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They told me that they were built of earth, and covered with turf; and that the windows were formed of filaments of grass woven together in such a manner that the light shone through.
In about ten days after the last moulting, the silk-worm climbs upon the props of his house, and choosing a situation among the heath, begins to spin in a most curious manner, until he is quite inclosed, and the cocon or pod of silk, about the size of a pigeon's egg, which he has produced remains suspended by several filaments.
By what nice interlacement of filaments the fibrous ring that margins the pupil, or aperture through the iris, regulates the admission of light, contracting or expanding, yet always preserving its circular form, according as the brilliance is excessive or deficient; how the humours or lenses are continually varying in figure and relative position so as to concentrate every pencil of light admitted on that point exactly where the retina is spread out to receive it; how, according as the object looked at is near at hand or far off, certain muscles perform quite opposite services, rendering the cornea more or less prominent, pushing the crystalline lens forward or backward, and thereby lengthening or shortening the axis of vision, so that, whether the rays enter divergently from a near object, or parallel from a remote one, they equally fall into focus at the same distance beyond, and equally form on the retina a picture of the object from which they come, perhaps compressing a landscape of five or six square leagues into a space of half an inch diameter, and anon allowing the page of a book or a dinner-plate to occupy the entire field of vision to these and to any kindred marvels it would be superfluous more than momentarily to refer.
In the jungle which adjoined the grounds attached to my official residence at Kandy, the shrubs were frequented by an insect covered profusely with a snow-white powder, arranged in delicate filaments that curl like a head of dressed celery. These it moves without dispersing the powder: but when dead they fall rapidly to dust.
The most remarkable fact, and one which I have observed in no other species of the genus, is that the filaments and the petioles of the young leaves, if they catch no object, after standing for some days in their original position, spontaneously and slowly oscillate a little from side to side, and then move towards the stem and clasp it.
In B flat minor, it sends out prehensile filaments that entwine and draw us into the centre of a wondrous melody, laden with rich odors, odors that almost intoxicate. The figuration is tropical, and when the major is reached and those glancing thirty-seconds so coyly assail us we realize the seductive charm of Chopin.
It does not matter to you how many cells there are in his bones, or how many filaments in his feathers; what you want is his moral character and way of behaving himself; it is just that which your imagination, if healthy, will first seize just that which your chisel, if vigorous, will first cut.
They polished and sharpened them in the same way, and made them fast to pieces of the fir with the sinews of the white bear; feathers of sea-fowl being tied with the filaments.
Whether it would have perished if its filaments had been gently disentangled from the object to which they had attached themselves, experienced judges of such matters may perhaps question. To justify Clement in his estimate of the danger of such an experiment, we must remember that to young people in their teens a first passion is a portentous and unprecedented phenomenon.
But these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aïe, Aïe."
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