire, catching the vibrations of sound at one end, and reproducing them at the other. At last he was on the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... and I have been a whole day under gas without injury, by keeping the cloth in my mask damp all the time. Men sometimes lose their lives through lack of confidence in their masks. The chemical causes an irritation of the mucous membrane, and they fancy they are being gassed, and in desperation tear them off. It is the duty of an officer to decide when the danger has passed and test the air. I remember on one occasion I warned some men who were opening their coats that the danger had not passed, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... the arrangement in another species of Orchids. When the bee begins to gnaw the labellum, he unavoidably touches a tapering projection, which, when touched, transmits a vibration which ruptures a membrane, which sets free a spring by which a mass of pollen is shot, with unerring aim, over the back of the bee, who then departs on his ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... smaller, and its open end is cut in deep indentations. The wooden body of the drum is made from various trees. A pine tree is the favourite one; but others are used, including a tree the native name of which is arive, which word is also the native word for a drum. The membrane is made of the skin of a reptile, probably the "iguana." The maker of a drum must climb up the tree from the wood of which he is about to make it, and there, until the drum is finished, he must remain sitting ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... no longer allowed to indulge in tobacco in their native country. One of the first effects of snuff is to injure the nerves of the nose, which are endowed with exquisite sensibility, and of which an incredible number are spread over the inner membrane of the nostrils. This membrane is lubricated by a secretion, which has a tendency to preserve the sense. By the almost caustic acrimony of snuff, the mucus is dried up, and the organ of smelling becomes perfectly callous. The consequence is, that all the pleasure we are capable ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... what you have here?" he asked. "This is a very close analogy to the hearing organs of that animal I was working on. The comb, as we've assumed, is the external organ. It's covered with small flaps and fissures. Back of each fissure is a long, narrow membrane; they're paired, one on each side of the comb, and from them nerves lead to clusters of small round membranes. Nerves lead from them to a complex nerve-cable at the bottom of the comb and into the brain at the base of the skull. ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper

... two or three months' duration, and a slight occasional difficulty of breathing, which at that time was not thought worth attention. Soon after, in November, he had one or two singular attacks of catarrhal affection of the mucous membrane of the lungs, which commenced with a sense of suffocation, succeeded by cough and an expectoration of cream coloured mucus, to the quantity of a quart in an hour, with coldness of the extremities, lividity of the countenance, and a deathlike ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren

... which (as I have said) is separated from the lower belly by the diaphragma or midriff, which is a skin consisting of many nerves, membranes; and amongst other uses it hath, is the instrument of laughing. There is also a certain thin membrane, full of sinews, which covereth the whole chest within, and is called pleura, the seat of the disease called pleurisy, when it is inflamed; some add a third skin, which is termed mediastinus, which divides ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... knows how or rather is able to make her way through one of these partitions. The mandibles are pickaxes suitable for breaking through hard mortar: are they also scissors capable of cutting a thin membrane? This is the point to look into ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... one of these little hooks touches a wall, or comes in contact with anything it is able to cling to, it begins to thicken, expands into a granulated mass of a bright-red hue, loses the form of a hook and assumes that of a club, from the edges of which club a thin membrane extends, and attaches itself firmly to the wall after the manner of a sucker. If all five of the extremities happen to touch, they all go through the same process; and when all are spread out on the wall, each with its extension complete, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... continuous spinal chord. But during the progress and completion of this first organic process no changes have been observed assimilating the nascent embryo to any of the inferior animals. The next series of changes in the germinal membrane are of two kinds—in one the nervous system, the organs of motion, the intestinal canal, the heart and blood-vessels are manifested; the other set of changes, which are subsequent, produce the perfection of the animal and determine its sex. All these manifestations ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... several long, slender and variously bended quills or wires, something resembling the veins of leaves; these are, as 'twere, the finns or quills which stiffen the whole Area, and keep the other part distended, which is a very thin transparent skin or membrane variously folded, and platted, but not very regularly, and is besides exceeding thickly bestuck with innumerable small bristles, which are onely perceptible by the bigger magnifying Microscope, and not with that neither, but with a very convenient augmentation of sky-light ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... yes; quite so," replied the secretary. He remembered how the vibrations of an elastic membrane can throw dry sand, loosely scattered upon its surface, into various floral and geometrical figures. Chladni's figures, he seemed to remember, they were called after their discoverer. But Mr. Skale's purpose in the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... cable, as they are usually coiled on the deck of a ship. The tail with its horny appendage protruded beneath, and the flat head peeped over above, resting upon the uppermost ring of the body. The nictitating membrane was drawn over its eyes. It appeared to sleep. This I thought strange, as I had heard that the fascinating power of these creatures lay in the eyes. It soon became evident, how ever, that the bird was not its object; for the latter, on seeing that the snake lay still, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... man, as he pushed the end of the butter tryer a little harder against the woman. "The bullet went in here, and went around here close to the liver, though probably it didn't touch the liver, passed through the thin membrane, and is probably lodged in here," and he reached around the woman with his left hand to where her apron was tied on. "Now, if they cannot extract the ball the great danger is ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... the intestines, and is there divided into two principles, each distinct from the other. One, a milk-white fluid,—the nutritive portion,—is absorbed by innumerable vessels which open upon the mucous membrane, or inner coat of the intestines. These vessels, or absorbents, discharge the fluid into a common duct, or road, along which it is conveyed to the large veins in the neighbourhood of the heart. Here it is mixed with the venous blood (which ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... washed out with warm water. The juice may now be given with a silver teaspoon. It is possible that the patient may be quite unable to swallow any of it. If this be so, the juice will serve as a mouth and throat wash. It will gradually dissolve the membrane, and enable it to be scraped gently away with the spoon. The juice should be given, and the throat scraped as far down as the nurse can reach, as often as the patient can bear it. The time will come, sooner or later, when the juice is swallowed. No other food should be given. The nurse may ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... long been familiar to naturalists, and indeed the most ordinary observer must have often remarked in the crabs and lobsters brought to table, appearances indicative of their change of external coverings. In the back of the edible crab, may often be noticed a red membrane lining the inner side of the shell, but so loose as to be readily detached. Along the greater part of its course this membrane has already assumed a half-crustaceous consistence, and is just the preparatory process to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... intelligent little face. In its aspect it has nothing of the disagreeable and repulsive look so common amongst the ordinary vespertilionidae; it likewise differs from them in the want of the nose-leaf, as well as of the tail. In the absence of the latter, its flight is directed by means of a membrane attached to the inner side of each of the hind legs, and kept distended at the lower extremity by a projecting bone, just as a fore-and-aft sail is distended by ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... and I was assured by a Spaniard, who had often caught them, that they were frequently blind; one which I kept alive was certainly in this condition, the cause, as appeared on dissection, having been inflammation of the nictitating membrane. As frequent inflammation of the eyes must be injurious to any animal, and as eyes are certainly not indispensable to animals with subterranean habits, a reduction in their size with the adhesion of the eyelids ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... from the cavity of the avicularium itself. Below the avicularium there is also in many cases a third distinct cavity which is usually widely open, the opening being covered in very frequently by a convex transparent membrane, and its bottom apparently perforated by several minute foramina—from this part of the lateral process there is in many species a prominent ala or keel prolonged to the bottom of the cell—which ala not unfrequently divides into two branches, which, again ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... which invariably attends its first application; and that its salutary influence ceases, whenever these peculiar effects cease to accompany its exhibition. Hence in all cases where it is continued an indefinite time, or until the schneiderian membrane loses its sensibility, it not only fails of its medicinal effect, but actually becomes pernicious; aggravating the very disease it was intended to cure. It not only does this, but goes on committing great ravages ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... of Venus. It was a variety of enjoyment that my lovely mistress acknowledged to me she at times felt much inclined to enjoy, but only after having the front path of pleasure well fucked and lubricated with sperm, which alone caused the other mucous membrane to ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... eggs taken out of one such nest alone. They are about the size of those of a goose, only the eggs of the alligator are of the same diameter at both ends, and the white shell is partially elastic, from having a strong internal membrane and but little lime in its composition. The distance from the water was about ten feet, and there were evidences of the same place having been used for a similar purpose in former years. A broad path led up from the water to the nest, and the dam, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... indulged in for the reason that it contains multitudes of sharp particles of the husk of the grain that cut the delicate mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines as it passes along, and if its use be long and continued, severe ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... this work on generation is thus a 'biologist' in the modern sense, and among the passages exhibiting him in this light is his comparison of the human embryo with the chick. 'The embryo is in a membrane in the centre of which is the navel through which it draws and gives its breath, and the membranes arise from the umbilical cord.... The structure of the child you will find from first to last as I have already described.... ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various



Words linked to "Membrane" :   axolemma, intima, flat solid, chorioallantois, tunica, virginal membrane, animal tissue, mucosa, sheet, retina, capsula glomeruli, eardrum, phospholipid, trophoblast, choroid coat, glomerular capsule, Bowman's capsule, cornea, ciliary body, choroid, serosa, head, semipermeable membrane, meninges, myringa, sarcolemma, endosteum, endocranium, periosteum, drumhead, ependyma, meninx, web, iris, adventitia, tunic, midriff, mucous membrane, gel, hyaloid, gelatin, lamella, membranous, perithelium, diaphragm, synovium, tympanum



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