Word: insection
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Where Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina join on the map of South America lies the Gran Chaco, a steaming, insect-swarming triangle 600 miles by 300 between the Paraguay and Pilcomayo rivers. British Explorer Julian Duguid has described the Pilcomayo as "a vast, foul-smelling, oozy stretch of bog with as much movement as an unsqueezed sponge. ... An Englishman may obtain some slight insight into the discomfort of penetration into the Chaco if he locks himself into a hothouse, waters the flowers, closes all the windows, and allows a blazing sun to shine through the glass while he rides a stationary...
...Department of Agriculture, whose agents have learned the educational value of mechanical models,* has a fly 4,000 times the size of the ordinary fly which gets into the kitchen. The colossal insect pokes its proboscis into a heap of "sugar," flaps its wings fearsomely. Blind children have vague ideas about house flies. They feel flies crawling on them, hear their elders talk about fly nuisance. To let blind children know just what a fly looks like the American Foundation for the Blind† has just had built a big fly model. All the contours, joints, vibrissa, hairs and feelers...
...active. Their body heat rose. Their appetites increased. In successive molts they continued to change color until all were black-&-yellow-the age-old color of plague locusts. No longer were they playful, harmless. They fought for food. They had become in every respect the thick-bodied, migratory, ravaging insect which is called a locust. A solitary grasshopper reared alone in a nearby cage caught the madness when put in with the rest. He too became a locust. Dr. Faure separated his locusts. In solitude, 135 out of 139 reverted into harmless grasshoppers. Armed with his knowledge, he went last...
...first suspected that mosquitoes might be carriers, as in the case with malaria. Numerous microscopic examinations, however, revealed that either because its sting is administered more deeply in the flesh or because the saliva of the insect is inimical to the parasite, the mosquito is definitely not a carrier. That the Eusimulium fly was the true source of infection was proved conclusively by over 2000 microscopic examinations...
...Bolivia. The land was poor. The natives were unfriendly. Nostalgia plagued all. Within a short time every colonist except Bill Murray and his half-Indian squaw had returned despondently to the U. S. They alone stuck it out for five wretched years, fighting insect pests, drought, shifty Bolivian officials. Finally in 1929 Bill returned to the U. S. practically penniless to complete the most remarkable political career in Oklahoma's history...