Word: caterpillar
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Silkworms are fine subjects for the study of growth. Like most insects, they metamorphize, reorganizing nearly all of their body substance into new members and organs. Scattered through the mushy tissues of the big green caterpillars are small groups of cells (imaginal discs) that lie quiescent while the caterpillar is growing...
Glands in the silkworm secrete the hormone which controls the production of an enzyme called cytohrome. This cytochrome is directly responsible for the growth and metamorphosis of the silkworm. Without it, the insect cannot change from caterpillar to pupa to moth. Such an enzyme in a human may be the cause of the malignant growths called cancers...
Despite the fact that the strip around the caterpillar's middle is narrower than usual this year, winter resorts are preparing bigger and more complete skiing facilities all over New England...
...question a lot of people are gambling on. Resort owners know that it has to be right, their futures depend on it. The student who wants to go skiing isn't looking at the long run situation, he's only concerned with December through March. Of course, the caterpillar may be wrong...
Appropriately for the Christmas season, a Manhattan gallery was showing some of the most elaborate grownups' toys ever made: automatons produced largely in the 18th Century by Swiss and British craftsmen. There was a gold caterpillar that, when wound, inched along a tabletop in a pretty fair imitation of nature. A gold mouse, ridged with pearls, scurried, stopped, spun and darted about as if in real fright. An emerald-green frog jumped and croaked...