|
|
|
More "Snipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rivers and streams, and living somewhat after the manner of the otter. It has a most wide range of diet, and will eat almost anything which is at all eatable. Fishes, frogs, and muskrats are his especial delight, and he will occasionally succeed in pouncing upon a snipe or wild duck, which he will greedily devour. Crawfish, [Page 190] snails, and water insects of all kinds also come within the range of his diet, and he sometimes makes a stray visit to some neighboring ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the tigers have been long since hunted from their lairs in the rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year. Narkarra one hundred and forty-three miles by road is the nearest station to Kashima. But Kashima never goes ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... states—"The raven is seen more frequently in the neighbourhood than in most parts of England: his croak over head is not at all an uncommon sound. A pair of buzzards will occasionally circle aloft for a considerable time. The snipe is found very early on the Forest, so much so that I have known in the month of July six killed in a day. The jack snipe particularly abounds about 'the Dam Pool.' The bittern has been twice shot ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... "'This snipe,' says Luke to the judge, 'shot and wilfully punctured with malice and forethought one of the most respected and prominent citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor. And in so doing laid himself liable to the penitence of law and order. And I hereby make claim ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... l'Italie." The migration of quails takes place at this season, and, with a good retrieving spaniel, hundreds may be shot. But they lie very close, and require a dog to put them up. They are by no means easy to shoot, and require snipe shot. They lie in the young corn, which is very thick and thriving here as on the field of Waterloo. As I had put up No. 6 shot by mistake, and had no spaniel, I bagged but few comparatively, some twenty. A great number ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... him and settled down squarely into the saddle. The desolate plains with the crying wind held the loneliness of the damned. Occasionally a wolf howled in the distance, or a wandering snipe cried as it lost itself among the stiffening reeds about the swampy levels, and through all he could hear the hoarse roar of the Kofn in flood, as it rushed down from its rocky bed, swollen with the melted snows of yesterday. Another interval passed while ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... to be well pleased, and tell him all de tings I want. Dat evening plenty of provisions came on board. Dere were—let me see— butter-birds and whistling ducks, snipe, red-tailed pigeons, turkeys, clucking hens, parrots, and plantation coots; dere was beef and pork and venison, and papaw fruit, squash, and plantains, calavansas, bananas, yams, Indian pepper, ginger, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... morasses. The haunts of the snipe and the hern— (I shall question the two upper classes On aquatiles, when we return)— Why, I see on them absolute masses ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... dance had concluded, Terence led his glowing partner to a cool quiet corner, where leaving her, he flew to the side table, and in less time than he would take to bring down a snipe, he was again beside her with a large mugful of hot negus, into which he had put, by way of stiffener, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... his house were alike shunned. The snipe and duck hunters forsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal. Sometimes the hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slow thumping of oar-locks on the canal. They would look at each other for a moment half in consternation, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... flicking the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it wasn't for ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... signs of people, where they had made their fire, and laid stones like a wall. In this place we saw four very fair falcons, and Master Bruton took from one of them his prey, which we judged by the wings and legs to be a snipe, for the head was ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... "Don't worry, you snipe. Nobody else will ever hanker to own her." Another insult from McGuffey. Having made up his mind that a fight was inevitable, the honest fellow was above pleading ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... a "pole" cut from the bank of the stream with a live grasshopper for bait; and there are few better weapons to teach a boy to be a keen sportsman. The birds that he shot were game—duck or geese, turkeys, quail, grouse, or snipe—and the fish that he caught were mostly game fish—trout and bass. It is true that the American generally shoots foxes; so does the Englishman when he goes to the Colonies where there are no hounds and too many foxes, with game birds which he wishes kept for his own shooting, and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... themselves momentarily and draw the fire of the enemy. This was of no avail. The hidden rifle with deliberate instancy cracked once more. The fleeing cowboy, slammed as if by a club, dashed on, but his right arm hung limp. No snipe ever made half the race for life that he put up in those fleeting seconds; and by his agility he earned then and there the nickname of the bird itself, for before the deadly sights could cover his flight again he threw himself into a slight ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... sailor, in the October evenings, may hear the murmurings of the snipe, circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like sound in nature; and still later in the autumn, when the frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he may lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting is passed, making the woods ring with his wild laughter. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... and what happens in the lonely pine woods no one knows but the desperadoes themselves, albeit some of them never come back to the little fringe of settlements. The winter visitor from the North kicks up the jack-snipe along the beach or tarponizes in the estuaries of the Gulf, and when he comes to the hotel for dinner he eats Chicago dressed beef, but out in the wilderness low-browed cow-folks shoot and stab each other for the possession of scrawny creatures not fit for a pointer-dog to mess on. One cannot but ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... climbed up in one of 'em. A mosely tree grows crooked; I don't care how straight you put it in the ground, it's goin' to grow crooked. So I climb up in the mosely tree and begin to yell. My brother heard me and come 'cause he knowed what was up. He used to say, 'Now, Snipe, when you come 'cross that mosely field, don't you wear that old red dress 'cause they'll get you down and tear that dress off you.' I liked the dress 'cause he had give it to me. I had set the milk down at the foot of the tree and it's a wonder they didn't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... in a contemporary book on French furniture, so identical are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. By dividing the glass unequally, by the introduction into his design of bevelled ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... of it should lift up their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes comes the ever-thickening chorus of the toads, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in sounding flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing, uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, mad with delight of the sun and the season—and over all, and laving all, moves the slow wind, heavy with the breath of the far-off blooms of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... he did it well! He looks that peanut headed snipe straight in the eye all the time after that and takes what's comin' to him without turnin' a hair. It was "Yes, Mr. Piddie," and "No, Mr. Piddie"; but nothin' else. And the cooler and politer he was, the wilder Piddie got. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... retreat, but as I wished the Baris to believe that we felt quite at our ease, we accomplished the move very leisurely, and strolled quietly homewards, shooting ducks and snipe as we ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the hotels here. Japan abounds in fish and game in great variety. Woodcock, snipe, hares, and venison are cheap, and all of excellent quality. The beef and mutton are also good, as are the vegetables. Turnips, radishes and carrots are enormous, owing, I suppose to the depth and fineness of the soil. Vandy measured some ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... little. Flat, bare country on every hand. Any driftwood we saw was buried in the sand and soaking wet. Not a bird to be seen except one or two snipe. We came to a lake, and out of the fog in front of me I heard the cry of a loon, but saw no living creature. Our view was blocked by a wall of fog whichever way we turned. There were plenty of reindeer tracks, but of course they were only those of the Samoyedes' ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... is the principal cause why animals change their places. The different tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once, in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of the double snipe in the Campagna of Rome, a great flight appeared on the 3rd of April, and the day after heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have no doubt that the augury of the ancients was a good ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... of Snipe known in Australia are—Scolopax australis, Lath.; Painted S., Rhynchaea australis, Gould. This bird breeds in Japan and winters in Australia. The name is also used ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... The American Snipe has some of the nocturnal habits of the Woodcock, and the same habit of soaring at twilight, when he performs a sort of musical medley, which Audubon has very graphically described in the following passage:—"The birds are met with in meadows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... salmon-trout for dinner, Monsieur Calyste, and snipe, and pancakes such as I know you can't get anywhere but here," said Mariotte, with a sly, triumphant look as she smoothed the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Solo, a bold sportsman may find game to his liking, and willing natives to guide him in his search after tigers, wild hogs, the huge boa, deer, snipe, and quail. In pursuit of the last, too many a fever is caught, through the imprudence of young men in staying out too late in the day, and in keeping on their wet and soiled clothes and shoes during their ride ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... and attempt to make off, is expression all over. Crege, who is one of the best amateur shots on Long Island, as a medal now in his possession will attest, had taken his number twelve, and walked the marshes for snipe. So far as the ducks were concerned, he had missed the sport, but he brought in a bunch of forty-five English snipe, which compared favorably with the success of the others. Crege is a superior ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... evidently inclined this morning to a fresh and kindly view of things. Nick could share her feeling but so far as was permitted by a recognition merely general of what his brother must have looked for. It might have been snipe and it might have been bristling boars. Biddy was indeed brief at first about everything, in spite of all the weeks that had gone since their last meeting; for he quickly enough saw she had something behind—something that made her gay and that she wanted to come to quickly. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... round the rocks to the eastward, would probably yield many delicate and brilliant little fishes; Gobies, brilliant Labri, blue, yellow, and orange, with tiny rabbit mouths, and powerful protruding teeth; pipe fishes (Syngnathi) (25) with strange snipe-bills (which they cannot open) and snake-like bodies; small cuttlefish (Sepiolae) of a white jelly mottled with brilliant metallic hues, with a ring of suckered arms round their tiny parrots' beaks, who, put into a jar, will hover and dart in the water, as the skylark does in air, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... and bushes to the thicker woods beyond, so that neither the hawk amid the cover nor its partner above nor the clamorous beaters could harm it. The King laughed at the mischance and rode on. Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the King soon tired of this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent silent attendant flapping above ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... we began to converse about the game. Westchester was, and is still, famous for partridges, snipe, quails, ducks, and meadow-larks; and I understood expatiating on such a subject, as well as the best of them. All the Littlepages were shots; and I have known my father bag ten brace of woodcock, among the wet thickets ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Jude, an' ol' Lucy ain't a-goin' to take ye in. We gotta snipe somepin quick—or starve! Look, we'll go down to Mike's place, an' then come back here when it's out, and ye kin pinch a string, or somepin, eh? ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... are birds which are common enough in England in the winter, but which mostly go away to Norwegian breeding-grounds, such as geese, ducks, woodcock, and snipe; while bramblings, fieldfares, and redwings are birds of the North, and never nest in Great Britain. Besides these, there are a certain number of birds which have no claim to be termed British, and which are found in Norway all the year round—the nut-cracker, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... streaming behind them, at a pace which would leave any pheasant standing. As peacocks are regarded as sacred by Hindoos, the Maharajah had particularly begged us not to shoot any. There were plenty of other birds, snipe, partridges, florican and jungle-cocks, the two latter greatly esteemed for their flesh. I shot a jungle-cock, and was quite disappointed at finding him a facsimile of our barndoor game-cock, for I had imagined that he would have the velvety black wing starred with ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... drew closer to nature than the dusty abstractions of civilization. It was highly figurative and the majority of its words referred directly to familiar external sights. The tribes of each nation of the Iroquois were known respectively as the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk. The significant names of chiefs are known to all, and whoever is familiar with Indian oratory will readily recollect its garb of bold and striking metaphors. These features, while imparting energy ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... must have had a pretty long spell of uneasiness before she saw him back again. But Mr. Waterton, Baptist of a new generation in these mysteries, took that conceit out of Europe: the sloth, says he, cannot like a snipe or a plover run a race neck and neck with a first-class railway carriage; but is he, therefore, a slow coach? By no means: he would go from London to Edinburgh between seedtime and harvest. Now Gillman's Coleridge, vol. i., has no such ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... old man is unnecessarily excited. I won't go far, I'll only just bring him down like a snipe. [Takes out his scent-bottle and scents his hands] I've poured out a whole bottle of scent to-day and they still smell... of a dead body. [Pause] Yes.... ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... been dining tete-a-tete with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very big drink," he said, confidentially, "and the major ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... bank and walks on through the rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and my heart ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... connected with the Galveston steamers at Burwick's Bay. Tom Brown and Holly Chappell, my partners, were both along; and as game was plenty along the road, we carried our shotguns along, and in the event of no bigger game were accustomed to get off and shoot snipe, catching the return train to the city in the evening. Sure enough, there was a party of traders aboard, and Brown lost no time in making their acquaintance and opening out. One of them commenced to cut his clothes the minute he got a glimpse ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... faint idea of it. I attempted to make a drawing of it, but before I had obtained much more than the outline, it was time to recross the river. We dined and passed the evening with Mr. Mackenzie as before. The next morning I walked to the Chinese cemetery with my gun in my hand, and shot a few snipe and wood pigeons, and after breakfast we crossed the river to pay a visit to the shops of Ningpo. The streets of the city are narrow, but superior to any that we had yet seen. The principal streets are ornamented with stone arches, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... Huron country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush (which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (Anthus), snipe, and other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of deer on ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the surface of the stagnant water, fluttered numbers of birds. Wild duck, teal, snipe lived there in flocks, and those fearless birds allowed themselves to ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... hot, Mitrich, thank God!" remarked the watchman, Ignat, as he passed by with some buckets.... "Snipe will be about to-morrow, and we will have ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the palmetto scrub behind the house, and shot one to see if it differs from ours. It is the same bird, Ortyx Virginiana: they call it partridge in the South—rather smaller than ours at the North. In the swamp I found snipe, Scolopax Wilsonii: they call them here jacksnipe. Here is one of them: did you ever see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... sharks in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant—officers mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well—behaved weeks only once, began to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... (Scolopax wilsonii) needs no protection.... The snipe, too, like the pigeon, will take care of itself, and its yearly numbers can not be materially ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... was good, And, turning on the poor hen, He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed, Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, To house with snipe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... them. There is a rabbit-warren on the north-east of the island, belonging to the Duke of Argyle. Young Col intends to get some hares, of which there are none at present. There are no black-cock, muir-fowl, nor partridges; but there are snipe, wild-duck, wild-geese, and swans, in winter; wild-pidgeons, plover, and great number of starlings; of which I shot some, and found them pretty good eating. Woodcocks come hither, though there is not a tree upon the island. There are no rivers in Col; but only some brooks, in which there is a great ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... scattered countryside of long distances by windy roads, with scarcely ever a village as a focus for gossip, news flew fast. The next morning Ned Cromarty had set out with his gun towards a certain snipe marsh, but while he was still on the high road he met a man on a bicycle. The man had heard strange news and stopped to pass it on, and the next moment Ned was hurrying as fast as his long legs could take ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... snipe were flanked with Indian corn, salsify, maple sugar, and cocoa-nut cakes; tea at one end, and a disipated-looking bottle of "old rye" at the other. But hasty justice was done to this repast by Lola and Freddy, who were dying to go down to the landing, and witness the disembarkation ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... as for me, I love to be Provided with a pipe,— A rare old bowl to warm my soul, A meerschaum brown and ripe,— With good plug cut, no stump or butt, Nor filthy gutter-snipe. ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... Ed let fall, fell, ez I say, on Sunday— Which is the reason we wuz shocked to see him sail in Monday A-puffin' at a snipe that sizzled like a Chinese cracker An' smelt fur all the world like rags instead uv like terbacker; Recoverin' from our first surprise, us fellows fell to pokin' A heap uv fun at "folks uz said how they ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... number of feet] biped, quadruped; [web-footed animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine^, ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin^; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... quiver of excitement. He stumbled along, shifting Sid Northcutt's rifle from one shoulder to the other, and listening open-mouthed to Jack Carter's directions. "You know, Bud," said that young gentleman, gravely, "it ain't every man that gets a chance to go on a snipe-hunt. And if you've got ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... ask: "Scotch or Irish," and see you tip it off with Blake and the rest. No bridge for you tonight—early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its delicate tracery in frost; ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... osier beds, and vast fields of reeds, and breadths of forest with dense thorny underwood, where all wild birds came in their season, and where all was quiet save for a bittern's cry, a boar's snort, a snipe's scream, on the lands once crowded with the multitudes that gave the eagle of Persia and the brazen trumpets of Lydia ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Duggie wasn't going to have those eyes patrolling his spine if he knew it. He meant to keep away and conduct this business by letter. There was going to be no personal interview with sister, if he had to dodge about America like a snipe. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the weather, our passage from Rio Janeiro to the Bay of Conception afforded us but few opportunities to add to our collections. A snipe blown out to sea from the Rio de la Plata, a specimen of Diomedea Albatros at Terra del Fuego, a large Salpa, and a Lepas, were all we were able to obtain. The Bay of Conception presents a rich ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... about, his hat gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ran ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... When they wanted us, German guards would come in, line up about twenty of us, and take us out to work in the fields. The first job they put us at was planting potatoes and we worked faithfully the first day, but when we came in that night I said to "Snipe," the new pal I had made, "By golly! Snipe, I don't like the idea of producing food for these 'square-heads,' let's see if we can't put one over them." "All right," said Snipe, "I'm game, but how in hell are you going ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at all a bad place as headquarters for the sportsman. In the neighbourhood there is very good snipe-shooting in spring and autumn. The fishing too is excellent for trout and grayling. The bear, the wolf, and the chamois are to be met with on the heights, which form this portion of the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... hunt the loamy swale And trail The snipe, their cunning wiles o'ercoming; And oft will flush the bevied quail, And hear the partridge slowly drumming Dull ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... faint bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, they only quickened her expectation; and the witch had told her not to fear them. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... embosomed in a submerged forest, whose trees are uniform in height and kind. All round us, like a hedge, is the glossy green foliage, sometimes brushing our boat on either side. And we scare up multitudes of water fowl, unused to such invasion of their solitudes. Wild duck, teal, grey snipe, shags, and many kinds that no one on board knows the names of, start from under our very bows. Not gay plumaged birds, though, for the most part; only now and then a pair of kingfishers, flashing green and orange as they fly, or the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... there in great numbers, and the boys were intensely interested in their awkward, and at times comical, movements. As they are not good for food, only one or two were shot, as curiosities. Cranes stalked along on their long, slender legs in the marshy places, while snipe and many similar birds ran rapidly along the sandy shores. The ducks were everywhere, and so the shooting was everything that our ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... and Saturday was devoted to 'clean ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... it is a fact it cannot be minute, cannot be unimportant; that it must be a fact of God; a message from God; a voice of God, as Bacon has it, revealed in things; and which therefore, just because it stands in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax feather in a snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously in certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be some deep and wide secret underlying them, which is worth years of thought to solve. That is reverence; a reverence which is growing, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... white and finely flavored. In marshy places and on the slimy banks of rivers, the jabiru (Mycteria americana, L.) loves to wade, together with the rose-colored spoon-bill (Platalea ajaja, L.); the fish-devouring ibis (Tantalus loculator, L.), the curved-billed snipe (Rhynchoea Hilaerea, Val.), the party-colored cranes, plovers, land-rails, shrites, and even sea-swallows.[91] In the rivers there are ducks: these birds are, perhaps, carried down by the currents from ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the first inn he comes to on the edge of the wood. Since you are good enough to act as my guardian pay me the income on my eighth of the fief and do not ask me to learn that Latin bosh. A man of birth is sufficiently well educated when he knows how to bring down a snipe and sign his name. I have no desire to be seigneur of Roche-Mauprat; it is enough to have been a slave there. You are most kind, and on my honour I love you; but I have very little love for conditions. I have never done anything from interested motives. I would ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... started with Jack. He was amazed at the quantity of birds that he met with—thrushes, wagtails, warblers, chifchaffs, fieldfares, and red-poles rose at every step. The air quivered with the song of innumerable larks, which mingled with those of the willow-warblers; snipe in considerable numbers sprang up and darted off with a sharp cry from almost under his feet; plovers circled round and round; ducks of various kinds passed between the shore, and, as Godfrey supposed, inland swamps or lakes; martins in great numbers darted hither and thither hawking for ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... I came upon a small plantation which I believed belonged to me. I struck straight across it; emerging from its shadows, I found myself by a small stream and some marshy land; on the other side another small plantation. A snipe got up, I fired, and tailored it. I marked the bird into this other plantation, and followed. Up got a covey of partridges—bang, bang—one down by the side of an oak. I was about to enter this covert, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of its inhabitants; viz. sundry cheetars, bore-butchers, (or leopards) hyenas, wolves, jackalls, foxes, hares, partridges, etc.; but not being a very capital shot, I have seldom made much devastation amongst them. Under the hill are swamps and paddy-fields, which abound in snipe and other game. Now, is not this a Zoological Garden on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... i want yu to kepe for me till i cum hum. I can't kepe it heer coz ime afrade it will git stole. don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want nobodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit—but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your sister ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... coveys of snipe in a bog, rose shoals of fish, of the genus monoptera, which have no other fins but their tail. I recognized the Javanese, a real serpent two and a half feet long, of a livid colour underneath, and which might easily be mistaken for a conger eel if it were not for the golden stripes on its side. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... Brackley came and told me of a delightful rough shooting he had rented in an obscure corner of Ireland. According to him it was a congested snipe area. You could not see the pools for wild-duck. The honking of wild-geese kept one awake at night. The drawback to the estate was that you were always tripping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... seems clear as print to me, lad. You have just brooded over it so long that it's natural you should begin to have doubts and fears. To me it's as sound as when you first gave it. That being so, we can't run an' leave them poor ignorant savages to be shot down maybe like snipe. It wouldn't be Christian like to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... other treasures on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without work, providing he did not leave the Zone. And ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... are different. They are just as courageous, but they take a wheelbarrow and push it from New York to San Francisco, or they starve forty days and forty nights and then eat watermelon and lecture, or they eat 800 snipe in 800 years, or get an inspiration ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... pudgy as a snipe— Well worth her weight in gold, Of honest, clean, conspicuous type, And just the size ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... Enny man that'll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt of the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... innyard. At one end was a balcony that would hold not more than three musicians. The candles of its former brightness have long since burned to socket. Vanished are "Sir Thomas Clubber, Lady Clubber and the Miss Clubbers!" Gone is the Honorable Wilmot Snipe and all the notables that once crowded it! Vanished is the punchbowl where the amorous Tracy Tupman drank too many cups of negus on that memorable night. I gave the dirty waiter a sixpence ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... of it without a break, unless the fever fog can be called a break. The only life in this great morass was that of the aquatic birds, and the animals that fed on them, of both of which there were vast numbers. Geese, cranes, ducks, teal, coot, snipe, and plover swarmed all around us, many being of varieties that were quite new to me, and all so tame that one could almost have knocked them over with a stick. Among these birds I especially noticed a very beautiful ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... to find a bird's-nest you have to stalk. That is to say, you watch a bird flying into a bush and guess where its nest is, and follow it up and find the nest. With some birds it is a most difficult thing to find their nests; take, for instance, the skylark or the snipe. But those who know the birds, especially the snipe, will recognize their call. The snipe when she is alarmed gives quite a different call from when she is happy and flying about. She has a particular call when she has young ones about. So that those who have watched and listened and know her ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... fishes with the tremendous name, the last part of which means snipe-billed, are very long and defenseless, and are invariably found among the leaves of a long sea-grass, which very nearly resembles them in form and color. Their head is quite long, and they always seem to stand on it, and when a ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the Azores are limited to the rabbit, weasel, ferret, rat (brown and black), mouse and bat, in addition to domestic animals. The game includes the woodcock, red partridge (introduced in the 16th century), quail and snipe. Owing to the damage inflicted on the crops by the multitude of blackbirds, bullfinches, chaffinches and green canaries, a reward was formerly paid for the destruction of birds in St Michael's, and it is said that over 400,000 were destroyed in several successive years between 1875 and 1885. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... pelicans, crows, kingfishers, and here and there, like sentinels on the topmost branches, a white-headed eagle, with his hooked bill, dominating the scene. Wheeling through the air were strings of duck and wisps of snipe in battalions, rows of cranes with their long legs trailing, and on the surface of the smooth water, on scores of small islands, formed originally by uprooted trees, and under the water, there ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... cranes, are found in great numbers on the shores of the lagoons and rivers. In the interior of the country the splendid Honduras turkey, as well as the curassow, and several varieties of the wood-pigeon and dove, as also the partridge, quail, and snipe, exist in abundance. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... home in 1874. These pheasants do not rise in the jungle and are, therefore, uninteresting to the Borneo sportsman. They are frequently trapped by the natives. There are many kinds of pigeons, which afford good sport. Snipe occur, but not plentifully. Curlew are numerous in some localities, but very wild. The small China quail are abundant on cleared spaces, as also is the painted plover, but cleared spaces in Borneo are somewhat few and far between. So much for ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... up out of Behring Sea, they marched back towards the hills, their feet ankle-deep in the soft fresh moss, while the air tasted like a cool draught and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and encircled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary weeks on shipboard, the dewy freshness livened them magically, cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Ladyship," said the old woman with another dip. "I'm wonderful souple in my limbs, considerin' everythin'; for the same house would give a snipe a cowld. The blankets are a great comfort. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... little man failed to respond. "I guess likely he will pull through," he said dryly. "He had a pretty good shaking up coming down, and I'd better run around to camp and get a bottle of port I cached this morning. The snipe got away with my flask; used the last drop, likely, before she needed it." His voice took a higher pitch, and he added over his shoulder, as he started in the direction of the fire: "He made a ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honey-suckle's tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... as we wished. At the two others there is such an abundance of birds of different sorts that one could not imagine it, if he had not seen them. There are cormorants, three kinds of duck, geese, marmettes?, bustards, sea-parrots, snipe, vultures, and other birds of prey; gulls, sea-larks of two or three kinds; herons, large sea-gulls, curlews, sea-magpies, divers, ospreys, appoils?, ravens, cranes, and other sorts which I am not acquainted with, and which also make their nests here. [34] We named these Sea-Wolf ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... Tinochorus rumicivorus, is here common: in its habits and general appearance it nearly equally partakes of the characters, different as they are, of the quail and snipe. The Tinochorus is found in the whole of southern South America, wherever there are sterile plains, or open dry pasture land. It frequents in pairs or small flocks the most desolate places, where scarcely ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In most localities ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... the fancy names he used to bestow upon his female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... surrounded by very extensive groves of palms. Several rivers intersect each other in this neighborhood, flowing through dense jungles and mangrove swamps. The sun is still high. The four white men and the Rajah Moussa have gone ashore snipe shooting, the Malays on board are sleeping, and I ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... words—or sounds, rather—which he and his companions had gabbled through as they prowled around the kitchen clashing their wooden swords. That St. George had become King William was natural enough; but what is to be said of changing the Turkish Knight into the Turkey Snipe? That was one of the "howlers" this youth perpetrated, amongst many others less striking, perhaps, but not less instructive. The whole thing showed plainly where the difficulty lay at the night-school. The breaking up of the traditional life of the village had failed to supply ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... were scattered about, there could be no doubt of its being much frequented by the natives. The grass being fairly burnt up, our animals found but little to eat, but they had a tolerable journey and did not attempt to wander in search of better food. I shot a snipe near the creek, much resembling the painted snipe of India; but I had not the means with ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... at home in their duties; besides, the fat cattle would be finished very shortly and sent off to be sold in Dublin. Jack had announced his intention of stealing a holiday on the morrow, and taking Hayes to a certain famous "snipe bottom," when the game was, to use Dick's expression, "as thick as plums in one ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... very powerful swimmer. The current is very swift. Tortoises used to line the margin of the river in the evening, with their heads sticking out above water, while crowds of angry birds accused them from the wet mud of the shore. Wild duck, partridge, snipe, sand-grouse and doves were fairly numerous, and in the evenings it was possible to get a good bag. It was worth shooting jackals, for their skins were in very good condition. The hospital had a football ground and later on, towards the end of the hot season, a tennis court ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... sounds and resembles the auk in some particulars of habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... long, stooping, gaunt and spindle-shanked, his hands big and crippled with gout: his cheeks were red after an old man's fashion, covered with a crimson network like a pippin; his lips thin and not well hiding his few teeth; his nose long like a snipe's neb. In short, a shame and a laughing-stock to the Folk, and a man whom the kindreds had in small esteem, and that for ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... close to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the police ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... was the French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, the ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... garden of the chateau, or reading up in the library. We have cleaned this up now, and it is an altogether curious sensation to recline here in an easy-chair, reading some fine old book, and just taking the precaution not to stay in front of the glassless windows through which the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts in the thickets on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres away. Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down your book for a while, and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the 75's and 120's throw up fountains of ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... sir," said the major. "I remember once in the neighbourhood of Malacca, how a party of us officers landed to get a shot at the snipe, and we were surprised by a party of copper-coloured scoundrels. By George, sir, there we were with nothing better than snipe-shot, sir, to defend ourselves against as murderous-looking a set of ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... lowan (Mallee hen, they're mostly called) and talegalla (brush turkey) were thick enough in some of the scrubby corners. Warrigal used to get the lowan eggs—beautiful pink thin-shelled ones they are, first-rate to eat, and one of 'em a man's breakfast. Then there were pigeons, wild ducks, quail, snipe now and then, besides wallaby and other kangaroos. There was no fear of starving, even if we hadn't a tidy herd of ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... aspect of the birds of Tasmania to distinguish them from those of other countries; there are, however, some peculiar forms, but they are not of such a nature as to strike the eye. Many of the birds of Europe are represented here, as the hawks, owls, swallows, snipe, ducks, &c., and not a few have received English names, from the real or fancied resemblance which they bear to their British prototypes, as ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... "and it's no more than Rosey deserves, ez it's suthing onnat'ral and spell-like that's come over her through Ferrers. It ain't my Rosey. But it's Gospel truth, whether she's bewitched or not; whether it's them damn fool stories she reads—and it's like ez not he's just the kind o' snipe to write 'em hisself, and sorter advertise hisself, don't yer see—she's allus stuck up for him. They've had clandesent interviews, and when I taxed him with it he ez much ez allowed it was so, and reckoned he must leave, so ez he could run her off, you know—kinder stampede her with 'honor.' ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... Christian" poker-player and red-light habitue has the supernal gall to ask us to make him lord over many things,—to accord him political promotion for dereliction of duty! In the name of Balaam's she-ass, does this snub-nosed little snipe suppose that we are all hopeless idiots? You are the state's hired hand, Charlie boy—duly employed to remain at Austin and display your anserine ignorance in the governor's office. The people don't care two whoops in hades what your "opinions" may be on any subject within ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is deep, and the current is swift in some places, sluggish in others. The channel winds through heavy timber lands and between high, rocky cliffs. The mountains are not far away. The fishing is splendid, and woodcock and snipe are plentiful." ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... be you! Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... former occasion, is the principal cause why animals change their places. The different tribes of wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of double snipe, in the campagna of Rome; a great flight appeared on the third of April, and the day after, heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in the mountains; might spear the boar in the oaken glades, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... enough, an' that girl just sparks around an' acts real entertainin', evenin's. I shouldn't wonder, with such a smart ma, if she caught a beau. I do wish, Janet, since you ain't got no one but Billy,—an' every one knows he's got 'bout as much gumption as a snipe,—I do wish you could land one of these boarders. They must be real easy from what ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... and is as happy as can be, he says he never felt so well and never had such good snipe shooting. Little Darfour's amusement at Maurice is boundless; he grins at him all the time he waits at table, he marvels at his dirty boots, at his bathing, at his much walking out shooting, at his knowing no Arabic. The dyke burst the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... continuance, I don't know but I should prefer mild hale." "You're right, old boy, it does give one very gentlemanly ideas, so take another glass, and you'll fancy yourself an emperor.—Your good health again." "The same to you, sir. And now wot do you call this chap?" "That is a quail, the other a snipe—which will you take?" "Vy, a bit of both, I think; and do you eat these chaps with them?" "Yes, nothing nicer—artichokes a la sauce blanche; you get the real eating part, you see, by having them sent up this way, instead of like haystacks, as they come in England, diving and ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... streets of Arras, after the Ridge was in our possession, had to be seen to be appreciated. Heretofore such a thing as a pleasure walk or shopping tour was out of the question, as the sniping was continuous, and the only way now for Fritz to snipe the town was with his heavy naval pieces, six or seven miles off, and as these visitors are a hundred times scarcer than the callers from the short range boys, the peace and quiet of our fellows were correspondingly increased ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the police ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... horse-fair. We sportsmen may often set off on a fine morning from our more or less ancestral roof, in the full intention of returning there the following evening, and little by little, still in pursuit of snipe, may get at last to the blessed banks of Petchora. Besides, every lover of the gun and the dog is a passionate admirer of the noblest animal in the world, the horse. And so I turned up at Lebedyan, stopped at the hotel, changed ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... old boy, it does give one very gentlemanly ideas, so take another glass, and you'll fancy yourself an emperor.—Your good health again." "The same to you, sir. And now wot do you call this chap?" "That is a quail, the other a snipe—which will you take?" "Vy, a bit of both, I think; and do you eat these chaps with them?" "Yes, nothing nicer—artichokes a la sauce blanche; you get the real eating part, you see, by having them sent up this way, instead of like haystacks, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... The relief works established by the Government, with the best intentions possible, too often were devoted to the most curiously useless, sometimes even to actually harmful, objects. To this day "Famine roads" may be met with in the middle of snipe bogs, or skirting precipices where no road was ever wanted or could possibly be used. By the time, too, they were in full working order the people were, in many cases, too enfeebled by want and disease to work. For close upon the heels of the famine followed an epidemic ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... observed on the north-east side of the Forest, states—"The raven is seen more frequently in the neighbourhood than in most parts of England: his croak over head is not at all an uncommon sound. A pair of buzzards will occasionally circle aloft for a considerable time. The snipe is found very early on the Forest, so much so that I have known in the month of July six killed in a day. The jack snipe particularly abounds about 'the Dam Pool.' The bittern has been twice shot near the same spot within the last twenty years. The seagull skims over occasionally ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... euer make my Foole, my purse: For I mine owne gain'd knowledge should prophane If I would time expend with such Snipe, But for my Sport, and Profit: I hate the Moore, And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets She ha's done my Office. I know not if't be true, But I, for meere suspition in that kinde, Will do, as if for Surety. He holds me well, The ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... severe injuries, such as burns; and, in an especial manner, by the passage of a catheter. Of all emotions, fear notoriously is the most apt to induce trembling; but so do occasionally great anger and joy. I remember once seeing a boy who had just shot his first snipe on the wing, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... there could be no doubt of its being much frequented by the natives. The grass being fairly burnt up, our animals found but little to eat, but they had a tolerable journey and did not attempt to wander in search of better food. I shot a snipe near the creek, much resembling the painted snipe of India; but I had not the means with me ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... could not bury her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air. She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary. She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! they were very far ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... which are common enough in England in the winter, but which mostly go away to Norwegian breeding-grounds, such as geese, ducks, woodcock, and snipe; while bramblings, fieldfares, and redwings are birds of the North, and never nest in Great Britain. Besides these, there are a certain number of birds which have no claim to be termed British, and which are found in Norway all the year round—the nut-cracker, several ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... and against some one black or pink bully in particular? Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a Delivering Angel, in the shape of a very small, very muddy, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... little snipe," cried Grace, laughing, "your pocket is stuffed so full it's going to burst open, and you'll be sick again, now ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... hotels here. Japan abounds in fish and game in great variety. Woodcock, snipe, hares, and venison are cheap, and all of excellent quality. The beef and mutton are also good, as are the vegetables. Turnips, radishes and carrots are enormous, owing, I suppose to the depth and fineness of the soil. Vandy measured some of each, and reports: "Radishes, eighteen ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... house were alike shunned. The snipe and duck hunters forsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal. Sometimes the hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slow thumping of oar-locks on the canal. They would look at each other for a moment half in consternation, half in glee, then rush from their sport ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Eagle bald. Eagle gray. Fishing Hawk. Turkey Buzzard, or Vulture. Herring-tail'd Hawk. Goshawk. Falcon. Merlin. Sparrow-hawk. Hobby. Ring-tail. Raven. Crow. Black Birds, two sorts. Buntings two sorts. Pheasant. Woodcock. Snipe. Partridge. Moorhen. Jay. Green Plover. Plover gray or whistling. Pigeon. Turtle Dove. Parrakeeto. Thrush. Wood-Peckers, five sorts. Mocking-birds, two sorts. Cat-Bird. Cuckoo. Blue-Bird. Bulfinch. Nightingale. Hedge-Sparrow. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... bloodshot, upon the contemptible white-faced person who had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of a glorious fire's warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered into ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... straight for my head. In the stalemate days a dozen sharpshooters waiting for such opportunities would have had a try at you; a machine gun might have loosened up, and even batteries of artillery in their search for game to show itself from cover did not hesitate to snipe with shells at ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... a fat man of Bombay, Who was smoking one sunshiny day, When a bird, called a snipe, Flew away with his pipe, Which vexed the fat ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... ground. I could shoot and fish as well as most of you, only that I don't think it right to take life except to provide food, or in self-defense. There's not so much happiness going that one's justified in cutting any of it short. Even a jack-snipe may have his little affairs of the heart, and a cock-salmon his gamble. But I can ride as straight as you can. I can break any horse to harness you choose to put me behind. I can sail a boat and handle an axe. I can turn my hand to most practical things—except ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and while he remained motionless, his pipe unlighted, his gun beside him, a spaniel worked below in the sere sedges at the water's margin. Presently the dog barked, a moor-hen splashed, half flying, half swimming, across the larger lake, and a snipe got up and jerked crookedly away on the wind. The dog stood with one fore-paw lifted and the water dripping along his belly. He waited for a crack and puff of smoke and the thud of a bird falling into the water or the underwood. But his master did not fire; he did not even see the flushing ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car—a London of chop-houses, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... they don't call me too late for dinner. Father and mother, whoever they were, when they ran away from me, didn't run away with my appetite. I wonder how long master means to play with his knife and fork. As for Mr Brookes, what he eats wouldn't physic a snipe. What's ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... dose of snipe-shot that he'd remember, and be thankful it wasn't slugs," said Jim promptly. Observing a deeper seriousness in her attitude, he added, "Why, if it was in war-time he'd get a BALL from ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... sorrows, for the woe must indeed be heavy which a new hammerless gun by such a maker cannot do something towards lightening. So on the next morning he took this gun and went to the marshes by the river—where, he was credibly informed, several wisps of snipe had been seen—to attempt to shoot some of them and put the new weapon ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... exceeding brilliancy of its plumage. But nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "I suppose I made an awful ass of myself. But even if she is a public dancer, that snipe shouldn't have insulted her. Of course I'd found out long before that Miss Toots was no longer anything to ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... are put into the boat, and off we go. Perhaps a gale springs up, and we are forced to make a harbor in some little island; or perhaps it falls calm, and we crawl into one, under oars. It is sure to be alive with ducks and geese and snipe. The shooting is superb. Happen what may, come storm or calm or fine weather, though often wet and cold, and frequently in danger, yet I have a grand time of it. I may be back in a day, two days, a week, or I may be gone a month. Then the winter comes back, and I have again to answer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... also on the bank of a small stream. Shortly after our arrival on the ground, Thompson started out afoot, taking with him his gun. He had noticed a tract of marsh at no great distance off. He thought it promised well for snipe. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... in the form of a fillet, is never seen at a "sit-down" supper, and even a fillet is rather too heavy. Lobster in every form is a favorite supper delicacy, and the grouse; snipe, woodcock, teal; canvasback, and squab on toast, are always ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... shall be content," he replied, "if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's." ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... provision of nature. At the present moment he also is engaged in the operation of weeding. In his right hand is a small species of sickle called a koorpee, with which he investigates the root of each weed as a snipe feels in the mud for worms; then with his left hand he pulls it out, gently shakes the earth off it, and contributes it to a small heap beside him. When he has cleared a little space round him, he moves on like a toad, without lifting himself. He enlivens his toil by exchanging remarks ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... looks, Jude, an' ol' Lucy ain't a-goin' to take ye in. We gotta snipe somepin quick—or starve! Look, we'll go down to Mike's place, an' then come back here when it's out, and ye kin pinch a string, or somepin, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... twenty years ago there used to be geese here, and cranes and ducks and grouse—clouds and clouds of them! The gentry used to meet together for shooting, and one heard nothing but pouf-pouf-pouf! pouf-pouf-pouf! There was no end to the woodcocks, the snipe, and the little teals, and the water-snipe were as common as starlings, or let us say sparrows—lots and lots of them! And what has become of them all? We don't even see the birds of prey. The eagles, the hawks, and the owls have all gone.... There are fewer of every sort of wild beast, ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Berardii) which inhabits the inland sounds and resembles the auk in some particulars of habit and appearance. There are numerous species in these sheltered channels, inlets and sounds of geese, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibises, bitterns, red-beaks, curlew, snipe, plover and moorhens. Conspicuous among these are the great white swan (Cygnus anatoides), the black-necked swan (Anser nigricollis), the antarctic goose (Anas antarctica) and the "race-horse" or "steamer duck" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... handsome assortment of victuals on this occasion, chiefly venison and birds, and some of the latter were baked in bread, probably a sort of paste. The majority of the names on the list are familiar, but a few—the teal, the curlew, the crane, the stork, and the snipe—appear to be new. It is, in all these cases, almost impossible to be sure how much we owe to the poet's imagination and how much to his rhythmical poverty. From another passage it is to be inferred that baked venison was a favourite mode of ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... "I wish you would come and stay with me a week or so this Christmas at my father's place in Suffolk, Nugget Towers. The best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. But there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. Besides we will have a day's partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. And there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... wood or pasture to another; now in great companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of this mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his own course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the golden plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbers uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by human agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I can see the sea-beaches ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... place and took the man into the field hospital himself and operated inside an hour, saving the man's life. For his gallantry in going to treat wounded men at posts which were under fire, the French commander remembered him with a citation. He is the officer whom the Bolshevik artillery tried to snipe with three-inch shells, as he passed from post to post during a quiet ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... that'll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... good to me. Bunch," I agreed, and then we went out and ordered some more three-sheets and a flock of snipe. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... a hunter in wild countries, it is quite impossible to avoid the difficulty, as there is no rifle that will combine the requirements for a great variety of game. As the wild goose demands B B shot and the snipe No. 8, in like manner the elephant requires the heavy bullet, and the deer ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... and wild duck the other day, which Capt. D- brought home from a shooting party. I have got the moth-like wings of a golden snipe for R-'s hat, and those of a beautiful moor-hen. They got no 'boks', because of the violent south-easter which blew where they were. The game is fast decreasing, but still very abundant. I saw plenty of partridges on the road, but was not early enough to see boks, who ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... pools, blue-fringed in May with iris, and osier beds, and vast fields of reeds, and breadths of forest with dense thorny underwood, where all wild birds came in their season, and where all was quiet save for a bittern's cry, a boar's snort, a snipe's scream, on the lands once crowded with the multitudes that gave the eagle of Persia and the brazen trumpets of Lydia ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... work of the office could be done twice as effectually and half as expensively. He embodied these reforms in a memorandum and they were not long afterwards adopted. He became private secretary to Snipe, a rising politician and persuaded him to change his party and his politics. Snipe, owing to this advice, became a Cabinet Minister, and the man who gave good advice, having inherited some money, stood for Parliament himself. He stood as a Conservative at a General Election and spoke eloquently ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... of the hill, keeping our distance as well as we could on the steep slope, and occasionally putting up something to shoot at. My bag this time made no great demands on my powers of porterage, consisting as it did of a solitary snipe. However, when nearly an hour later we gathered at the foot of the next line of butts—the last before lunch—most of us were carrying something. Standish gleefully displayed two hares and ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... the birds of passage swept aloft, snipe and teal and barnacle geese, and the rains began; when the green lizard with its turquoise-blue throat vanished; when the Jersey crapaud was heard croaking no longer in the valleys and the ponds; and the cows were well blanketed—then ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cottage hinders his prospect: they are indeed his almshouses, though there be painted on them no such superscription. He never sits up late but when he hunts the badger, the vowed foe of his lambs; nor uses he any cruelty but when he hunts the hare; nor subtilty but when he setteth snares for the snipe or pitfalls for the blackbird; nor oppression but when, in the month of July, he goes to the next river and shears his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks not the bones of the dead anything bruised or the worse for it though the country lasses ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Robert, without leaving their companions, shot some snipe and partridge under the low shrubs of the plain. Olbinett, to save time, plucked the birds as ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Chertsey. The stile stands across an ancient right of way, which crosses the fields; a straight line from the churchyard to Chertsey. John de Rutherwyk, doubtless, often walked or rode that lonely byway; perhaps it was he who raised the level path dry and well-drained out of the swampy, snipe-haunted meadows that lay between the little church and the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... know. He preferred to take the journey on foot, and he may be here at almost any time. But, as I have told you, he is very uncertain. If he should happen to make the acquaintance of some interesting snipe, or crane, or plover, he may prefer its company to ours, and then there is no counting on him any longer. He may be as likely to turn up at the North Pole as at ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Borneo, but wild cattle and a small species of elephant are said to exist on the large grass plains around Brunei in North Borneo, the only part of the island entirely free from jungle. The animal tribe, then, is reduced to the following:—Orang-utan, tiger cat, wild pig, deer, and snipe; the pretty "plandok" or mouse-deer, and honey-bears, ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... preferred to him; he suspects him too of an intrigue with Emilia; and, lastly, Cassio has a daily beauty in his life which makes Iago ugly. In addition to these annoyances he wants Cassio's place. As for Roderigo, he calls him a snipe, and who can hate a snipe? But Roderigo knows too much; and he is becoming a nuisance, getting angry, and asking for the gold and jewels he handed to Iago to give to Desdemona. So Iago kills Roderigo. Then for Desdemona: a fig's-end for her virtue! but he has no ill-will to her. In fact he 'loves' ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... would be compelled to rise from time to time and tighten up my belt, until I must have resembled one of the ladies of fashion, so far as the waist was concerned. Again we came to marshy ground, filled with royal duck, teal, water-hens, snipe, etc, and forgot the pangs of past hunger. At such places we would fill our horns and drink the putrid water, or take off our shirts and wash them and our bodies. Mud had to serve for soap. Our washing, spread out ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... We are such near neighbours." She was ready to say anything that would make him feel he was not being treated as a shopman. "And did you have your day's shooting? Were you successful?" "Well," with modest pride, "I came upon snipe unexpectedly, and brought home a couple of brace. If I had thought you would condescend to accept them, Miss ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... never fear! You can not be always reading, and when the fine weather comes you will yield to the temptation; all the more likely because you have Claudet Sejournant with you. A jolly fellow he is; there is not one like him for killing a snipe or sticking a trout! Our trout here on the Aubette, Monsieur de Buxieres, are excellent—of the salmon kind, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... I was utterly incapable of any such thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my lord's, lent him by the valet-de-chamer; the one ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... growth of rushes intimates that water is near, and upon parting the bushes a little may be seen, all that has escaped evaporation in the shade. From one of these marshy spots I once—and once only—observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling round return and settle by another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with the fall of the year, the rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly yellow, and presently brownish. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Lesser Tell tale sometimes called Yellow-leg Snipe, and Little Cucu, inhabits the whole of North America, nesting in the cold temperate and subarctic districts of the northern continent, migrating south in winter to Argentine and Chili. It is much rarer in the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... treasures on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without work, providing he did not leave ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... window upon a balcony now, he looked down the street. The newsboy was almost below. He whistled, and the lad looked up. In response to a beckoning finger the gutter-snipe took the doorway and the staircase at a bound. Like all his kind, he was a good judge of character, and one glance had assured him that he was speeding upon a visit of profit. Half a postman's knock—a sharp, insistent stroke—and he entered, his thin weasel-like face thrust forward, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tete-a-tete with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very big drink," he said, confidentially, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Foreign Office in London and saw the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Hammond, who gave him some parting advice. "When you reach Hongkong," said he, "never venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as absurd as ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... alighting place for birds. Moorhens evidently migrate up or down the river in spring and autumn, and occasionally dabchicks; otherwise their sudden appearance and disappearance on the eyot could not be accounted for. Snipe follow the Thames up the valley. Formerly Chiswick Eyot was their first alighting place when east winds were blowing, after the fatigue of crossing London; and persons still living used to go out and shoot them. A friend of mine, whose family has resided in Chiswick for several generations, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... the moorland proper. There were boulders of rock of unknown age, dark patches of peat land, where even in midsummer the mud oozed up at the lightest footfall, pools and sedgy places, the home and sometimes the breeding place of the melancholy snipe. Of colour there was singularly little. The heather bushes were stunted, their roots blackened as though with fire, and even the yellow of the gorse shone with a dimmer lustre. But in the distance, a flaming carpet of orange and purple stretched almost to the summit of the brown ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "It's just what I wanted, Viola. Now you are being a real sister to me. We will start early in the morning and—and buy out the town. Bless your heart, you've taken a great load off my mind. I haven't the intelligence of a snipe when it comes to fitting up a—why, say, I tell you what I'll do. I will let you choose everything I need, just as if you were setting up housekeeping for yourself. Curtains, table cloths, carpets, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... animal, inhabiting small rivers and streams, and living somewhat after the manner of the otter. It has a most wide range of diet, and will eat almost anything which is at all eatable. Fishes, frogs, and muskrats are his especial delight, and he will occasionally succeed in pouncing upon a snipe or wild duck, which he will greedily devour. Crawfish, [Page 190] snails, and water insects of all kinds also come within the range of his diet, and he sometimes makes a stray visit to some neighboring poultry yard to satisfy ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... game in abundance generally lies within reach, and nothing of its kind is more delightful than an afternoon with the spring snipe, or a shooting trip of a few days in company with a ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... night, and all night long, Over those plains still roams the Dong; And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe, While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain, To meet with his Jumbly Girl again; Lonely and wild, all night he goes,— The Dong with a luminous Nose! And all who watch ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... out of Behring Sea, they marched back towards the hills, their feet ankle-deep in the soft fresh moss, while the air tasted like a cool draught and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and encircled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary weeks on shipboard, the dewy freshness livened them magically, cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... highest point of his spring I fired. I did not dare to wait, for I saw that he would clear the whole space and land right upon me. Without a sight, almost without aim, I fired, as one would fire a snap-shot at a snipe. The bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, which broke the shock), ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... honour!" replied the domestic, with perfect gravity, "but there ought to be capital snipe ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... know all ther joys o' life. I've had one ounce shot inter my leg, an' if ther contents o' two shells gives double ther pain one does, then excuse me. An' mine wuz only snipe shot, ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... outside the town, and you meet the heroes returning. "Well, what sport?" "Pas mal, mon cher. Not so bad," is the reply, in a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... gone by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honey-suckle's tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in the ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... lines of houses have sprung up, concealing beneath unpromising exteriors, such as only London houses can show, comfort enough and to spare. This is a favourite residential quarter, though we now consider it in, not "conveniently near," town. Snipe were shot in the marshes of Brompton, and nursery gardens spread themselves over the area now devoted to the museums and institute. It is rather interesting to read the summary of John Timbs, F.S.A., writing so late as 1867: "Kensington, a mile and a half west of Hyde Park Corner, contains ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... on the ban," she exclaimed. "Look at the Marsh of the Discontented Soul. It fairly swarms with teal and coot, and see the snipe on the sand." She stood up and watched the sandy strip they were nearing. They were a goodly distance out from the shore, but Pepi poled nearer midstream. "The pity of it," she sighed; "but I doubt not the place ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... that gush from the mountain heights, and roll in a meandering course to join the waters of the lake. These pasture grounds constitute Jala-Jala the greatest game preserve in the island: wild boars, deer, buffaloes, fowls, quail, snipe, pigeons of fifteen or twenty different varieties, parrots—in short all sorts of birds abound in them. The lake is equally well supplied with aquatic birds, and particularly wild ducks. Notwithstanding its extent, the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the ash out of his pipe with his finger, "it is early yet of course, but you never can tell with the snipe. The snipe's a bird that wants watching. If you are unlucky, you may sit waiting at home, and miss his flying over, and then you must wait till autumn. . . . It is a business! The snipe is not a rook. . . . Last year he was flying the week before Easter, while the year before we had ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... there were nests there were eggs. The birds congregated here in such numbers, because rocks provided them with thousands of cavities for their dwelling-places. In the distance a few herons and some flocks of snipe indicated ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... a vile man." Again he forgot her, and again she laid her hand on his lips. When his thoughts came back to her he looked happier, though he had to think of her penitently. "I was a beast," he went on, "the coldest, cruellest beast. Do you know why I raged at you when you mentioned that little snipe you call Mr. Philip? I knew it was the roughest luck on you to have gone through that time with him. But I wasn't sorry for you. I was jealous. I felt you might have protected yourself from being looked at by any other man in ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... friends drinking out of it should lift up their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... they form such a barrier as to make landing well nigh impossible. These small lakes, subject to the ebb and flow of the tides, are the resort of innumerable sea birds and water fowls of all sizes and descriptions; from the snipe to the crane, and brightly colored flamingos, from the screeching sea gulls to the serious looking pelican. They are attracted to these lakes by the solitude of the forests of mangroves that afford them excellent shelter, ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. By dividing the glass unequally, by the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... requires one half of the traveler's attention to avoid them In these plains I observed great numbers of the brown Curloos, a small species of curloo or plover of a brown colour about the size of the common snipe and not unlike it in form with a long celindric curved and pointed beak; it's wings are proportionately long and the tail short; in the act of liteing this bird lets itself down by an extention of it's wings without motion holding their points very much together above it's back, in this rispect differing ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... them. Pelicans were also there in great numbers, and the boys were intensely interested in their awkward, and at times comical, movements. As they are not good for food, only one or two were shot, as curiosities. Cranes stalked along on their long, slender legs in the marshy places, while snipe and many similar birds ran rapidly along the sandy shores. The ducks were everywhere, and so the shooting was everything that ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... command the counsellor sent the Snipe and the Turnstone, Aiwohikupua's swiftest messengers, to go up and find out the truth ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... Iroquois were as follows: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. (Morgan, 79.) The clans of the Snipe and the Heron are the same designated in an early French document as La famille du Petit Pluvier and La famille du Grand Pluvier. (New York Colonial Documents, IX. 47.) The anonymous author of this document ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... out of personal regard for the noble fellow, but, as he was our sole dependence, losing his services would have been a sad if not a fatal disaster to the entire party. During the day I shot two of an apparently distinct species of snipe, to preserve their skins for the Smithsonian Institute collection. One of them was distinguished by a sweet, simple song, somewhat similar to the lark's, its silvery tones gushing forth as if in perfect ecstasy of enjoyment of sunshine and air; at the same time rising and poising itself upon its ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Afric hen or the Ionic snipe, Than olives newly gathered from the tree, That hangs abroad its clusters rich and ripe, Or sorrel, that doth ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... I suppose you do not have the snipe in the Nawth. It is the aristocratic fowl of the Old Dominion. Its bill is only shorter than its legs, and it will not brown at the fire, to perfection, unless upon a silver spit. Ah! when the Jedge and myself were ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... scrub the enemy began to snipe. We had there, tucked into folds of the hills, a couple of tubby old black-powdered howitzers, and they let fly three rounds which should have been very effective. But the black powder gave away their ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... and weaver birds hang from the canes. Jungle-fowl and pheasant, snipe and partridge, are there to provide the traveller with food, and often, flying heavily from tree to tree, a peacock offers a welcome addition to ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... ecstasy of all the dogs, and, indeed he was surprised to find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some of his game ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smoothbore. How can he possibly get a correct aim with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle is placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not accustomed to recognize any ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... footpath on the bank and walks on through the rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and my ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... Snipe known in Australia are—Scolopax australis, Lath.; Painted S., Rhynchaea australis, Gould. This bird breeds in Japan and winters in Australia. The name is also used as ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... eerie morasses, The haunts of the snipe and the hern - (I shall question the two upper classes On aquatiles, when we return) - Why, I see on them absolute ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... warriors. The fever for volunteering, which laid hold on the middle classes after the series of regrettable incidents of the winter, raged violently among the Irish Loyalists. Nowhere were the recruiting officers more fervently besieged than in Dublin. Youthful squireens who boasted of being admirable snipe shots, and possessed a knowledge of all that pertained to horses, struggled with prim youths out of banks for the privilege of serving as troopers. The sons of plump graziers in the West made up parties with footmen out of their landlords' mansions, and arrived in Dublin hopeful of enlistment. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Well—I followed this little brook till it entered the river, and then took the path that runs along the bank. On the opposite side I observed several little birds running along the shore, and making a piping noise. They were brown and white, and about as big as a snipe. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... fowling-piece cracked sharply, close at hand; something splashed, and the ruffled body of a snipe bobbed in the bronze ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the rifle flashes there were not more than twenty men in that flanking party. We still have to hear from another body, and I believe they are hiding in the mill, ready to snipe us from there. Besides, probably a smaller party has been sent from the flankers to lie in wait and get us as we go through the lagoon. It's a bad trap, Mr. Carmody, and we must move slowly, if we wish to get away with ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... clergy of old times the choice between being grilled erect behind a chimney, or of lying flat in a chamber about the size of a coffin near the roof, where the martyr Jesuits lived on suction, like the snipe, absorbing soup from a long straw passed through a wall into a ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... forget running across him in the woods one afternoon when I had gone out snipe shooting alone. Whether he had followed me or whether we had chosen the same vicinity by chance, I do not know; but at any rate as I came out from the underbrush on the edge of a low, swampy place, I almost stepped on ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... plentifully in Belgium. A traveller through Belgium in the summer or early autumn should always make a point of ordering grives at a good restaurant. When grives go out of season, we have woodcock and snipe; and there are several houses which make a speciality of Becasses a la fine Champagne. At Mons and at Liege, and I think at Charleroi also, there is every year a woodcock feast, just as there is an oyster feast at Colchester. At these festivities a little wax candle is placed on the table ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... proceeded towards Lake Winnipeg, and soon were moving slowly down its low-lying eastern shore. Here they had their first glimpse of the prairie country, with its green carpet of grass. Out from the water's edge grew tall, lank reeds, the lurking place of snipe and sand-piper. Doubtless, in the brief night-watches, they listened to the shrill cry of the restless lynx, or heard the yapping howl of the timber wolf as he slunk {53} away among the copses. But presently ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... his uniform, with medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words with ...
— Options • O. Henry
... commingle, o'er them rose the call Of Eagle shrill: "Yon crowned couple, who supposed the world too small, Now one grave fill! Chiefs blinded by your rage! each bleached sapless bone Becomes a pipe Through which siroccos whistle, trodden 'mong the stone By quail and snipe. Folly's liege-men, what boots such murd'rous raid, And mortal feud? I, Eagle, dwell as friend with Leo—none afraid— In solitude: At the same pool we bathe and quaff in placid mood. Kings, he and I; For I to him leave prairie, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... you could not tell them from turtle-doves except by their size and the sound they made with their wings. But there were not many pigeons in the woods around the Boy's Town, and they were very shy. There were snipe along the river, and flocks of kildees on the Commons, but the bird that was mostly killed by these boys was the yellowhammer. They distinguished, again, in its case; and decided that it was not ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... interesting about my younger brothers, who delighted in horses and dogs, hunted, shot, and fished, and played cricket; one of them bowled for Gloucestershire and Oxford. But about me the inquiring literary snipe only heard that "Andra was aye the stupid ane o' the fam'ly." Yet, I, too, had bowled for the local club, non sine ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Friday, and Saturday was devoted to 'clean ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic of the week. Then a free afternoon for all hands ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... and so is my bully little Nieuport. Say, old man, we've got to go out and see what's gone wrong with that little snipe Orry, eh?" ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... I won't give you any trouble, either.... I reckon," mused the adventurer, jingling his manacles thoughtfully, "I'm a back-number, anyway. When a half-grown girl, a half-baked boy, a flub like Mulready—damn his eyes!—and a club-footed snipe from Scotland Yard can put it all over me this way,... why, I guess it's up to me to go home and retire to my country-place up the Hudson." He ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... both hands pressed to his breast as if he had a faithful heart on the right side as well as the one on the left. This young man—it was our kind friend Marcus, of course—crossed the court, taking a zigzag at first, as a snipe flies, and then came towards our door. The steward and the gate-keeper had both vanished.—Do you remember the young Goths whom their father took to bathe in the Tiber last winter, when it was so cold? And how they first stood on the brink and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a little. Flat, bare country on every hand. Any driftwood we saw was buried in the sand and soaking wet. Not a bird to be seen except one or two snipe. We came to a lake, and out of the fog in front of me I heard the cry of a loon, but saw no living creature. Our view was blocked by a wall of fog whichever way we turned. There were plenty of reindeer tracks, but of course they were only those of the Samoyedes' ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... to pass the winter of 1615-6 in the Huron country. At that time it swarmed with game. Amongst birds, there were swans, white cranes, brent-geese, ducks, teal, the redbreasted thrush (which the Americans call "robin"), brown larks (Anthus), snipe, and other birds too numerous to mention, which Champlain seems to have brought down with his fowling-piece in sufficient quantities to feed the whole party whilst waiting for the capture of deer on ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... sluice at the outflow, and, for some reason, the farmer used to let most of the water out, in the summer of every year. In winter the tarn is used by the curling club. It is not deep, has rather a marshy bottom, and many ducks, snipe, and wild-fowl generally dwell among the reeds and marish plants of its sides. Nobody ever dreamed of fishing here, but one day a rustic, "glowering" idly over the wall of the adjacent road, saw fish rising. He mentioned ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... in praise of sport and physical exercise, touched with a sentiment not far removed from poetry—the only poetry of which they are not half-ashamed. Audubon even joined in, forgetting for the moment his customary pose, and rhapsodizing with the rest over his favourite pursuits of snipe-shooting and cricket. Much of this talk was lost upon me, for I am nothing of a sportsman; but some touches there were that recalled experiences of my own, and for that reason, I suppose, have lingered in my memory. Thus, I recollect, some one ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... that shot all this lot used to go about saying he'd shoot me at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He didn't get much show 'ere, I can tell you; that little foreign snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to your profession, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... water seemed to be not enough, nor the first arrival from northwards of the tumultuous geese, nor the wild rejoicing of the wings of the wildfowl when every feather sings, nor the wonder of the calm ice that comes when the snipe depart and beards the rushes with frost and clothes the hushed waste with a mysterious haze where the sun goes red and low, nor even the dance of the Wild Things in the marvellous night; and the little Wild Thing longed to have a soul, and to go and ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... them with ample means of gratifying their inclination. Besides bears, wolves, boars, foxes, roebucks, chamois, hares, and ermines, all of which are plentiful in parts of the country, birds of all kinds abound; grey and red-legged partridges, blackcock, ducks of various kinds, quail, and snipe, are the most common; while flights of geese and cranes pass in the spring and autumn, but only descend in spring. Swans and pelicans are also birds of passage, and occasionally visit these unknown lands. The natives are clever in trapping these animals. This they do either by means ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... in invective softly, 'if you'll go down the trench a bit or up top o' that old barn behind I'll get this bloomin' Soho waiter mad enough to keep on shootin' at me, an' you'll p'raps get a chance to snipe 'im.' ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... lately that an American vessel brought them. There is a rabbit-warren on the north-east of the island, belonging to the Duke of Argyle. Young Col intends to get some hares, of which there are none at present. There are no black-cock, muir-fowl, nor partridges; but there are snipe, wild-duck, wild-geese, and swans, in winter; wild-pidgeons, plover, and great number of starlings; of which I shot some, and found them pretty good eating. Woodcocks come hither, though there is not a tree upon the island. There are no rivers in Col; but only some brooks, in which there ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... frogs leapt into the pools and runnels, burying themselves in the mud at the shock of a footstep; but the tadpoles sported recklessly in the sunny water, for as yet their legs as well as their troubles were to come. I confess that this long morass by the sparkling Beuene, frequented by the heron, the snipe, the water-hen, and other creatures that seek the solitude, interested me more than the caverns which I had set out to see. I nevertheless followed the old man into them, and tried to admire all that he showed me; but there was not a stalactite ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... reluctantly yielded a little in his intention; "and Winchester would fancy a bird exceedingly in a day or two. I never was hit in my life that I did not feel a desire for game after the fever was gone. Snipe, too, must live on the banks of that stream. Snipe are coming ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wilsonii) needs no protection.... The snipe, too, like the pigeon, will take care of itself, and its yearly numbers can not be materially lessened ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a Delivering Angel, in the shape of a very ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... MUTTON. To make mutton taste like venison, provide for it the following gravy. Pick a very stale woodcock or snipe, and cut it to pieces, after having removed the bag from the entrails. Simmer it in some meat gravy, without seasoning; then strain it, and serve ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... intoxication, the landlord was tearing madly about, his hat gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and were no more. Nor did there seem to be any reason for this extraordinary conduct except—except—— Well, it is true that a willow-grouse, white as the snowy branch he sat upon, did start clucking somewhere in the dim tree regiments, a snipe did come whistling sadly over the tree-tops, and a raven, jet against the white, did flap up, barking sharply, above the pointed pine-tops; but that was nothing—to us. To the wolverines it was everything, a whole wireless message in the universal ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... dandy-looking in his uniform, with medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words ...
— Options • O. Henry
... that where it had been dry in spring one might now sink to his knees in the bog; also that the snipe which had vanished for a season were back at the old spot where they used to breed. It was a bitter day near the end of an unpleasant summer, with the wind back in the old hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, the sky was blue, and the flying clouds were of a dazzling whiteness. Shivering, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... or so this Christmas at my father's place in Suffolk, Nugget Towers. The best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. But there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. Besides we will have a day's partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. And there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a week at least, and some ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron, standing midleg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher—an ornithological Marius —reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't make up his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... up to the period of birth in man, as well as in other animals, as anatomists in general have described them, but for several months subsequently, in some indeed for several years, not to say for the whole course of life; as, for example, in the goose, snipe, and various birds and many of the smaller animals. And this circumstance it was, perhaps, that imposed upon Botallus, who thought he had discovered a new passage for the blood from the vena cava into the left ventricle of the heart; and I own that when I met with the same arrangement ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... clans of the Iroquois were as follows: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Tortoise, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. (Morgan, 79.) The clans of the Snipe and the Heron are the same designated in an early French document as La famille du Petit Pluvier and La famille du Grand Pluvier. (New York Colonial Documents, IX. 47.) The anonymous author of this document adds a ninth clan, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... will be quite enough of a treat, without the vague horrors that may be comprised in the additional 'all kinds.' Jack's account of the game on St. Simon's is really quite tantalising to me, who cannot carry a gun any more than if I were a slave. He says that partridges, woodcocks, snipe, and wild duck abound, so that, at any rate, our table ought to be well supplied. His account of the bears that are still to be found in the woods of the mainland, is not so pleasant, though he says they do no harm to the people, if they are not meddled with, but that they steal the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... numerous and varied tits; wagtails; five species of parrots; eight or nine species of wren; thrushes of a dozen species; ten species of robin; and, lastly, many species of waders such as florekin, cranes, plovers, snipe, sandpipers, coots, water-hen, storks, heron, cormorants, terns, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... case," said Rose-Pompon, laughing, "your father was not a gutter-snipe by trade, but only for the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... tasks. The week's work ended on Friday, and Saturday was devoted to 'clean ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic of the week. Then a free afternoon for ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... where there were nests there were eggs. The birds congregated here in such numbers, because rocks provided them with thousands of cavities for their dwelling-places. In the distance a few herons and some flocks of snipe indicated ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... shot several snipe and a fat turkey, when, as we were clambering up a bank, being somewhat before my companions, I was not a little surprised to see, within four paces of me, the huge head of a black bear, peering over the tops of the palmetto to ascertain what was approaching. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the pools—in short, with the poorest sort of gun I could have shot a thousand in one day. One can hear the wild geese calling.... There are lots of them here too. One often comes upon a string of cranes or swans.... Snipe and woodcock flutter about in the birch copses. The hares which are not eaten or shot here, stand on their hindlegs, and, pricking up their ears, watch the passer-by with an inquisitive stare without the slightest misgiving. They are so often running across the road that to see them doing ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... His cross, how comes it that this snipe of a stripling may speak from his mouth of what lieth beyond the grave? For this is death, and death is a matter concerning Holy Church alone. By what right doth he tell us of what she says no mortal ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... a snipe were the size of a threepenny bit It would be a great deal harder to hit. But if it grew to the size of an emu It wouldn't be better ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... of grouse. I see no amusement in dawdling over a lowland moor where the packs are as thick as chickens in a poultry-yard. I like better than most things a day with my own dogs in scattered covers, when I know not what may rise—a woodcock, an odd pheasant, a snipe in the out-lying willow-bed, and perhaps a mallard or a teal. A hare or two falls in agreeably when the mistress of the house takes an interest in the bag. I detest battues and hot corners, and slaughter for slaughter's sake. I wish every tenant in England had his share in amusements which ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it wasn't for these ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... crooked; I don't care how straight you put it in the ground, it's goin' to grow crooked. So I climb up in the mosely tree and begin to yell. My brother heard me and come 'cause he knowed what was up. He used to say, 'Now, Snipe, when you come 'cross that mosely field, don't you wear that old red dress 'cause they'll get you down and tear that dress off you.' I liked the dress 'cause he had give it to me. I had set the milk down at the foot of the tree and it's a wonder they didn't knock it over, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... from a musical point of view, have their wing feathers or tails peculiarly developed and stiffened, and are able to produce with them a strange snapping or cracking sound. Thus several species of snipe make drumming or "bleating" noises—something like the bleat of a goat—with their narrowed tails as they descend in flight.[74] Magpies have a still more curious method of call, by rapping on dry and sonorous branches, which they use not only to attract the female, but ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... too, into deep dark water-holes, only connected by gravelly fords, with a slender stream of clear water running across the yellow pebbles. These water-holes were the haunts of the platypus and the tortoise. Here, too, were flocks of black duck and teal, and as you rode past, the merry little snipe would rise from the water's edge, and whisk away like lightning through the trees. Altogether a pleasant woodland creek, alongside of which, under the mighty box-trees, ran a sandy road, bordered with deep beds of bracken ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... unconvinced, so we went on. The rushes were shining in the moonlight, and one flake of mist was lying on the river. We looked into one bog-hole, and then into another, where a snipe rose and terrified us. We listened: a cow was chewing heavily in the shadow of a bush, two dogs were barking on the side of a hill, and there was a cart far away upon the road. Our teeth began to chatter with the cold of the bog air and the loneliness of ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... and I sez, "Well, you good-for-nothin' snipe you, instead of traipsin' all over the neighborhood tellin' of your wife's state, why hain't you to home buildin' a fire and heatin' soap stuns and ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... in wild countries, it is quite impossible to avoid the difficulty, as there is no rifle that will combine the requirements for a great variety of game. As the wild goose demands B B shot and the snipe No. 8, in like manner the elephant requires the heavy bullet, and the deer ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... them in a mirepoix made with plenty of ham, fat bacon, herbs, and a wine glass of Marsala. When they are cooked pour off the sauce, skim off the grease and reduce it. Take the two smallest snipe and make a forcemeat of them by pounding them in a mortar with the livers of all the snipe, then dilute this with reduced Espagnole sauce (No. 1) and add it to the first sauce. Cut twelve croutons of bread just large enough to hold a snipe ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... deep, and the current is swift in some places, sluggish in others. The channel winds through heavy timber lands and between high, rocky cliffs. The mountains are not far away. The fishing is splendid, and woodcock and snipe are plentiful." ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... we will hunt the loamy swale And trail The snipe, their cunning wiles o'ercoming; And oft will flush the bevied quail, And hear the partridge slowly drumming Dull echoes in the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... easily procured. The woods and waters furnished all that they required. A hare and some snipe and plover, with a few trout and a salmon, were the result of a short excursion, that did not extend much farther than a stone's throw from ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... heath-cock was as jaunty, and the willow grouse and partridge were wise in covert to avoid the hungry snowy owl. Upon the river and lagoons and creeks the swan and wild goose and countless duck made constant clamor, and there were water-rail and snipe along the shallows. There were eggs to be found, and an egg baked in the ashes was a thing most excellent. It was with the waterfowl that the boys were most successful. The ducks would in their feeding approach close to the shores of the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... of patridges, A nide of pheasants, A wisp of snipe, A flight of doves or swallows, A muster of peacocks, A siege of herons, A building of rooks, A brood of grouse, A plump of wild fowl, A stand of plovers, A watch of nightingales, A clattering of choughs, A flock of geese, A herd or bunch of cattle, A bevy of quails, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my lord's, lent him by the valet-de-chamer; ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... others. We see a handsome assortment of victuals on this occasion, chiefly venison and birds, and some of the latter were baked in bread, probably a sort of paste. The majority of the names on the list are familiar, but a few—the teal, the curlew, the crane, the stork, and the snipe—appear to be new. It is, in all these cases, almost impossible to be sure how much we owe to the poet's imagination and how much to his rhythmical poverty. From another passage it is to be inferred that baked venison was a favourite ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... continent. In addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions of the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... correct aim with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle is placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not accustomed ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... miles across the country join the boat again, the bend rendering it necessary for her to go around some thirty or forty miles. This we gladly assented to, and taking my gun, in hopes of meeting with some snipe in the paddy-fields, and with Aling and a ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... do that is little enough to crawl through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt of the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the bog from early morning till dark without firing a shot. The snipe rose almost at his feet, and wheeling in circles through the air, dipped again into some dark crevice of the waste, unnoticed by him! One thought only possessed, and never left him, as he went. He had overheard Nina's words ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... chimney-corner. "But I hope it is not my wood that he's burning... Ah, it was this time last year that I met with that man Venn, bringing home Thomasin Yeobright—to be sure it was! Well, who would have thought that girl's troubles would have ended so well? What a snipe you were in that matter, Eustacia! Has your husband written to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... shooting to-day of partridge or snipe; It has steadily rained since morning broke, In dancing spirits I kindle his pipe (I am learning to like the smell ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... which is watered by pure and limpid springs that gush from the mountain heights, and roll in a meandering course to join the waters of the lake. These pasture grounds constitute Jala-Jala the greatest game preserve in the island: wild boars, deer, buffaloes, fowls, quail, snipe, pigeons of fifteen or twenty different varieties, parrots—in short all sorts of birds abound in them. The lake is equally well supplied with aquatic birds, and particularly wild ducks. Notwithstanding its extent, the island produces neither noxious nor carnivorous animals; the only ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... four pounds weight. While Archer, who had gone forth with Garry only in the canoe, had picked up half a dozen wood-duck, two or three of the large yellow-legs, a little bittern, known by a far less elegant appellative throughout the country, and thirteen English snipe. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... 5, we saw a seal asleep upon the water, and several bunches of sea-weed. The next day we saw more seaweed in bunches, and on the 29th, a bird, which we thought a land bird; it somewhat resembled a snipe, but had a short bill. On the 1st of October, we saw birds innumerable, and another seal asleep upon the water; it is a general opinion that seals never go out of soundings, or far from land, but those that we saw in these seas prove the contrary. Rock-weed is, however, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the gathering gloom of night could be seen a tall blue heron, standing midleg deep in water, obviously catching cold in his reckless disregard for wet feet and consequences. The mournful curlew, the dejected plover and the low-spirited snipe, who sought to join him in his suicidal contemplations, the raven, soaring through the air on restless wings, croaking his melancholy complaints were not calculated to add to the ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... be content," he replied, "if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's." ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... people they were who claimed last week that winter had come, because it was a little chilly, when he could have told them, by half a century's experience, that the most beautiful part of the year was to come, the Indian summer, the lazy days when you want to shoot snipe, and eat grapes, and have appendicitis. The red-headed boy came out yawning, half awake, and raised his arms and stretched until it seemed that he ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... presented himself at the Foreign Office in London and saw the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Hammond, who gave him some parting advice. "When you reach Hongkong," said he, "never venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as absurd as ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... here, and a day in November: the day after I finished husking. Huldah reckoned a wild turkey wouldn't go with a bad relish, and so I shouldered the old gun in the morning, and letting Bose follow slyly along behind, I put away out into the woods. I killed three or four pigeons, and a squirrel, and snipe; but on and on, and round, I ranged, afore I could get a single crack at a turkey. But a flock flew up at last, and one proud old Tom taking a tall maple in sight, and swinging his red gorget as if to dare a ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... simple, and meritorious that, to the beholders, should be a profound and an everlasting lesson. "Just look at 'im, 'ee knows what's what—never fear!" he exclaimed now and then, flourishing a hand hard and fleshless like the claw of a snipe. Jimmy, on his back, smiled with reserve and without moving a limb. He affected the languor of extreme weakness, so as to make it manifest to us that our delay in hauling him out from his horrible confinement, and then that night spent on the poop among our selfish neglect of his needs, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... last sixty years long lines of houses have sprung up, concealing beneath unpromising exteriors, such as only London houses can show, comfort enough and to spare. This is a favourite residential quarter, though we now consider it in, not "conveniently near," town. Snipe were shot in the marshes of Brompton, and nursery gardens spread themselves over the area now devoted to the museums and institute. It is rather interesting to read the summary of John Timbs, F.S.A., writing so late as 1867: "Kensington, a mile and a half west of Hyde Park Corner, ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... gravely. "Your reasoning seems clear as print to me, lad. You have just brooded over it so long that it's natural you should begin to have doubts and fears. To me it's as sound as when you first gave it. That being so, we can't run an' leave them poor ignorant savages to be shot down maybe like snipe. It wouldn't be Christian like to go when that ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... larks, The lapwing and the snipe, And tune their songs, like Nature's clerks, O'er meadow, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... care what they call me, so long as they don't call me too late for dinner. Father and mother, whoever they were, when they ran away from me, didn't run away with my appetite. I wonder how long master means to play with his knife and fork. As for Mr Brookes, what he eats wouldn't physic a snipe. What's your ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... plenty; wild ducks that swam across the lake at terrific speed as we approached; plover-snipe, tiny gray birds with long bills and white breasts, feeding along the edge of the lake peacefully at our very feet; an eagle carrying a trout to her nest. Brown squirrels came into the tents and ate our chocolate and ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... me, and then we began to converse about the game. Westchester was, and is still, famous for partridges, snipe, quails, ducks, and meadow-larks; and I understood expatiating on such a subject, as well as the best of them. All the Littlepages were shots; and I have known my father bag ten brace of woodcock, among the wet thickets of Satanstoe, of a morning; and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... gentlemanly ideas, so take another glass, and you'll fancy yourself an emperor.—Your good health again." "The same to you, sir. And now wot do you call this chap?" "That is a quail, the other a snipe—which will you take?" "Vy, a bit of both, I think; and do you eat these chaps with them?" "Yes, nothing nicer—artichokes a la sauce blanche; you get the real eating part, you see, by having them sent up this way, instead of ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... make off, is expression all over. Crege, who is one of the best amateur shots on Long Island, as a medal now in his possession will attest, had taken his number twelve, and walked the marshes for snipe. So far as the ducks were concerned, he had missed the sport, but he brought in a bunch of forty-five English snipe, which compared favorably with the success of the others. Crege is a superior marksman, but he shoots much better when the boys gather about the table at the ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... powder to little purpose, for Tom, the best shot among them, had only killed one snipe, a troop of horses, led by several black cavaliers, dressed in leathern caps and high hoots, with belts round their waists, and duck-guns slung over their shoulders, and followed by a pack of hounds, made their appearance. Their leader announced that they were the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Jack Snipe who provided winter shooting for the whole of Kerry, and not one of them ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... that on the Imperial preserves in the neighbourhood of Vienna the first snipe had been seen, the passionate huntsman said, 'I am exceedingly sorry, but I've no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... barren moors appeared in the dim and melancholy distance, the feelings they inspired were those of discomfort and depression. On each side of them were a variety of lonely lakes, abrupt precipices, and extensive marshes; and as our travellers went along, the hum of the snipe, the feeble but mournful cry of the plover, and the wilder and more piercing whistle of the curlew, still deepened the melancholy dreariness of their situation, and added to their anxiety to press on towards the place of ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "down to Essex to see if I can get a few duck or snipe on the fens. I wish you were coming ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... snapped viciously. "What's the matter with you! You'll be well paid for it—and have police protection. You ought to know what that'll mean to you—eh? You live like a gutter-snipe here—half starved most of the time, for all you can get out ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... here in the trenches Me heart's a-splittin' with spleen, For a parcel o' lead comes missing me head, But it smashes me old dudeen. God blast that red-headed sniper! I'll give him somethin' to snipe; Before the war's through Just see how I do That ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... killed, and found the venison to be fat and of high flavour. They saw a light grey fox; and a spotted white and black animal, somewhat larger than the weasel, with short ears, and a long tail. The island abounds with small snipes, similar to the English jack-snipe. The ducks were hatching their eggs, and many wild geese ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter. ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... furniture, so identical are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. By dividing the glass unequally, by the introduction into ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... almost with commiseration, for she was evidently inclined this morning to a fresh and kindly view of things. Nick could share her feeling but so far as was permitted by a recognition merely general of what his brother must have looked for. It might have been snipe and it might have been bristling boars. Biddy was indeed brief at first about everything, in spite of all the weeks that had gone since their last meeting; for he quickly enough saw she had something behind—something that made ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Tired of listless dreaming, Through the lazy day: Jovial wind of winter Turns us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir-forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! The brave North-easter! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... just a rotten little snipe, but he does mischief as Harietta's tool—and through his ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae[Lat]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock[obs3], duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c. (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine[obs3], ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin[obs3]; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot[obs3]; tag, teg[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... extraordinary blue—the blue of the wild chicory. When the boy glanced up or down, there was great play of dark lashes, long, and amazingly thick. This would have been charming on a girl, but seemed somehow affected in a boy, though one could hardly have accused the little snipe of making his own eyelashes. He wore a very loose-trousered knickerbocker suit of navy-blue; a white silk shirt or blouse, loose also, with a turned-down Byronic collar and a careless black bow underneath. He had extremely small hands, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... though he did manage to pay his bills annually, spent every shilling of it. He preserved his foxes loyally, and was quite as keen about the fishing of a little river that he owned, and which ran down from his demesne into Lough Corrib. He was particular also about his snipe, and would boast that in a little spinney at Ballytowngal were to be met the earliest woodcock found in the West of Ireland. He was a thorough sportsman;—but a Roman Catholic—and as a Roman Catholic he was ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... helping Alice to a snipe, answered carelessly, "Young lady? O, Miss Winnie Morris, sister of Wayland Morris, editor ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... us plenty of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ahead ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... around an' acts real entertainin', evenin's. I shouldn't wonder, with such a smart ma, if she caught a beau. I do wish, Janet, since you ain't got no one but Billy,—an' every one knows he's got 'bout as much gumption as a snipe,—I do wish you could land one of these boarders. They must be real easy ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... was his abstract of title. There was nothing said about records and patentees as long as you worked your ground; but, likewise, when you didn't work it, somebody else usually did. We had a thousand feet of as good dirt as ever laid out in the rain; but there was men around drulin' to snipe it, and I knowed it was risky to leave. However, I saw what was gnawin' at the boy, and if ever a man needed a friend and criminal lawyer, that was the time. According to the zodiac, certain persons, to the complainant unknown, had a mess ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... sharp slap at his hat. Instinct works on all brave men very much alike. McCloud dropped forward in his saddle, and, seeking no explanation, laid his head low and spurred Bill Dancing's horse for life or death. The horse, quite amazed, bolted and swerved down the grade like a snipe, with his rider crouching close for a second shot. But no second shot came, and after another mile McCloud ventured to take off his hat and put his finger through the holes in it, though he did not stop his ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... left-hand creek that comes in here, and had a hard pull over a little cataract. This should be called Summit Creek. It doesn't seem to have any name. It runs narrow, and fringed with alders. Very crooked. Saw some jack-snipe and a robin to-day, up here on the summit of the Rockies, almost at the Arctic Sea and ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... your friend obstinately pinned to No. 5, when you have declared a preference for No. 6, meet him half-way, or even profess to be converted by his arguments. Or tell him the anecdote about the Irishman, who always shot snipe with No. 4, because, "being such a little bird, bedad, you want a bigger shot to get at the beggar." You can then inform him how you yourself once did dreadful execution among driven grouse in a gale of wind with No. 8 shot, which you had brought out by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... with the waiter by inquiring. When that functionary recommended a bite of broiled tenderloin, prepared with Madeira sauce, and the addition of fresh mushrooms and a small sweetbread, he allowed himself to be persuaded. An English snipe, with chicory salad and some cheese, with coffee, completed his order. Oh, and a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... stroll through the streets of Arras, after the Ridge was in our possession, had to be seen to be appreciated. Heretofore such a thing as a pleasure walk or shopping tour was out of the question, as the sniping was continuous, and the only way now for Fritz to snipe the town was with his heavy naval pieces, six or seven miles off, and as these visitors are a hundred times scarcer than the callers from the short range boys, the peace and quiet of our fellows were ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... good. As it was, he attended to his duties in the most perfunctory and superficial manner. He showed not the slightest interest in the business. In fact, his position could have been ably filled by the veriest gutter-snipe. And he is the man who one day, in all probability, would have come into control of the Carmody millions! And he would have scattered them in a riot of dissipation the length and ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... to see if there were any sharks in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant—officers mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well—behaved weeks only once, began to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... can spend the day with much comfort, which is a wonderful provision of nature. At the present moment he also is engaged in the operation of weeding. In his right hand is a small species of sickle called a koorpee, with which he investigates the root of each weed as a snipe feels in the mud for worms; then with his left hand he pulls it out, gently shakes the earth off it, and contributes it to a small heap beside him. When he has cleared a little space round him, he moves on like a toad, without ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... on Friday week, and is as happy as can be, he says he never felt so well and never had such good snipe shooting. Little Darfour's amusement at Maurice is boundless; he grins at him all the time he waits at table, he marvels at his dirty boots, at his bathing, at his much walking out shooting, at his knowing no Arabic. The dyke burst the other day ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... kind. I had come from above and was going down. She had come from the dregs; she was going up. We met on the way. I married her, not because I loved her, but because she loved me and I could not understand it. She was a lonely, tired little gutter-snipe, who had gone on the stage, had had no success whatever, and whose pale red hair was always stringing down around her neck and eyes; but even then I could not see why she picked me out for her devotion. She was like a dog ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... and pudgy as a snipe— Well worth her weight in gold, Of honest, clean, conspicuous type, And just the size ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... his advantage, and raises his gun, quick as for the shooting of a snipe. The crack comes; and, simultaneous with it, Richard Darke is seen to drop out of his saddle, and fall face foremost on the plain— his horse, with a wild neigh, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... which grows very plentifully in Belgium. A traveller through Belgium in the summer or early autumn should always make a point of ordering grives at a good restaurant. When grives go out of season, we have woodcock and snipe; and there are several houses which make a speciality of Becasses a la fine Champagne. At Mons and at Liege, and I think at Charleroi also, there is every year a woodcock feast, just as there is an oyster feast at Colchester. At these festivities a little wax candle is placed on the table beside ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... to show where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of the coyote and ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... keeping watch, when Harpstenah was called by her mother to assist her. The father's morning meal was prepared early, for he was going out to hunt. Wild duck, pigeons, and snipe, could be had in abundance; the timid grouse, too, could be roused up on the prairies. Larger game was there, too, for the deer flew swiftly past, and had even stopped to drink on the opposite shore ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... to convey any idea of the pleasant family life in that isolated spot tucked away amongst the Tyrone mountains; of the long tramps over the bogs after duck and snipe; of the struggles with big salmon; of the sailing-matches on the lakes; of the grouse and the woodcocks; of the theatrical performances, the fun and jollity, and all the varied incidents which make country life so fascinating to ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... crossed by many streams, holding many pools, blue-fringed in May with iris, and osier beds, and vast fields of reeds, and breadths of forest with dense thorny underwood, where all wild birds came in their season, and where all was quiet save for a bittern's cry, a boar's snort, a snipe's scream, on the lands once crowded with the multitudes that gave the eagle of Persia and the brazen trumpets of Lydia ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... fires off his gun every half hour. The troops are quite happy; if anyone grumbles they are sent up to the trenches, where George Graves and Sarah Bernhardt let off crackers. The battalion snipers are put in the opposite trench and told to snipe the trench opposite them. Occasionally they hit a man, and then there is a casualty list, and some General gets sent home in disgrace. Gallipoli is ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... fact, it cannot be minute, cannot be unimportant; that it must be a fact of God; a message from God; a voice of God, as Bacon has it, revealed in things; and which therefore, just because it stands in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax feather in a snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously in certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be some deep and wide secret underlying them, which is worth years of thought to solve. That is reverence; a reverence which is growing, thank God, more ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... lonely itself, but so close to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... progress had been made, and they were now drawing close in to the island. It lay there, looking calm and peaceful in the morning sunlight. A few birds flew up from along the shore, some of them "teeter" snipe that had been feeding. Davy even pointed with his paddle to a big gray squirrel that ran along a log in plain view, and sat up on his haunches as if to curiously observe these approaching human beings who ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... was long, stooping, gaunt and spindle-shanked, his hands big and crippled with gout: his cheeks were red after an old man's fashion, covered with a crimson network like a pippin; his lips thin and not well hiding his few teeth; his nose long like a snipe's neb. In short, a shame and a laughing-stock to the Folk, and a man whom the kindreds had in small esteem, and ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... We had shot several snipe and a fat turkey, when, as we were clambering up a bank, being somewhat before my companions, I was not a little surprised to see, within four paces of me, the huge head of a black bear, peering over the tops of the palmetto to ascertain what was approaching. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... dogs, marmosets, and a dear little lion-monkey, very small and rather red, with a beautiful head and mane, who roared exactly like a real lion in miniature. There were cages full of small flamingoes, snipe of various kinds, and a great many birds of smaller size, with feathers of all shades of blue, red, and green, and metallic hues of brilliant lustre, besides parrots, macaws, cockatoos innumerable, and torchas on stands. The torcha is a bright-coloured black and ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... minute, cannot be unimportant; that it must be a fact of God; a message from God; a voice of God, as Bacon has it, revealed in things; and which therefore, just because it stands in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax feather in a snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously in certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be some deep and wide secret underlying them, which is worth years of thought to solve. That is reverence; a reverence which is growing, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... sound the screech of Bakahenzie shot up like a snipe from a rice field. The other wizards sprang with him. The moonlight kissed a spearhead beside the stone figure of Mungongo by the Sacred Fires. Birnier leaped, plucked the spear, caught zu Pfeiffer in his arms and raised him shoulder high that all ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... latitude 28 deg. 59', longitude 169 deg. 5, we saw a seal asleep upon the water, and several bunches of sea-weed. The next day we saw more seaweed in bunches, and on the 29th, a bird, which we thought a land bird; it somewhat resembled a snipe, but had a short bill. On the 1st of October, we saw birds innumerable, and another seal asleep upon the water; it is a general opinion that seals never go out of soundings, or far from land, but those that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... consists in their immense flocks of sheep. The horses and mules of Algeria are noted; and the native cattle are an excellent stock on which to graft the better European varieties. Of birds, eagles, vultures, hawks, owls and quails are common; snipe, curlews, plovers, storks and herons frequent the marshy parts; and the ostrich the desert. Partridges and woodcocks are fairly common. Among the reptiles are various species of serpents, tortoises, turtles, lizards, &c. Locusts ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a contemporary book on French furniture, so identical are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. By dividing the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... of the golden plover, few of the wading birds resemble those of Europe. The snipe, the woodcock, the curlew, most of the sandpipers, together with the coot and the water-hen, are distinct from those of Europe, and are not only peculiar to America, but few of them have been found to the south of the line. One of the most magnificent birds is the American flamingo, which ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... earth was once covered with water and the sky alone was inhabited, until God sent his only begotten daughter in the form of a kuri, or snipe, to look for dry land. She found a spot, and brought down to it earth, and a creeping plant, which grew and decomposed into worms, and, lo! the worms turned into men ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... severe. The water-fowls were geese, a small sort of duck, almost like that mentioned at Kerguelen's Land; another sort which none of us knew; and some of the black seapyes, with red bills, which we found at Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. Some of the people who went on shore, killed a grouse, a snipe, and some plover. But though, upon the whole, the water-fowls were pretty numerous, especially the ducks and geese, which frequent the shores, they were so shy, that it was scarcely possible to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... look- out for cants that he could catch and apply in season, and might have done himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to throw over any cant as soon as he had come across another more nearly to his fancy; his friends used to say that when he rose he flew like a snipe, darting several times in various directions before he settled down to a steady straight flight, but when he had once got into this he would ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... my patience. I had never practised shooting with ball; I had frightened a few snipe, and wounded a few partridges, but that was the extent of my experience. I knew, however, that I could not by any possibility shoot worse than every body else had done, and might by accident ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... for fever is to go out into the forest before the sun is up and look for a snipe's nest. When you have found it, take out one of the young birds and keep it beside you for three days. Then go back into the wood and set the snipe free. The fever will leave you at once. The snipe has taken it away. So in Vedic times the Hindoos of old sent ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... said Rose-Pompon, laughing, "your father was not a gutter-snipe by trade, but only for the honor of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of Englishmen, in praise of sport and physical exercise, touched with a sentiment not far removed from poetry—the only poetry of which they are not half-ashamed. Audubon even joined in, forgetting for the moment his customary pose, and rhapsodizing with the rest over his favourite pursuits of snipe-shooting and cricket. Much of this talk was lost upon me, for I am nothing of a sportsman; but some touches there were that recalled experiences of my own, and for that reason, I suppose, have lingered in my memory. Thus, I recollect, some one spoke of skating on ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... so much. Well—I followed this little brook till it entered the river, and then took the path that runs along the bank. On the opposite side, I observed several little birds running along the shore, and making a piping noise. They were brown and white, and about as big as a snipe. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... within reach of all. At the unpretending hotel, the cookery would not discredit the Hotel de Bristol itself, everything being of the best. I was served with a little bird which I ate with great innocence, and no little relish, supposing it to be a snipe, but, on asking what it was, I found, to my horror, the wretches had served up a thrush! I am sorry to say a tremendous slaughter of migratory birds goes on at this time of the year; not only thrushes, but larks, linnets, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... what foolish people they were who claimed last week that winter had come, because it was a little chilly, when he could have told them, by half a century's experience, that the most beautiful part of the year was to come, the Indian summer, the lazy days when you want to shoot snipe, and eat grapes, and have appendicitis. The red-headed boy came out yawning, half awake, and raised his arms and stretched until it seemed that he ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... kinds of antelopes, the nilgei, four-horned antelope, the antelope, and the gazelle. Of the birds, I may mention 12 varieties of pigeons, 2 of sandgrouse, 2 of partridges, 8 of quail, peafowl, jungle-fowl, spenfowl, bustard, floriken (a kind of bustard), woodcock, woodsnipe, common snipe, jacksnipe, painted snipe, widgeon, 4 kinds of teal, and 5 of wild ducks. I may mention that there are 9 kinds of eagles, 20 kinds of hawks, and 13 varieties of owls. As regards reptiles, crocodiles are the only ones that sportsmen take any interest in, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... a day too late for the Twelfth, he found the sport bad and he shot badly, but he enjoyed the healthful walks on the hill. His employments were curiously mixed. 'Sept. 8th.—In the bog for snipe with Sir J. Mackenzie. Read Timaeus. Began Byron's Life. My eyes refused progress. Verses. 15th.—Snipe-shooting with F. in the bog. Began Critias. 22nd.—Haddo. Otter-hunting, senz esito. Finished Plato's Laws. Hunting too in the library.' The mental dispersion of country-house ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... from the lounge and took her seat, and the two young men launched out into a discussion of flies and worms and fish-bait, and whether frog's legs were better than minnows in fishing for pickerel, and what was the best-sized shot for woodcock and Jack-snipe. Oliver told of the ducking-blinds, of the Chesapeake, and of how the men sat in wooden boxes sunk to the water's edge, with the decoy ducks about them, and shot the flocks as they flew over. And John told of a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... amusement. But never fear! You can not be always reading, and when the fine weather comes you will yield to the temptation; all the more likely because you have Claudet Sejournant with you. A jolly fellow he is; there is not one like him for killing a snipe or sticking a trout! Our trout here on the Aubette, Monsieur de Buxieres, are excellent—of the salmon kind, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... Therefore Herbert and Gideon Spilett, with Top in front, traversed more often than their companions the road to the corral, and with the capital guns which they carried, capybaras, agouties, kangaroos, and wild pigs for large game, ducks, tetras, grouse, jacamars, and snipe for small, were never wanting in the house. The produce of the warren, of the oyster-bed, several turtles which were taken, excellent salmon which came up the Mercy, vegetables from the plateau, wild fruit from the forest, were ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... devoted to 'clean ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic of the week. Then a free afternoon for all hands followed, and after dinner in the ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... with impunity. Although a highly chivalrous chap in questions of the fairer sex, I am yet to see why it is allowable to render the female bird a bereaved widow, but totally forbidden to make the male a widower! Or why it is permissible to slay a minute bird such as a snipe, while a titlark is on ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the fun. So they get it into line with another man's grove nearer by, and under that cover quicken to a gallop. Away, away; splash, splash, through the coolees, around the maraises, clouds of wild fowl that there is no time to shoot into rising now on this side, now on that; snipe without number, gray as the sky, with flashes of white, trilling petulantly as they flee; giant snowy cranes lifting and floating away on waving pinions, and myriads of ducks in great eruptions of hurtling, whistling wings. On they gallop; on ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the season than anywhere else away from the coast, finds plenty of other food. He is not here in the winter. His place just now is filled by the jacksnipe, which flutters up from every boggy place and comes to bag in a condition anything but suggestive of short commons. The snipe's terrestrial surface lies two and a half inches beneath ours. At that distance he strikes hard pan; but it is margin enough for his operations, and he is not often caught among the shorts. Gourmands assure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... called tumblers turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements peculiar to the season of love: thus ring-doves, though strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind- hover; and the green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the spiced vinegar heating for pickles, a reminder of winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace would say: "Don't you suppose the backlog ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... and I won't give you any trouble, either.... I reckon," mused the adventurer, jingling his manacles thoughtfully, "I'm a back-number, anyway. When a half-grown girl, a half-baked boy, a flub like Mulready—damn his eyes!—and a club-footed snipe from Scotland Yard can put it all over me this way,... why, I guess it's up to me to go home and retire to my country-place up the Hudson." He ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... began rubbing the horses' noses and feeling about their mouths behind the bits. "Not many birds just now. A few ducks this morning; and some snipe come to drink. But there was a crane last week. She spent one night and came back the next evening. I don't know why. It is not her season, of course. Many of them go over in the fall. Then the pond is full of ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Tortoises used to line the margin of the river in the evening, with their heads sticking out above water, while crowds of angry birds accused them from the wet mud of the shore. Wild duck, partridge, snipe, sand-grouse and doves were fairly numerous, and in the evenings it was possible to get a good bag. It was worth shooting jackals, for their skins were in very good condition. The hospital had a football ground and later on, towards the end of the hot season, a tennis court was ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... were very sorry for this, but they got over the loss of the ship with philosophical resignation, as other midshipmen have under like circumstances done before them; and with the rest of their shipmates amused themselves very well in shooting snipe and red-legged partridges, in wandering about, in trying to talk Greek, and in doing nothing, till a brig of war arrived and carried them all back to Malta. Captain Hartland and his officers were tried for the loss of his sloop, and honourably acquitted; and Adair and Rogers rejoined the Racer, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... how awful! High into the air he flew, describing a great arch. Just as he touched the highest point of his spring I fired. I did not dare to wait, for I saw that he would clear the whole space and land right upon me. Without a sight, almost without aim, I fired, as one would fire a snap-shot at a snipe. The bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... upon his female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... those big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bury her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air. She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary. She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! they were very far away. Death reigned within her who outwardly was so fair ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... pigeons; they would have killed wild pigeons if they had got a chance, though you could not tell them from turtle-doves except by their size and the sound they made with their wings. But there were not many pigeons in the woods around the Boy's Town, and they were very shy. There were snipe along the river, and flocks of kildees on the Commons, but the bird that was mostly killed by these boys was the yellowhammer. They distinguished, again, in its case; and decided that it was not a woodpecker, and might be killed; ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... generally seen for the last time this month, the house-martin the latest. The rooks return to the roost trees, and the tortoise begins to bury himself for the winter. Woodcocks begin to arrive, and keep dropping in from the Baltic singly or in pairs till December. The snipe also comes now;" and with the month, by a kind of savage charter, commences the destruction of the pheasant, to swell the catalogue of the created wants and luxuries of the table. "One of the most curious natural appearances," says Mr. L. Hunt, "is the gossamer, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the tigers have been long since hunted from their lairs in the rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year. Narkarra—one hundred and forty-three miles by road—is the nearest station to Kashima. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... first part strong Gales and Squally; remainder a fresh breeze and settled weather. At 1 p.m. was obliged to take in the Topsails, but set them again at 4. At 11 a.m. saw a Bird something like a Snipe, only it had a short bill; it had the appearance of a land bird. Several Albetrosses, Pintado birds, and Sheer Waters about the Ship, and a Number of Doves; of these we have seen more or less ever since the 31st of last Month, the day we first saw them. Wind South-West; ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... tumbled out of one deep ditch into another, scrambled perseveringly through brambles and brushwood, saw places where pheasants ought to have been, and places where they had been, but never saw a bird except a jack-snipe in the distance. The only sport we had was in the untiring energy of the lad already mentioned, who, long after the dogs had given it up as a bad job, continued to beat every bush as diligently as at first starting, and kept up a form of hortatory interjections addressed to the invisible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... no protection.... The snipe, too, like the pigeon, will take care of itself, and its yearly numbers can not be ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Meadow-larks and song-sparrows kept up a faint warbling about us, but the crickets, which yesterday had here and there made a thin music, as of straggling bands of survivors of the Summer, were numbed into silence again. Once or twice we caught sight of the dainty snipe in the meadows, and high over the woods a bird-hawk floated, as by some invisible anchorage, in the sky. It was an austere landscape, grave with elm and ash and pine. For a space, a field of buckwheat standing in ricks struck a smudged negroid note, but there was warmth in ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the streamers of passers like a wounded snipe he was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was "Bully" McGuire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The other Nimrod of the asphalt was "Spider" Kelley, a sportsman ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the moment helping Alice to a snipe, answered carelessly, "Young lady? O, Miss Winnie Morris, sister of Wayland Morris, editor of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... heart spring straight up into my New England mouth; but the foreign snipe wasn't speaking to me, so I sat still and listened for what that young ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... want no bangs around me to remind me of that snipe-legged Alta Wood. Bangs may be all right for fellers with music boxes in their watches, but they don't go with ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... your rank, Sir," the WATER-DOG cried As he shook his rough coat, that was scarcely yet dried, "But in sport who with me can compare?—have you seen, Where the bush-fringed pool is mantled with green, How I wind, thro' the reeds and the rushes, my way, And the haunt of the Snipe, or the Mallard betray? How, when loud sounds the Gun, aroused by the crash } (As the fall of the victim, is marked by the splash) } Leaping forward I bear off the prey at a dash?" } "Tis enough—you have merit—but I think it better To mention my claims," quoth the ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... nestes is gone, I can't see no woodcock, nor snipe; My dog he looks dogged and dull, My ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... moment a flock of teal and snipe flew up before his Majesty; and he exclaimed laughingly: "Go, go, my beauties; make room for other game." His Majesty said to those around him, "This time we ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... addition to the spurred lapwing, characteristic and most interesting resident of most of South America, we found tiny red- legged plover which also breed and are at home in the tropics. The contrasts in habits between closely allied species are wonderful. Among the plovers and bay snipe there are species that live all the year round in almost the same places, in tropical and subtropical lands; and other related forms which wander over the whole earth, and spend nearly all their time, now in the arctic and cold temperate regions of ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes comes the ever-thickening chorus of the toads, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in sounding flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing, uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, mad with delight of the sun and the season—and over all, and laving ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... islands of the Ellice, Kings-mill and Gilbert Groups, a species of snipe are very plentiful. On the islands which enclose the noble lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to be met with in great numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily good shot may get thirty or forty ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and my ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... did man see A wretch like poor Nancy, So teazed day and night By a Dean and a Knight. To punish my sins, Sir Arthur begins, And gives me a wipe, With Skinny and Snipe:[2], His malice is ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... ejaculated Mr. Rogers. "What ever bee has stung him?" And gripping me by the shoulder as I heaved at the boat, he swung me round to face him. "Look here, young Harry Brooks! Do you happen to be sickening for something, that you talk like a gutter-snipe to a gentleman old enough to be your grandfather? Or, damme, have you and Goodfellow been coming to blows? By the nose of you and the state of your shirt a man would say you've come from a street fight; and by your talk, that your head ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... in game which has been driven from the tamer parts of Europe. There are bears, wolves, jackals, wild boars, deer, chamois; and all kinds of birds, such as eagles, falcons, bustards, wild geese, pheasants, partridges, woodcock, snipe, and moorhen. For the sportsman the Balkan Peninsula is almost the only tract left in Europe offering really wild game. King Ferdinand, who recognises the tourist possibilities of his country, has lately encouraged the stocking of the Rhodope streams ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... the bell on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What's the figure? What ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... 'Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.' So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven's blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, all of which caused much merriment and diversion, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... rain and the good sunlight over that great desert of pasty black clay at low tide. I had lain at high tide in a sand-pit at the edge of the open sea beyond the dunes, waiting for chance shots at curlew and snipe. I had known the bay at the first glimmer of dawn with a flight of silver plovers wheeling for a rush over my decoys. Dawn—the lazy, sparkling noon and the golden hours before the crisp, still twilight warned me it was high ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... at the house of the "hairpin" bend simultaneously with a shell. The shell hit the house, the house did not hit Huggie, and the sniper forgot to snipe. So every ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... of water carry others; ships and railroads give free transportation to quantities among the hay used in packing; birds and animals lift many on their feet - Darwin raised 537 plants from a ball of mud carried between the toes of a snipe! - and such feathered and furred agents as feed on berries and other fruits sometimes drop the seeds a thousand miles from the parent. but it will be noticed that such vagabonds as travel by the hook or by crook method, getting a lift in the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... it well! He looks that peanut headed snipe straight in the eye all the time after that and takes what's comin' to him without turnin' a hair. It was "Yes, Mr. Piddie," and "No, Mr. Piddie"; but nothin' else. And the cooler and politer he was, the wilder Piddie got. When I hears him tell Mallory that another such break will cost ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... them all! I remember twenty years ago there used to be geese here, and cranes and ducks and grouse—clouds and clouds of them! The gentry used to meet together for shooting, and one heard nothing but pouf-pouf-pouf! pouf-pouf-pouf! There was no end to the woodcocks, the snipe, and the little teals, and the water-snipe were as common as starlings, or let us say sparrows—lots and lots of them! And what has become of them all? We don't even see the birds of prey. The eagles, the hawks, and the owls have all gone.... There are fewer of every sort of wild beast, too. ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... brushwood and bushes to the thicker woods beyond, so that neither the hawk amid the cover nor its partner above nor the clamorous beaters could harm it. The King laughed at the mischance and rode on. Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the King soon tired of this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent silent attendant flapping above ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and locked the door. "Pierre says you're grouching about your garret. How about me, and this job? You get out of yours to-night for keeps. What about me? I can't do anything but act as a damned blind for the rest of you with this fool store, just because I was born a freak that every gutter-snipe on the street ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... as before, we pushed into the breast-high grass, and the walking was easy. Once we crossed a patch of oozy turf from which arose a score of jack-snipe; again we skirted a drying pond whose boggy edges were the hunting ground of marsh hens. Yet other trails could be read here: deer, wildcat, raccoon, and innumerable wee things. And here, too, around the "bonnet" leaves, the silent moccasin lay coiled, so it ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... common, I found that where it had been dry in spring one might now sink to his knees in the bog; also that the snipe which had vanished for a season were back at the old spot where they used to breed. It was a bitter day near the end of an unpleasant summer, with the wind back in the old hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, the sky was blue, and the flying clouds were of a dazzling whiteness. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... such thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn's gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my lord's, lent him by the valet-de-chamer; the one over his face, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... pounds weight. While Archer, who had gone forth with Garry only in the canoe, had picked up half a dozen wood-duck, two or three of the large yellow-legs, a little bittern, known by a far less elegant appellative throughout the country, and thirteen English snipe. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... comparatively new. Within the last sixty years long lines of houses have sprung up, concealing beneath unpromising exteriors, such as only London houses can show, comfort enough and to spare. This is a favourite residential quarter, though we now consider it in, not "conveniently near," town. Snipe were shot in the marshes of Brompton, and nursery gardens spread themselves over the area now devoted to the museums and institute. It is rather interesting to read the summary of John Timbs, F.S.A., writing so late as 1867: "Kensington, a mile and a ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... breathless air. Tired of listless dreaming Through the lazy day: Jovial wind of winter Turns us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir-forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! The brave North-easter! Breast-high lies the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of tiger-stalking nights, Of mornings with the snipe, With never a pause save when he lights An ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... and osier beds, and vast fields of reeds, and breadths of forest with dense thorny underwood, where all wild birds came in their season, and where all was quiet save for a bittern's cry, a boar's snort, a snipe's scream, on the lands once crowded with the multitudes that gave the eagle of Persia and the brazen trumpets of Lydia to the legions ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... my wings gits stwaight agin, Where you all cwumpled 'em," he says, "I bet I'll ist fly clean away an' won't take you To old Miss Hoodjicum's at all!" he says. An' nen I ist weach out wite quick, I did, An' gwab the sassy little snipe agin— Nen tooked my topstwing an' tie down his wings So's he can't fly, 'less'n I want him to! An' nen I says: "Now, Mr. Squidjicum, You better ist light out," I says, "to old Miss Hoodjicum's, an' show me ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... However, by careful crawling he succeeded in gaining his own lines in safety. It is always by night these men work, and the Australian snipers get two days off every week to go to the base for a rest. This time is usually spent in their going somewhere else to snipe. Fighting to the Australians is ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Monsieur Calyste, and snipe, and pancakes such as I know you can't get anywhere but here," said Mariotte, with a sly, triumphant look as she smoothed the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... quadruped; [web-footed animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine^, ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin^; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot^; tag, teg^; bison, buffalo, yak, zebu, dog, cat. [dogs] dog, hound; pup, puppy; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant—officers mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well—behaved weeks only once, began to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Camels were reared in some places, and sheep and goats were numerous. Horned cattle were probably not so abundant, as the character of the country is not favorable for them. Game existed in large quantities, the lakes abounding with water-fowl, such as ducks, teal, heron, snipe, etc.; and the wooded portions of the mountain tract giving shelter to the stag, the wild goat, the wild boar, the hare, the pheasant, and the heathcock, fish were also plentiful. Whales visited the Persian Gulf, and were sometimes stranded upon the shores, where their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... eyes and knowledge of the habits of wild life were a revelation to Billy. This part of the country was too settled for large game, but Billy kept Saxon supplied with squirrels and quail, cottontails and jackrabbits, snipe and wild ducks. And they learned to eat roasted mallard and canvasback in the California style of sixteen minutes in a hot oven. As he became expert with shotgun and rifle, he began to regret the deer and the mountain lion he had ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... or stay. Still the famine raged almost unchecked. The relief works established by the Government, with the best intentions possible, too often were devoted to the most curiously useless, sometimes even to actually harmful, objects. To this day "Famine roads" may be met with in the middle of snipe bogs, or skirting precipices where no road was ever wanted or could possibly be used. By the time, too, they were in full working order the people were, in many cases, too enfeebled by want and disease ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... he creeps twel he wake up de snipe, My honey, my love! Mister Bull-Frog holler, Come alight my pipe! My honey, my love! En de Pa'tridge ax, Ain't yo' peas ripe? My honey, my love! Better not walk erlong dar much atter night, My honey, my love! My honey, my love, my heart's delight— ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... BULWER who took the first specimen home in 1874. These pheasants do not rise in the jungle and are, therefore, uninteresting to the Borneo sportsman. They are frequently trapped by the natives. There are many kinds of pigeons, which afford good sport. Snipe occur, but not plentifully. Curlew are numerous in some localities, but very wild. The small China quail are abundant on cleared spaces, as also is the painted plover, but cleared spaces in Borneo ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... inn he comes to on the edge of the wood. Since you are good enough to act as my guardian pay me the income on my eighth of the fief and do not ask me to learn that Latin bosh. A man of birth is sufficiently well educated when he knows how to bring down a snipe and sign his name. I have no desire to be seigneur of Roche-Mauprat; it is enough to have been a slave there. You are most kind, and on my honour I love you; but I have very little love for conditions. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... their own ground. I could shoot and fish as well as most of you, only that I don't think it right to take life except to provide food, or in self-defense. There's not so much happiness going that one's justified in cutting any of it short. Even a jack-snipe may have his little affairs of the heart, and a cock-salmon his gamble. But I can ride as straight as you can. I can break any horse to harness you choose to put me behind. I can sail a boat and handle an axe. I can turn ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... whole sight reminded me more of the battle books I read as a boy than anything I saw in the war. About six hundred prisoners were taken, but many of the Turks escaped to the mountains and lay among the rocks, whence they could snipe at us with impunity. They were a tenacious lot, for all next day when we were using the road below the hills they continued to shoot at us from the places whence it was ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... fat man of Bombay, Who was smoking one sunshiny day, When a bird called a snipe, Flew away with his pipe, Which vexed the fat ...
— Denslow's Mother Goose • Anonymous
... excessive roughness of the weather, our passage from Rio Janeiro to the Bay of Conception afforded us but few opportunities to add to our collections. A snipe blown out to sea from the Rio de la Plata, a specimen of Diomedea Albatros at Terra del Fuego, a large Salpa, and a Lepas, were all we were able to obtain. The Bay of Conception presents a rich field to the ornithologist. A kind of parrot, with a long tail, and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... day in November: the day after I finished husking. Huldah reckoned a wild turkey wouldn't go with a bad relish, and so I shouldered the old gun in the morning, and letting Bose follow slyly along behind, I put away out into the woods. I killed three or four pigeons, and a squirrel, and snipe; but on and on, and round, I ranged, afore I could get a single crack at a turkey. But a flock flew up at last, and one proud old Tom taking a tall maple in sight, and swinging his red gorget as if to dare a shot, I fired, and plump he come to the ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... a very neat idea, to put your wife out in the country so that you may spend the day as you like at Paris. So this is the cause of your passion for a country house! Snipe that I was, to be caught in the trap! You are right, sir, a villa is very convenient: it serves two objects. But the wife can get along with it as well as the husband. You may take Paris and its hacks! I'll ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... "Snipe, by all that's wonderful!" cried Bob, firing two barrels almost as he spoke, and bringing down four birds out of a flock that bore some resemblance to, but were double ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... expensive and precarious mode of sporting. The hawks are liable to various misfortunes, and are besides addicted to fly away; one of ours was fairly lost for the day, and one or two went off without permission, but returned. We killed a crow and frightened a snipe. There are, however, ladies and gentlemen enough to make a gallant show on the top of Mintlaw Kipps. The falconer made a fine figure—a handsome and active young fellow with the falcon on his wrist. The Colonel was most courteous, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the little larks, The lapwing, and the snipe, And tune their song like Nature's clerks, O'er meadow, muir, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... species of Snipe known in Australia are—Scolopax australis, Lath.; Painted S., Rhynchaea australis, Gould. This bird breeds in Japan and winters in Australia. The name is also used as ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in idleness, hugging their misery, discussing the "bating" of the Unionist party, or, as I saw them yesterday evening, listening to the crooning of an ancient female gutter-snipe, a dun-coloured heap of decrepit wretchedness, chanting the great future of the Irish Parliament in a picturesque and extraordinary doggerel anent the "larned reprisintatives of the Oirish na-a-tion. Promiscu-o-ous they shtand in em-u-la-a-tion." The ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... around him and settled down squarely into the saddle. The desolate plains with the crying wind held the loneliness of the damned. Occasionally a wolf howled in the distance, or a wandering snipe cried as it lost itself among the stiffening reeds about the swampy levels, and through all he could hear the hoarse roar of the Kofn in flood, as it rushed down from its rocky bed, swollen with the melted snows of yesterday. Another ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the snipe would ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... sprang from point to point to expose themselves momentarily and draw the fire of the enemy. This was of no avail. The hidden rifle with deliberate instancy cracked once more. The fleeing cowboy, slammed as if by a club, dashed on, but his right arm hung limp. No snipe ever made half the race for life that he put up in those fleeting seconds; and by his agility he earned then and there the nickname of the bird itself, for before the deadly sights could cover his flight again he threw himself into a slight ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... eyes of an extraordinary blue—the blue of the wild chicory. When the boy glanced up or down, there was great play of dark lashes, long, and amazingly thick. This would have been charming on a girl, but seemed somehow affected in a boy, though one could hardly have accused the little snipe of making his own eyelashes. He wore a very loose-trousered knickerbocker suit of navy-blue; a white silk shirt or blouse, loose also, with a turned-down Byronic collar and a careless black bow underneath. He had extremely small hands, tanned brown, and on the least ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... bog from early morning till dark without firing a shot. The snipe rose almost at his feet, and wheeling in circles through the air, dipped again into some dark crevice of the waste, unnoticed by him! One thought only possessed, and never left him, as he went. He had overheard Nina's words to his ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native padi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a Delivering Angel, in the shape of a very small, very muddy, very ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... enjoying the ecstasy of all the dogs, and, indeed he was surprised to find himself fully alive to the delight of forcing his way through a furze-brake, hearing the ice in the peaty bogs crackle beneath his feet; getting a good shot, bringing down his bird, finding snipe, and diving into the depths of the long, winding valleys and dingles, with the icicle-hung banks of their streamlets. He came home through the village at about half-past three o'clock, sending the keeper to leave some ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and lonely itself, but so close to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the police ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... troops are quite happy; if anyone grumbles they are sent up to the trenches, where George Graves and Sarah Bernhardt let off crackers. The battalion snipers are put in the opposite trench and told to snipe the trench opposite them. Occasionally they hit a man, and then there is a casualty list, and some General gets sent home in disgrace. Gallipoli is another ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... the Baylor bosses—mobbed by the Catholics for saying that it probably came OUT of the convent? Now, you people keep down the narrative of your nether garment and apply a hot mush poultice to your impudence. The ICONOCLAST is only tickling you with snipe-shot now; but don't forget for one moment that it has buck a-plenty in ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his lips. When his thoughts came back to her he looked happier, though he had to think of her penitently. "I was a beast," he went on, "the coldest, cruellest beast. Do you know why I raged at you when you mentioned that little snipe you call Mr. Philip? I knew it was the roughest luck on you to have gone through that time with him. But I wasn't sorry for you. I was jealous. I felt you might have protected yourself from being looked at by any other man in the world ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ahead ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... a heavy bribe and the promise of efficient protection, to undertake the removal of Ippolito. Whilst dallying with his former mistress, the Cardinal fell ill of malarial fever, common in the swampy plain of Garigliano, where he had gone shooting snipe. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... likely those new strangers over in the Fork have been paying cash and filled him up with conceit," said Union Mills, trying to dry his leg by alternately beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall. "Once begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag everybody ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... man of Bombay, Who was smoking one sunshiny day, When a bird, called a snipe, Flew away with his pipe, Which vexed the ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... as a snipe; Well worth her weight in gold; Of honest, clean, conspicuous type, And ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... I caught the cry of a pewit, or saw a snipe glance up from his bed; but mainly I was busied about the mare. "Let us but gain the ridge ahead," thought I, "and there is a chance." So I rode as light as I could, husbanding ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... him three causes of offence: Cassio has been preferred to him; he suspects him too of an intrigue with Emilia; and, lastly, Cassio has a daily beauty in his life which makes Iago ugly. In addition to these annoyances he wants Cassio's place. As for Roderigo, he calls him a snipe, and who can hate a snipe? But Roderigo knows too much; and he is becoming a nuisance, getting angry, and asking for the gold and jewels he handed to Iago to give to Desdemona. So Iago kills Roderigo. Then for Desdemona: a fig's-end for her virtue! but he has no ill-will ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... and many of them remarkable for the beauty of their plumage. Great numbers of eagles, vultures, hawks, bustards and other birds of prey are met with; and partridges, duck, teal, guinea-fowl, sand-grouse, curlews, woodcock, snipe, pigeons, thrushes and swallows are very plentiful. A fine variety of ostrich is commonly found. Among the birds prized for their plumage are the marabout, crane, heron, blacks bird, parrot, jay and humming-birds ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... together than we had passed at the rookery under the cliffs in the morning; but we sailed by an island, of which birds of all descriptions had taken entire possession. There were various species of ducks, and geese, and snipe, and teal, and shags, and grebes, and penguins, and albatrosses, and sea-rooks, and oyster-catchers, and gulls with pink breasts, and many others, of whose names I have no note. As we believed that we had plenty of time, we landed near some cliffs to have a nearer look at them. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... Don't I pay them myself? objects the auditing Papa, at that latter kind of items: No more of that. "For mending the flute, four GROSCHEN [or pence];" "Two Boxes of Colors, sixteen ditto;" "For a live snipe, twopence;" "For grinding the hanger [little swordkin];" "To a Boy whom the dog bit;" and chiefly of all, "To the KLINGBEUTEL,"—Collection-plate, or bag, at Church,—which comes upon us once, nay twice, and even thrice a week, eighteenpence each time, and eats deep into ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... every shilling of it. He preserved his foxes loyally, and was quite as keen about the fishing of a little river that he owned, and which ran down from his demesne into Lough Corrib. He was particular also about his snipe, and would boast that in a little spinney at Ballytowngal were to be met the earliest woodcock found in the West of Ireland. He was a thorough sportsman;—but a Roman Catholic—and as a Roman Catholic he was hardly equal in standing ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. [domesticated mammals] horse &c (beast of burden) 271; cattle, kine^, ox; bull, bullock; cow, milch cow, calf, heifer, shorthorn; sheep; lamb, lambkin^; ewe, ram, tup; pig, swine, boar, hog, sow; steer, stot^; tag, teg^; bison, buffalo, yak, zebu, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... through a knot-hole without rubbing his clothes." Says I: "I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... to the reedy tarn, and at his approach several snipe got up, and they flew above his head uttering sharp cries. His fishing-rod was a long hazel stick, and he threw the frog as far as he could into the lake. In doing this he roused some wild ducks; a mallard and two ducks got up, and they flew towards the larger ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the month in which the avian population attains its maximum. Geese, ducks, teal, pelicans, cormorants, snake-birds and ospreys abound in the rivers and jhils; the marshes and swamps are the resort of millions of snipe and other waders; the fields and groves swarm with flycatchers, chats, starlings, warblers, finches, birds of prey and the other migrants which in winter visit the plains from the Himalayas ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... who having come a little way out of the thicket is beatifically listening.] And how do you, Snipe, translate his poem? ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... judging by the rifle flashes there were not more than twenty men in that flanking party. We still have to hear from another body, and I believe they are hiding in the mill, ready to snipe us from there. Besides, probably a smaller party has been sent from the flankers to lie in wait and get us as we go through the lagoon. It's a bad trap, Mr. Carmody, and we must move slowly, if we wish to get away with ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for a year without work, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... his hat gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... English company had been formed to supply the parched seaport and the ships that call there with fresh water, and its reservoirs were situated at La Piedad. In the bowels of the flats below, where the snipe-shooting ought to be good, our countryman told me the water was to be sought. Galleries had been sunk in every direction in land which the company had purchased, and pumps and engines are soon to be erected that will raise the liquid collected there up ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... work hard for my five brace of grouse. I see no amusement in dawdling over a lowland moor where the packs are as thick as chickens in a poultry-yard. I like better than most things a day with my own dogs in scattered covers, when I know not what may rise—a woodcock, an odd pheasant, a snipe in the out-lying willow-bed, and perhaps a mallard or a teal. A hare or two falls in agreeably when the mistress of the house takes an interest in the bag. I detest battues and hot corners, and slaughter for slaughter's sake. I wish every tenant in England ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Saturday was devoted to 'clean ship,' the officers doing [Page 78] their share of the scrubbing. In the forenoon the living-spaces were thoroughly cleaned, holes and corners were searched, and while the tub and scrubber held sway the deck became a 'snipe marsh.' At this time the holds also were cleared up, the bilges pumped out, the upper deck was 'squared up,' and a fresh layer of clean snow was sprinkled over that which had been soiled by the traffic of the week. Then a free afternoon for all hands followed, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... brilliancy of its plumage. But nowhere could a spot be found where the ship's boat could approach without extreme danger. The water was shallow everywhere, and the breakers were heavy. Fish of many kinds—more especially mullets,—geese, snipe, teal, and other birds of excellent flavour, were caught and killed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... several snipe and a fat turkey, when, as we were clambering up a bank, being somewhat before my companions, I was not a little surprised to see, within four paces of me, the huge head of a black bear, peering over the tops of the palmetto ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... Sir Jocelyn preserved one characteristic, an unerring instinct for field-sports that no amount of drinking could impair. He could hit a flying bird with a stone, was a deadly shot for snipe or mallard, rode like a centaur, and fished with the instinct of a heron. It is probable that his consciousness of this faculty was at the bottom of his startling recovery. Possibly he was frightened to find a little of his skill failing. I only know that at the age of forty-eight, he pulled ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... McVickar" indicated, and felt that he should lose caste with the waiter by inquiring. When that functionary recommended a bite of broiled tenderloin, prepared with Madeira sauce, and the addition of fresh mushrooms and a small sweetbread, he allowed himself to be persuaded. An English snipe, with chicory salad and some cheese, with coffee, completed his order. Oh, and a pint of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... starting and alighting place for birds. Moorhens evidently migrate up or down the river in spring and autumn, and occasionally dabchicks; otherwise their sudden appearance and disappearance on the eyot could not be accounted for. Snipe follow the Thames up the valley. Formerly Chiswick Eyot was their first alighting place when east winds were blowing, after the fatigue of crossing London; and persons still living used to go out and shoot them. A friend of mine, whose ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... said the major. "I remember once in the neighbourhood of Malacca, how a party of us officers landed to get a shot at the snipe, and we were surprised by a party of copper-coloured scoundrels. By George, sir, there we were with nothing better than snipe-shot, sir, to defend ourselves against as murderous-looking a set ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... little simple food, are put into the boat, and off we go. Perhaps a gale springs up, and we are forced to make a harbor in some little island; or perhaps it falls calm, and we crawl into one, under oars. It is sure to be alive with ducks and geese and snipe. The shooting is superb. Happen what may, come storm or calm or fine weather, though often wet and cold, and frequently in danger, yet I have a grand time of it. I may be back in a day, two days, a week, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... are such near neighbours." She was ready to say anything that would make him feel he was not being treated as a shopman. "And did you have your day's shooting? Were you successful?" "Well," with modest pride, "I came upon snipe unexpectedly, and brought home a couple of brace. If I had thought you would condescend to accept them, Miss Pennycuick—if ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... deliberation he launched upon a tirade of abuse. "But, no, you are not a man of energy, not a man to take things in your hands. The obstacles are too big. Those three husbands! You might even take that woman, that lovely, royal dancing woman—you, my dear sir, a common street snipe. What would a woman like that, with that novel, impassioned, barbaric, foreign dance, be worth to a man on your Broadway? Eh? But obstacles! Obstacles! You have her not on Broadway. It is too many thousand miles, and you have ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... But never fear! You can not be always reading, and when the fine weather comes you will yield to the temptation; all the more likely because you have Claudet Sejournant with you. A jolly fellow he is; there is not one like him for killing a snipe or sticking a trout! Our trout here on the Aubette, Monsieur de Buxieres, are excellent—of the salmon kind, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... another; now in great companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of this mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his own course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the golden plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbers uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by human agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I can see the sea-beaches and the marshes lined ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... workhouse is already every winter filled with abler- bodied men than he, between starvation—and this—. Well, as for employing him, one would have thought that there was a little work waiting to be done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which I used to tramp over last winter—but those, it seems, are still on the "margin of cultivation," and not a remunerative investment—that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy a present of ten acres ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... still keeping watch, when Harpstenah was called by her mother to assist her. The father's morning meal was prepared early, for he was going out to hunt. Wild duck, pigeons, and snipe, could be had in abundance; the timid grouse, too, could be roused up on the prairies. Larger game was there, too, for the deer flew swiftly past, and had even stopped to drink on the opposite shore ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... delighted pointer would come bounding at the call, and, after circling round his young master with agile grace and yelps of glee at the sight of the gun, dash forward to the well-known "bottoms" in eager expectancy of ducks and snipe. How fared it all this time with the lord of Scatterbrain? He became established, for the present, in a house that had been a long time to let in the neighbourhood, and his mother was placed at the head of it, and Oonah still remained under his protection, though the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... from any habitation. The instant it touched the soil, all needful precautions were taken to hold it there firmly; and Kennedy, fowling-piece in hand, sallied out upon the sloping plain. Ere long, he returned with half a dozen wild ducks and a kind of snipe, which Joe served up in his best style. The meal was heartily relished, and the night was passed in undisturbed and ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... extract a divine spirit of gravy from those materials which, duly compounded with a consistence of bread and cream (yclept bread-sauce), each to each giving double grace, do mutually illustrate and set off (as skilful gold-foils to rare jewels) your partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, struggling with my carnal and fleshly prudence (which suggests that a bird a man is the proper allotment in such cases), yearneth sometimes to have thee here to pick a wing ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... will the thing was hopeless. Considine, too, would encourage rather than repress such feelings; his feudalism would lead him to any lengths; and in defence of what he would esteem a right, he would as soon shoot a sheriff as a snipe, and, old as he was, ask for no better amusement than to arm the whole tenantry and give battle to the king's troops on the wide plain of Scariff. Amidst such conflicting thought, I travelled on moodily and in silence, to the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... three times a week. When they wanted us, German guards would come in, line up about twenty of us, and take us out to work in the fields. The first job they put us at was planting potatoes and we worked faithfully the first day, but when we came in that night I said to "Snipe," the new pal I had made, "By golly! Snipe, I don't like the idea of producing food for these 'square-heads,' let's see if we can't put one over them." "All right," said Snipe, "I'm game, but how in hell are you going ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.' So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven's blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, all of which caused much ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-by to the Hispaniola, good-by to the squire, the doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moment helping Alice to a snipe, answered carelessly, "Young lady? O, Miss Winnie Morris, sister of Wayland Morris, editor of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... GAME.—Larks, woodcock, snipe, wild pigeons, squabs, young geese, young turkeys, plover, wild ducks, wild geese, swans and brant fowls, reed-birds, grouse, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... Grosbeak Sparrow Hawk Bobolink White-headed Eagle Meadow Lark Great Horned Owl Bluejay Snowy Owl Ruffed Grouse Red-headed Woodpecker Great Blue Heron Golden-winged Woodpecker Bittern Barn-swallow Wilson's Snipe Whip-poor-will Long-biller Curlew Night Hawk Purple Gallinule Belted Kingfisher Canada Goose Kingbird Wood Duck Woodthrush Hooded Merganser Catbird Double-crested Cormorant White-bellied Nuthatch Arctic Tern Brown Creeper Great Northern Diver Bohemian Chatterer Stormy ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... will not kick so much as when loaded with small shot; and amongst different kinds of shot, that which is the smallest, causes the greatest recoil against the shoulder. A gun loaded with a quantity of sand, equal in weight to a charge of snipe-shot, kicks still more. If, in loading, a space is left between the wadding and the charge, the gun either recoils violently, or bursts. If the muzzle of a gun has accidentally been stuck into the ground, so as to be stopped up with clay, or even with ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... amazed at the quantity of birds that he met with—thrushes, wagtails, warblers, chifchaffs, fieldfares, and red-poles rose at every step. The air quivered with the song of innumerable larks, which mingled with those of the willow-warblers; snipe in considerable numbers sprang up and darted off with a sharp cry from almost under his feet; plovers circled round and round; ducks of various kinds passed between the shore, and, as Godfrey supposed, inland swamps or lakes; martins in great numbers darted ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... seeing that Mr Snipe's ears were open, he continued—"I can't tell how it is, but I saw, when first I came, you had never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... heap rather lay off in the brush somewheres an' snipe Germans," Mr. Daniels pleaded. "On the level, boss, if they'll give me a Springfield rifle with telescopic sights I'll guarantee to sicken anythin' I get a fair sight ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... he replied, "if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's." ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... tilth of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... accurate shot—out for his first shooting-day of the year: was it intelligible that he should be visited by vague sentimental regrets for London drawing-rooms and vapid talk? The getting up of a snipe interrupted these speculations; Ogilvie blazed away, missing with both barrels; Macleod, who had been patiently waiting to see the effect of the shots, then put up his gun, and presently the bird came tumbling down, some ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... with Keene on the previous evening after a hard day's snipe shooting, and bore evident traces about him of a heavy night—a fact which he lost no time in alluding to, not without a certain pride, like the man in Congreve's play, who exults in having "been drunk in excellent company." "We had a very ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the road was intricate, and it passed through a desert waste of marshes and lagoons. The scene by the dimmed light of the moon was most desolate. A few fireflies flitted by us; and the solitary snipe, as it rose, uttered its plaintive cry. The distant and sullen roar of the sea scarcely broke the stillness of ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... "Miserable snipe," demands BUMSTEAD, eyeing his trophy gloomily, and giving him a turn or two as though he were a mackerel under inspection, "what are you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... advantage, and raises his gun, quick as for the shooting of a snipe. The crack comes; and, simultaneous with it, Richard Darke is seen to drop out of his saddle, and fall face foremost on the plain— his horse, with a wild neigh, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... on shore, where we had manifest signs of people, where they had made their fire, and laid stones like a wall. In this place we saw four very fair falcons, and Master Bruton took from one of them his prey, which we judged by the wings and legs to be a snipe, for ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... at least one loophole, from which men can snipe, for every section? Have I pointed out to Section Commanders the portion of the enemy's trench they are responsible for keeping under fire, and where his ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... walked with a little cane and had a little umbrella made to carry when it rained. In fact, whatever other men did this little man was anxious to do also, and so it happened that when the hunting season came around, and all the men began to get their guns ready to hunt for snipe and duck, Mr. Jimson also had a little gun made, and determined to use it as well as any ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... bird that pleased me so much. Well—I followed this little brook till it entered the river, and then took the path that runs along the bank. On the opposite side I observed several little birds running along the shore, and making a piping noise. They were brown and white, and about as big as a snipe. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... but to each family belongs its own quarrels, its own revenge. If the Big Throat should interfere too deeply, it would anger the other small families, who might fear the same treatment at some other time. And with Beaver, Snipe, Deer, and Potato united against us,—well, it is a simple ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... meant. Good old Duggie wasn't going to have those eyes patrolling his spine if he knew it. He meant to keep away and conduct this business by letter. There was going to be no personal interview with sister, if he had to dodge about America like a snipe. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle is placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not accustomed to recognize any sight; and while the person is vainly endeavouring ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... fine rage. A situation, unique in his forty years of experience as a lumber and shipping magnate, was confronting him, with the prospects exceedingly bright for Cappy playing a role analogous to that of the simpleton who holds the sack on a snipe-hunting expedition. He summoned Mr. Skinner into his private office, and glared at the latter over the rims of his spectacles. "Skinner," he said solemnly, "there's the very ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... and the first inn he comes to on the edge of the wood. Since you are good enough to act as my guardian pay me the income on my eighth of the fief and do not ask me to learn that Latin bosh. A man of birth is sufficiently well educated when he knows how to bring down a snipe and sign his name. I have no desire to be seigneur of Roche-Mauprat; it is enough to have been a slave there. You are most kind, and on my honour I love you; but I have very little love for conditions. I have never done anything from interested motives. I would rather remain an ignoramus ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, they only quickened her expectation; and the witch had told her not ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... left of the shelled tree was the position from which I and two others were ordered to snipe. We climbed the ricketty building and fired from the eaves and from the cover of the chimney. The building was in a state of almost total ruin, but we took our places on the shaken beams and considered ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... a pretty long spell of uneasiness before she saw him back again. But Mr. Waterton, Baptist of a new generation in these mysteries, took that conceit out of Europe: the sloth, says he, cannot like a snipe or a plover run a race neck and neck with a first-class railway carriage; but is he, therefore, a slow coach? By no means: he would go from London to Edinburgh between seedtime and harvest. Now Gillman's Coleridge, vol. i., has no such speed: it has taken six years to come up with those whom chiefly ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... BORKIN. Roast snipe are good too, but they must be cooked right. They should first be cleaned, then sprinkled with bread crumbs, and roasted until they will ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... book on French furniture, so identical are they in every detail with the carved woodwork of Picau, of Cauner, or of Nilson, who designed the flamboyant frames of the time of Louis XV. Others have more individuality. In his mirror frames he introduced a peculiar bird with a long snipe-like beak, and rather impossible wings, an imitation of rockwork and dripping water, Chinese figures with pagodas and umbrellas; and sometimes the illustration of Aesop's fables interspersed with scrolls and flowers. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... orderly. All along their way they made unsparing slaughter of the birds that hovered over and around them. Nearly every species of the feathered tribe seemed to have its representative in that living cloud. There were wild ducks in thousands; snipe, larks, rooks, and swallows; a countless variety of sea-birds—widgeons, gulls, and seamews; beside a quantity of game—quails, partridges, and woodcocks. The sportsmen did their best; every shot told; and the depredators fell by dozens ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... The species of Snipe known in Australia are—Scolopax australis, Lath.; Painted S., Rhynchaea australis, Gould. This bird breeds in Japan and winters in Australia. The name is also used ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... horrors that may be comprised in the additional 'all kinds.' Jack's account of the game on St. Simon's is really quite tantalising to me, who cannot carry a gun any more than if I were a slave. He says that partridges, woodcocks, snipe, and wild duck abound, so that, at any rate, our table ought to be well supplied. His account of the bears that are still to be found in the woods of the mainland, is not so pleasant, though he says they do no harm to the people, if they ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... an easterly squall the sloop Arrow, Lemuel Vinton master and owner, was making her way along the low coast, southward, from Snipe Point, one of the islands in Florida Bay about twelve miles ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... then appeared before him the largest, and to my mind the hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the table of a nobleman, yet it disappeared just in time to answer the enquiry of the butler, 'Snipe or pheasant, my lord?' He instantly replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of meat at that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was taking care of his health, to which the octogenarian Premier replied: "Oh yes—indeed ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... I came to a pond where were sitting five snipe. I killed the whole bunch, and they helped to make another square meal. We were now near the border of the Great Desert proper, where, out of the midst of a level plain, stood a lone mountain known as the "Old Crater," which, together with its surroundings, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... muscle-shells that were scattered about, there could be no doubt of its being much frequented by the natives. The grass being fairly burnt up, our animals found but little to eat, but they had a tolerable journey and did not attempt to wander in search of better food. I shot a snipe near the creek, much resembling the painted snipe of India; but I had not the means ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... brooded over it so long that it's natural you should begin to have doubts and fears. To me it's as sound as when you first gave it. That being so, we can't run an' leave them poor ignorant savages to be shot down maybe like snipe. It wouldn't be Christian like to go when that ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... glorious sight sailing down-wind through the sunlight with their tails streaming behind them, at a pace which would leave any pheasant standing. As peacocks are regarded as sacred by Hindoos, the Maharajah had particularly begged us not to shoot any. There were plenty of other birds, snipe, partridges, florican and jungle-cocks, the two latter greatly esteemed for their flesh. I shot a jungle-cock, and was quite disappointed at finding him a facsimile of our barndoor game-cock, for I had imagined that he would have the velvety black wing starred with cream-coloured eyes, which we ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... also staring after us, and I had half a mind to go back and examine his portfolio to see what a snipe-faced notary might be carrying ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... that where there were birds there were nests, and where there were nests there were eggs. The birds congregated here in such numbers, because rocks provided them with thousands of cavities for their dwelling-places. In the distance a few herons and some flocks of snipe indicated ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... powerful swimmer. The current is very swift. Tortoises used to line the margin of the river in the evening, with their heads sticking out above water, while crowds of angry birds accused them from the wet mud of the shore. Wild duck, partridge, snipe, sand-grouse and doves were fairly numerous, and in the evenings it was possible to get a good bag. It was worth shooting jackals, for their skins were in very good condition. The hospital had a football ground and later on, towards the end of the hot ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... fat man of Bombay, Who was smoking one sunshiny day, When a bird, called a snipe, Flew away with his pipe, Which vexed the fat ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... leisurely. The gray gloom of the November evening was spreading over the sky as I came upon a small plantation which I believed belonged to me. I struck straight across it; emerging from its shadows, I found myself by a small stream and some marshy land; on the other side another small plantation. A snipe got up, I fired, and tailored it. I marked the bird into this other plantation, and followed. Up got a covey of partridges—bang, bang—one down by the side of an oak. I was about to enter this covert, when a lady and gentleman emerged, and, struck with the unpleasant thought that I was possibly ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... believed that the earth was once covered with water and the sky alone was inhabited, until God sent his only begotten daughter in the form of a kuri, or snipe, to look for dry land. She found a spot, and brought down to it earth, and a creeping plant, which grew and decomposed into worms, and, lo! the worms turned into men ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... provided them with ample means of gratifying their inclination. Besides bears, wolves, boars, foxes, roebucks, chamois, hares, and ermines, all of which are plentiful in parts of the country, birds of all kinds abound; grey and red-legged partridges, blackcock, ducks of various kinds, quail, and snipe, are the most common; while flights of geese and cranes pass in the spring and autumn, but only descend in spring. Swans and pelicans are also birds of passage, and occasionally visit these unknown lands. The natives are clever in trapping these animals. This they do either by means of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... longer do the ruffs trample the sedge into a hard floor in their fighting-rings, while the sober reeves stand round, admiring the tournament of their lovers, gay with ears and tippets, no two of them alike. Gone are ruffs and reeves, spoonbills, bitterns, avosets; the very snipe, one hears, disdains to breed. Gone, too, not only from Whittlesea but from the whole world, is that most exquisite of English butterflies, Lycaena dispar—the great copper; and many a curious insect more. Ah, well, at least ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... be in it. I listened eagerly for some intermission, but it did not relax or recede, and I knew that the Turks must be holding on. The bullets became thicker—an ironic whistle, a sucking noise, a gluck like a snipe leaving mud, the squeal and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... eastern North America, wintering in southern parts of its range, and a famous game bird. A ground bird of marshy woods and near-by fields, though he belongs to the same family as the Snipe, and is therefore classed among the Birds that Wade. He has a plump body, with short, legs, neck, tail, and wings, a big head with the eyes set in its back upper corners, a very long bill which is soft, sensitive, and can be bent a little; and the three outside feathers in each wing are very ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... splendid vegetation, which is watered by pure and limpid springs that gush from the mountain heights, and roll in a meandering course to join the waters of the lake. These pasture grounds constitute Jala-Jala the greatest game preserve in the island: wild boars, deer, buffaloes, fowls, quail, snipe, pigeons of fifteen or twenty different varieties, parrots—in short all sorts of birds abound in them. The lake is equally well supplied with aquatic birds, and particularly wild ducks. Notwithstanding its ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... a reminder of winesap and rambo in the boiling cider, while the newly opened bottles of grape juice filled the house with the tang of Concord and muscadine. It seemed to me I never got nicely fixed where I could take a sly dip in the cake dough or snipe a fat raisin from the mincemeat but Candace would say: "Don't you suppose the backlog ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... and a lot of cast-up sea-weed. If the boy had been permitted to choose, it isn't likely that he would have thought of alighting there; but the birds probably looked upon this as a veritable paradise. Ducks and geese walked about and fed on the meadow; nearer the water, ran snipe, and other coast-birds. The loons lay in the sea and fished, but the life and movement was upon the long sea-weed banks along the coast. There the birds stood side by side close together and picked grub-worms—which ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... camp the estuary had so much the appearance of a low-lying arm of the sea, with the tide out, that we could easily understand why Gregory called it a "sea" rather than a lake. Numerous sandspits stand out in the middle, on which, in early morning, so dense was the crowd of shags, pelicans, snipe, small gulls, whistling duck, teal, and other birds, that to say that there was acre upon acre of wild-fowl would not be wide of the mark; but in spite of their abundance they were not easily shot; ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... describing a great arch. Just as he touched the highest point of his spring I fired. I did not dare to wait, for I saw that he would clear the whole space and land right upon me. Without a sight, almost without aim, I fired, as one would fire a snap-shot at a snipe. The bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, which broke the shock), and the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... ostrich, bustard, and florikan affect all open places. The guinea-fowl is the most numerous of all game-birds. Partridges come next, but do not afford good sport; and quails are rare. Ducks and snipe appear to love Africa less than any other country; and geese and storks are only found where water most abounds. Vultures are uncommon; hawks and crows much abound, as in all other countries; but ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... himself at the Foreign Office in London and saw the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Hammond, who gave him some parting advice. "When you reach Hongkong," said he, "never venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as absurd as the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... uproariously at that jest, so Mahommed repeated it more pointedly, and the Sikh turned his back to consider the sunshine through the open door and the rising heat within. Suliman and the other little gutter-snipe proceeded to make friends with the whole gang promptly, giving as good as they got in the way of repartee, and nearly starting a riot until Grim called Ali Baba into the dining-room, where de Crespigny was shaking up the second round of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... dinner, Monsieur Calyste, and snipe, and pancakes such as I know you can't get anywhere but here," said Mariotte, with a sly, triumphant look as she smoothed the cloth, a ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... instant "Snipe," the household and post-office dog, ran across the floor with high-careering head, holding a huge envelope ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... renounced this expensive and precarious mode of sporting. The hawks are liable to various misfortunes, and are besides addicted to fly away; one of ours was fairly lost for the day, and one or two went off without permission, but returned. We killed a crow and frightened a snipe. There are, however, ladies and gentlemen enough to make a gallant show on the top of Mintlaw Kipps. The falconer made a fine figure—a handsome and active young fellow with the falcon on his wrist. The Colonel was most courteous, and named a hawk after me, which was a compliment. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air. She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary. She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! they were very far away. Death reigned within her who outwardly ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... water-fowl, including several varieties of duck, also shag, divers, pigmy geese, small teal, grebe, red-headed plover, spur-wing plover, curlew, sandpipers, snipe, swamp hen, water-rail, and many other birds. The red-headed plover were especially numerous, and ran about on the surface of the lake, which was covered with the water-lily leaves and a thick sort of mossy weed. All the birds seemed remarkably tame, and we got a good assorted bag, chiefly duck—enough ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... sheik was not a good specimen of the effect produced by his way of living. He was very small, very spare, and sadly shriveled—a poor overroasted snipe—a mere cinder of a man. I made him sit down by my side, and 10 gave him a piece of bread and a cup of water from out of my goatskins. This was not a very tempting drink to look at, for it had become turbid and was deeply reddened by some coloring matter contained in the skins; but it ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Goulds and Manlys, and day after day the rich smells of roast beef and the salt vapours of boiling hams trailed along the passages, and ascended through the banisters of the staircases in Beech Grove and Manly Park. Fifty chickens had been killed; presents of woodcock and snipe were received from all sides; salmon had arrived from Galway; cases of champagne from Dublin. As a wit said, 'Circe has prepared a banquet ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... see A wretch like poor Nancy, So teazed day and night By a Dean and a Knight. To punish my sins, Sir Arthur begins, And gives me a wipe, With Skinny and Snipe:[2], His malice is ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... failed to respond. "I guess likely he will pull through," he said dryly. "He had a pretty good shaking up coming down, and I'd better run around to camp and get a bottle of port I cached this morning. The snipe got away with my flask; used the last drop, likely, before she needed it." His voice took a higher pitch, and he added over his shoulder, as he started in the direction of the fire: "He made a ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... dozen varieties of cactus, portulaccas, geraniums, petunias, verbenas, scattered over the prairie, morning-glories and sunflowers in the arroyos and along the creeks, and many a flower nameless to the general, abounded. So, it should be added, did in their season plover, snipe, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... better known than the mosquito. In common with the woodcock, snipe, and other winged succubi, it breeds in wet places, yet is always dry. Like them it can sustain life on mud juleps, but prefers "cluret." It is a familiar creature, seems to regard the human family as its Blood relations, and is always ready to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... gray. Fishing Hawk. Turkey Buzzard, or Vulture. Herring-tail'd Hawk. Goshawk. Falcon. Merlin. Sparrow-hawk. Hobby. Ring-tail. Raven. Crow. Black Birds, two sorts. Buntings two sorts. Pheasant. Woodcock. Snipe. Partridge. Moorhen. Jay. Green Plover. Plover gray or whistling. Pigeon. Turtle Dove. Parrakeeto. Thrush. Wood-Peckers, five sorts. Mocking-birds, two sorts. Cat-Bird. Cuckoo. Blue-Bird. Bulfinch. Nightingale. Hedge-Sparrow. Wren. Sparrows, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... The Snipe, Sandpipers, Plovers, Phalaropes, Curlews, etc., are great destroyers of insects. Moving as many of them do in great flocks and spreading out over the meadows, pastures, and hillsides, as well as among the cultivated ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... intensely interested in their awkward, and at times comical, movements. As they are not good for food, only one or two were shot, as curiosities. Cranes stalked along on their long, slender legs in the marshy places, while snipe and many similar birds ran rapidly along the sandy shores. The ducks were everywhere, and so the shooting was everything that our enthusiastic ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... added Snap; who having devoted himself exclusively all his life to the sharpest practice of the criminal law, knew about as much of real property law as a snipe—but it would not have done to appear ignorant, or taking no part in the matter, in the presence of the heir-at-law, and the future great ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... You see my brain was filled with all sorts of stuff, and when that gun went bang! it struck me I was being fired at, so I ducked and something went 'sh! 'sh! just then, so's to make me get mixed up for a minute, and think it was flying lead. I know now it was one of them little snipe zipping past. They fooled me a few times a ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... have a thrashing, you lying little snipe, always hanging around the petticoats! Don't you suppose ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... in machine and engine construction is shown by referring to the tables for 1918. At the Armistice of the twelve types—Avro, Bristol Fighter, Sopwith Snipe, S.E. 5a, de Havilland 4 and 9a, Vickers Vimy, Handley Page O/400 and V/1,500, Fairey Seaplane 3c, F. 2 A. and F. 5—all were British and, except the de Havilland 9a, which had an American engine, were fitted with engines of British manufacture. The F. ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... carry others; ships and railroads give free transportation to quantities among the hay used in packing; birds and animals lift many on their feet - Darwin raised 537 plants from a ball of mud carried between the toes of a snipe! - and such feathered and furred agents as feed on berries and other fruits sometimes drop the seeds a thousand miles from the parent. but it will be noticed that such vagabonds as travel by the hook or by crook method, getting a lift in the world frpm every passer-by -.burdocks, beggar-ticks, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... far enough. The bay is not so very far away, and I have heard that there is salmon-fishing back in the mountains. And Mr. Washington and Uncle Jack Belmont often go duck and snipe shooting down on the marsh." She stopped with a shortening of the breath. She had not made such a long speech since ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... stripling, master, youth, son, minor, junior, youngling, cadet, chap, urchin, bub, sprig, callant, younker, hobbledehoy; gamin, gutter-snipe. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
