"Beetle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... agree, Bishop? Here is what I would call a worn-out earthenware plate. It is not a plate unless I tell it to be a plate. You may call it anything you like—it can't answer back. But we need not pursue the argument. Speaking for myself, I am feeling as comfortable as a beetle in a rose." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... certain unfrocked preacher of the Remonstrant persuasion, who, according to the fashion of the learned of that day, had translated his name out of Hendrik Sleet into Henricus Slatius, was one of his most unscrupulous instruments. Slatius, a big, swarthy, shag-eared, beetle-browed Hollander, possessed learning of no ordinary degree, a tempestuous kind of eloquence, and a habit of dealing with men; especially those of the humbler classes. He was passionate, greedy, overbearing, violent, and loose of life. He had sworn vengeance upon the Remonstrants ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... down of the axe and the hah! that helped it,—the straight-grained stick opening at the first appeal of the implement as if it were a pleasure, and the stick with a knot in the middle of it that mocked the blows and the hahs! until the beetle and wedge made it listen to reason,—there are just such straight-grained and just such knotty men and women. All this passes through my mind while Biddy, whose parlor-name is Angela, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a large Beetle, during his rambles, chanced to espy the Diamond, and he also recognised him to be some one of great ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... snow, which scarcely showed on its surface the delicate print of their tiny feet, and the sweep of their fine light feathery tails. Sometimes they met with some little shrewmice, running on the snow. These very tiny things are so small, they hardly look bigger than a large black beetle; they lived on the seeds of the tall weeds, which they, might be seen climbing and clinging to, yet were hardly heavy enough to weigh down the heads of the dry stalks. It is pretty to see the footprints of these small shrewmice, on ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... hand, quite proud of his expedition. The box is placed on the table and opened with great ceremony. I can hear the bursts of laughter and the shouts of the merry party when, instead of the looked-for sweets, he finds, neatly arranged on moss or cotton-wool, a beetle, a snail, a bit of coal, a few acorns, a turnip, or some such thing. Another time in a newly whitewashed room, a toy or some small article of furniture would be hung on the wall and the children would have to fetch it without touching the wall. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... similar things. Although, for example, the pupil has experienced but one such object, he does not necessarily think of it as a mere individual—this thing—but as a representative of a possible class of objects, a beetle. In other words the new particular notion tends to pass directly into a ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... this sacred beetle, which has been shaped by some workman down in Thebae on the Nile. We may be sure that no people believes more intensely in a future life. What compliment they pay this physical frame of men when they hold that embalmment restores to ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... other one. Piccolissima did not know what to understand, but she hastened to arm herself. Two bees, as her body guard, placed upon her head for helmet a flower of the snapdragon. Two wasps, redoubtable hussars, brought her for a shield a piece of the gold bronze wing shell of a beetle. ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... man. He would never put anything that wasn't nice into a poem, and he would never run anyone down; but if you were the worst in the world, he'd make you the best in it; and when his wife lost her beetle, he made a song of ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... be intolerable in an emperor to a black-beetle,"' quoted Beverley. 'Well, what are we going ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... just come to this conclusion, and was applying the flame of the candle to the nose of an inquisitive beetle, when it struck him he heard voices in altercation outside his door. One, clear, ringing, and imperious, yet withal feminine, was certainly not heard for the first time; and the subdued and respectful voices that answered, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... these your wood children find out each other untaught, as the butterfly that has never seen his kindred knows his painted mate, passing on the wing all others by. Only when the lark shall mate with the nightingale, and the honey-bee and the clock-beetle keep house together, shall I wed another maid. Fair maybe she will not be, though fair to me. Wise maybe she will not be, though wise to me. For riches I care not, and of her kindred I have no care. All I know is that just to sit by her will be bliss, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... foreign pollen by selecting for pollinating purposes a flower which has not quite opened. If the standard is not erected, it is unlikely to have been visited by Megachile. Lastly, it not infrequently happens that the little beetle Meligethes is found inside the keel. Such flowers should be ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... village of Chamouni lies too close to the toe of the Great White Mountain to permit of his being seen to advantage. One may truly see a small scrap of the veritable top from Chamouni, but one cannot obtain an idea of what it is that he sees. As well might a beetle walk close up to the heel of a man, and attempt from that position to form a correct estimate of his size; as well might one plant himself two inches distant from a large painting and expect to do it justice! No, in order to understand ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of beetle or butterfly, then, that this philosopher comes down upon here from the heights of his universal science—his science of the nature of things in general, but that great Spenserian monstrosity,—that diseased product ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... and refreshment, and that he constantly occupied the remaining eighteen (the time for divine service only excepted) in study. At Cambridge he superintended the exhibition of a Greek play of Aristophanes, among the machinery of which he introduced an artificial scarabaeus, or beetle, which flew up to the palace of Jupiter, with a man on his back, and a basket of provisions. The ignorant and astonished spectators ascribed this feat to the arts of the magician; and Dee, annoyed by these suspicions, found it expedient to withdraw to the continent. Here ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... close to him a brown beetle, sitting on a blackberry leaf. Teddy looked at the beetle for a while in silence, and then he said, "Well, why is ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... a pretty pair, Thorndyke," I exclaimed. "A human life seems to be no more to them than the life of a fly or a beetle." ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... the so-called "leaf-miner" being especially troublesome. The Mediterranean fruit fly deposits larvae which destroy or lessen the worth of the coffee berry by tunneling within and eating the contents of the parchment. The coffee-berry beetle and its grub also live within ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... said. "I've lived on th' moor with 'em so long. I've watched 'em break shell an' come out an' fledge an' learn to fly an' begin to sing, till I think I'm one of 'em. Sometimes I think p'raps I'm a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or even a beetle, ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... train erupted. It came with the belch of a monstrous beetle, red-eyed and menacing, hastening terribly to ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... XVII His beetle brows the Turk amazed bent, He wrinkled up his front, and wildly stared Upon the cloud and chariot as it went, For speed to Cynthia's car right well compared: The other seeing his astonishment How he bewondered was, and how he fared, All suddenly by name the prince gan call, By which awaked ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... world, passion and prejudice should fail to stir the mind, one learned coleopterist will fill ten attractive volumes with descriptions of species of beetles, nine-tenths of which are immediately declared by his brother beetle-mongers to be no ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Germany was a melody compared with this. I ought to have stopped in the tent, according to the wise old mother's advice, given sincerely, for prudence counselled her to strike her canvas and be gone. There I should have lain, interested in the progress of a bee, the course of a beetle or a cloud, a spider's business, and the shaking of the gorse and the heather, until good health had grown out of thoughtlessness. The very sight of my father was as a hive of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Pilkington, I could sympathize with Macbeth when he chatted with Banquo. He said I had killed his play. He nearly wept, and he drew such a moving picture of a poor helpless musical fantasy being lured into a dark alley by thugs and there slaughtered that he almost had me in tears too. I felt like a beetle-browed brute with a dripping knife and hands imbrued ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... I rode down last night about six, I saw a sight I must try to tell you of. In front of me, right over the top of the forest into which I was descending was a vast cloud. The front of it accurately represented the somewhat rugged, long-nosed, and beetle-browed profile of a man, crowned by a huge Kalmuck cap; the flesh part was of a heavenly pink, the cap, the moustache, the eyebrows were of a bluish gray; to see this with its childish exactitude of design ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there was long and for the most part carried on through the keyhole, but in the end their visitor was admitted, a beetle-browed brute of much the same stamp ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... clogs his feet; or if no snow is seen, The field with all its juicy store to screen, Deep goes the frost, till every root is found A rolling mass of ice upon the ground. No tender ewe can break her nightly fast, Nor heifer strong begin the cold repast, Till Giles with pond'rous beetle foremost go, And scatt'ring splinters fly at every blow; When pressing round him, eager for the prize, From their ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... grandm'ther, in the land of the living. His father was some kind of a natural, I guess, or else he hadn't known Deacon Scraper by sight or hearing; but when he dies what does he do but leave that old—old—beetle-bug guardeen of that child, case of his mother dyin'. Well, if I'd ha' had children, I might leave 'em to a fox for guardeen, or I might leave 'em to a horned pout, whichever I was a mind to, but ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... high o'er the ruined tower, When the night-bird sings in her lonely bower, When beetle and cricket and bat are awake, And the will-o'-the-wisp is at play in the brake, Oh then do we gather, all frolic and glee, We gay little elfins, beneath the old tree! And brightly we hover on silvery wing, And dip our small cups in the whispering ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... at all crowded, but their leaves were so thick, and their boughs spread so far, that it was only here and there a sunbeam could get straight through. All the gentle creatures of a forest were there, but no creatures that killed, not even a weasel to kill the rabbits, or a beetle to eat the snails out of their striped shells. As to the butterflies, words would but wrong them if they tried to tell how gorgeous they were. The princess's delight was so great that she neither laughed nor ran, but walked about with a solemn ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... as they have broken through the soil, an enemy awaits them in the small black insect commonly known as the cabbage or turnip fly, beetle, or flea. This insect, though so small as to appear to the eye as a black dot, is very voracious and surprisingly active. He apparently feeds on the juice of the young plant, perforating it with small holes the size of a pin ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... stand that from him!" exclaimed a voice from without, and the shadow of Pride, a beetle-browed, black-haired, ill-favoured lad, now ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the ruins or poring over the mouldy pedigree. And this son, so disowned,—for what dark offence? An awe crept over me. And this girl,—his ewe-lamb, his all,—was she fair? had she blue eyes like my mother, or a high Roman nose and beetle brows like Captain Roland? I mused and mused and mused; and the candle went out, and the moonlight grew broader and stiller; till at last I was sailing in a balloon with Uncle Jack, and had just tumbled into the Red Sea, when ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the guard-house, and I'll show you a few of our picked men, who are there on duty; real dare-devils, who care no more for a blue than they do for a black-beetle; and then we'll go to the Angers gate. It's there that Lechelle will show himself; and then—and then—why, then we'll go home, and get some breakfast, for it will be nearly time for us to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... expense, which weavers were permitted to occupy as hereditary possessions. It was formally decreed that "None but Weavers, Spinners, and other persons useful in the Weaving trade, Painters (i.e. designers of patterns for chintz), Washers (bleachers), Dyers, Bettleca-merchants (beetle-sellers), Brahmins and Dancing women, and other necessary attendants on the pagoda (erected in the settlement) shall inhabit the said town." In Chintadripet to-day there are still many spinners and weavers; and ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... money—money for all the work I've done as wasn't in my wages, and for the food as I haven't had, when I'd ought to. What do you call that?" She pointed to a plate of something on the kitchen table. "Is that a dinner for a human being, or is it a dinner for a beetle? D'you think I'd eat it, and me with money in my pocket to buy better? You want to make a walkin' skeleton of me, do you?—but I'll have it out of you, I will—There goes another dish! And here goes a sugar-basin! And here ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... to whom one is attached unnerves a man in moments of danger. I know, although it was now chilly enough, I could feel the perspiration running down my nose, and in order to relieve the strain on my attention employed myself in watching a beetle which appeared to be attracted by the firelight, and was sitting before it thoughtfully rubbing his ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... the way any babies are," said Peter, talking to himself as is his way when there is no one else to talk to. Just then a funny little black pollywog wriggled into sight, and while Peter was watching him, a stout-jawed water-beetle suddenly rushed from among the water grass, seized the pollywog by his tail, and dragged him down. Peter stared. Could it be that that ugly-looking bug was as dangerous an enemy to the baby Toad as Reddy Fox is ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... An' 't is awnly your bigness of heart, as wouldn't hurt a beetle, makes you speak kind of the boozy auld sweep. I'll soon shaw un wheer he's out if he thinks you ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a small man carrying a neat bag. He was of surpassing ugliness, and yet she liked him. His mouth had a curious twist. He had no chin to speak of, and his bright eyes protruded like those of a beetle. His voice, however, was surprisingly ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... another side of the wood pile, and brought a large beetle and an iron wedge. When he got back to his log, he started out the axe which he had left sticking into it. Then Rollo saw that the axe had made a little indentation, or cleft, in the wood. He put the point of the wedge into this cleft, and drove it in a very little, with ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... is caused by a beetle which bores into the twigs. The twigs above the point where the beetle enters dies and then, of course, buds come out from healthy wood below. No treatment has been devised against it, though its breeding ground is limited if all dead wood and brush and litter is cleaned up and twigs ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... grate, which was a wide one, was wound and screwed up tight, so as to hold no more than a little thin sandwich of fire. Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon. He would have known, at the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up the ghost ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... I by any argument convince this beetle-head that I was simply speaking the barbarous ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feasts Excited the spleen of the Birds and the Beasts: For their mirth and good cheer—of the Bee was the theme, And the Gnat blew his horn, as he danc'd in the beam. 'Twas humm'd by the Beetle, 'twas buzz'd by the Fly, And sung by the myriads that sport through the sky. The Quadrupeds listen'd with sullen displeasure, But the tenants of air were enraged beyond measure. The PEACOCK display'd his bright plumes to the Sun, And, addressing his Mates, thus indignant ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... With squeaking bucket on his arm, emerges The errand-boy, slow marching to the tune Of "Uncle Ned" or "Norma," whistled shrill. Hark! heard you not against the window-pane The dash of horny skull in mad career, And a loud buzz of terror? He'll be in, This horrid beetle; yes,—and in my hair! Close all the blinds; 't is dismal, but 't is safe. Listen! Methought I heard delicious music, Faint and afar. Pray, is the Boat-Club out? Do the Pierian minstrels meet to-night? Or chime the bells of Boston, or the ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... also unique in the production of a species of beetle remarkable for variety of colors and ornamentation of body. We had seen numerous specimens of this insect in southern India and at Singapore, some of which were an inch long, but these of Elephanta were not ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... towards the inside of the calix. A beetle, a little smaller than herself, with brown wing-sheaths and a black breastplate, was sitting at the entrance. He kept his place unperturbed, and looked at her seriously, though by no means ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... against each other and everything else in their way, and end in a general stampede to underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass growing fresh and green where the stone lay—the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole—the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... chosen for the guard, With all my trusty fellows. Pilate knew I was a man who had no foolish heart Of softness all unworthy of a man! I was a soldier who had slain my foes; My eyes had looked upon a tortured slave As on a beetle crushed beneath my tread; I gloried in the splendid strife of war, Lusting for conquest; I had won the praise Of our stern general on a scarlet field, Red in my veins the warrior passion ran, For I had sprung from ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... gods!—the manna has descended in showers. Go into any of the London theatres now, and the following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... allotted hours aloft shall wheel in vain And in the unpregnant ocean plunge again. Assault of squalls that mock the watchful guard, And pluck the bursting canvas from the yard, And senseless clamour of the calm, at night Must mar your slumbers. By the plunging light, In beetle-haunted, most unwomanly bower Of the wild-swerving cabin, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stomach of animals; but the bladderwort and pitcher-plants can only absorb in the form of soup the products of their victims' decay. Flies and gnats drowned in these pitchers quickly yield their poor little bodies; but owing to the beetle's hard shell covering, many a rare specimen may be rescued intact to ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... into the shed and showed her the traveling-cranes that could pick up a locomotive between their long fingers and carry it across the long room like a captured beetle. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... back to the well-lit little building, where the beetle-browed driver again chaffed the police-agents, while the Customs officer placed his rubber stamp upon the paper, scribbled his initials and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... Beetle were at enmity together, and they destroyed one another's nests. The Eagle gave the first provocation in seizing upon and in eating the young ones of the Beetle. The Beetle got by stealth at the Eagle's eggs, and rolled them out of the nest, and followed the Eagle ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... Broad-shouldered, beetle-browed, brutal and lazy was Bill Hennard, son of a prosperous settler. He had inherited a fine farm, but he was as lazy as he was strong, and had soon run through his property and followed the usual course from laziness to crime. Bill had seen the inside ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... deliver the deceased from the Great Crocodile Sui, and the Serpents Rerek and Seksek, and the Lynx with its deadly claws, and the Beetle Apshait, and the terrible Merti snake-goddesses, and a group of three particularly venomous serpents, and Aapep a personification of Set the god of evil, and the Eater of the Ass, and a series of beings who lived by slaughtering the souls of the dead. In Chapter XLII every ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... an alley, To a castle in a valley, They completely lost their way, And wandered all the day; Till, to see them safely back, They paid a Ducky-quack, And a Beetle, and a Mouse, Who ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... than that? Are you a lover of dead moths, and empty beetle-skins, and butterflies' wings, and dry tufts of moss, and curious stones, and pieces of ribbon-grass, and strange birds' nests? These are some of the things I used to delight in when I was about as ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... The earth he had dreaded lay close to his eyes, and seemed beautiful. He saw the structure of the clods. A tiny beetle swung on the grass blade. On his own neck a human hand pressed, guiding the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... out to gather fruit at a venture: and now this misery will soon be ended with his illness; driven away by deluges of lemonade, I think, made in defiance of wasps, flies, and a kind of volant beetle, wonderfully beautiful and very pertinacious in his attacks; and who makes dreadful depredations on my sugar and currant-jelly, so necessary on this occasion of illness, and so attractive to all these detestable inhabitants of a place ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Bouhours[271], who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart. In the description of night in Macbeth[272], the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... sitting on a stool in the middle of it with an A B C in her hand. But Beth took no interest in the alphabet in those days, and hunted black-beetles with the bellows instead of learning it. The hearthstone was the place of execution. When she found a beetle, she would blow him along to it with the bellows, and there despatch him. She had no horror of any creature in her childhood, but as she matured, her whole temperament changed in this respect, and when she met a beetle on the stairs she would turn ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... also an American beetle, the Ambrosia beetle, belonging to the family of Scolytidae, which derives its name from its curious cultivation of a succulent fungus, called ambrosia. Ambrosia beetles bore deep though minute galleries ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is juice of poppy bruised, With black hellebore infused; Here is mandrake's bleeding root, Mixed with moonshade's deadly fruit; Viper's bag with venom fill'd, Taken ere the beast was kill'd; Adder's skin and raven's feather, With shell of beetle blent together; Dragonwort and barbatus, Hemlock black and poisonous; Horn of hart, and storax red, Lapwing's blood, at midnight shed. In the heated pan they burn, And to pungent vapours turn. By this strong suffumigation, By this potent invocation, Spirits! I compel you here! ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in the Garden of Birds trouble had begun. There were disputes every morning as to which was the earliest bird who was entitled to the worm. There were quarrels over the best places for nest-building and over the fattest bug or beetle; and there was no one to settle these difficulties. Moreover, the robber birds were growing too bold, and there was no one to rule and punish them. There was no doubt about it; the birds needed a king to keep them ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... a stain on the gravel walk, caused by the remains of an unlucky beetle, crushed under his friend's heavy foot. "You trod on the beetle before I could ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... known to lovers of the amphitheatre under the name of Lanio, a victor in many games. With a great helmet on his head, and in mail which formed a ridge in front of his powerful breast and behind, he looked in the gleam of the golden arena like a giant beetle. The no less famous retiarius Calendio ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cut from the tops of the trees, or from the branches, and were, consequently, small in diameter; others were from the trunks, which would, of course, make large logs. These logs had, however, been split into quarters by a beetle and wedges, when the wood had been prepared, so that there were very few sticks or logs so large, but that Jonas could pretty easily get them on ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... mutton into steaks with a bone in each; trim them nicely, and scrape clean the end of the bone. Flatten them with a rolling pin, or a meat beetle, and lay them in oiled butter. Make a seasoning of hard-boiled yolk of egg and sweet-herbs minced small, grated bread, pepper, salt, and nutmeg; and, if you choose, a little minced onion. Take the chops out of the butter, and cover them with the seasoning. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... Thames, all found their way to Phoebe's flower-plats. He brought her in summer evenings glow-worms enough to form a constellation on the grass; and would spend half a July day in chasing for her some glorious insect, dragon-fly, or bee-bird, or golden beetle, or gorgeous butterfly. He not only bestowed upon her sloes, and dew-berries, and hazel-nuts "brown as the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em," but caught for her the squirrel itself. He brought her a whole litter of dormice, ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... the slope of the world in a battle line that covered a wide sector of the southwestern horizon, steamed four German battle cruisers. They were four sea eagles dashing at a little water beetle of a tug—the hammer of Thor swinging forward to crush an insect. The submarine had signaled by wireless the whole German South Atlantic fleet to destroy ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... when there were still mayings among the hyacinths, and milkmaids' dances under the thorns, and mummings when the snow fell. And Dick Ashbridge shot and fished in the most disconsolate abandonment, though the girl yet ran past him "like a ghost" when the beetle and bat were abroad, and he was still mooning about ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... crop fully fifty per cent., and was the cause, not only of serious loss to the farmers, but of the closing of the cotton mills in New England, of a scarcity of cotton cloth and a decided rise in its price. The boll-weevil is a beetle about a quarter of an inch in length. This little beetle eats into the heart of each boll, which soon falls to ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... swallow free, And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe And the matin-bell and the mountain bee: 20 Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim: The beetle forgot to wind his horn, The crickets were still in the meadow and hill: 25 Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun Night's dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are their prey From the lamp's death to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... butterfly. With his bird and beetle and butterfly he travelled on and on until he became lost in the jungle. The foliage was so dense that he could not see his way, so he climbed to the top of the tallest tree he saw. From its summit he spied in the distance ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... road in a cloud of dust before a shout from the crowd proclaimed that the Golden Eagle was once more in sight. At first a mere speck against the blue, she rapidly assumed shape and was soon circling above the heads of the onlookers, her engine droning steadily, as if she had been some gigantic beetle. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... one came knocking At my wee, small door; Some one came knocking, I'm sure - sure - sure; I listened, I opened, I looked to left and right, But naught there was a-stirring In the still dark night; Only the busy beetle Tap-tapping in the wall, Only from the forest The screech-owl's call, Only the cricket whistling While the dewdrops fall, So I know not who came knocking, At all, at ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... of Givet. Then, as now, he had lain staring, his whole soul sickened by the cruel jar of the jest. Hand of fate, was it? Nay, a jocose and blundering finger, rather, that had flipped him, as a man might flip a beetle, into the night. Then, as now, his soul had welled up in sullen indignation. He blamed no one; for in all the stupid chapter of accidents there was no one to blame. But when the Protestant chaplain in Givet came to his bed he turned ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... glands of many tentacles. An insect, such as a fly, with thin integuments, through which animal matter in solution can readily pass into the surrounding dense secretion, is more efficient in causing prolonged inflection than an insect with a thick coat, such as a beetle. The inflection of the tentacles takes place indifferently in the light and darkness; and the plant is not subject to any nocturnal ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... haze of smoke on to the black beams of the ceiling, the dust-red brick of the walls and floor, and the cavernous depths of the great fireplace. Sitting cross-legged on the table in the centre of the room was the pedlar, a little, dark, beetle-browed man, and at his side were his wares, his pack flung open, and cloths of green and gold and blue and red flung pell-mell at his side. Leaning against the table, her hands on her hips, was the girl, dark like her father, tall and flat-chested, with a mass of black hair flung back ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the grass," answered Nostromo, and his voice seemed deadened by the thick veil of obscurity that felt warm and hopeless all about them. There were long periods when he made no sound, invisible and inaudible as if ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... I once procured a beetle with red stripes across its wing-sheaths, and trained it to show some degree of intelligence. This was for months the sole companion of my solitude, but it was at last discovered in my possession ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the boat she stepped then, and found the earth all paved of a middling gravel, and nought at all growing there, not even the smallest of herbs; and she stooped down and searched the gravel, and found neither worm nor beetle therein, nay nor any one of the sharp and slimy creatures which are ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... a beetle [that is, a large wooden hammer], and a few men of my own choice, and I'll take her," he said to General Amherst. He meant to row under the stern of the ship and wedge her rudder so that she would be helpless. Whether ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... a beautiful spring morning. The young wife bade him a hearty good-by, and stood in the doorway watching him, gay and debonair, riding off, on his stout black charger Beetle, in the direction of the town in which court was to be ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... the beetle boometh Athwart the thicket lone: At noon the wild bee [1] hummeth About the moss'd headstone: At midnight the moon cometh, And looketh down alone. Her song the lintwhite swelleth, The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... sound as of men forcing their way downward on each side of the gully, and the next minute, as the place grew lighter, consequent upon the trees being absent for a space of about, a dozen yards, there was the sharp whiz as of some great beetle darting across, followed by the report of a gun, which was magnified by echoes which died away ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... Albert," said Bill, sternly. "These are very ignoble and shameless words," but the Puddin' merely laughed scornfully, and called Bill a bun-headed old beetle-crusher. ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... go a bit,—I 'll say that for him,—but they were determined that he should. I didn't mind his going to dinners and minstrels, of course, but when they spoke of being out until after midnight, or to-morrow morning, and when one beetle-browed, vulgar-looking creature offered to lend him a 'tenner,' I thought of the mortgage on the Noble ranch, and the trouble there would be if Edgar should get into debt, and I felt I must do something to stop him, especially as he said himself that everything depended ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... pillagers; but know They are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvests keep a hundred harms; Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... point,' said Claudio. 'O, I do fear you, Claudio!' replied his sister; 'and I quake, lest you should wish to live, and more respect the trifling term of six or seven winters added to your life, then your perpetual honour! Do you dare to die? The sense of death is most in apprehension, and the poor beetle that we tread upon, feels a pang as great as when a giant dies.' 'Why do you give me this shame?' said Claudio. 'Think you I can fetch a resolution from flowery tenderness? If I must die, I will encounter ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... were in the habit of coming up from our bunks in the evening. We used to lean over the handrail and watch the wonder of a Mediterranean sunset transform in schemes of peacock-blue and beetle-green, down and down, through emerald, pale gold and lemon yellow, and so to the horizon of the inland sea, in bands of deep chrome and orange, scarlet, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... and musketoon So gallantly you come, I read you for a bold Dragoon That lists the tuck of drum.' 'I list no more the tuck of drum, No more the trumpet hear; But when the beetle sounds his hum, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... men took from the floor the sheet of manuscript and stepped to the window, for already the evening shadows were glooming the forest. The song of the whip-poor-will was heard in the distance and a monstrous beetle sped by the window on roaring wings and thundered away out of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... wonder of it. No bird, however evident his acknowledgement of my harmlessness, had ever hopped and REMAINED. Many had perched for a moment in the grass or on a nearby bough, had trilled or chirped or secured a scurrying gold and green beetle and flown away. But none had stayed to inquire—to reflect—even to seem—if one dared be so bold as to hope such a thing—to make mysterious, almost occult advances towards intimacy. Also I had never before heard ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nearest bushes as you approach, or with the hermit thrush, that pours out its heavenly song in the solitude of the forest, how gracious and full of gentle confidence it seems! Every gesture is graceful and elegant; even a wriggling beetle is eaten as daintily as caviare at the king's table. It is only when its confidence in you is abused, and you pass too near the nest, that might easily be mistaken for a robin's, just above your ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... not have noticed it, but it was of too considerable weight to travel over his person without making its progress felt. Deterred by none of the superstitious tremors which the unaccountable peregrinations of the gold beetle would have excited in one less intrepid, he quickly thrust his hand into his pocket to close it over another hand already there, a hand which beyond a first little start to escape, lay passive and unresisting, a hand soft and delicate, yet well-muscled withal, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... escaped him as he tried to lift his paw quite as quickly as it had descended but the awful thing clung to it and it was only after a number of vigorous shakes that he succeeded in dislodging it. In his lack of experience he had planted his paw directly upon a giant rhinoceros beetle with bristling, thorn-like "antlers" one of which had penetrated the skin between the pads. The pain was intense so he held up the injured member and wailed for his mother; he was in trouble and wanted ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... let us give them decent burial. Crush the wounded beetle if you will, but do not try to mend it. I am glad to have seen the remains of the Assumption chapel while they are in their present state, but am not sure whether I would not rather see them destroyed at once, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... he deficient in fancy, and 'The Celestial Grocery' is as whimsical as it is fresh. 'Bill' is in yet another vein, and proves that Mr. Pain can handle the squalor of reality: while the last half of 'The Girl and the Beetle,' the best of the book, suggests a certain comprehension of ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... parasite requires a secondary host. In this case a particular species of the May-beetle larva or white grub that is commonly found about manure piles and in clover pastures is the host. The hog eats a white grub that is host for the larval form. The digestive juices free the larva, it then becomes attached to the intestinal mucous membrane and develops ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... or cucuij, is a kind of beetle, about three inches long, which emits a very brilliant light from two large protuberances in its head, which look like its eyes. It is called the lantern-fly in English, and lives in South America. The light ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to sink. Then, before they could adjust their unaccustomed feet to the different balance of the Puncher's heaving deck, the gongs clanged and the destroyer leaped ahead like a dripping sea-soused water beetle, into her utmost ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... anchor in that neighborhood—of a woodcutter's axe. Sturdy were the blows, and steady the succession in which they followed: some even fancied they could hear that sort of groaning respiration which is made by men who use an axe, or by those who in towns ply the "three-man beetle" of Falstaff, as paviers; echoes they certainly heard of every blow, from the profound woods and the sylvan precipices on the margin of the shores; which, however, should rather indicate that the sounds were not supernatural, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Osten-Sacken remained within the Russian frontier with powerful reserves, and reinforcements were pouring along in unbroken streams from the great centres of Russian military power. The fierce Cossack from the Don and the Dneister, the Tartar from the Ukraine, the beetle-browed and predatory Baschkir, with all their variety of wild uniform, and "helm and blade" glancing in the summer's sun, crowded on the great military thoroughfares, while fresh supplies of well-appointed and formidable artillery ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... within gunshot of the place before he dismounted and allowed the horse to graze. She watched his progress as he covered the last half-mile on foot. He had discarded his heavy chaps, his blue and white shirt and overalls giving him the appearance of some great striped beetle as he crawled up a shallow ravine. The figures were small from distance, even when viewed through the glasses, thus lending her a feeling of detachment and lessening the personal element and the grim reality ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... and my mind kept on behaving like a beetle on a pin, tremendous activity and nothing done at the end of it. Come round just where it was before. There was sorrowing for the other chaps, beastly drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and young Sanders with the spear through his neck wouldn't go out of my mind. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... cold water. If, after the wood has dried, it becomes cracked, apply a solution of hot size with a brush, which will bind it well together and make it better for varnishing, as well as destroy the beetle which is often met with in old oak, and is erroneously called ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... Carry me down the empty street Made hideous with arcs of purple light... Inevitably I must return to bed. The house is waiting, chairs, and books, and clocks. I am their prisoner. I have no more chance Of escape, when all is said, Than a dying beetle in a box— And life, and love,—and death—have gone ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... hear around The churme and chirruping of busy reptiles At hideous banquet on the royal dead:— Full soon methought the loathsome epicures Came thick on me, and underneath my shroud I felt the many-foot and beetle creep, And on my breast the cold ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... the fish that had been washed up on the lake shore, and so helped keep things sweet and clean. In this way they were scavengers; and it is always well to remember that a scavenger, whether he be a bird or beast or beetle, does great service in the world for all who ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... a broken beetle— Sprawls without grace, Her face gray as asphalt, Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges... Shadows ply about her mouth— Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree, That dances above her ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... Pem. Hence, beetle-head. And, Pembrook, now bethink How great a tyde of miseries breakes in. First, thou art taxed with the losse of him Whom equall with thy selfe thou holdest Deare; Next, Bellamira is become a Leper, Whose absence Philip carefully laments; ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... insects can hardly be estimated at their true dreadfulness by persons unacquainted with the infamous habits of the nocturnal beetle of the tropics. Sluggish creatures in the temperate zone, in warm countries they develop the power of flying, and obstacles successfully interposed to their progress in countries where they merely crawl are ineffectual here. They had ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... slightly. On a chair stood a stack of photographs of statues and pictures, which it was his habit to exhibit, one by one, for the space of a day or two. The books on his shelves were as orderly as regiments of soldiers, and the backs of them shone like so many bronze beetle-wings; though, if you took one from its place you saw a shabbier volume behind it, since space was limited. An oval Venetian mirror stood above the fireplace, and reflected duskily in its spotted depths the faint yellow and crimson of a jarful of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... is prettier than the American elm when it reaches the majesty of its maturity and I do not believe it will ever cease to be a favorite. One thing against it, though, is the 'elm beetle,' a pest which is spreading and which will kill some of our most beautiful trees unless spraying is consistently practised. China berry trees, abundant in the South, and box elders, native to a score of states, are quick growing, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... profane mockery, or in pious commemoration of it, must depend on the time of its adoption, before or since the Reformation; and it is not worth inquiring. The two words are transposed, and bee annexed as being perhaps thought more seemly in such a connection than fly-bug or beetle. The dignified ecclesiastics in ancient times wore brilliant mixtures of colours in their habits. Bishops had scarlet and black, as this insect has on its wing-covers. Some remains of the finery of the gravest personages still exist on our academical robes of ceremony. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... First, he said, let Augusta be watched and deprived of sleep for five or six days. Next, he must be strapped to a shutter, with his head hanging over one end; he must have vinegar rubbed into his nostrils; he must have a beetle fastened on to his stomach; and in this position, with his neck aching, his nostrils smarting, and the beetle working its way to his vitals, he must be kept for two days and two nights. And, third, if these measures ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... vaunted astuteness gained her little knowledge which could be of value to her in their late acquaintance. Mrs. Lindsay was a beetle-browed, enormously stout old lady, with a stern eye and commanding presence, who looked as if in her younger days she might well have been a police-matron—as indeed she had been. She had two double rooms and a single hall bedroom to show for inspection, and she waxed surprisingly voluble concerning ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... see Mr. Evans. When we came to his house, he, having been drunk the night before, was upon his bed—if it be lawful to call that a bed whereon he lay.' 'He was the most saturnine man my eyes ever beheld either before I practised (astrology) or since: of middle stature, broad forehead, beetle browed, thick shoulders, flat nosed, full lips, down looked, black, curling, stiff hair, splay footed;' 'much addicted to debauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome; seldom without a black eye, or one mischief or another.' A very good description this, save that the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back, And there was the Gnat and the Dragonfly too, With all their Relations, green, orange and blue. And there came the Moth, with his plumage of down, And ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Throg invaders, Shann Lantee and Ragnar Thorvald enter the world of beautiful women. Immensely powerful as they are lovely, these witches control men by thought domination. Shann's victory over the beetle-like Throg and his civilized alliance with the women is told here with that sweep of imagination and brilliance of detail which render Andre Norton a primary talent among writers of science ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... embryo or spawn deposited by the female, the breed of Salmon and Trout (to say nothing of other species) would long since have become extinct. Eels, fish, birds, water rats, toads, frogs, and last but not least, the water beetle,[8] prey upon the ova, spawn and young fry; floods also sweep away and leave on banks, or rocks, a considerable quantity of spawn, which of course comes to nothing. Escaping the above perils and causalities, and ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... perfect state it is a very handsome beetle, about three-quarters of an inch long, cylindrical in form, of a pale brown color, with two broad, creamy white stripes running the whole length of its body; the face and under surface are hoary white, the antennae and legs gray. The females ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... this Pilcher built a second glider which he named the 'Beetle,' because, as he said, it looked like one. In this the square-cut wings formed almost a continuous plane, rigidly fixed to the central body, which consisted of a shaped girder. These wings were built up of five ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... king of gods? the royal ape? Shon of a nymph? or wears a demon's shape? The kingly deity of wind and rain? The offshpring of the Pandu-princes' bane? A prophet? or a vulture known afar? A shtatesman? or a beetle? or a ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka |
