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Microscopic   /mˌaɪkrəskˈɑpɪk/   Listen
Microscopic

adjective
1.
Of or relating to or used in microscopy.  Synonym: microscopical.  "Microscopical examination"
2.
Visible under a microscope; using a microscope.  Synonym: microscopical.
3.
Extremely precise with great attention to details.
4.
So small as to be invisible without a microscope.  Synonym: microscopical.



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"Microscopic" Quotes from Famous Books



... that have passed the fatal bourne have fallen on no unworthy successors. The cynosure, however, just now, in our faculty of medicine, would seem, by general consent, to be Dr. Allen Thomson. And there is reason for this. His able, trustworthy researches in microscopic science have gained for him a European reputation—as a teacher of anatomy he is rivalled by few, if any, in the kingdom—as a member of the Academical Senate he is a most energetic promoter of the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... matter of fact, I don't suppose my little venture has ever been heard of across the ocean. You think it is very presumptuous in me ever to have thought of it; but I did not think of it. I was only afraid of it. Suppose the British Quarterly has not vision microscopic enough to discern you; you like to know how you would feel in a certain contingency, even if it should never happen. Besides, so many strange things arise every day, that incongruity seems to have lost its force. Nothing surprises. Cause and effect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... gold mineral is native or metallic gold. This occurs in nature in small scales, crystals, and irregular masses, and also in microscopic particles mechanically mixed with pyrite and other sulphides. Chemically, gold is very inactive and combines with but few other elements. A small part of the world's supply is obtained from the gold-silver tellurides—calaverite, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... did to occupy themselves all the year round. The Brisevilles were much astonished; for they were always busy, either writing letters to their aristocratic relations, of whom they had a number scattered all over France, or attending to microscopic duties, as ceremonious to one another as though they were strangers, and talking grandiloquently of the most ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... to allow of any foolery at the other places. I think I am succeeding pretty well; the popularity of my readings has been steadily on the increase. By and by I am going to vary the programme with microscopic and other exhibitions,as soon as the people are ready for it, and ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... the romantic object? It is a 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, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... that every day of delay increased the peril; but things often look differently under different circumstances, and now the most important duty in life for Albert Charlton was the immediate settlement of a question in structural botany by means of microscopic investigation. Albert was at this moment a curious illustration of the influence of scientific enthusiasm, for he hurriedly relieved his hat of its little museum, ate his supper, got out his microscope, and returned to the hotel. He placed the instrument on the old piano, adjusted the object, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... it easily," expostulated Bluff; "everybody doesn't happen to have microscopic eyes like Jerry here. I warrant you now I passed within thirty feet of this spot several times, and never tumbled to what was ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... advanced, all diseases—whether hereditary or acquired—were found to be associated with abnormal conditions of the blood. A microscopic examination of a drop of blood enabled the scientist to determine the character and intensity of any disease, and at last to effect ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... we sought in the midst of the charred stumps of the primeval forest. While Mr. Quekett was quoting Andrew Ross, the most famous of the three opticians referred to, as calling "135 deg. the largest angular pencil that can be passed through a microscopic object-glass," Mr. Spencer was actually making twelfths with an angle of more than 170 deg.. Those who remember the manner in which the record of his extraordinary success was deliberately omitted from the second edition of a work which records ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... themselves often highly picturesque, but we are no better able to view the conflict as a whole than if we ourselves had fought in the ranks. As in painting, so in poetry, a true impression is not to be conveyed by microscopic accuracy in minutiae, but by a vigorous grasp of ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton

... unlucky drop of ink might mar the work and excite suspicion, whereas if he made a mistake upon a fresh sheet of parchment he could always begin again. There was only one danger. The Saracinesca might have made some private mark upon the original which should elude even his microscopic examination. He spent nearly a day in examining the sheet with a lens but could discover nothing. Being satisfied of the safety of the proceeding he executed the forgery with the same care he had bestowed upon the first, and showed ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... (woolly).—Stems as in R. Cassytha, but thicker, longer, and with the branchlets in compact clusters on the ends of the long, arching branches. The dots marking the position of the microscopic hair-tufts are in small depressions. Flowers and fruit as in R. Cassytha, of which this might reasonably be called a variety. This ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... how it came about, as difficult almost as to understand how a certain amount of inorganic molecules will sometimes suddenly seem to obey an impulse from within, and become an organism, a yeast plant, or a microscopic animal; but whether or not we succeed in understanding the how and why of the phenomenon, the phenomenon nevertheless took place; and this unorganised mass of passions called Vittorio Alfieri, this chaotic thing without a higher ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... hardly expect added health or comfort from its ministration. If your observation of this semiannual performance isn't sufficient, and you are curious to know how much noisome dirt and dust, how much woolly fibre and microscopic animal life, you respire,—how these poisonous particles fill your lungs with tubercles, your head with catarrh, and prepare your whole body for an untimely grave,—you can study medical books at your leisure. They will all tell the same story, and will justify my supposition ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... sentimentalist, no devotee of the god Wish, have we here; but an imperturbable beholder, whose dauntless and relentless eyeballs, telescopic and microscopic by turns, can and will see what the fact is. If the universe be bad, as some dream, he will see how bad; if good, he will perceive and respect its goodness. A man, for once, equal to the act of seeing! Having, as the indispensable preliminary, encountered himself, and victoriously fought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... roaring, the room seemed whirling, but in a moment that passed. I felt a sudden growing sense of lightness. A humming was within me—a soundless tingle. The drug had gone to every tiny microscopic cell in my body. The myriad pores of my skin seemed thrilling with activity. I know now that it was the exuding volatile gas of this disintegrating drug. Like an aura it enveloped me, acted upon ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... homely, familiar note, we beheld a garden. In this garden walked the cock—a two-legged gentleman of gorgeous plumage. If abroad for purely constitutional purposes, the crowing chanticleer must be forced to pass the same objects many times in review. Of all infinitesimal, microscopic gardens, this one, surely, was a model in minuteness. Yet it was an entirely self-respecting little garden. It was not much larger than a generous-sized pocket handkerchief; yet how much talent—for growing—may be hidden in a yard of soil—if the soil have the right virtue ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... imagination suppose yourself to be reading a newly-discovered fragment of the apostolic age. Treat it somewhat as many of us have recently sought to treat Bryennius' discovery, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. What microscopic attention has been brought to bear upon that little book, just because good evidence gives it a place in the first century, and because it speaks of Christ, and of Christians; of faith, worship, ministry, and life, in a part of the primeval Church! Now I attempt ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; 190 No pow'rs of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, 195 T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... bearings from a dozen different points. He will feel very badly unless Capt. Lee puts him within a few inches of where his calculations tell him he should be. Why, you should see him calculating! He used a 6 H pencil, and he can cover a large sheet of paper with microscopic figures before you have even sharpened yours! It will be just like 'Specs,' if it is a still night, to drop a plumb line and check himself. When you see him coming down slowly, you can be sure that he is going to drop his ladder at exactly the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... excessive predisposition to appendicitis—a frequent disease in the penitentiary. This was also promoted by the bread, which was made of the poorest grade of white flour, without nourishing quality, the value per loaf being about two cents; the flour was ground in steel mills, and microscopic particles of steel were rubbed off into it—this fact I had from a physician who had examined it. The flour, when received at the prison, was frequently full of weevils, most of which but not all ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... tense, tragic silence. In the back seat with Penfield Evans, and in the intervals of frustrating his attempts to hold her hand, Betty considered how frightfully silly young married couples could be over microscopic differences. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... bodily condition mentally he was fully alert. It even seemed as if his bodily weakness stimulated the clear activity of his mental powers. Working through the long hours of voiceless solitude he held under almost microscopic review every aspect of the situation his final triumph had created. Everything must fall out—provided his sick body endured—just as he had calculated. There was only one thing that disturbed the perfect smoothness of the road that lay open before him. It was the story he had listened ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... the license system of the state, the gang of thugs that lived on the gambling house and the barter in human blood in the sale of virtue and the degradation of boys and girls, all fought him. The newspapers that print liquor and other questionable advertisements, the microscopic men who made a living by appointment to little political dirty jobs, the horde of hungry office seekers who didn't know "America" from the latest vaudeville rag-time, the plunderers of the treasury who live without any visible means of support except what they boldly stole from ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... recently struck (I think, in 1819) a medal with the same obverse and reverse, of about the size between an English farthing and halfpenny. The statue of Henry is perhaps the MIRACLE OF ART: but it requires a microscopic glass to appreciate its wonders. Correctly speaking, probably, such efforts are not in the purest good taste. Simplicity is the soul of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... bushes with feet that clung to the steep sides of the cliff as well as the animal's. Before he could reach her, she had winded him, and was off up the track. He followed, without further attempt to hide himself; but, despite his vigour and ability, would, I fancy, have stood a microscopic chance of catching her had she not been heavy with kid. As it was, he had all his work cut out for him. When he did catch her, she made so fierce it struggle for life and liberty that, in the endeavour to hold her, he missed his insecure foothold, and the pair ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... asci, or sterile cells, called paraphyses. These asci are variously shaped bodies and are known in different orders by different names, such as ascoma, apothecium, perithecium, and receptacle. The Ascomycetes often include among their numbers fungi ranging in size from microscopic one-celled plants to quite large and very beautiful specimens. To this group belong the great number of small fungi producing the ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... motus retrogressus. In microscopic experiments it is usual to see globules of blood regurgitate from the capillary vessels again and again, before they pass through them; and not only the mouths of the veins, which arise from these capillaries, are frequently seen by microscopes to regurgitate some particles ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... analogous principles. Pelosine or buxine is precipitated by a concentrated solution of HCl, by sal ammoniac, by potassium nitrate and potassium iodide. He also discovered a neutral substance, deyamitin, which crystallizes in microscopic tablets; sulphuric acid added to these gives a pretty dark blue color which changes ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... but too minute to be of value. An allied species is common on the coast of China, where the pearls are collected for export to India, to be reduced to lime by calcination for the use of luxurious betel-nut chewers. These almost microscopic pearls are also burnt in the mouths of the dead who have been ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... scenery, his microscopic eye and marvellously delicate ear are exercised to the utmost in detecting the minutest relations and most evanescent melodies of the objects before him, in order that his representation shall include everything which is important to their full perfection. His pictures ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... which Jean Davi, the architect of the Chapelle de la Vierge, built for Archbishop Guillaume de Flavacourt in 1278, will bear microscopic examination in every part, and the reverently careful restorations carried out some time ago by MM. Desmarest and Barthelemy have only brought to light the exquisite perfection of the original ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... of a renowned histologist, who has been calculating the aggregate cell forces of the human brain, the cerebral mass is composed of at least 300,000,000 of nerve cells, each an independent body, organism, and microscopic brain so far as concerns its vital functions, but subordinate to a higher purpose in relation to the functions of the organ; each living a separate life individually, though socially subject to ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... are sketched, and Hans Sachs is worked out in some detail; but nothing in their nature especially affects the drama. In Lohengrin the tragedy is directly produced by Elsa's weakness and curiosity. The characterization is by no means profound or microscopic. It is, indeed, a question whether music is capable of anything of the sort, whether it can render anything save bold, simple outlines. In Figaro and Don Giovanni Mozart was content with this, and yet his characterization appears subtle in comparison with that of ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... the people; and against that authority, against the aristocracy, the priesthood, and the accomplices of foreign dominion, the Pharisees ceaselessly excited the mob. In their inability to overthrow the pontificate, they undermined it. With microscopic attention they examined and criticised every act of the clergy; and, with a view of showing the incompetence of the priests, they affected rigid theories in regard to ritualistic points. Every detail of the ceremonial office was watched by them ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... alternating lights and shadows. She had, by her own confession, conceived a strong dislike to Dorothy the moment she saw her, and without love there can be no understanding. Hate will sharpen observation to the point of microscopic vision, affording opportunity for many a shrewd guess, and revealing facts for the construction of the cleverest and falsest theories, but will leave the observer as blind as any bat to the scope of the whole, or the meaning of the parts which can be understood ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... with this worm by grazing in pastures in which infested cattle have grazed and scattered their droppings. The worms in the stomach produce a multitude of eggs of microscopic size, which pass out of the body with the feces. In warm weather, these eggs hatch in a few hours; if the temperature remains about freezing point, they soon die. The eggs are also destroyed, by dryness, but, on the other hand, moisture, if the weather is warm, favors their ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... ordinary professorial knowledge, or rather ignorance, of men and the world, falling into introspection under the pressure of circumstance, and for want, as it were, of something else to think about. Not at all. The man who has left us these microscopic analyses of his own moods and feelings, had penetrated more or less into the social and intellectual life of half a dozen European countries, and was familiar not only with the books, but, to a large extent also, with the men of his generation. The meditative and introspective ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... A microscopic examination of the granules of the rock itself will show that many of them have had crystalline quartz deposited upon their surfaces, and in some cases rounded grains have in this way become ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... altogether strategic; they are chiefly moral, and were not so clearly discernible then. In the face of national feeling, before the march of national regeneration, a single man, world-conqueror though he may have been during a period of national disorganization, is an object of microscopic size. The French emperor did not know the strength of Russian feeling, the great revolutionist was ignorant of the Europe he had unconsciously regenerated. If he blundered as a strategist in not confessing defeat at Smolensk, he behaved like a tyro in statesmanship ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... beautiful their intelligence, were certain that neither man as a body, nor the world as a home, were anything but lack evils, ruined by the fall of Adam, and to be ignored and despised with every power and faculty. Faith in God came to be faith in "a microscopic and picayune Providence," governing the meanest detail of the elect's existence, and faith in man had no place in any scheme of life or thought. If a poem were written it came to be merely some transcription from the Bible, or an epitaph or elegy ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... into license is that it actually deters many people from taking their share in public life. The fact that any public action is sure to bring down upon one's head a torrent of abuse or adulation, together with a microscopic investigation of one's most intimate affairs, is enough to give pause to all but the most resolute. Leading journals go incredible lengths in the way they speak of public men. One of the best New York dailies dismissed Mr. Bryan as "a wretched, rattle-pated boy." Others constantly alluded to Mr. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... who, had I advertised The Value of Greek and Latin in English Life might even now be swooping from all quarters of the sky on a suggestion that these dry bones yet were flesh: for the eyes I dread are not only red and angry, but naturally microscopic—and that indeed, if they only knew it, is their malady. Yet 'surely' groaned patient job, 'there is a path which the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... understands the methods of world building, of landscape-sculpture, may stand in wonder and awe and reverence before the forces that have been at work for millions of years, and are at work the same to-day. How many men have even a conception of the wonders of the microscopic world? To how many men do the star have anything to say at night? A man looks at a bowlder, unlike any other rock there is to be found anywhere in the neighborhood, and perhaps he does not even ask a question about it; while a man who has made a careful study of these things ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... blue of the cold, pure sea with vivid patches of living green thirty miles in diameter. These minute organisms are doubly curious from their power of astonishing reproduction and the strange electric fire they display. Minute as these microscopic creatures are, every motion and flash is the result of volition, and not a mere chemic or mechanic phosphorescence. The Photocaris lights a flashing cirrus, on being irritated, in brilliant kindling sparks, increasing in intensity until the whole organism ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... of the candles, such as takes place if they are removed from the muffle before it has cooled down to the room temperature, may give rise to microscopic cracks and flaws which will effectually destroy ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... outmost Whig and inmost Tory exist more opposite extremes than between these great rival political parties of the United States. As a drop of sea-water possesses the properties of the entire water of the ocean, so these units of American political controversy were microscopic representatives of their respective parties. It was curious to remark what a prominent part their religious convictions played in the war of words. The republican was a member of the Baptist congregation; the democrat held opinions not very easy of description, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... the step next above, both extremes of which seem combined in the structure of birds and of their quill-feathers; but above all, the convexity of the crystalline lens, so much greater than in birds, quadrupeds, and man, and seeming to collect, in one powerful organ, the hundred-fold microscopic facettes of the insect's light organs; and it will not be easy to resist the conviction, that the same power is at work in both, and reappears under higher auspices. The intention of Nature is repeated; but, as was to have been expected, with ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... are mere rocky islets, and not more than twenty have fixed inhabitants. Is there anything more wonderful in nature than that these hundreds of isles should have been built up from the bottom of the sea by insects so small as to be microscopic? All lie north of Cuba and St. Domingo, just opposite the Gulf of Mexico, easily accessible from our own shores by a short and pleasant sea-voyage of three or four days. They are especially inviting to those persons who have occasion ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... place. I think it is want of imagination—I mean the power of seeing things as they are. You are the kind of woman who, if you had married comfortably some one you rather liked, might have become like Sybell Loftus, who never understands any feeling beyond her own microscopic ones, and who measures love by her own small preference for Doll. You would have had no more sympathy than she has. People, like Sybell, believe one can only sympathize with what one has experienced. That is why they are ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... serviceable to Mr. Collier to remember it. By reference to Mr. Grant White's "Shakespeare," Vol. ii. p. lx., an instance may be seen of a positive misstatement by Mr. Collier, of which, whatever the motive or the manner, the result is to deprive Chalmers of a microscopic particle of antiquarian credit and to bestow it upon himself. In fact, our confidence in Mr. Collier's trustworthiness, which, diminished by discoveries like these, as our knowledge of his labors increased, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... mind of the public, and error to increase as time rolls on. But, if the sad fate should be ours, for this most minute cause, to destroy our Government, the historian who shall attempt philosophically to examine the question will, after he has put on his microscopic glasses and discovered it, be compelled to cry out, "Veritably so the unseen insect in the course of time destroys the mighty oak!" Now, I believe—may I not say I believe? if not, then I hope—there is yet time, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... microscopic scrutiny that children manifest seemed mine—in my unreasoning, half-convalescent state; and for a time I observed all that I have described with a listless pleasure, difficult to analyze, a sort of dreamy acceptance of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... popular mind. The giant touches the earth to recover his strength. History returns to the people. After two thousand years, popular intelligence is again to be revived. And under what new conditions? We live in a telescopic, microscopic, telegraphic universe, all the elements of which are brought together under the combined operation of fire and water, as erst, in primitive Nature, vulcanic and plutonic forces struggled together in the face of heaven and hell to form the earth. The long ranges of history have left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... generation; in other words, the production of life. Ranging himself against them, Pasteur showed their experiments not to have been conclusive, simply because they had not succeeded in excluding the dust which contained germs of life in the shape of spores of microscopic plants. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... sends him to the sea shore. He puts down his gun under a tree, and a bat from above cries out, "What wild beast is this ?" The youth replies, "You just go to sleep, old fellow." The bat comes down, touches the gun and it becomes a piece of wood; touches the youth and he becomes microscopic. This in turn happens to all the brothers, after which the girl goes to the sea-shore, and when she is under the tree the bat calls out, "What wild beast is this?" But she does not answer she waits till the bat is asleep, then climbs the tree, and catching the "bird" (sic), ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... is foreign to the purpose of this note, it may be worth while to mention a few of the plants upon which the experiments were made. Sections were taken of many of the grafts and microscopic examinations made to determine the extent of cell union. Coleuses of many kinds were used, with uniform success, and the cions of some of them were vigorous a year after being set. Even iresine (better known as Achyranthes Verschaffeltii) united with coleus and grew for a time. Zonale ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... Wallace Taylor, M.D., of Osaka in Japan, attributed the disease to a microscopic spore found largely developed in rice, and which he had also detected in the earth of certain ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair

... interest to the zoologist, and attractive to the common observer from the singularity or beauty of their forms, and, in many cases, the brilliancy of their colouring. The ocean, throughout its wide extent, swarms with myriads of gelatinous creatures—some microscopic, some of large dimensions—which deck it with the gayest colours by day, and at night light up its dreary waste with 'mimic fires,' and make it glow and sparkle as if, like the heavens, it had its galaxies and constellations. These are ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... itself hopelessly lost in a jungle growth so dense that one could penetrate it only by cutting a tunnel through, and for hours we hacked and hacked and made microscopic progress. At last the head of the column came to an abrupt drop of a couple of hundred feet which seemed an effectual bar to all further progress. The cliff fell off at an angle of sixty degrees, with the slope densely matted with heavy scrub and underbrush. It was ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... said the big man. "But I don't know whether to hope he does or hope he doesn't." He used his right thumbnail to pick a bit of microscopic dust from beneath his left index finger, studying the operation without actually seeing it. "Meanwhile, we've got to decide what to do about the rest of those screwballs. Wendell was the only sane one, and therefore the most dangerous—but ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett

... week or so in making a needless barometer. In the course in geology, days and days were spent in drawing ideal crystalline forms and colouring them in water-colours, apparently in order to get a totally false idea of a crystal, and weeks in the patient copying of microscopic rock sections in water-colours. Effectual measures of police were taken to prevent the flight of the intelligent student from these tiresome duties. The mischief done in this way is very great. It deadens the average students and exasperates and maddens ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... me in Washington, Albert, seeking warcontracts for your microscopic business, I suppose there was even then a mark upon your forehead, but I was too heavy with the guilt of my own affairs to see it. We all have our price, Albert, sometimes it is another star on the shoulderstraps or a ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... mental load of grievances until the new year; but as it is essential to commence it well in order that measures may prosper to the end, I have resolved to put my intention in execution, regardless of the officious tongues of those of microscopic views who may deem that my time might be well employed in balancing the rivalships of barbarous seamen or protecting the movable stores of the immovable Hellas. In my present state of official insignificance I could render no other service. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... by another press chap, representing a Spokane sheet, who wished me to elaborate my views concerning the most probable cause of appendicitis, which I found myself able to do with some eloquence, reciting among other details that even though the metal dust might be of an almost microscopic fineness, it could still do a mischief to one's appendix. The press chap appeared wholly receptive to my views, and, after securing details of my plan to smarten Red Gap with a restaurant of real distinction, he asked so civilly ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the parents is most marked, as we have said, where the young are cast upon the world to look after themselves, often as microscopic creatures. The reason of this is because they have come from eggs which were so tiny that they could not contain enough food to support the growing body within until it had assumed its final shape. In consequence, the ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... properly done, and that nothing necessary is left undone. This function can be fulfilled for all departments by the same superintending body, and by a collective and comprehensive far better than by a minute and microscopic view. It is as absurd in public affairs as it would be in private, that every workman should be looked after by a superintendent to himself. The government of the crown consists of many departments, and there are many ministers ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... mysteries; all arcana are revealed to him, every sanctum is a highway. No art of mortal pen can defeat this mischief of acuteness: character is character; oaks grow of acorns, and the plan of a life may be detected in a microscopic speech. The career of Mr. Jennings is as much predestined by us to iniquity, from the first intimation that he never makes excuse, as honest Roger is to trouble and temptation from the weary effort wherewithal he woke. And, even now, pretty Grace and young Sir John, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... story. Above timber-line there are none but inch-high willows and flat, piney growths, mingled with tiny arctic flowers, which shrink in size with elevation; even the sheltered spots on Lyell's lofty summit have their colored lichens, and their almost microscopic bloom. At timber-line, low, wiry shrubs interweave their branches to defy the gales, merging lower down into a tangle of many stunted growths, from which spring twisted pines and contorted spruces, which the winds curve to leeward or bend at sharp angles, or spread in full development as prostrate ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... service. The steepness increased, but these stone steps allowed us to rise with facility, and even with such rapidity that, having rested for a moment while my companions continued their ascent, I perceived them already reduced by distance to microscopic dimensions. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... once more on the singular and suspicious case in which I had become involved. But fatigue soon put an end to my meditations; and having come to the conclusion that the circumstances demanded a further consultation with Thorndyke, I turned down the gas to a microscopic blue spark ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... "dementia" and as "acute confusional insanity." Death in second attack at 26 (first attack at 22). Father also insane. Death due to bilateral ptthisis with tuberculosis of intestines and mesenteric glands, emaciation. It is noteworthy that the brain weighed but 1038 grams. Dr. W. L. Worcester's microscopic examination showed acute nerve cell changes probably of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... columbarium where the dead slept in rows, behind squared marbles lettered in black or bronze. Yet her resting-place,—in the highest range,—already seemed old. Under our Southern sun, the vegetation of cemeteries seems to spring into being spontaneously—to leap all suddenly into luxuriant life! Microscopic mossy growths had begun to mottle the slab that closed her in;—over its face some singular creeper was crawling, planting tiny reptile-feet into the chiselled letters of the inscription; and from the moist soil below speckled euphorbias were growing up to her,—and morning glories,—and ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... had rather set ourselves something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... head emphatically. "No; the science professors should live. They're really great. But it would be a good deed to break the heads of nine-tenths of the English professors—little, microscopic-minded parrots!" ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... Earth is inhabited by a large variety of living forms ranging from the microscopic bacteria and animalcula to the glorious form of man with all his superior endowments. The air, earth and water are teeming with their billions of sensitive creatures; even a breath of air, a drop ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... which we would know more. Yet what do we find about them? Save in meagre or verbose pamphlets, nothing. To be sure, there was a book written which claimed to be about Buffalo, but a microscopic examination would fail to find in it anything worth knowing about the history of this community. The author of that book, William Ketchum, had the audacity to name it, as we read on the title-page, "An Authentic and Comprehensive History of Buffalo, with ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... past twenty years has been: Is cancer due to the invasion of a parasite, a veritable microscopic crab, or is it due to alterations in the communal relations, or, to speak metaphorically, the allegiance of the cells? Disappointing as it may be, the balance of proof and the opinion of the ablest and broadest-minded ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... potter's power over the lump, the fire's upon the clay, and the gilder's upon the porcelain. Even the temper in which we behold these various displays of mind must be different; and it admits of more than doubt whether, if the bold work of rapid thought were afterwards in all its forms completed with microscopic care, the result would be other than painful. In the shadow at the foot of Tintoret's picture of the Temptation, lies a broken rock-bowlder.[19] The dark ground has been first laid in, of color nearly uniform; and over ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... seaweed containing their eggs may dispense with the hypothesis of the submersion of 1,200 miles of land once intervening. I want naturalists carefully to examine floating seaweed and pumice met with at sea. Tell your correspondents to look out. There should be a microscopic examination of both these means of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... the microscope in studying the nature and origin of such deposits as those of the Pampas, Darwin submitted many of his specimens both to Dr. Carpenter in this country, and to Professor Ehrenberg in Berlin. Many very important notes on the microscopic organisms contained in the formation will be ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... evidence of doubling rests with microscopic and anatomical analysis which is a task ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... excessive; he preserved an irritating habit of parading such words as eclat, penchant and monticle, and persisted in saying "of a verity," and using the word "individual" in the sense of person. Such blemishes are microscopic enough. It was not such trifles as these that proved stumbling-blocks to the "men of blood and foam," as he ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... the bottom of the sea are covered with shells of a gelatinous or flesh-look aspect of very bright colors, that may be mistaken for lifeless bodies; yet they are formed by the aggregation of a crowd of little microscopic animals, whose organisation is very varied; care should be taken to remove them with the blade of a knife, and these beds, not generally very thick, should be plunged in spirits of wine, taking care to note their ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various

... flagrant, you are sometimes tempted to take the law into your own hands, and administer a little of the castigation which the cheating rascal so richly deserves. In other cases it is necessary to submit the seed to a microscopic examination. If any old, worn seeds are detected, you reject the sample unhesitatingly. Even when the seed appears quite good, you subject it to yet another test. Take one or two hundred seeds, and putting them on a damp ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... flesh and the devil. It is only a difference of terminology. Poet, artist, priest and anchorite alike thought all the time of the tyranny of the body until it became a million-horse-power steam hammer crushing out his microscopic pin-head of a soul. To man, woman is still the siren tradition made her; she likes to be. She likes to think hers is 'the face that launched a thousand ships and fired the topless towers of Ilium.' She insists that man ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... initialing reports with, "Passed to you," or, "I agree," written on the margin. The censors who lived with us and traveled with us and were our friends, and read what we wrote before the ink was dry, had to examine our screeds with microscopic eyes and with infinite remembrance of the thousand and one rules. Was it safe to mention the weather? Would that give any information to the enemy? Was it permissible to describe the smell of chloride-of-lime in the trenches, or would that discourage recruiting? That description ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... up a part of their structure of it, or elaborate the characteristic leaf-green which, under solar light, assimilates inorganic into organic matter, the most distinguishing function of vegetation. On the other hand, there are plants—microscopic, indeed, but unquestionable—which move spontaneously and freely around and among animals that are fixed and rooted. And, to come without further parley to the matter in hand, while the majority of animals feed directly upon plants, "for 'tis their nature to," there are ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... abide by the belief, that St. Paul's "trial" was merely some bodily affliction of the ordinary kind, we can understand the meaning of his saying that the Galatians did not "despise" it (although, by the way, it seems rather a microscopic basis on which to found a laudation of a body of Christian men and women, to say that they were so good as not to despise him on account of a natural bodily infirmity), but it is impossible, on this assumption, to attach any consistent sense to the word "rejected." ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... jockeys, and dilapidated body-servants, seemed there to congregate. To these must be added the horde of workpeople who returned at sunset; those who let chairs, or tiny carriages drawn by goats; dog-fanciers, beggars of all sorts, dwarfs from the hippodrome and their microscopic ponies. Picture all these to yourself, and you will have some idea of this singular spot—so near to the Champs Elysees that the tops of the green trees were to be seen, and the roar of carriages ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... the great fly stood with moveless, wide-spread wings, scintillating aerial hues as if its body was compacted of a million microscopic prisms. The transparent tissue of its wings was filled with a finer and more elusive iridescence. The great rounded, globose, overlapping jaws, half as big as the creature's whole head, kept opening and shutting, as if to polish their edges. The other half of its ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... which for the last twenty-three years has emanated from a simple country house in Kent. Memories of poets breathe about the mighty church. Science invokes the aid of imagination no less than poetry. Darwin as he searched, imagined. Every microscopic fact his patient eyes unearthed, his fancy caught up and set in its proper niche in a fabric as stately and grand as ever the creative company of Poets' Corner ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... And yet, neither her sense of humour nor her sense of beauty were deceived. It was a queer little affair with a tuft of black hair, in grace greatly inferior to a kitten. Its tiny, pink, crisped fingers with their infinitesimal nails, its microscopic curly toes, and solemn black eyes—when they showed, its inimitable stillness when it slept, its incredible vigour when it fed, were all, as it were, miraculous. Withal, she had a feeling of gratitude to one that had not killed nor ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... trunks and gnarled branches give ample testimony to their extreme struggle for existence. Where the ordinary plants cease to exist the snowy protococcus holds undisputed sway on the extensive snow fields. This is a small one-celled microscopic plant having a blood red color in one stage of its existence. Even in the crater, on the warm rocks of the rim, will be found three or four mosses—I have noted one there which is not found anywhere else—several lichens, and at ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... is liable to several diseases, which affect the flour made from it, and render it unfit for good bread. The principal of these are the blight, mildew, and smut, which are occasioned by microscopic fungi, which sow themselves and grow upon the stems and ears, destroying the nutritive principles, and introducing matter of a deleterious kind. The farmer is at the utmost pains to keep away these ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... seed, but it is very small an awakened, exercised, conscientious, believing monk, is an imperceptible atom which superstitious multitudes, and despotic princes, and a persecuting priesthood will overlay and smother, as the heavy furrow covers the microscopic mustard-seed. But the living seed burst, and sprang, and pierced through all these coverings. How great it grew and how far it spread history tells to-day. We have cause to thank God for the greatness of the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... explain. The secretion of the mouth in infants is acid, disease increases this acidity; and it has been found that this acid state is not merely favourable to the increase of thrush, but also to the development between the specks of thrush of a sort of membrane formed by a peculiar microscopic growth, of whose existence, just as of that of the phylloxera which destroys the vine, or the muscardine which kills the silkworm, we were ignorant till brought to ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... at Nashville, April 4, 5, and 6, 1876. Its distinguished and talented author will long be remembered as one of the most active, earnest, and zealous members of the State Society. At this meeting he also read a very admirable paper on "The Microscopic Appearance of the Blood in Syphilis," and prepared the report of the Committee on State Board of Health, to which report may be ascribed the honor of securing the necessary legislation organizing the Board. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... and he gradated it with geometrical faultlessness to the exact note where Beethoven marked it to cease. In diminuendos and accelerandos and ritenutos he was just as faithful. In the softer portions his sforzandos were not irrelevant explosions, but slight extra accents: he made microscopic distinctions between piano and pianissimo; he achieved the most difficult feat of keeping his band at a level forte through long passages without a symptom of breaking out into fortissimo. His players treated the stiffest ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... to fair proportions. He was no longer of necessity the hunted, in most cases now he was to be the hunter. As his head parted the surface, myriads of frightened atoms fled panic-stricken before him. Each lash of his tail scattered a microscopic community, and, as he progressed, the sense of mastery grew upon him. Food was here, and in plenty. He had only to open his mouth and take his fill. Yet he had no appetite. For the first few days of his water existence he sat amid the weed, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... Nineteenth Century; but the labors of Van Beneden, Kuechenmeister, Cobbold, Manson, Laveran, and others have now established the causal relationship between great numbers of animal parasites—gross and microscopic—and certain definite morbid states. This has led to a great increase in our knowledge of the connection between the parasites of the lower animals and grave disease in human beings, and on this knowledge rest many of the precautions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... the position of leaves of the twisted plants with this normal arrangement, the best way is to make a corresponding section through the heart of the rosette of the first year. It is not necessary to make a microscopic preparation. In the fall the changed disposition may at once be seen to affect the central leaves of the group. All the rosettes of the whole race commence with opposite leaves; those that are to produce straight stems remain ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... atmosphere with a velocity of twenty miles a second, it seems unquestionable that it would have been dissipated by heat, though, no doubt, the particles would ultimately coalesce so as to descend slowly to the earth in microscopic beads of iron. How has the meteorite escaped this fate? It must be remembered that our earth is also moving with a velocity of about eighteen miles per second, and that the relative velocity with which the meteorite plunges into the air is that which will determine the degree to ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... example of the action of electricity," he said in French, addressing the lady. "Every man has in his skin microscopic glands which contain currents of electricity. If you meet with a person whose currents are parallel with your own, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... by which the Bible itself could then, in all mere particulars, be safely interpreted. Once and again, in the course of his Tetrachordon, he expresses his contempt for the grubbing literalists, who, in their microscopic infatuation over one text at a time, miss the view of the whole waving field of all the texts together. Yet he shows much ingenuity in parts of the verbal proof, and produces also commentators of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... on microscopic examination that it was an uncommon linen bond paper, and I have taken a large number of microphotographs of the fibres in it. They are all similar. I have here also about a hundred microphotographs of the fibres in other kinds of paper, many of them bonds. These I have accumulated ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... cases the Danes are again mentioned. In 1848 all these doors had been removed from their original positions (the old north doors of Worcester being still preserved in the crypt) but Mr. Way succeeded in obtaining fragments of the parchment-like substance from each for microscopic examination. They were declared to be, in each case, human in their origin, and to have belonged probably to fair-haired persons. These cases show flaying not to have been unknown in England, even, to judge by the Worcester case, after the Norman Conquest, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

... particles must largely contribute to the result. Not to particularize this circumstance as true of divers species of sharks, cuttle-fish, and many others of the larger varieties of the finny tribes; the myriads of microscopic mollusca, well known to swarm off soundings, might alone be deemed almost sufficient to kindle a fire in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... milk tin propped between her brown palms resting on her breast. Twenty fathoms off a shark fin, blue as lapis in the shadow, cut the water soundlessly. The hush of ten thousand miles was disturbed by nothing but that grotesque, microscopic babbling: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... our motives bare and you beat them raw, each and every one. Oh, I grant you it was masterful! It was the Beardsley of old! You managed to keep us off balance every moment—" He wet his lips. "What was it, Beardsley? A compulsion, some grotesque need to squeeze us all down to microscopic size first? Oh, you enjoyed doing that! I watched you. You enjoyed it in a way that—" He shook his head, glanced sorrowfully at the equate-panel. "And this ... was it all for this? An achievement—an ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... invisible objects, especially those of an astronomical kind, thus stand as the gigantic counterparts both as to space and time of the microscopic changes which we recognize as occurring in the body of man. However, in adopting these views of the relations of material nature and spirit, we must continually bear in mind that matter "has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... 'personalities,' or by whatever name we may prefer to be called, are but the consensus and full-flowing stream of countless sensations and impulses on the part of our tributary souls or 'selves,' who probably no more know that we exist, and that they exist as a part of us, than a microscopic insect knows the results of spectrum analysis, or than an agricultural labourer [sic] knows the working of the British Constitution; and of whom we know no more than we do of the habits and feelings of some class widely separated from our ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler

... right side and arm became cold and numb. For a year after this letters came frequently, and always at unexpected times. I never knew what they contained until I examined them with a magnifying-glass: they were microscopic. And they contained a vast amount of matter with which it was impossible for me to be acquainted." . . . "Unknown to me, my mother, who was staying some sixty miles away, lost her pet dog, which my father had given her. The same ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle

... races of animated beings, which are entirely within the range of our powers of observation,—which have such a size and locality that we can study and accurately determine their organization and habits,—are unquestionably produced from parents of their own kind. Only the minute microscopic animals are now supposed to be generated spontaneously; and this alleged fact rests not on direct proof, but only on our inability in certain cases to trace the process of their production in the ordinary way. As many of these animals, in their perfect state, are not more than ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... to a fish's body. I forget now what fish. Then with incredible pains, they laid rows upon rows of fish scales all over the monkey's shoulders and chest. Wonderful work. Each scale was glued on separately, beginning from scales almost microscopic and shading both in size and color exactly into those of the fish hinder portion. The work was so exquisitely done that its artificiality could not be detected. But live mermaids haven't been put ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... practised by most of the European parties, was a total failure. Utterly discrepant values of the microscopic displacements designed to serve as sounding lines for the solar system, issued from attempts to measure even the most promising pictures. "You might as well try to measure the zodiacal light," it was remarked to Sir George Airy. Those taken on the American plan of using ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... resemble the interior of the pearl oyster shell. Whether this sheen is produced by polarization of the light in some manner, or whether it is at all analogous to fluorescence, is yet to be decided. The impression of the surface with fine microscopic lines might produce an iridescence, but not separate and clearly defined hues. The ware was intended for ornamental purposes, not for household use; and it was suspended against the rich, dark tapestries of the period with which walls were covered, thus aiding, as it ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various

... only that, in the one beloved, which has awakened the desire. But Love content, regains full vision, and, as time goes on, those powers of vision increase and become, by means of daily, hourly, use,—microscopic and telescopic. Wedded love is not blind. Bah! An outsider staying with married people is apt to hear what love sees, on both sides, and the delusion of love's blindness is dispelled forever. I know Garth was blind, during all those golden days, to my utter lack of beauty, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... can define the Natural Life and the Physical Force we may hope for further clearness on the nature and action of the Spiritual Powers. The effort to detect the living Spirit must be at least as idle as the attempt to subject protoplasm to microscopic examination in the hope of discovering Life. We are warned, also, not to expect too much. "Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." This being its quality, when the Spiritual Life is discovered in the laboratory ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... six months in the year, you can dispense altogether with that most unpleasant encumbrance, the umbrella. For it must be remembered that in Russia the snow does not fall in the soft feathery flakes to which we are accustomed in the more temperate latitudes. It comes down in showers of microscopic darts, which, instead of intercepting the light of the sun, like the arrows of Xerxes' army, glitter and sparkle in the rays as they reflect them in every direction. The minute crystals, or rather crystalline ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have had something different from this intellectualist type of criticism applied ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... yet be so idiotic as to make a spectacle of herself in her real womanhood. As far as I can make out, Nature is more to blame than the girl. There is not a bat blinking in the sunlight more blind than she to every natural beauty of this June day; and yet her eyes are microscopic, and she sees a host of little things not worth seeing. A true womanly moral nature seems never to have been infused into her being. She detests children, her little sister shrinks from her; she speaks and surmises evil of the absent; ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... fully investigated, especially the Diatomaceae, of the 252 species of Algae known to occur in the county, 156 belonging to that interesting family of microscopic plants. As an illustration of their minute size it may be mentioned that a single drop of water from the saucer of a flower-pot at Hertford, mounted as a microscopic slide, was found to contain 200,000 separate frustules of Achnanthes subsessilis, and it was estimated that these ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... PLATE IV. Microscopic anatomy of the liver. The liver is composed of innumerable small lobules, from 1/20 to 1/10 inch in diameter. The lobules are held together by a small amount of fibrous tissue, in which the bile ducts and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... added the Professor, with what we thought a quiet note of warning in his voice, "I need hardly tell you that what we are dealing with must be regarded as altogether ultra-microscopic." ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... of microscopic projection which has done so much for the popularization of science was one of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... assemblage of colors spread from the white ray of sunlight, we do not find red simple red, yellow yellow, etc., but there is a vast number of fine microscopic lines of various lengths, parallel—here near together, there far apart, always the same number and the same relative distance, when the same light and prism are used. What new alphabets to new realms of knowledge ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... a microscopic fungus, that is parasitic upon cultivated plants. Roses, Bouvardias, and especially grape vines, are subject to its attacks. If not arrested, mildew will soon strip a plant of its foliage. Whenever a whitish dust, as if flour had been sprinkled upon them, appears upon the leaves, ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... once she took the lid off and disclosed a tiny tea service of china, packed in shavings; there was a teapot with a lid, a cream jug, cups and saucers, and six microscopic plates, each ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, and it was soon found that however carefully organic matter might be protected by screens, or by being placed in stoppered receptacles, putrefaction set in, and was invariably accompanied by the appearance of myriads of bacteria and other low organisms. As knowledge of microscopic forms of life increased, so the apparent possibilities of abiogenesis increased, and it became a tempting hypothesis that whilst the higher forms of life arose only by generation from their kind, there was ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... preparing to put up the "standing room only" notice. In another thousand years, for aught we know, the earth may be going round dark and tenantless and bearing the sign "To Let." What does it matter to us? What are we but microscopic weevils in the mouldy crust of earth? Sufficient unto the day ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford

... fires of the Aryans in Europe appear to have been commonly kindled and fed with oak-wood, and in Rome itself, not many miles from Nemi, the fuel of the Vestal fire consisted of oaken sticks or logs, as has been proved by a microscopic analysis of the charred embers of the Vestal fire, which were discovered by Commendatore G. Boni in the course of the memorable excavations which he conducted in the Roman forum at the end of the nineteenth century. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the .. appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward; —for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... Darmstetter some question about the preparation of a microscopic slide from a bit of a ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... or stunned. He gives his orders in staccato. We feel that he knows what he is going to do, and will certainly accomplish it. Meanwhile his mind is dominant. It is preternaturally active. His "asides," which before were lyrical, now become the comments of an acute intellect. His vivid and microscopic recollection of the apothecary shop, his philosophical bantering with the apothecary, his sudden violence to Balthasar at the entrance to the tomb, and his as sudden friendliness, his words and conflict with Paris, whom he kills incidentally, absent-mindedly, and, as it were, with his ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... comprehensive execution of Tacitus. Here was something to be done seemingly insuperable; for how can any one hope to imitate the execution of another, with such marvellous nicety that no distinction can be discerned between the two on the minutest test of microscopic investigation? more especially if the execution to be imitated be that of a man of real genius, consequently unparalleled in its way, of a mighty nature, and, in addition to its mightiness, a thing of the purest individuality. Now, the History of Tacitus ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... included Aristotle held the doctrine of [Greek: ideai], and next, in 33, that Aristotle crushed the same doctrine, appears very absurd. We may reflect, however, that the difference between Plato's [Greek: ideai] and Aristotle's [Greek: ta kathalou] would naturally seem microscopic to Antiochus. Both theories were practically as dead in his time as those of Thales or Anaxagoras. The confusion must not be laid at Cicero's door, for Antiochus in reconciling his own dialectics with Plato's must have been ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the exception of the carbon inks employed on papyrus, the writing pigments of antiquity and the Middle Ages have scarcely been investigated. The dark to light-brown pigment, hitherto a problem, universally used on parchment, he contends upon historical, chemical and microscopic evidence is identical with oeno-cyanin and was prepared for the most part from yeast, and was first employed as a pigment. Contrary to the general opinion it contains no iron, except frequently accidental traces, and after its appearance ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... Microscopic shells of various kinds, not larger than grains of wheat, were heaped up in ridges at high-water mark; further back the shore was sandy, but soon rose, in an undulating manner, to hills covered with grass; and several clumps of trees scattered over them gave the land a pleasing ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... to her rebuke, but looked over the deed with slow and microscopic scrutiny. At last he said to Edith, whom nothing but dire necessity impelled to have dealings with so ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... chatting, Samuel Brohl was striving with all his might to recover from the terrible blow he had received. He noted with keen satisfaction that the eyesight of the princess was considerably impaired; that the microscopic studies, for which she had always had a taste, had resulted in rendering her somewhat near-sighted; that she was obliged to look out carefully to find her way among her wine-glasses. "She has not seen me for six ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... talents ought to respect themselves and posterity in the employment of their time. What would posterity think of us if we had nothing to transmit to it save a complete insectology, an immense history of microscopic animals? No—to the great geniuses great objects, little objects to the little ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... in that umbrageous shelter, to the music of the frogs. He condescended to partake of a microscopic share of my meal, and thereafter left me, with some old-world compliment, to irrigate his ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... herself—here Henrietta's tone conveyed restraint, even comparative reverence—who never for an instant forgot she once had reigned over some microscopic court out in the far Colonial wilderness, nor allowed you to forget it either. Her glance half demanded your curtsy. Still she was the "real thing" and, in that, eminently satisfactory—genuine grande dame by right both ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... component members. The only apparent desideratum was a recipient for the focal image which should transfer it, without refranging it, to the surface on which it was to be viewed under the revivifying light of the microscopic reflectors.' ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... biography which, whether interesting or not in themselves, have to be determined before Chaucer's life can be written. They are not "all and some" mere antiquarians' puzzles, of interest only to those who have leisure and inclination for microscopic enquiries. So with the point immediately in view. It has been said with much force that Tyrwhitt, whose services to the study of Chaucer remain uneclipsed by those of any other scholar, would have composed a quite different biography of the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... result was scarce a thimbleful. He searched in his pockets, and brought forward, between thumb and forefinger, tiny pinches of rubbish. Here and there in this rubbish were crumbs of tobacco. These he segregated with microscopic care, though he occasionally permitted small particles of foreign substance to accompany the crumbs to the hoard in his palm. He even deliberately added small, semi-hard woolly fluffs, that had come originally from ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... grilling work. The cold seemed something vital, sentient, alive, which opposed him with all its might. The wind and snow appeared cunning allies of the one great enemy; and, to make matters worse, the very underbrush and trees themselves apparently conspired against this one microscopic human who dared invade the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... which Mr. Booth places under microscopic observation covers Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St. George's in the East, Stepney, Mile End, Old Town, Poplar, Hackney, and comprises a population 891,539. Of these no less than 316,000, or 35 per cent, belong to families whose weekly ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... came reaction, doubt. After all, humanity was a puny production of the Ages. Men and women were like the struggling animalculae that her father had so often shewn the boys, in a drop of magnified ditch-water; yet not quite like those microscopic insects, for the stupendous processes of life had at last created a widening consciousness, a mind which could perceive the bewildering vastness of Nature and its own smallness, which could, in some measure, get outside its own particular ditch, and the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... 1878, the phonograph made its way also to Europe, and various sums of money were paid there to secure the rights to its manufacture and exploitation. In England, for example, the Microscopic Company paid $7500 down and agreed to a royalty, while arrangements were effected also in France, Russia, and other countries. In every instance, as in this country, the commercial development had to wait several years, for in the mean time another ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... continuous, he could return again and again to the same point; he could polish, correct, eliminate superfluities, and compress his meaning more and more closely, till he has constructed short passages of imperishable excellence. This microscopic attention to fragments sometimes injures the connexion, and often involves a mutilation of construction. He corrects and prunes too closely. He could, he says, in reference to the Essay on Man, put things more briefly in verse than in prose; one reason being that he could take liberties ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... the picture to a level with his face, and with bent head and extended neck, appeared to be trying to decipher upon the canvas some microscopic writing or obscure hieroglyphics. ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... of exalted dreams. Alas! that love, the purest and most real, Clusters forever round some form ideal; And martial things have some strange necromancy To captivate romantic maiden fancy. The very word "Lieutenant" hath a charm, E'en coupled with a vulgar face and form, A shriveled heart and microscopic wit, Scarce for a coachman or a barber fit; His untried sword, his title, are to her Better than genius, wealth, or high renown; His uniform is sweeter than the gown Of an Episcopalian minister; And "dash," for swagger but a synonym, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... punishment would cost him little pains. In three weeks from that time the palpitating Merman saw his book announced in the programme of the leading Review. No need for Grampus to put his signature. Who else had his vast yet microscopic knowledge, who else his power of epithet? This article in which Merman was pilloried and as good as mutilated—for he was shown to have neither ear nor nose for the subtleties of philological and archaeological study—was much read and more ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... growing up around them. She had tried for years to get a husband, but finally, at the age of thirty-eight, had given up the fight; and instead of sharing in the happiness of her lifelong neighbors, she had drifted into being the neighborhood gossip, picking flaws in everything and searching with microscopic eye to find the failures in the lives of those around her, trying to find satisfaction in her unmarried state by seeing only the darker side of the matrimonial adventures around her. If a man came home late after dining well but not wisely with his companions, ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... that it can not be missed; as, the application of the remark was obvious. Visible applies to all that can be perceived by the sense of sight, whether the noonday sun, a ship on the horizon, or a microscopic object. Discernible applies to that which is dimly or faintly visible, requiring strain and effort in order to be seen; as, the ship was discernible through the mist. That is conspicuous which stands ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... atmosphere of the Northland serves merely to develop and emphasize traits that lie slumbering in men and women everywhere. And on this basis the fantastic figures created by Hamsun relate themselves to ordinary humanity as the microscopic enlargement of a cross section to the living tissues. What we see is ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun



Words linked to "Microscopic" :   microscopy, little, microscopic anatomy, microscope, electron microscopic, seeable, precise, visible, small



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