Pl. larvæ. [L. larva a ghost, spectre, hobgoblin; also, a mask.]

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  1.  A disembodied spirit; a ghost, hobgoblin, spectre. Obs. exc. Hist.

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1651.  Baxter, Inf. Bapt., 273. I live almost perpetually in my bed or chair or pulpit; as Calvin said of Cassander; such a larva I am that here am called up.

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1882.  Encycl. Brit., XIV. 313/2. The dead … were … spirits of terror…: in this fearful sense the names Lemures and still more Larvæ were appropriated to them.

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  fig.  1827.  Syd. Smith, in Edin. Rev., March, 429. There is the larva of tyranny, and the skeleton of malice.

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  2.  a. An insect in the grub state, i.e., from the time of its leaving the egg till its transformation into a pupa. b. Applied to the early immature form of animals of other classes, when the development to maturity involves some sort of metamorphosis.

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  In the first quot. the word is used in a general sense = ‘mask,’ ‘guise’: the technical restricted use is due to Linnæus. In the larva the perfect form, or imago, of the insect is unrecognizable.

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[1691.  Ray, Creation, I. (1692), 7. We exclude both these from the degree of Species, making them to be the same Insect under a different Larva or Habit.]

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1768.  G. White, Selborne, xviii. (1789), 54. The larvæ of insects are full of eggs.

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1770.  Pennant, Zool., IV. 37. The two small ones [sc. lizards] are Larvæ, with their branchial fins, which drop off when they quit the water.

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1815.  Kirby & Sp., Entomol., I. 67. This Linné called the larva state, and an insect when in it a larva.

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1837.  Goring & Pritchard, Microgr., 212. Among aquatic larvæ, the most beautiful and delicate are those of the numerous species of gnat.

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1849.  Murchison, Siluria, App. D. 539. They are larvæ of Echinoderms.

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1859.  Darwin, Orig. Spec., xiii. 440. Cuvier did not perceive that a barnacle was … a crustacean; but a glance at the larva shows this to be the case.

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1874.  Brewer, in Coues, Birds N. W., 65. Collecting flies and larvae among a clump of locust trees.

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1897.  Daily News, 23 Jan., 6/1. This plaice larva has no mouth, at least no open mouth.

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  fig.  1854.  H. Rogers, Ess., II. i. 32. He is sure to deposit in his own writings the larvæ of future controversies.

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  c.  attrib., as larva-form, -state.

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1791.  E. Darwin, Bot. Gard., I. 197. So in his silken sepulchre the worm, Warm’d with new life, unfolds his larva-form.

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1874.  Carpenter, Ment. Phys., I. ii. § 59 (1879), 58. The change from the larva to the perfect or imago state of the Insect.

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