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Metamorphosis   Listen
noun
Metamorphosis  n.  (pl. metamorphoses)  
1.
Change of form, or structure; transformation.
2.
(Biol.) A change in the form or function of a living organism, by a natural process of growth or development; as, the metamorphosis of the yolk into the embryo, of a tadpole into a frog, or of a bud into a blossom. Especially, that form of sexual reproduction in which an embryo undergoes a series of marked changes of external form, as the chrysalis stage, pupa stage, etc., in insects. In these intermediate stages sexual reproduction is usually impossible, but they ultimately pass into final and sexually developed forms, from the union of which organisms are produced which pass through the same cycle of changes. See Transformation.
3.
(Physiol.) The change of material of one kind into another through the agency of the living organism; metabolism.
Vegetable metamorphosis (Bot.), the doctrine that flowers are homologous with leaf buds, and that the floral organs are transformed leaves.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Metamorphosis" Quotes from Famous Books



... well have been in search of something like the later Unity of Type, he uses his amassed details of scientific knowledge most effectively in support of nonscientific propositions. Thus, he uses the facts of embryonic development, alchemy, and insect metamorphosis as a part of his argument for the immortality of ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... a metamorphosis in all the pages of Ovid so wonderful as that which the great magician of the shears and thimble is capable of effecting. If there be the most unpleasant disproportions in the turn of your limbs—any awkwardness or deformity in your figure, the enchantment of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... lost one of her shoes, the hag sent her husband back to look for it, while she proceeded with the metamorphosis of the hapless infant who had fallen into her hands. She smeared the little face with muddy water from the margin of the pool; she jerked out the semi-circular comb which held back Marian's cloud of dusky hair, and let the thick locks fall in disorder about her head and face; she dragged the ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... see," quoth Baba; while Don Juan, turning to his comrade, who Though somewhat grieved, could scarce forbear a smile Upon the metamorphosis in view,— "Farewell!" they mutually exclaimed: "this soil Seems fertile in adventures strange and new; One's turned half Mussulman, and one a maid, By this old black enchanter's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... reckless leer that filled Marian with loathing. Her aspect conveyed the same painful suggestion as her voice had done before, but more definitely; for it struck Marian, with a shock, that Conolly, in the grotesque metamorphosis of a nightmare, might appear in some such likeness. The lamp did not seem to attract her attention at first; but when she came within a few steps, she saw some one before her, and, dazzled by the light, peered at Marian, who lost her presence of mind, and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... such a metamorphosis was too absurd not to throw me into a hearty fit of laughing, in which the worthy emigre ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... was in a dreadful agony, when I found the lady had escaped, and in my wrath had like to have slain Dorcas, and our mother, and every one I met. But, by some quick transition, and strange metamorphosis, which dreams do not usually account for, methought, all of a sudden, this matronly lady turned into the famous mother H. herself; and, being an old acquaintance of mother Sinclair, was prevailed upon to assist in my plot ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... The appetite for luxury and pleasure had insinuated itself into manners—which were no longer republican, and the vast number of Russians and English who drove about everywhere with brilliant equipages contributed not a little to this metamorphosis. All Paris flocked to the Carrousel on review days, and regarded with eyes of delight the unusual sight of rich foreign liveries and emblazoned carriages. The parties at the Tuileries were brilliant and numerous, and nothing was wanting but the name of levees. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... correct to say that Beauty and the Beast is a late, courtly, French adaptation and amplification of the original popular "wild growth" which first appears (in literary form) as Cupid and Psyche, in Apuleius. Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as Thetis ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... growing out of the war, Red Cross work, Patriotic Fund, all those manifold avenues through which the women fought their share of Canada's fight. For a pleasure-loving creature Sophie Carr seemed to have undergone an astonishing metamorphosis. She spent on these things, quietly, without parade or press-agenting, all the energy in her, and she had no reserve left for play. War work seemed to mean something to Sophie besides write-ups in the society column and pictures of her in sundry poses. These ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... than half an hour a wonderful metamorphosis. A tinted fringe of cloud appears on the mists high up, and gives the impression of a beam of sunlight amidst the shadows. But no sun has broken the eastern sky-line, nor will it for another half-hour. Yet the light increases, and the swirling mists become ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... surface culture and clothes, the thin veneer of education which in his case, as in the cases of the great majority of young men who have been graduated from this or that university, had imparted only a sort of finish, a neat, gleaming polish, and no great metamorphosis of the inner and true being, was he a better man? If there was any one particular, no matter how small, in which Greek Conniston was a better man than the men among whom he had moved with careless contempt, he wanted ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... possesses any direct alimentary value, the medical advocates of its use have been driven to the assumption that it is a kind of secondary food, in that it has the power to delay the metamorphosis of tissue. "By the metamorphosis of tissue is meant," says Dr. Hunt, "that change which is constantly going on in the system which involves a constant disintegration of material; a breaking up and avoiding of that which is no longer aliment, making room for that new supply which is to sustain ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... simulacrum idoli, and, besides the passages under consideration, refers to Jud. viii. 27, xvii. 5, xviii. 14, 17. But one requires only to examine these passages a little more minutely, to be convinced that the metamorphosis of Jehovah into an idol is as little justified as the changing of the mantle into a statue. From the personal character of Gideon, who was so zealous for the Lord against the idols, we cannot at all think of idolatry in Jud. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... was opened by the Assessor. No hermit, nor even robber, had his abode therein; the hut was empty, but clean and compact, and it was with no little pleasure that the Assessor took possession of it, and seated himself with Petrea on the only bench which it possessed. Petrea sighed. What a miserable metamorphosis of her glorious castle in ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... vast number of eggs upon grass stems near water. The larvae are aquatic, active, armed with strong sharp mandibles, and breathe by means of seven pairs of abdominal branchial filaments. When full sized they leave the water and spend a quiescent pupal stage on the land before metamorphosis into the sexually mature insect. Sialis lutaria is a well-known British example. In America there are two genera, Corydalis and Chauliodes, which are remarkable for their relatively gigantic size and for the immense length and sabre-like shape ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... perform no function in the life of the individual, have no relation to external conditions, either in the sense of being caused by special conditions or fitting the individual to live in special conditions. A still more important fact is that they do not explain the origin of metamorphosis. They do not arise by a metamorphosis: in the case of the rose comb of fowls the chick is not hatched with a single comb which gradually changes into a rose comb, but the rose comb develops directly from the beginning. Mutationists and ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... herself, try to form some manly resolution; but she was kept in leading strings by the need for money. And so, slowly and in spite of the ambitious protests and grievous recriminations of her own mind, she underwent the provincial metamorphosis here described. Each day took with it a fragment of her spirited determination. She had laid down a rule for the care of her person, which she gradually departed from. Though at first she kept up with the fashions ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... Of Carlin, M. Sand speaks:—"Like most clever buffoons, he had a very melancholy disposition, and, as with Dominique, his gaiety was what the English term humour. It belonged to his mind, and not to his temperament." Carlin also wrote a book entitled, "Les Metamorphosis d'Arlequin." In 1783 Carlin died, and his place in the favour of the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... Shahar, the dawn, never becomes an independent agent; she is never spoken of as Eos rising from the bed of her husband Tithonos (the setting sun), solely and simply because the word retained its power as an appellative, and thus could not enter into any mythological metamorphosis. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... and postmortemity is their most proper ubi and quomodo. And as the ends and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... says Dr. Leidy, its attacks upon the larva, develop its mycelium, and produce a sporular mass within the active pupa, when many are probably destroyed; but should some be only affected so far as not to destroy the organs immediately essential to life, they might undergo their metamorphosis into the imago, in which case they would be affected in the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... kinds. They went into the details of the contemplated deal with meticulous care and consummate administrative skill. They elaborated a programme which would undoubtedly have proved in the highest degree advantageous to Russia, had the conditions not undergone a complete metamorphosis owing to the outbreak of the Revolution in Petrograd a very few days after they landed, sanguine and reassuring, in this country on their ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... and Fritz went forth to find—not the King, but the unnamed friend of the King, who had lain in Zenda and flashed for a moment before the dazed eyes of Duke Michael's servants on the drawbridge. The metamorphosis had happened; and the King, wounded almost to death by the attacks of the gaolers who guarded his friend, had at last overcome them, and rested now, wounded but alive, in Black Michael's own room in the Castle. There he had been carried, his face ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... an actual man; and this is supported by the tradition of his association with Kartavirya Arjuna, who, in spite of all the mythical tales that are related of him, really seems to have been a king of flesh and blood. Thus we may venture to see in him yet another example of the metamorphosis so common in India from a saint to an incarnation of the god ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... Prater of Vienna. I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand and pens, seat myself in the corner of my sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time really set about thinking what I have written. To see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of manuscript into print, is a delight to which I give myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy pleasure, which would have furnished the departed Voss with worthy matter for more than one blessed Idyl—(the more so, as on such occasions, I am generally arrayed in a morning ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Thus the author of Martin's Month's Mind (1589) speaks of "twittle-twattles that I had learned in ale-houses and at the Theatre of Lanham and his fellows." Again, Nash, in Pierce Penniless (1592), writes: "Tarleton at the Theatre made jests of him"; Harrington, in The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596): "Which word was after admitted into the Theatre with great applause, by the mouth of Master Tarleton"; and the author of Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatory (c. 1589) represents Tarleton as connected with the Theatre. Now, unless Lanham, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... by the creation of woman's character, by introducing into mediaeval poetry, hitherto hard and austere, the nuances of love, that the Breton romances brought about this curious metamorphosis. It was like an electric spark; in a few years European taste was changed. Nearly all the types of womankind known to the Middle Ages, Guinevere, Iseult, Enid, are derived from Arthur's court. In the Carlovingian poems woman is a nonentity without character or individuality; in them ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... Franchise and Home Rule episodes. Worst of all, so super-subtle was the satire, that it was never actually stated straight out that the Premier had changed places with the Radical working man, so that the door might be left open for satirically suggested alternative explanations of the metamorphosis in their characters; and as, moreover, the two men re-assumed their original roles for one night only with infinitely complex effects, many readers, otherwise unimpeachable, reached the end without any suspicion ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... the Daika era. For the main features of that development were that the entire nation became the public people of the realm and the whole of the land became the property of the Crown, the hereditary nobles being relegated to the rank of State pensioners. This metamorphosis entailed taking an accurate census of the population; making a survey of the land; fixing the boundaries of provinces, districts, and villages; appointing officials to administer the affairs of these local divisions, and organizing the central government ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... that moment, seemed like the work of fate. Bagley was to be absent from town a week, and Murray Davenport was about to undergo a metamorphosis that would make detection impossible. It really appeared as though destiny had gone in for an act of poetic justice; had deliberately planned a restitution; had determined to befriend the new man as it had afflicted the ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... nearly resembles the ordinary symphony in that it is in three distinct movements—with pauses between—which stand, respectively, for the three chief characters in Goethe's drama: Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. In the Faust Symphony the principle of transformation or metamorphosis of themes is of such importance that it may be defined as their rhythmic, melodic and harmonic modification for the purpose of changing the meaning to correspond with a modification in the characters for which they stand. The ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... the most remarkable points about the dinner was the peculiar metamorphosis of Mrs. Pickett from the brooding silent woman he had known to the gracious ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... The period in which these remarkable changes were taking place is known as that of the Renaissance. It cannot be confined to definite chronological limits, but is the period of transition from one historical stage to another, in which there was a "gradual metamorphosis of the intellectual and moral state of Europe." The Renaissance must be viewed as "an internal process whereby spiritual energies latent in the Middle Ages were developed into actuality and formed a mental habit for the modern world." ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... primeval invented situations, one of the elements of the Marchen in prose. Such tales or myths occur in the stories of savages, in the legends of peasants, are interwoven later with the plot in Epic or Romance, and may also inspire ballads. Popular superstitions, the witch, metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, all of them survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part. The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... changes is to es: as, amanuensis, amanuenses; analysis, analyses; antithesis, antitheses; axis, axes; basis, bases; crisis, crises; diaeresis, diaereses; diesis, dieses; ellipsis, ellipses; emphasis, emphases; fascis, fasces; hypothesis, hypotheses; metamorphosis, metamorphoses; oasis, oases; parenthesis, parentheses; phasis, phases; praxis, praxes; synopsis, synopses; synthesis, syntheses; syrtis, syrtes; thesis, theses. In some, however, the original plural is not so formed; but is made by changing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... had been no surprise in seeing the young man come out to her with the old one on his arm—had he not told her that he went in peace?—and even the glorious metamorphosis in Mr. Higginson's appearance quite failed to arrest her attention. She had smoothed his approach with a welcoming smile and the beginning of a gay greeting; but her eyes were for her lover. And now as she saw the look on Varney's ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Penarrow, is at long length set forth in the chronicles of Lord Henry Goade. His lordship conveys to us some notion of how utterly overwhelming he found that fact by the tedious minuteness with which he follows step by step this extraordinary metamorphosis. He devotes to it two entire volumes of those eighteen which he has left us. The whole, however, may with advantage be summarized into ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... when met in the imaginative world, bears quite another appearance. In the former we are aware of a perpetual ebb and flow, an alternation between birth and death. But in the imaginative world there appears, in place of this phenomenon, a continual metamorphosis of the one into the other. In the physical world we see, for instance, how a plant fades away, but in the imaginative world there emerges, in proportion as the plant fades, another form, not physically discernible, into which the withering plant is ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... the largest and the smallest. The appearance of the former is now before you. It is divergent from the common type when seen in its perfect condition, avoiding the oval form, but it resumes it in metamorphosis. It is comparatively huge in its proportions, its average extreme length being the 1/1000 of an inch. Its normal form is rigidly adhered to as that of a rotifer or a crustacean. Its body-substance is a structureless sarcode. Its differentiations are a nucleus-like body, not common to the monads; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... two hours I have met nothing but lovers, men and women in couples. I had the notion of going into the Luxembourg Gardens, where I saw all manner of phantasmagorias, that stirred my heart extraordinarily. Ellegies are bursting from me, I bleat and I coo; I am undergoing a metamorphosis, and am half lamb half turtle dove. Look at me a bit, I must ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... anatomy, which informs us that the original cause of disease is a change in the form of the cellular elements of different digestive organs,—in explanation of which the customary technical terms are used, such as "atrophy," "degeneration," "metamorphosis," etc. But, I reasoned with myself, this surely cannot be seriously regarded as the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... after a few seconds, the bald head rose, glistening from the pool of the "beer." The thin wisps of gray hair hung in dank strings; the jungle of beard seemed strangely thin; there was something curiously unlike Ben York in the lineaments. The marshal guessed that the metamorphosis was wrought by the swirling mess, which had scrubbed the weazened face almost clean for the first time in the memory of living man. As the dilapidated head emerged, it showed the grotesque caricature of a Neptune, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... Helen only." In Homer, then, Helen is the daughter of Zeus, but Homer says nothing of the famous legend which makes Zeus assume the form of a swan to woo the mother of Helen. Unhomeric as this myth is, we may regard it as extremely ancient. Very similar tales of pursuit and metamorphosis, for amatory or other purposes, among the old legends of Wales, and in the "Arabian Nights," as well as in the myths of Australians and Red Indians. Again, the belief that different families of mankind descend from animals, as from the Swan, or from gods in the shape of animals, is found in every ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... had hung himself, or thrown himself off a bridge—whether he really was dead or had only been arrested—when our conjectures were suddenly set at rest by the entry of the man himself. He had undergone some strange metamorphosis, and walked up the centre of the room with an air which showed he was fully conscious of the improvement in his appearance. It was very odd. His clothes were a fine, deep, glossy black; and yet they looked like the same suit; nay, there were the very darns ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... a miracle was no more than the same beautifully simple process which Nature enacts every day, when she changes an awkward and dirt-colored cygnet into a glorious swan or a leggily gawky colt into a superb Derby-winner. But Bruce's metamorphosis seemed none the less wonderful in the eyes of the two people who had learned to ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... descent from the most closely related lower species, and under certain circumstances also from species of the same rank, and even by degeneration from the next higher, it must have occurred in one of two ways: either by leaps—called by naturalists "metamorphosis of germs" or "heterogenetic conception"—or by a succession of imperceptibly small alterations of the individuals from generation to generation. Each of these changes would have been no greater than the differences we ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... like a man-of-war as possible, though she as much resembled the old-fashioned sailing sloop which then still performed duty on our more distant stations as a swan does a goose, her sailing powers far exceeding those of the fastest of them, whilst Williams' metamorphosis of her only had the effect of imparting to her an extremely rakish and ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... he was the victim of some extraordinary typographical blunder, the author at once sat down and read the proof. In its new dress, with the metamorphosis of type,—that metamorphosis which every writer so well knows changes his relations to it and makes it no longer seem a part of himself,—he was able to read it with something of the freshness of an untold tale. As he read on he found himself affected, even as he had been affected in the conception ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... enough to see a hairdresser or a lackey converted into a governor; a sailor or a deserter transformed into a district magistrate, collector, or military commander of a populous province, without any other counsellor than his own crude understanding, or any other guide than his passion. Such a metamorphosis would excite laughter in a comedy or farce; but, realized in the theatre of human life, it must give rise to sensations of a very different nature. Who is there that does not feel horror-struck, and tremble for the innocent, when ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... a movement with his hand, and, directly he did so, it happened as on the previous evening, that a metamorphosis took place in the very abysses of my being. I woke from my torpor, as he put it, I came out of death, and was alive again. I was far, yet, from being my own man; I realised that he exercised on me a degree of mesmeric force which I had never dreamed that one creature could exercise on another; ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... understand my language?" Then I received another strange but unmistakable impression which replied: "I can understand your thoughts but not your babble." "Are you able," she continued telepathically, "to give an explanation of this extraordinary metamorphosis?" "The only information I can offer," answered I, "will be cheerfully given. My name is John Convert, late seaman aboard the schooner Brawl, bound from Sydney to London. Last night I was thrown overboard by my shipmates and after floating about the deep for several hours I landed ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... her cheek and chin. Upon a table, where they had been hastily deposited, on the intelligence of Darrell's accident, lay a pair of pink kid gloves, bordered with lace, and an enormous fan; the latter, when opened, represented the metamorphosis and death of Actaeon. From her stomacher, to which it was attached by a multitude of glittering steel chains, depended an immense turnip-shaped watch, in a pinchbeck case. Her hair was gathered up behind, in a sort of pad, according to the then prevailing mode; and she wore ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the Rev. Theron Ware, from the very first moment of waking next morning, that both he and the world had changed over night. The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he had been laboring blindly so long, was accomplished. He stood forth, so to speak, in a new skin, and looked about him, with perceptions of quite an altered kind, upon what seemed in every way a fresh existence. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... on the bowl figured in plate CXXXII, f, would be identified as a frog, save for the presence of a tail which would seem to refer it to the lizard kind. But in the evolution of the tadpole into the frog a tailed stage persists in the metamorphosis after the legs develop. In modern pictures[138] of the frog with which I am familiar, this batrachian is always represented dorsally or ventrally with the legs outstretched, while in the lizards, as we have seen, a lateral view is always adopted. As the sole picture found on ancient pottery where ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... as the Gospels tell us, he can be said to have died as a man at Calvary? For if upon the Mount of Transfiguration, or at any other time previous to the scene at Calvary, Jesus was metamorphosed, the form which was the result of the process of re-metamorphosis necessary to make him recognisable again cannot be said to have been born of the Virgin Mary, and can have been human only ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... the words so mournfully intoned brought solace and surcease from sorrow. The sisters of charity moved among the throng with grave, pale faces, mere shadows of their earthly selves, as though they had undergone the first stage of the great metamorphosis which is promised. To them, who had already buried health, vitality and passion, was not this chant to the dead, this strange intoning of words, sweeter than the lullaby crooned by a nurse to a child, more stirring than the patriotic hymn to a soldier, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... from the fact that philosophers use the word development to designate a definite sequence of ideas, i.e., in a logical order. "Metamorphosis, says Hegel, belongs to the Idea as such since its variation alone is development. Rational speculation must get rid of such nebulous concepts as the evolution of the more highly developed animal organisms from the ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... cab, and she had taken the train for Hampton. For a while she sat as in a trance. She knew that something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that same morning—an age ago. But she was unable to realize the metamorphosis. In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime, exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to feel any more. The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of people returning to homes scattered through ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... great table of walnut- wood, on which are arranged bottles, test-tubes, and old sardine-boxes, which Fabre employs in order to watch the evolution of a thousand nameless or doubtful eggs, to observe the labours of their larvae, the creation and the hatching of cocoons, and the little miracles of metamorphosis, "after a germination more wonderful than that of the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... Few of the vniuersity pen plaies well; they smell too much of that writer Ouid, and that writer Metamorphosis,[xi:1] and talke too much of Proserpina and Juppiter. Why, heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe, I,[xi:2] and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow! he brought vp Horace giuing the Poets ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp

... day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are." I do not know. But The Encyclopaedia has a suggestive sentence: "All grasshoppers are vegetable feeders and have an incomplete metamorphosis, so that their destructive powers are continuous from the moment of emergence from the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... "Perimedes," 1588, imitated from Boccaccio; "Pandosto," a tale of Bohemian and Sicilian kings and shepherds, which had an immense success, much greater according to appearances than the exquisite drama of a "Winter's Tale," that Shakespeare drew from it. "Alcida," a story of the metamorphosis of three young love-stricken princesses of an island "under the pole antartike," was apparently published in the same year; "Menaphon," a charming pastoral tale, appeared in 1589, and several others followed. His popularity was soon considerable; his books ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... their drying, the bell struck eight, the flag was hoisted, and close on the drums followed the band playing the "Star-Spangled Banner," while the ship's company went to breakfast. It was the transformation scene of a theatre; within five minutes the metamorphosis was complete. There was doubtless a flavor of the circus about it all, but it was a wholesome flavor and tonicked the professional appetite. Yes, and the natural appetite, too; your breakfast tasted better, especially ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... met with a facetious piece of Sir John Harrington, printed in 1596 (and possibly there may be an earlier Edition), called, The Metamorphosis of Ajax, where I suspect an allusion to the old Play: "Read the booke of Taming a Shrew, which hath made a number of us so perfect, that now every one can rule a Shrew in our Countrey, save ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... action. I had been more than a year soliciting leave to go home, with a view to place my daughters in the society and care of their friends, and to return for a short time to my station at Paris. But the metamorphosis through which our government was then passing from its chrysalid to its organic form, suspended its action in a great degree; and it was not till the last of August that I received the permission I had asked. And ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... booke is that she tosseth so? Boy. Grandsier 'tis Ouids Metamorphosis, My mother gaue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... a plant, or stump, include atoms derived from every other cell of the whole organism and capable of development, I gain a distinct idea. But this idea would not be worth a rush, if it applied to one case alone; but it seems to me to apply to all the forms of reproduction—inheritance—metamorphosis— to the abnormal transposition of organs—to the direct action of the male element on the mother plant, etc. Therefore I fully believe that each cell does ACTUALLY throw off an atom or gemmule of its contents;—but whether or not, this hypothesis serves ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... be seen that the brutality Heppner displayed at home he could successfully repress when on duty. But the most remarkable thing about this man, who behaved like a brute to his wife, and had no affection for his comrades, was the metamorphosis he underwent if the horses were in question. Towards those beautiful animals he showed an almost womanly tenderness. They all knew him, and he loved them all, though naturally he had his favourites among them. There was Udo, a light-brown gelding, who could kneel down. And Zulu, almost ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... surreptitious moment, and was now dispensing the brilliant comestibles with much ill-subdued glee. One mouth, that had bitten off the head of a checkerberry chanticleer, was convulsed with the acidulous tickling of sweetened laughter, till the biter was bit and a metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate snatching, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... tale of Erec and Enid, and translated the Commandments of Ovid and the Art of Love, and composed the Bite of the Shoulder, and sang of King Mark and of the blonde Iseult, and of the metamorphosis of the Hoopoe and of the Swallow and of the Nightingale, is now beginning a new tale of a youth who was in Greece of the lineage of King Arthur. But before I tell you anything of him, you shall hear his father's life—whence he was and of what lineage. ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... first impression on seeing Will was one of sunny brightness, which added to the uncertainty of his changing expression. Surely, his very features changed their form, his jaw looked sometimes large and sometimes small; and the little ripple in his nose was a preparation for metamorphosis. When he turned his head quickly his hair seemed to shake out light, and some persons thought they saw decided genius in this coruscation. Mr. Casaubon, on the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... around his skull. Necklace, fetich, and the plume that adorned his sidelock, he put in the quiver. He was now so far transformed that any one, Nacaytzusle excepted, might have taken him in the night for a Navajo warrior. This metamorphosis was performed rapidly, but without anxious haste or confusion. The howls had meanwhile been repeated. They sounded nearer than before from the east, the south, and the southeast. Nacaytzusle alone, to judge from the signals which he gave, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... remarkable metamorphosis which the German Democrats have undergone, is shown in their changed attitude to England. This country gave a home to Marx and Engels; the former is buried in Highgate cemetery. For many decades ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... can point nowhere to anything final but tendency; but tendency appears on all hands; planet, system, constellation, total nature is growing like a field of maize in July; is becoming something else; is in rapid metamorphosis. The embryo does not more strive to be man, than yonder burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a globe, and parent of new stars." "In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that impression nature makes on us is this, that it does not exist to any one, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... a word of plural number, A foe to peace and human slumber, Yet, do but add the letter S,— Lo! what a metamorphosis! What plural was, is plural now no more, And sweet's what bitter ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... moment I learned the particulars of the charge against me, resolved, for the present at least, to lay aside my Irish accent, and speak my native tongue. This I had done in the very few words I had spoken to my conductors in the anti-room: they started at the metamorphosis; but they had gone too far for it to be possible they should retract, in consistence with their honour. I now told the justice that I was no Irishman, nor had ever been in that country: I was a native of England. This occasioned a consulting of ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... change takes place in girls generally at from thirteen to fifteen, and in boys a year or two later, though it is not completed for a period of five or six years. During this time the most profound alterations take place in nearly all parts of the body; the mind undergoes a similar metamorphosis, so that often the child so carefully watched from babyhood seems entirely superseded by ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... Saturn within these few days, I found it solitary, without the assistance of its accustomed stars, and in short perfectly round and defined, like Jupiter, and such it still remains. Now what can be said of so strange a metamorphosis? Are perhaps the two smaller stars consumed like spots on the sun? Have they suddenly vanished and fled? Or has Saturn devoured his own children? Or was the appearance indeed fraud and illusion, with which the glasses ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... Gloria and Anthony, this first year of marriage, and the gray house caught them in that stage when the organ-grinder was slowly undergoing his inevitable metamorphosis. She ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... look upon the Uran-utan, or Wood-man, as the possessor of superhuman wisdom. The hunter and the herdsman, who had few other companions, would presently explain the peculiar relations of animals to themselves by material metamorphosis, the bodily transformation of man to brute giving increased powers of working him weal and woe. A more advanced stage would find the step easy to metempsychosis, the beast containing the Ego (alias soul) of the human: such instinctive belief explains much in Hindu literature, but it was not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... friction of the two sticks which are regarded as his parents; he is the supreme director of religious ceremonies and duties,and even has the power of influencing the lot of man in the future world. He is worshipped under a threefold form, fire on earth, lightning and the sun. His cult survived the metamorphosis of the ancient Vedic nature-worship into modern Hinduism, and there still are in India fire-priests (agnihotri) whose duty is to superintend his worship. The sacred fire-drill for procuring the temple-fire by friction—symbolic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 'Strange metamorphosis of the old tower. A good dining-room. A good library. A bedroom between them: he did not show it me. Good wine: excellent. Pretty waiting-maids, exceedingly pretty. Two of seven Vestals, who maintain the domestic fire on the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... not a giant," said the landlord at this; but Don Fernando told him to hold his tongue and on no account interrupt Don Quixote, who continued, "I say in conclusion, high and disinherited lady, that if your father has brought about this metamorphosis in your person for the reason I have mentioned, you ought not to attach any importance to it; for there is no peril on earth through which my sword will not force a way, and with it, before many days are over, I will bring your enemy's head to the ground and place ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... country fail! Am I to be branded because I have made half a million by a good book? What if I have kept a gambling-house? From the back parlour of an oyster-shop my hazard table has been removed to this palace. Had the play been foul, this metamorphosis would never have occurred. It is true I am an usurer. My dear sir, if all the usurers in this great metropolis could only pass in procession before you at this moment, how you would start! You might find some Right Honourables among ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... may be that they underwent some classic metamorphosis, translated to a rainless paradise, where they dreamed of battalions for ever inspected and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... very real to him. After the fashion of Olympians he became frankly incestuous, seducing vestals, his sisters too, and gaining in boldness with each metamorphosis, he menaced the Capitoline Jove. "Prove your power," he cried to him, "or fear my own!" He thundered at him with machine-made thunder, with lightning that flashed from a pan. "Kill me," he shouted, "or I will kill you!" Jove, unmoved, must have moved his assailant, for presently Caligula ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... end of the six months of probation approached, Madam became more and more anxious. Ever since Eleanor's high-handed departure she had been undergoing a metamorphosis. Like most autocrats, the only things of which she took notice were the ones that impeded her progress. When they proved sufficiently formidable to withstand annihilation, she awarded them the respect that was their due. Eleanor's childish whim, heretofore ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... friend what he thought of them, and Hogg answered that it might be possible by a little alteration to turn them into capital burlesques. The idea took the young poet's fancy; and the friends between them soon effected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which they became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they now bethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should the poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... Expedition were the last Gothic builders superseded. The fine Gothic church of St. Merri was begun as late as 1520 and not finished till 1612, and the transitional churches of St. Etienne and St. Eustache remind one, by the mingling of Gothic and Renaissance features, of the famous metamorphosis of Agnel and Cianfa in Dante's Inferno, and one is tempted to exclaim, Ome, come ti muti! Vedi, che gia non sei ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... the Dead Sea who were changed to apes are referred to in various places by Carlyle. He tells the story of the metamorphosis, which he got from the introduction to Sale's Koran, in Past and Present, Book III. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Izumo some kittens are born with long tails; but it is very seldom that they are suffered to grow up with long tails. For the natural tendency of cats is to become goblins; and this tendency to metamorphosis can be checked only by cutting off their tails in kittenhood. Cats are magicians, tails or no tails, and have the power of making corpses dance. Cats are ungrateful 'Feed a dog for three days,' says a Japanese proverb, 'and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... Council suitable to the whole tenor of their proceedings. Here the man whom they had employed and betrayed appeared in a new character. Observe their course with him. First he was made a commissioner. Then he was changed from a commissioner to be a voluntary accuser. He now undergoes another metamorphosis: he appears as a culprit before Mr. Hastings, on the accusation of the donor of Mr. Hastings's bribes. He is to answer to the accusations of Debi Sing. He is permitted to find materials for his own defence; and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Christianity when Constantine suddenly made that which had been the faith of a despised and persecuted sect, the religion of the world. The Fathers can have thought thus only because their minds rested upon that which was outward and spectacular. Not unnaturally the metamorphosis in the inward nature of Christianity which had taken place a century and a quarter earlier was hidden from their eyes. In truth, by that earlier and subtler transformation Christianity had passed permanently beyond the stage in which it had been preponderantly ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... liberal in the measures he enforced. Hardenberg, great and adroit as he was, stood for the passing conservatism, and while he was indefatigable to the end, he was after all a worker at twilight, unable to see the coming metamorphosis of old Europe into the new. It was a proposition outlined by him which brought forward the first vital question, the partition of Turkey. His sovereign's stateliest lands had been gained by the partition of Austria and of Poland; he now suggested ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the Indians on the way, returned the same evening; but they were so emaciated that I could scarcely recognise them, looking like so many spectres—a metamorphosis caused by the influenza, at that time prevalent in the country. My principal guide, however, declared himself able to proceed on the journey, with a light load; and it was arranged that Pellican should accompany ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... and the leit-motif in Tristan are two: in Tristan they are more significant—indeed, they are pregnant to bursting—and more fully charged with energy and colour; also they are not stated and restated in their elementary form as in Lohengrin, but continually subjected to a process of metamorphosis. This last mode of developing a theme he probably learnt from Liszt, and without it both Tristan and the Ring would be very different. But while these are the most striking characteristics of Wagner's later leading themes and mode of using them, it must be ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... wrote of Erec and Enide, and translated into French the commands of Ovid and the Art of Love, and wrote the Shoulder Bite, [22] and about King Mark and the fair Iseut, [23] and about the metamorphosis of the Lapwing, [24] the Swallow, and the Nightingale, will tell another story now about a youth who lived in Greece and was a member of King Arthur's line. But before I tell you aught of him, you shall hear of his father's life, whence he came and of what family. He was so bold and so ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... metamorphosis, habits epizooetic, thoracic segments similarly developed: a composite aggregation which includes both the ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... were wont to stop as they rode past this field of clover, and look at it with utter astonishment. Some could not be satisfied with looking, but would drive to the house to inquire what magical power had been used to produce such a strange metamorphosis in the appearance of the place. When assured it was all effected by guano, they went away—not ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... denying that they may be traced, in some cases, to distinct external influences; which are assuredly competent to alter the character of the tegumentary covering, to change colour, to increase or diminish the size of muscles, to modify constitution, and, among plants, to give rise to the metamorphosis of stamens into petals, and so forth. But however they may have arisen, what especially interests us at present is, to remark that, once in existence, varieties obey the fundamental law of reproduction that like tends to ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley

... told the story in his 'Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details. But the theme was doubtless first suggested to Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c c), but narrates in the exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... is impossible to disconnect the relation between names and things. When the anti-federal party dropped the name of Republicans to assume that of Democrats, their principles underwent a corresponding metamorphosis; and they are now the most devoted and most obsequious champions of executive power—the very life-guard of the commander of the armies and navies of this Union. The name of Democracy was assumed because it was discovered to be very taking among the multitude; yet, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... reservations." "If Diderot was as far as possible from being a dramatic poet, if he was destitute of that supreme creative power which involves the transformation of an author's own personality, he possessed, on the other hand, in the highest degree, that faculty of demi-metamorphosis which is the exercise and the triumph of criticism, and which consists in putting one's self in the the place of the author, occupying the point of view to the subject under examination, and reading every writing in the spirit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... I cannot analyze them! This vile place, I exclaimed, the scite of the once-enchanting Ranelagh!—It cannot be—the same eyes were never destined to see such a metamorphosis! All was desolation!—A few inequalities appeared in the ground, indicative of some former building, and holes filled with muddy water shewed the foundation walls—but the rest of the space, making about two acres, was covered with clusters of tall nettles, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... science has gathered during ages of painful labor, go for naught, even with educated persons, when brought face to face with the false assertions of a hysterical girl, and of two ignorant and deceitful peasants. If there is any one thing we know, it is that there can be no force without the metamorphosis of matter of some kind. Here was a girl maintaining her weight—actually growing—her animal heat kept at its due standard, her mind active, her heart beating, her lungs respiring, her skin exhaling, her limbs moving whenever she wished them to move, and all, as very many persons supposed, ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... second Figure of the 31. Scheme, and in the little Mite-worm, which I call a Land-crab, describ'd in the second Figure of the 33. Scheme, but in their manner of generation being oviparous, &c. And it were very worthy observation, whether there be not some kinds of transformation and metamorphosis in the several states of crustaceous water-animals, as there is in several sorts of Insects; for if such could be met with, the progress of the variations would be much more conspicuous in those larger Animals, then they can be in any kind of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... town. In reading the pages of the Tatler, we seem as if suddenly carried back to the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis. The beaux and the belles are of a quite different species from what they are at present; we distinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty fellows, as they pass by Mr. Lilly's shop-windows in the Strand; we are introduced to Betterton ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... conjecture, for it is nothing else, be well founded, one of the most poetical ideas in the whole range of mythology would, in this plodding, practical, spilling-jenny age of ours, have thus undergone a most singular metamorphosis." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... makes them look like fish; when the time of their metamorphosis arrives, this skin will split all down their back, and a little frog will come out of it. Look at this tadpole I have just caught; you can see the feet through its transparent skin. To-day it is a fish, that is to say, it breathes through gills—those little tufts you see ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... drawing-room he found Emma reading. From that moment—to his own surprise, and according to his own statement—he became an ass! The metamorphosis was complete. Ovid, had he been alive, would have rejoiced in it! He blushed more than a poor boy caught in his first grievous offence. The very straightforwardness of his character helped to make him worse. He felt, in all its importance, the momentous ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... Nitschke ('Bot. Zeitung,' 1861, p. 224) the purple fluid results from the metamorphosis of chlorophyll. Mr. Sorby examined the colouring matter with the spectroscope, and informs me that it consists of the commonest species of erythrophyll, "which is often met with in leaves with low vitality, and in parts, like ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... dulled were restored to animation and keenness. Not a trace of irascibility remained; but in its place came trooping the sweet angels that Father Faber says continually hover over the good-humored man. I declare that the metamorphosis was so complete that I almost needed an introduction to my new self. And this prodigy was created by one grand, complete and unusual slumber, when wearing a nightcap! Subsequent experiments have been relatively successful; so I am getting to be an enthusiast on the subject. Some ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... represented by five succeeding formations. There is no progression. If fish rose into reptiles, it must have been by sudden transformation. There is no getting rid of miracle in the case,—there is no alternative between creation and metamorphosis. The infidel substitutes progression for Deiety;—Geology robs him ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... account of a cat from Algoa Bay, which had been kept for some time on board and could be identified with certainty; this {47} animal was left for only eight weeks at Mombas, but during that short period it "underwent a complete metamorphosis, having parted with its sandy-coloured fur." A cat from the Cape of Good Hope has been described by Desmarest as remarkable from a red stripe extending along the whole length of its back. Throughout an immense area, namely, the Malayan ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... ear makes a more ready and lasting impression than when it comes through the eye. He attempts to apply the method to Arithmetic and Geography, and in a short time is forming plans for the complete metamorphosis of his school. When engaged in hearing a recitation, his mind is distracted with his schemes and plans, and instead of devoting his attention fully to the work he may have in hand, his thoughts are wandering continually to new schemes and ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... In this epoch-making chapter Darwin shows what conditions must prevail in any given place in order that fossils shall be formed, how unusual such conditions are, and how probable it is that fossils once imbedded in sediment of a sea-bed will be destroyed by metamorphosis of the rocks, or by denudation when the strata are raised above the water-level. Add to this the fact that only small territories of the earth have been explored geologically, he says, and it becomes clear that the paleontological record as we now possess it shows but a mere ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... and the sudden metamorphosis that was wrought in him, despised him heartily, and yet were glad—for the sake of their association with him—that things ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... of his own property diligently, yet in such a way that, with his mind occupied with the increase of his resources, he should not cast away the fear of God, or faith or care in God's Word. But our adversaries, by a wonderful metamorphosis, transform passages of Scripture to whatever meaning they please. [They produce from the Scriptures black and white, as they please, contrary to the natural meaning of the clear words.] Here to know signifies with them ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... was soon reduced to a shapeless mass. Small portions were carried away and preserved for generations in families as heirlooms of hatred. The bulk was melted again and reconverted, by a most natural metamorphosis, into the cannon from which it had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... which I mounted the best beast that I had hired to convey me to Hurricane Hall, and we all set off thither. I confess that I was excessively anxious upon your account, for I could make nothing whatever of Wool's wild story of your supposed metamorphosis! I thought it best to make a circuit and take the Hidden House in our course, to make some inquiries there as to what had really happened. I had got a little bewildered between the dark night and the ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... sleepiest burg I ever did see. I was here, you know, before Farnham Hall was built. I was here before the old Merriwell house was remodeled and turned into Merry Home. This field was an uneven, rocky strip of land, and the lake down yonder was half drained, the dam having fallen into disuse. The metamorphosis seems almost as surprising as the magic changes worked by Aladdin's lamp. Frank is the modern Aladdin. He has the lamp hidden somewhere—I'm sure ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... subsequent gratification has nothing to do with the matter. We know by the experience of our own instincts that this causal connection does not lie within our consciousness; {102a} therefore, if it is to be a mechanism of any kind, it can only be either an unconscious mechanical induction and metamorphosis of the vibrations of the conceived motive into the vibrations of the conscious action in the brain, or ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... paradoxes or impossibilities, when he that penned the most desperate and abominable pamphlet of 'Strange News,' and disgorged his stomach of as poisonous rancour as ever was vomited in print, within few months is won, or charmed, or enchanted, (or what metamorphosis should I term it?) to astonish carnal minds with spiritual meditations," &c. Such a reception of well-intended and eloquently-written amends was enough to make Nash repent even his repentance, as far as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... be effaced! On examining her, she proved, with the exception of four barrels of quicksilver, to have no cargo of any value. I really was so disappointed that I was ashamed to return on board, and when I did, and made my report, there was a complete metamorphosis of faces. Those that were naturally short became a fathom in length, and those that were long frightful to behold. The order was given to burn her and take out the seven Spaniards who composed her crew. On interrogating the patroon, or master, of her, he informed us that the vessel with the precious ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... Parliament's writ would run but lamely in loyal Oxfordshire. Whether Milton went down on this eventful Whitsuntide in the capacity of a creditor cannot now be known; and a like uncertainty envelops the precise manner of the metamorphosis of Mary Powell into Mary Milton. The maiden of seventeen may have charmed him by her contrast to the damsels of the metropolis, she may have shielded him from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the Royalist ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... his bosom. Any one who had seen that face but the moment before, and had looked upon it now, could not fail to have noticed the change that had so suddenly come over it—a perfect contrast in its expression. What had produced this metamorphosis? Something of importance, I warrant; for the young botanist, naturally of a sober turn, but now more than ever so, was not given to sudden transitions of feeling. What, then, was ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... and the men—fierce enough and warlike in their aspect at all times—had now rendered themselves doubly so, by putting on broad belts with pistols therein, and tucking up their sleeves to the shoulders, thereby displaying their brawny arms as if they had dirty work before them. This strange metamorphosis was finally completed when Manton, with his own hands, ran up to the peak of the mainsail a bright scarlet flag with the single word "AVENGER" on it in ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... are going to tell me everything about this wonderful metamorphosis,' she said merrily,—'every solitary thing. When did it dawn upon you that even a handsome man is utterly ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... legendary Palladium of the Knights Templars, well known under the title of Baphomet. In any case it failed to spread, and it is uncertain whether the New and Reformed Palladium, also an androgyne order, with which we shall presently be concerned, is a metamorphosis or reconstruction of the original institution, but a connection of some kind is affirmed. For a period exceeding sixty years we hear little of the legendary Palladium; but in 1801 the Israelite Isaac Long is said to have carried ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... heralded the morning from a birch or alder spray, and the undying race of reed-birds still rustles through the withering grass. But these bones rustle not. These mouldering elements are slowly preparing for another metamorphosis, to serve new masters, and what was the Indian's will erelong be the white ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... power had occasioned the metamorphosis, the countenance of the dying woman rapidly changed, and her features bore the same appearance they had in years gone by. A smile lingered round her lips, and over her face was a beautiful and saint-like expression. The husband gazed upon it, and her resemblance to what she was in days of yore, ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... competition with an authorized key. "The Popiad" and "The Curliad" were rapidly huddled together and placed upon the market. Close upon the heels of these publications came "The Female Dunciad," containing beside the "Metamorphosis of P. into a Stinging Nettle" by Mr. Foxton, a novel called "Irish Artifice; or, the History of Clarina" by Mrs. Eliza Haywood. In a short introduction to the piece, Curll explained how it happened to fall into ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... Since pollinators are required for filberts anyhow, the pollinators may be the trap-plants. This is actually the case in the initial plantings. Clean cultivation will also do away with many of the curculios, since they depend on unbroken soil in the fall for their metamorphosis. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... countenances: at Zayla I was shown a Bedouin, by name Farih Badaun, who notably became a hyena at times, for the purpose of tasting human blood. [27] About forty years ago, three brothers, Kayna, Fardayna, and Sollan, were killed on Gulays near Berberah for the crime of metamorphosis. The charge is usually substantiated either by the bestial tail remaining appended to a part of the human shape which the owner has forgotten to rub against the magic tree, or by some peculiar wound which the beast received and the man retained. Kindred to this superstition is the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... once sombre sadness of those eyes. Even Mrs. Evringham had buried the Macbethian dagger, and wore the meek and patient air of one misunderstood; but nothing would have amazed the child so much as to be told that she had had anything to do with this metamorphosis. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... not wish to threaten you, young lady,' he resumed, 'and I think, besides, that I can trust your kind face. Will you promise me not to reveal this metamorphosis until your ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... temperament, of the man he had come to be, and takes the imprint of his soul with minute delicacy and truth. It is a meditation on sin, but so made gracious with beauty as to lose the deformity of its theme; and it suffers a metamorphosis into a thing of loveliness. To us it is in boyhood our dream of Italy, and in after years the best companion of memory; it is also a romance of nature and art, and of the mystery of evil, shot through ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... remains or hints of all that we esteem badges of servitude in the lower races; yet in him they enhance his nobleness and grace; as Io, in Aeschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the imagination; but how changed when as Isis in Egypt she meets Osiris-Jove, a beautiful woman with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the splendid ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... England must have come as somewhat of a shock. To those whose knowledge of Mr. Belloc's writings was confined to The Path to Rome or the Cautionary Tales, who thought of him as essayist or poet, this must have seemed a strange metamorphosis indeed. Even those who were conversant with his study of the military aspects of the Revolution and had noticed the careful attention paid by Mr. Belloc to military matters in various books could scarcely have been ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... science may have effected, her literal age was verging on sixty? If she were not an old woman she had been one. That beautiful body had withered, undesired of all men, that perfect face had been the battered mirror of an aged ego. He did not ask himself if the metamorphosis would last, if the shell might not wither again tomorrow. He was abreast of the important scientific discoveries of his day and was not at all astonished that the problem of senescence should be solved. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... it difficult to recognize in that polished smile of a man in official life the almost bestial mouth which had been foaming but a moment before; he gazed with amazement on that fantastic and alarming metamorphosis, and he felt as a man might feel who should behold a tiger ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Aristotle, the Atlas of the church. This was no less than pure Pantheism,—God in and through all, the infinite Intelligence. Deus est monadum monas—nempe entium entitas. This creed, by an incomprehensible metamorphosis, was styled, in the language of the day, Atheism; its promulgation, even its conception, was pronounced a crime whose penalty was death. And Bruno, who, from the depths of infamous superstition, had risen into the pure light of heaven, to a theory whose principles, though they might not ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... see the process of the metamorphosis. Year after year he had waited and worked and Catherine Trelane had waited; then had come a time when he did not wish her to wait longer. His ideals had changed. Success had come to mean but one thing for him: gold; ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... childish, unformed way. She told him every little thing concerning their own household, and the Flins', and Pat's misfortunes, and their ejectment from, and reinstalment in, their attic home; and she dwelt a great while upon Mrs. Flin's metamorphosis, and upon her own new abode with the Minturns. And the worthy bachelor read it all with as much delight as if it had been his pet-newspaper. Wasn't it just what interested him, and he so far away from the spot where all his joys centered alone, and among ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... of the sun. This changing of the bodies of the gods into gold, silver, and precious stones, explains why the alchemists, who were disciples of the Egyptians, often compared the transmutation of metals to the metamorphosis of a genius or of a divinity: they thought by their art to hasten at will that which was the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... METAMORPHOSIS is a classical name for the changing of a human being into a beast, an inanimate object, or an element, stories of which are common in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... night at the bidding of the slaves of the lamp, could scarcely have been a greater paradox to the aged Sultan, than this increase of prosperity on the part of Scotland was to our southern legislators. How to explain the metamorphosis seemed for a time a mystery. One thing, at all events, was clear—that English gold had no participation in the change. North of the Tweed, a guinea was a suspected article, apt to be rung, and examined, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... come the general governments, those which possess and exert, in one way or another, attributes of sovereignty. First, the various colonial governments have been considered, and some features of their metamorphosis into our modern state governments have been described. In the course of this study, our attention is called to the most original and striking feature of the development of civil government upon American soil,—the written constitution, with the accompanying power ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... Desideratum desiderata Effluvium effluvia Ellipsis ellipses Emphasis emphases Encomium encomia or encomiums Erratum errata Genius genii [2] Genus genera Hypothesis hypotheses Ignis fatuus, ignes fatui Index indices or indexes [3] Lamina laminae Magus magi Memorandum memoranda or memorandums Metamorphosis metamorphoses Parenthesis parentheses Phenomenon phenomena Radius radii or radiuses Stamen stamina Seraph seraphim or seraphs Stimulus stimuli Stratum strata Thesis theses Vertex ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... the ball visitors then took place, and the squire did not suffer many days to elapse before the spiritual metamorphosis of eight into four was effected by the clerical dexterity of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... she was perfect or ever could be, but she might come very close to it if she went on improving as she did every day. As a matter of fact, I found an immense amount of analytical pleasure in studying the changes that attended the metamorphosis. It seemed to my eager imagination that she was being translated before my eyes; developing into a serious, sensible, unselfish person with a soul preparing to mount higher than self. Her voice seemed to be ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... lieutenant-colonel. Gallantry at Las Guasimas made him their colonel, the first colonel, Leonard Wood, having received a brigadier-general's commission. Returning from the war, Colonel Roosevelt found himself, as by a magic metamorphosis, Governor of his State, fighting civic battles against growing corporate abuses. He urged compulsory publicity for the affairs of monopolistic combinations, and was prominently instrumental in the enactment of the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... or less. A ray of heavenly light traversing human life, the message of Christ has been broken into a thousand rainbow colors, and carried in a thousand directions. It is the historical task of Christianity to assume with every succeeding age a fresh metamorphosis, and to be forever spiritualizing more and more her understanding of the Christ and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... go in her white dress, just as she is, but Denise overrules so great a blunder, and when Grandon returns he finds a pale little nun in black, with a close bonnet and long veil. Cecil has come with him, and is shocked at this strange metamorphosis. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... the same time, deflected his course, and steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe came upon her as the strangeness of his metamorphosis was brought into closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so vividly his straw-coloured mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more grown-up, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old, boyish Teddy came back ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... fulfilment of certain hard conditions, the non-compliance wherewith on the part of her earthly swain threatens her with the direst penalties; her lover fails in the test, which consists in this, that, however evil and repulsive she may appear to him (in the metamorphosis which she has to undergo), he shall not reject her in his unbelief. In Gozzi's tale the fairy is changed into a snake; the remorseful lover frees her from the spell by kissing the snake, and thus wins her for his wife. I altered this denouement by changing ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... ancient stones; the altar was raised on the spot where shone the bright image of the Peruvian deity, and the cloisters of the Indian temple were trodden by the friars of St. Dominic.6 To make the metamorphosis more complete, the House of the Virgins of the Sun was replaced by a Roman Catholic nunnery.7 Christian churches and monasteries gradually supplanted the ancient edifices, and such of the latter as were suffered to remain, despoiled ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... she related her betrayed and deluded love in a short novel, one of the masterpieces of that period. This book, of a dangerous example, was classed with "Adolphe," a dreadful lamentation, the counterpart of which is found in Camille's work. The true secret of her literary metamorphosis and pseudonym has never been fully understood. Some delicate minds have thought it lay in a feminine desire to escape fame and remain obscure, while offering a man's name and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... who shall decide?" It is contended by one group of scientists that the water lily, which shows the plainest metamorphosis of some sort, has developed its stamens from petals - just the reverse of Nature's method, other botanists claim. A perfect flower, we know, may consist of only a stamen and a pistil, the essential organs, all other ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... are agreed, And Saunders hastes to cross the Tweed, Where, such the splendours that attend him, His very mother scarce had kend him. His metamorphosis behold, From Glasgow frieze to cloth of gold; His back-sword, with the iron hilt, To rapier, fairly hatch'd and gilt; Was ever seen a gallant braver! His very bonnet's grown a beaver. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... tree-haunting toads must needs repair to the water once a year to deposit their spawn in its native surroundings. Once more, crabs pass their earlier larval stages as free-swimming crustaceans, somewhat shrimp-like in appearance, and as agile as fleas: it is only by gradual metamorphosis that they acquire their legs and claws and heavy pedestrian habits. Now there are certain kinds of crab, like the West Indian land-crabs (those dainty morsels whose image every epicure who has visited the Antilles still enshrines with regret in a warm corner of his heart), which ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... hurried out again, and went down the lane in the rear to the deserted shed. She remained longer here than in the attic, perhaps ten minutes, working mostly in the darkness, risking the flashlight only when it was imperative; and then, the metamorphosis complete, a veiled figure, in her own person, as Rhoda Gray, the White Moll, she was out on the street again, and hastening back in the same general direction from which ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... reason behind every movement; and from thence the gradation is easy to proclaiming them marvels, or monsters, of innumerable ideas. Whereas the truth is that these ten thousand individuals, that have been produced simultaneously, that have lived together, and undergone metamorphosis at more or less the same time, cannot fail all to do the same thing, and are compelled, however slight the sentiment within them, to adopt common habits, to live in accord and union, to busy themselves with their dwelling, to return to it after their ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck



Words linked to "Metamorphosis" :   transformation, alteration, transfiguration, metabolism, hemimetaboly, organic process, hemimetamorphosis, revision, holometabolism, translation, metamorphic, holometaboly, hemimetabolism, heterometaboly, biological process, metamorphous



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