Discobolus

“ The section Discoidea comprises those Spumellaria in which the fenestrated shell is more or less discoidal or lenticular, flattened or compressed in the direction of one axis. The geometric fundamental form of the latticed shell, which in the Sphæroidea is a sphere, here becomes a flat disk, like a medal, or a biconvex lens, sometimes also a biconcave lens. The Discoidea can be derived from the Sphæroidea by shortening of one axis. This shortened vertical axis is the main axis of the disk; both its poles are constantly equal. ”

“ The next moment the vivid moon was suddenly obscured by drifting wisps of cloud. As the green light blurred to an emerald haze, the creature under the crag came slithering out toward Dixon.
He had a vague glimpse of a monster such as one should see only in nightmares—a huge loathesome spider-form with a bloated body as long as that of a man, and great sprawling legs that sent it half a dozen yards nearer Dixon in one effortless leap.
he onslaught proved too much for Dixon's morale, half-dazed as he was by the green moon's paralyzing rays. ”

“ Whilst in the greater number of Discoidea its form continues circular, in many forms provided with radial arms it enters into the arms and assumes their form. The protoplasm of the capsule is commonly coloured by brown or red pigment, and often contains many oil-globules. The nucleus is originally enclosed by the medullary shell or the central chamber, and with increasing size enters into the surrounding parts; in the Cyclodiscaria it often fills out the internal concentric rings. The extracapsular jelly or the calymma is commonly thick, and envelops the greater part or the whole body. ”

“ Besides this copy of Myron’s statue, we find on many vases and gems the diskobolos in the act of hurling the diskos. For instance, on one of Hamilton’s vases we see a diskobolos with a diskos in his right hand, while the right arm is bent and held forward, showing that he is on the point of moving the arm backward, and then forcibly hurling the diskos from below, forward. The left arm is bent over the head, the eyes are fixed on the diskos, the right foot is placed forward, so that the centre of gravity falls on the left, which is obliquely bent at the knee. ”

“ But the red giant, seeing his brother fall, smote at Le Beau Disconus with the half-roasted boar, like a madman; and he laid on so sore that Le Beau Disconus's horse was slain. But Le Beau Disconus leapt out of the saddle, like a spark from a torch, and drove at him with his falchion, fierce as a lion. The giant fought with his spit till it broke in two; then he caught up a tree by the roots, and smote Le Beau Disconus so mightily that his shield was broken into three pieces. But before the giant could heave up the tree again, Le Beau Disconus struck off his right arm ”

“ Definition.—Discoidea without phacoid shell, with flat discoidal shell, in which a simple spherical central chamber is surrounded by concentric chambered rings (each ring divided by radial beams into imperfect chambers) . Surface of the disk on the two flat sides covered by a porous sieve-plate.
The family Porodiscida is by far the largest and richest in different and common forms among all Discoidea; already in my Monograph (1862) nine genera and twenty-eight species have been enumerated. Their number is here increased to more than thirty genera and two hundred species. ”

“ In the deep seas rays are found even under the equator. In the south-temperate zone the species are mostly generically distinct, Psammobatis being a typical form, differing from Raja. Discobatus sinensis, common in China and Japan, is a shagreen-covered form, looking like a Rhinobatus. It is, however, a true ray, laying its eggs in egg-cases, and with the pectorals extending on the snout. Fossil Rajidæ, known by the teeth and bony tubercles, are found from the Cretaceous onward. They belong to Raja and to the extinct genera Dynatobatis, Oncobatis, and Acanthobatis. ”

“ So Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos
Stood up and began to sing,— "Far away from hurry and strife Here we will pass the rest of life, Ding a dong, ding dong, ding! We want no knives nor forks nor chairs,
No tables nor carpets nor household cares;
From worry of life we've fled; Oh! W! X! Y! Z! There is no more trouble ahead, Sorrow or any such thing, For Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos!"
THE QUANGLE WANGLE'S HAT. I.
On the top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat, But his face you could not see,
On account of his Beaver Hat. ”

“ Diplodactylus laevis is readily distinguished from D. platyurus in possessing an enlarged first supralabial that contacts the ventral edge of the nasal scale (vs 1st supralabial small and not differentiated from the rest of the supralabial row) . It is distinguished from D. conspicillatus, D. laevis, D. bilybarasp. nov. and D. custossp. nov. in having enlarged, plate-like scales on the nape and top of head that are appreciably larger than those on the sides of the neck (vs scales on nape granular and not appreciably larger than those on sides of neck) . ”

“ Population genetics
Genetic sampling for a number of lineages was sparse, and only D. conspicillatus sensu stricto (n = 28) , lineage B (n = 60) and lineage C (n = 62) were well sampled with good geographic spread across their distributions (S1B Table) . Diplodactylus conspicillatus sensu stricto included two divergent sublineages (>10% divergence) with distributions in arid and monsoonal areas of Queensland and the Northern Territory, and in arid South Australia and Western Australia, respectively. ”

“ There shall ye find the bitch-fox and the nee'le together.
Do as I bid you, man, come on your ways hither!
Doctor Rat. Art thou sure, Diccon, the swill-tub stands not hereabout?
Diccon. I was within myself, man, even now, there is no doubt.
Go softly, make no noise; give me your foot, sir John,
Here will I wait upon you, till you come out anon.
[D. Rat creeps in.
Doctor Rat [calling from within] . Help, Diccon! out alas! I shall be slain among them!
Diccon. If they give you not the needle, tell them that ye will hang them. ”

“ Marsh’s specimen in Washington supplied the greater part of the skull; and the fore-foot is copied from a specimen in New York.
The cast of the reconstructed skeleton of Diplodocus carnegii measures 84 ft. in length and 12 ft. 9 in. in maximum height at the hind-limbs. It displays the elongated neck and tail and the relatively small head so characteristic of the Sauropodous Dinosaurs. The skull is inclined to the axis of the neck, denoting a browsing animal; while the feeble blunt teeth and flat expanded snout suggest feeding among succulent water-weeds. ”

“ The same remarkable arrangement is also very common among the Discoidea. The small spherical primary nucleus is in such instances immediately surrounded by the innermost earliest developed lattice-shell, around which the concentric rings are subsequently deposited; it then grows out through the meshes, and the processes fuse outside the ring to form a homogeneous lentiform nucleus (Pl. 43, fig. 15) . The same process recurs in certain Prunoidea and Larcoidea, whilst in other Spumellaria of these groups (e.g., Pylonida) the lobate processes of the nucleus remain free. ”

“ But in these cruciform Discoidea the shell and the enclosed central capsule are discoidal or lenticular, whilst in the Staurosphærida they remain spherical. Commonly the cross is quite regular, with four right angles and four equal beams; but often also it becomes more or less irregular. In some genera one pair of equal opposite spines is larger than the other pair. ”

“ Low genetic diversity has been detected in a number of widespread arid zone taxa, and is thought to reflect relatively recent and major demographic shifts through severe glacial cycles of the Plio-Pleistocene [55] , [11] , [8] , [13] , [56] . The distribution of the two AAZ endemic taxa in this gecko complex is also outwardly contrasting; Diplodactylus bilybarasp. nov. is restricted to the southern and coastal west Pilbara and Carnarvon regions, while Diplodactylus laevis has a vast distribution across central Australia. ”

“ Insects and decay Any Boletus answering this description may be eaten without fear, assuming, of course, that its substance is free from any taint of dissolution and traces of insect contamination. Both of these conditions are too apt to prevail in the mature specimens, and all Boleti are more safely employed for food in their young crisp stage, or at least before their full expansion. In their maturity, moreover, they often prove too mucilaginous in consistency to be pleasant to the average partaker, especially the novice. ”

“ Two of the Paspaheghs were silent for evermore. Diccon had the knife of the first to fall, and it ran red. The Italian, quick and sinuous as a serpent, kept beside my lord and me, striving to bring his dagger to his master’s aid. We two panted hard; before our eyes blood, within our ears the sea. The noise of the other combatants suddenly fell. The hush could only mean that Diccon was dead or taken. I could not look behind to see. With an access of fury I drove my antagonist toward a corner of the hut,—the corner, so it chanced, in which the panther had taken up its quarters. ”

“ Most of them in time vanished, while their descendants which still exist have lost in great measure their air-breathing powers, and the Dipnoans, in which the development of the lung had gone too far for reversal, have degenerated into eel-like, mud-haunting creatures, in which the organs of locomotion have become converted into the feeble paddle-like limbs of Neoceratodus and the filamentary appendages of the other species. ”

“ It always lies in the equatorial plane of the discoidal body, and always unpaired in one of its axes; in the triradiate Discoidea it is in the axis of the unpaired principal arm and opposite to it (Pl. 43, fig. 15) . In the Ommatodiscida (p. 500, Pl. 48, figs. 8, 19, 20) the axoflagellum probably passes out through the peculiar marginal ostium of the shell. Perhaps it is always connected with the central nucleus by intracapsular axial fibres, and is to be regarded as a specially differentiated bundle of pseudopodia (or axopodia?) ”

“ The tail of the female is curved upon itself, rounded off, and drawn out at the extreme end into a straight beak-shaped point; whilst to both sides of the stumpy caudal extremity of the body short vesicular prominences are attached. The female reproductive outlet occurs at the commencement of the second half of the body. Thus, judging by its external characters this genus is most closely allied to Strongylus.” In reproducing Diesing’s description I have here rendered the translation somewhat more freely than in my previous record of the discovery given in ‘Nature’ (1871) . ”

“ Most of the species are of some economic value as food Fishes. Psammobatis, with a circular disc, frequents the southern coasts of South America, and Platyrhina the coasts of India, China, and Japan.
The family ranges from the Upper Cretaceous, in which, as well as in different Tertiary deposits, it is represented by species of Raia. An extinct genus, Cyclobatis, with a circular or oval disc, occurs in the Upper Cretaceous of Mount Lebanon. ”

“ In nothing is more consideration now required than to determine what of new genera ought to be adopted and what rejected. Had you and I begun our botanic career when old Dickson was in his prime, we should have had the same aversion to the Hedwigian improvements which he had, but which have nevertheless tended so very much to the advancement of muscology. ”

“ The reptile was hanging from a rail on the bus, its form grotesquely large for a gecko and resembling a Silpakorn swamp monster in miniature, with a head like a four legged dinosaur, a tongue like a snake, and a body like an alligator, but a gecko it was nonetheless. "It's your destiny and you cannot escape it. Why look so frightened? ”

“ The shape of the specimens is similar to that of Diplopora, but the canals and cavities present a characteristic and more complex appearance, when seen in a transverse section of the wall, than in the older genus Diplopora. Gümbel has given a detailed account of this Tertiary genus in his memoir on Die sogenannten Nulliporen [328] ; he distinguishes between Dactyloporella and Gyroporella by the existence of cavities in the calcareous wall of the tube in the former genus, and by their absence in the latter. The oval cavities in a Dactyloporella were originally occupied by sporangia ”

“ The relations of the different genera of Dipneusti to one another has been discussed by Dollo in a remarkably suggestive paper. [611] Until the publication of this treatise it was generally believed that the modern Dipneusti, Neoceratodus, Protopterus, and Lepidosiren, especially the first mentioned, were the most primitive and the more nearly related to the ancestral stock, while the older types, such as Dipterus, were regarded in the light of highly specialised offshoots. ”

“ Cyclas gibbosa, and another species.
The subjacent strata (marls, with fishes, plants, &c.) run out into a terrace, beneath which gypsum is extensively worked. "In this upper gypsum fossil insects occur exclusively in a finely laminated bed of 2 inches in thickness: still lower are two other ranges of gypsum, the upper one of which alone is worked; the marls associated therewith contain nearly as great a quantity of fishes as those of the upper calcareous zone. ”