"Constrictor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the oesophagus is closed by the sphincter-like action of the lower fibres of the inferior constrictor muscle, and the cervical part of the tube appears as a transverse slit, due to the backward pressure of the trachea. The thoracic portion is more open and may contain air, so that it is possible to see down to the lower end, the closed cardiac orifice appearing as an oblique cleft surrounded ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many explanations it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the genealogical ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself about the country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,—with such art that a passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... the descent of the Spirit as the gift of miracles and of miraculous infallibility by inspiration have rendered it of course of little or no application to Christians at present. Yet how can Arminians pray our Church prayers collectively on any day? Answer. See a 'boa constrictor' with an ox or deer. What they do swallow, proves so astounding a dilatability of gullet, that it would be unconscionable strictness to complain of the horns, antlers, or other indigestible non-essentials being suffered to rot off at the confines, [Greek: herkos hodonton]. But to write seriously ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... last of being done, and fell in the savages' esteem greatly. The way in which that sticky compost of boiled maize went down was absolutely amazing. The man opposite Dick, in particular, was a human boa-constrictor. He well-nigh suffocated Dick with suppressed laughter. He was a great raw-boned savage, with a throat of indiarubber, and went quickly and quietly on swallowing mass after mass with the solemn gravity of an owl. It mattered not ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... powers. When I lived on the coast of Florida I had a tame tarpon, which could swallow anything—croquet balls, door scrapers—and once ate an entire cottage pianoforte in half-an-hour. Here I may add that in my travels in Turkestan I was attacked by a boa-constrictor, and, though I escaped with my life, it proceeded to swallow the Bactrian camel on which I was riding. On the following day, however, when the boa was still in a comatose condition, I killed it with a boomerang, rescued the camel and continued ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... speak at all. She just stood still, looking at Jimsy until it seemed as if she were all eyes. "It comes so suddenly,"—Carter had told her—"like the boa constrictor's hunger ... and then ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... most cases have no special function in the animal oeconomy, is admitted by the first authorities in comparative anatomy. The minute limbs hidden beneath the skin in many of the snake-like lizards, the anal hooks of the boa constrictor, the complete series of jointed finger-bones in the paddle of the Manatus and whale, are a few of the most familiar instances. In botany a similar class of facts has been long recognised. Abortive stamens, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... which are quoted by Sir Emerson Tennent. Dr. Watson says regarding this power of withdrawal: "It is evident that were the throat of this animal similar to that of other mammals, this could not be accomplished, as the insertion of a body, such as the trunk, so far into the pharynx as to enable the constrictor muscles of that organ to grasp it, would at once give rise to a paroxysm of coughing; or, were the trunk merely inserted into the mouth, it would be requisite that this cavity be kept constantly filled with water, at the same time that the lips closely ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... me if, to all future posterity coming after us, the word 'Macleod' don't shut up their jaws from bragging of British valour just about as tight as the death-squeeze of a boa-constrictor round a smashed-up buffalo! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was a colossal menagerie. In it there were more than twenty elephants, giraffes, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, zebras, dromedaries, camels, and the rarest kinds of antelopes. Then came the reptiles,—from the boa constrictor, who was ten yards long, to the smallest blind-worm, amongst them some of the most dangerous kinds. Crocodiles twenty feet long, monstrous toads, tortoises as big as donkeys. Then there were the wild beasts too. Lions from Abyssinia, from Atlas, tigers from Bengal, from Persia, ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... disease?—Eh? And it's just one of the things a quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one who is in the beaten track. Do you know, Richard, my dear boy, I've often thought that if we could by any means appropriate to our use some of the extraordinary digestive power that a boa constrictor has in his gastric juices, there is really no manner of reason why we should not comfortably dispose of as much of an ox as our stomachs will hold, and one might eat French dishes without the wretchedness of thinking what's to follow. And this makes me think that those fellows ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a boa-constrictor, and even a boa-constrictor has an end. Hunger satisfied, his next strongest feeling, simple vanity, remained to be contented. As the last morsel ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... you go there often? How ever do you find the time for such things?" asked Kitty, busily cutting from a big sheet the touching picture of a parent bird with a red head and a blue tail offering what looked like a small boa constrictor to one of its nestlings, a fat young squab with a green head, yellow body, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... remember what to do in case of attack by a formidable snake. If a boa constrictor or a python begin to curl himself about you, you should pinch him vigorously, and he will loosen his folds and get away from you. Some may prefer to blow his head off with a pistol, but it is largely a matter of taste, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Bouldon, skating up, prevented it getting between Charles and Lemon, who stood prepared to drive it up to the goal, if, as they hoped, they could elude the vigilance of the stout gentleman. He, however, was not asleep, and watching their movements, as Tom Bouldon observed, as keenly as a boa-constrictor, glided swiftly up to the spot where they had driven the ball, and sent it spinning back, till once more Frank and Ernest got it within their power. Thus the game continued fluctuating; but finally, after many a bandy here and there, and many ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being able to improve upon nature; but this is conclusive and unpardonable. Again, take the stem of the chief tree in Claude's Narcissus. It is a very faithful portrait of a large boa-constrictor, with a handsome tail; the kind of trunk which young ladies at fashionable boarding-schools represent with nosegays at the top of them, by way of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... entered her poor little Eden—even the green-eyed monster constrictor, who, if given full swing, would not spare a bone of ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... presence of wild beasts. Elephants were numerous—it was because of the destruction they had wrought on the farms that fishing had become the main support of the township. Early one morning a commotion broke out: a boa constrictor had been seen during the night, and bands of men armed with clubs, cutlasses, and muskets set off, yelling, to hunt the monster. Whenever she moved out she was followed by all the men, women, and children. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... boa constrictor as well as all the others to which the name boa applies are, according to Cuvier, natives of America. The engraving represents one of these terrible snakes in the ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... and began writhing, twisting her hard young body like a boa constrictor in his hands. But he was stronger. He bent her back over his knee, until a mangled moan was coming from her speaker; then his foot kicked out, knocking her feet out from under her. He let her hit the ground, caught ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... boa-constrictor in the Zoo were gems of humanity in comparison with those of the negroid-Egyptian's as he turned to obey, and then stopped mulishly until a third little reminder chipped splinters from the marble at his heel, whereupon he stooped and recovered his headgear, minus the brooch, but plus a neat ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... morning the shepherd and the monkey once more formed in procession and wended their way to the old pump. The new rope could hang an elephant. It was thick as a boa-constrictor, and the shepherd took a full hour to adjust the noose and get the gallows into working order. Then the fatal moment came. With a mightier shove than before the monkey was launched into the air, and the rope stiffened and held like a ship's hawser. But the executioner had not calculated ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... made the follerin' observations Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' patience, An', no reporters bein' sent express To work their abstrac's up into a mess Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur' Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constrictor, I've writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies 'Twixt nonsense o' my own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... The boa-constrictor—sawar, as the Malays called it—lived in the jungle and rice-swamps. Sometimes it attained an enormous size. An Englishman told me that he and some Malays were exploring the jungle to find traces of antimony ore, and came ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... themselves are too feverish provocations for civilized man. They are incompatible with the sense of taste in its epicureanism, and their gratification is of a very bodily order. The savage man, like a boa-constrictor, would swallow his animals whole, if his gullet would let him. This is to cheat the taste with unmanageable objects, as though we should give an estate to a child. On the other hand, civilization, house-building, warm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... said. "Look at that boa-constrictor you have out there. It is stuffed and in a glass case. Don't you know that in its natural surroundings you yourself would come mighty near stepping on one without seeing it? You would. If you had that thing set up as it should be, these museum visitors of yours would ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Bandy-legs, "I'm real glad it wasn't a snake, because they always give me the creeps, you remember, I hate 'em so. Just think what a fine pickle we'd be in now if a monster anaconda or a big boa constrictor or python, broke loose from a show, should climb up on our bridge boat, and start to chasin' us all overboard. Things look bad enough as they are without our takin' on a bunch of new trouble. So, Toby, please don't glimpse anything else, and ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... which he had already consumed some six peaches. Add to this (quite an ordinary repast) half a bottle of heavy wine, a cup of black coffee and three glasses of water—what work shall be got out of a man after such a boa-constrictor collation? He is as exasperated and prone to take offence as in the morning—this time from another ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas |
