MODULUS n.
ght in feet or weight in pounds of a column of the same body) which would be necessary to elongate a prismatic body of a transverse section equal to a given unit, as a square inch or foot, to double, or to compress it to half, its original length, were that degree of elongation or compression possible, or within the li…
PALISADE n.
Any fence made of pales or sharp stakes. Palisade cells (Bot.), vertically elongated parenchyma cells, such as are seen beneath the epidermis of the upper surface of many leaves. -- Palisade worm (Zoöl.), a nematoid worm (Strongylus armatus), parasitic in the blood vessels of the horse, in which it produces aneurisms,…
PANCREAS n.
sweetbread, a gland connected with the intestine of nearly all vertebrates. It is usually elongated and light-colored, and its secretion, called the pancreatic juice, is discharged, often together with the bile, into the upper part of the intestines, and is a powerful aid in digestion. See Illust. of Digestive apparatu…
PARADISE n.
oöl.), any flycatcher of the genus Terpsiphone, having the middle tail feathers extremely elongated. The adult male of T. paradisi is white, with the head glossy dark green, and crested. -- Paradise grackle (Zoöl.), a very beautiful bird of New Guinea, of the genus Astrapia, having dark velvety plumage with brilliant…
PUPA n.
A genus of air-breathing land snails having an elongated spiral shell. Coarctate, or Obtected, pupa, a pupa which is incased in the dried-up skin of the larva, as in many Diptera. -- Masked pupa, a pupa whose limbs are bound down and partly concealed by a chitinous covering, as in Lepidoptera.
QUILLWORT n.
Any plant or species of the genus Isoetes, cryptogamous plants with a cluster of elongated four-tubed rushlike leaves, rising from a corm, and containing spores in their enlarged and excavated bases. There are about seventeen American species, usually growing in the mud under still, shallow water. So called from the sh…
RAY n.
ulum in such composite plants as the aster, goldenrod, daisy, and sunflower. They have an elongated, strap-shaped corolla, while the corollas of the disk flowers are tubular and five-lobed. -- Ray point (Geom.), the common point of a pencil of rays. -- Röntgen ray ( (Phys.), a kind of ray generated in a very highly e…