"Tentacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eye-piece micrometer, of which each division equalled 1/500 of an inch. It should be stated that as the leaves grow older the tentacles of the exterior rows bend outwards and downwards, so as ultimately to become deflected considerably beneath the horizon. A tentacle in the second row from the margin was selected for observation, and was found to be moving outwards at a rate of 1/500 of an inch in 20 m., or 1/100 of inch in 1 h. 40 m.; but as it likewise moved from side to side to an extent of above 1/500 of inch, the movement was probably ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... all hope would be gone. I cut desperately at the fastenings that secured the weights; felt myself rising; felt my legs pull out from the clinging, slimy arms; looked down at them—a sea of bobbing smooth heads, of round, expressionless, black eyes; saw them waving their tentacle-like arms in fury; saw at last the dim, golden crest of the tallest tower below my feet; burst above the blessed sea-level and saw good blue waves slapping the bow of the brigantine ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... tentacle, thrown out of the neck of the larvae of the genus Papilio when alarmed, is, no doubt, a protection against the attacks of ichneumons, and may, perhaps, also frighten small birds; and the habit of turning up the tail possessed by the harmless rove-beetles ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... hydra, demand repetition under careful observation.[A] The observer placed on one of the tentacles of a sea-anemone a bit of paper which had been dipped in beef-juice. It was seized and carried to the mouth and here discarded. This tentacle after one or two experiments refused to have anything more to do with it. But other tentacles could be successively cheated. The nerve-cells governing each tentacle appear to have been able to learn by experience, but each group in the diffuse nervous system had to learn separately. The dawn ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... infinite agglomeration of coloured infusoria, of veritable globules of jelly, provided with a threadlike tentacle, and of which as many as twenty-five thousand have been counted in less than two ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... plausible, observant, indefatigably cunning, and in business most capable ("No bloomin' flies on 'Orris F." as he would confidently and truthfully assure you) was the first tentative tentacle advanced to feel its way by the fine old British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt, in the mazy markets of the gorgeous Orient, and to introduce to the immemorial East their famous jewellery and wine of ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... race would do or could do. It was forty feet to bottom. There, partly exposed, but mostly hidden under the bulge of a coral lump, I could discern his objective. His keen eyes had caught the projecting tentacle of a squid. Even as he swam, the tentacle was lazily withdrawn, so that there was no sign of the creature. But the brief exposure of the portion of one tentacle had advertised its owner ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London |
